System to Aid Counterinsurgency Campaign Analysis, Design, and Evaluation (SACCADE)

Among the Army’s many responsibilities, Counterinsurgency (COIN) operations are assuming growing importance. FM 3-24, /Counterinsurgency/, defines the role, importance, and general properties of an effective COIN campaign design process: exploratory, multi-dimensional, collaborative, and iterative responding to ongoing assessment. COIN campaign designers must learn both within and across campaigns based on accumulating experience and insight drawn from all components of the U.S. effort. Efficiently collecting lessons learned and effectively using them to support COIN campaign design is thus an important socio-technical challenge. We propose to develop a System to Aid Counterinsurgency Campaign Analysis, Design, and Evaluation (SACCADE). SACCADE will combine, adapt, and extend several Stottler Henke tools and technologies. Innovation will focus on (1) adaptation of our collaborative design support and capture tools to the COIN context, (2) application of conceptual analysis techniques and ontology management tools to COIN domain modeling, (3) experimentation with collaborative causal modeling techniques to extend and maintain the COIN domain model, (4) implementation of lessons-learned organization and exploitation approaches, and (5) selection and development of advanced visualizations of campaign designs, domain models, and lesson libraries. During Phase I we will gather requirements, produce a proof-of-concept prototype, and develop a detailed Phase II design and work plan.