Development of a Decision Support Tool for Development Planning

The extraordinary political changes since 1989 have led to abrupt and fundamental changes in the National Military Strategy of the United States, which in turn have totally altered the focus and substance of U.S. military force planning--and led to increased demands for improved development planning. This puts the development planner into a particularly acute predicament for two reasons: the development planner has an enormous span of responsibility, and tools which were barely adequate even before the increased emphasis on development planning--much less now. In the last three years, much progress has been made in treating certain elements of the force planning and acquisition problem, specifically in the development and production of a core set of force effectiveness parametrics applicable to conventional warfare in which theater level campaign analyses were performed within the "Strategy to Task" as well as the acquisition directives (DoDI 5000.1/.2). This proposal takes advantage of the applicable elements of that progress to create a tool that will substantially reduce the development planner's burden.