Geo-Political Analysis and Modeling Environment (GAME): A Decision Support Tool for U.S. Naval Future Force Architecture Analysis

Determining the composition of future naval force architectures has never depended so critically upon understanding the emerging geo-political environment as it does today. At the same time, however, the end of the Cold War and emergence of non-state asymmetric threat entities have removed the key anchor assumptions that guided long-term naval strategic planning for over five decades. Furthermore, an explosion of data as part of the global revolution in information technology has accompanied the rise in uncertainty associated with the on-going geo-strategic paradigm shift. The combination of ambiguous future trends and ubiquitous praecognita electronica have left naval force architecture analysts drowning in data but starving for information that provides fiscally and culturally constrained alternative geo-political contexts. Cyberneutics, Inc. and its subcontractor General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems/Veridian Systems Division, Inc. propose to address this situation with the Geo-Political Analysis and Modeling Environment (GAME), a standard methodology and decision support tool to assist long-term context development for force design and planning efforts. GAME will provide an end-to-end environment where analysts making geo-political predictions can build "alternative futures" using the best tool for the task of indicator construction from a library of pre-built components, including tools to support tapping external data sources. The GAME Phase II prototype will support continuous monitoring of the future world and iterative updating of the underlying assumptions and models.