Terms of Reference

MORS Workshop: Combat Analyst:
Deploying Quantitative Support to the Combatant Commander
28 – 30 January 2003
Booz Allen and Hamilton, McLean, Virginia
(Draft - Updated 7 November 2002)

1.      Purpose

The proposed meeting will provide a forum for discussing Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force approaches to training, equipping and deploying operations research support to the combatant commander.  The goal is to gain inter-service perspectives on combat operational assessment techniques and capabilities to better support the joint combat forces.

2.  Type of Meeting

Workshop 

3.      Justification

Since World War II the value of analysts to the warfighter has been a continuously relearned lesson.  In recent conflicts such as DESERT STORM, ALLIED FORCE and now ENDURING FREEDOM and NOBLE EAGLE the value of analysts has emerged again.   We need analysts operating side-by-side with the warfighters for many reasons. Some, but not all, of the reasons are to: 1) Analyze Combatant Commander’s course of action (COA) alternatives; 2) Provide insights on objectives achieved; 3) Analyze logistics, ISR and force structure alternatives; 4) Collect, disseminate, and archive information; 5) Provide mission effectiveness vs. attrition rates; and 6) Detect and analyze emerging trends.  Commanders need the hard-hitting, factual operational assessments provided by combat analysts to aid in the art of military strategy development.

Combatant Commanders play a complex and multifaceted role as integrators and translators of strategy.  Their responsibility is to formulate theater strategy to meet national military objectives and to design and execute a COA aimed at achieving those objectives.  Technology and information advances have shattered traditional boundaries of strategic thinking.  Today, a combat task accomplished at the tactical level can have profound impacts at all levels.  More than ever before, a Combatant Commander needs the operational assessment support of a combat analyst to rapidly link task execution to strategy.

Cohesion of analysis at the joint level is particularly critical.  Vital tasks such as establishing measures of merit (MoM) and determining jointly how and when MoMs are achieved present the combat analyst with crucial and demanding tasks—tasks critical to the commander’s decision process.  The synergy of air, land, and  naval fires is vital to the Secretary of Defense’s call for light and lethal forces.  To be truly effective in this paradigm the Combatant Commander requires rapid and robust operational assessments that reflect the joint force effort and are quantitatively based.  These assessments must accurately reflect the services’ gains and losses and must complement sister service assessments in order to fully support the Combatant Commander.  The proper preparation and deployment of the combat analyst is fundamental to providing commanders with the ability to successfully lead joint force military efforts and achieve operational objectives.

The operations analysis community needs to prepare the military services to properly leverage analytical combat support and help set a framework for future capabilities.  The community should set a course of cooperation in the critical areas of training, equipping and deploying/employing operations analysis capabilities.  This spirit of cooperation should include a sharing of efforts, successes and failures in the key capabilities.

4.      Sponsor Interest

All sponsors have expressed a strong interest in this workshop.

5.  Workshop Description

The Combat Analyst:  Deploying Quantitative Support to the Combatant Commander workshop will be organized into four working groups and a synthesis group.  The four working groups will address the key issues of 1) deploying/employing operations assessment analysis capabilities, 2) training analysts and leaders, 3) assessment tool development, and 4) the Combatant Commander’s role in leveraging the combat analyst.

WG-1 Deploying/Employing the Operations Assessment Capabilities—Identify current service capabilities for employing operations research skills to support the Combatant Commander’s operational objectives.  This working group will focus on:

Participants are encouraged to share employment capabilities including location and organizational positioning of operations analysts inside command and control (C²) structures that best contributes to the Combatant Commander’s warfighting execution process.

WG-2 Training/Educating Combat Analysts and Leaders— The combat analyst needs not only to know how a war is prosecuted, but also must understand the proper OR techniques and have the knowledge to assist in the planning and execution of the combat effort. Group members should be prepared to discuss training and education requirements for readying operations analysts to serve in forward and possibly austere locations. The WG should examine each services’ training processes for readying an operations analyst to work on a Combatant Commander’s staff and examine OR education required.  This working group will focus on these tasks:

Current training capabilities and should be discussed and evaluated to best prepare for successful employment.  Additionally, inputs should be developed to prepare a Combatant Commander’s staff for fully exploiting the capabilities of an operations analyst.

WG-3: Equipping the Combat Analyst—What hardware and software tools do we provide the combat analyst when deploying overseas with operating forces to support a combat commander in an international contingency?  The working group will accomplish four tasks:

Providing hardware for the combat analyst is complicated by the possibility of an austere working environment when deployed.  This possibility raises considerations not normally raised during hardware selection.  These considerations include ruggedization, reliability, portability, and power source availability.  Another consideration is equipping the combat analyst with the ability to reach back to CONUS for analytical support. It may be that one of the considerations concerning software selection is the warfighting commander being supported.  Analytical support provided to the Joint Forces Air Component Commander (JFACC) may not be the same as the analytical support to the Joint Forces Land Component Commander (JFLCC) or the Joint Forces Maritime Component Commander (JFMCC).

WG-4 The Combatant Commander’s Role in Leveraging Combat Analysts—Operations Researchers are well aware of the very significant potential benefit OR brings to the Commander to shorten the war and save lives as well as materiel.  The very foundations of the OR discipline reside in plentiful examples of these phenomena—largely from what is now, unfortunately, the distant past.  Modern commanders have little to no knowledge of OR and what it can do for them, and, in fact, are often times suspicious of analysts and what they have to say.  This is reflected in current practice—in the limited opportunities in recent years to put combat analysts close to the Combatant Commanders, it has not been unusual for them to be relegated to “computer honcho” or other less significant duties rather than to practice their craft.  There seems to be no natural place for the combat analyst to “fit in,” so that when deployed, they spend a considerable amount of their time trying to position themselves to be relevant.  It is of little utility to train combat analysts, equip them with tools, and deploy them only to be out-of-the-loop to the point of becoming the “gofer” on the staff.  The purpose of this working group is to recommend a strategy and specific actions that can be taken to mitigate this situation.  The group will focus on three areas: 

Synthesis Group—The synthesis group will bring together the work of the three working groups and develop the overall recommendations from the analysis community to the individual service operations analysts.  As well, this group will provide inputs and recommendations to J-8 on development of the operations assessment capability to support the Combatant Commander.

6.  Prospective Chairs:

7.      Organizing Committee:

8.  Location

Booz Allen Hamilton Conference Facility, Tyson’s Corner VA

9. Fees

Government: $210
Non-Government:  $420

10.  Proposed Dates

28-30 Jan 2003

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