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REVIEWING SENIOR MILITARY EDUCATION CURRICULA FOR

AN ERA OF TRANSFORMATION

Dr. Salvador Raza and Dr. Craig Deare

The defense establishment is entering an era in which the advantages of the

widespread application of advanced technology, increasing specialization in the labor

force, and the integrative effects of rapid communications are conferred to transformed

forces designed to be small, lethal, highly responsive, dispersed, and networked.

Force design transformational trends have caused the emergence of new standards

and criteria for military higher education. Enforcing outdated educational parameters more

efficiently will not produce the advantages of the information era essential for the warfare

landscapes of tomorrow.

Defense education institutions are pressed to review their curricula for senior

professional military education (S-PME)1 to assure that critical thinking and new decision

making logic blend seamlessly with the accomplishment of forward-looking ability in

educational outcomes. To succeed, such reviews must correctly design tomorrow’s

military profile in conjunction with present force transformation guidelines, adequate to

meet future forms of the use (or threat of use) of force in support of defense missions

embodying the national will.

While the term curricula review sounds to some like enhanced instructional

methodologies based on advanced delivery technologies, to others it foreshadows an

aggressive approach for achieving military superiority and an organizational build-up. In

fact, in the best sense of the term, it is neither – rather, it is simply an attempt (often driven

by necessity) to break out of possible stagnant situation, generally reflecting the

recognition that one will fall behind if there is hesitation to adapting to the future. In this

case, the measure of “behind” is not limited to courses’ content and structure; it can

simply reflect the realization of the inability to transform one´s S-PME in light of the new

decision making logic required to attend to future designs of force and innovative

operational concepts.

The paper begins by making evident the implicit organizing principle underlying

current defense curricula of war colleges and service colleges, and explicates the double

bind presented by the limitation of this principle. At precisely the time when the demands

for effective performance have become greater, the definition of the articulated set of

procedures and processes required to conceive and justify (under cost and risk constraints)

the set of joint capabilities needed to support politically oriented defense objectives, under

threat uncertainty and open-technology possibilities, is more difficult to determine. The

parameters of a transformed defense sector serve to increase complexity in defense

education. Educators are now under pressure to solve problems that they did not worry

about twenty years ago, and many of these problems seem decidedly greater in their

inherent difficulty.

The paper progresses to propose new decision logic based on force design as the

organizing principle for war colleges and service colleges curricula. Blending strategic

situational awareness and critical thinking with forward-looking ability and reengineering

efficiency, force design provides the conceptual warp and weft giving pattern to the fabric

of military capability.

The logical model of force design – outlined as a framework – provides a set of

critical relationships underlying the bewildering complexity involved in transforming

military capabilities, and the attributes used in structuring choices. It enumerates stages

and explains causal drivers within and across the component processes of these stages.

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Through these attributes, force designers can explain assumptions and clearly state

propositions addressing the relevant uncertainties under which a given choice is proposed,

examined, carried out, and eventually executed. Equally as important, the force design

logic frames the questions about priorities and interests, resource allocation criteria and

institutional arrangements involved in defense decision-making in the information era. It

acts as a device to help divide transactions into segments, distinguished by their individual

actions and purposes.

The force design logic provides the new body of concepts and attributes embedded

in the education requirements of the information era military. It engages educators and

students in a reflection about what defense capabilities are and what they can be, creating

the tools for actions that will bring them forth. In order to define the resources force design

might use, they should look backwards to the trends that have formed current capabilities,

and look forward to as-yet-undeveloped technologies, maintaining or/and bringing forth

different kinds of commitments, opening up a space of communications actions, within the

context of a network of interests and institutional concealment and resistance.

The paper furthers the application of force design concepts through the

identification of educational attributes for the information era military. New metrics to

judge performance are formulated, and success is predicted to take the form of a

transformed military if the power of effective decision-making is sufficient to dislodge the

inertial malaise of an overly bureaucratic structure.

The paper concludes stating that ultimately, success will be measured by the

efficiency, efficacy and economy of defense resource allocation, or, in the negative

alternative, by the degree of withering of the national will regarding the desired state of

security of the nation that an integrated project of defense describes.

LOOMING NEW THREAT

It is not worth arguing with anyone that do not realize that the information age is

the greatest complex of discovery and achievement of applied technology shaping how

armed forces will transform the way they plan, organized, manage, combat, and support in

the future. The concept of defense transformation, however, is remarkable puzzling as our

knowledge of the truths of the chain of causality that lead to a transformed force. All it can

be perceived are the contingencies between processes. What we experience in defense

transformation is an attempt, often driven by necessity, of reducing the uncertainty and

complexity of hedging power through a series of assumptions about how the pattern of

future contingencies will emerge pressed by technological possibilities.

Information Fusion In this context, information fusion - an amalgam of knowledge management,

information technology, system analysis, and project design elements - stipulates a series

of rules and conditions that authorize cause and effect relationships to be linked in the flux

of association of re-association of the components of the defense system. Its central tenet

is direct related to the ability to predict the degree to which results can be coordinated,

which is a function of a networked command and control (C2), communications and

computing (C2) enabling elements of the force components linked through doctrine to

intelligence (I), surveillance (S) and reconnaissance (R), to constitute the enacting

mechanisms of enhanced C4ISR.

Enhanced C4ISR will provide support for the employment of a capability

according to novel operational requirements: an adaptive control system seeking to

influence selected aspects of an operating environment, supported by a variety of

information systems2. Its functionality progresses across the full range of possible tasks,

directing and monitoring operations at the joint and combined levels and supporting

effective end-to-end management. This includes land and space communications,

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improved interoperability and joint capabilities, and the integration of automated

information to ensure that commanders share the suitable (consistent with task

requirements), complete (task relevant) and accurate (error-free) knowledge that they will

require.

Jointness and enhanced C4ISR are influential factors in facilitating the composite

of relationships required to produce an assembly of military capability. These two

elements exist in a continuum of interdependencies across the spectrum of possible

capabilities alternatives, configuring a process support system of factors that orient,

develop and constrain the dynamic organization of military assets, operational

organizations, objectives and tasks, in order to provide different types of capabilities. Such

a system can be thought of as a rationalization code operating in interrelated processes,

increasing the variance of a military capability.

Those codes are formulated as a set of accepted rules and values that mediate the

relationship between military assets, operational structures, and objectives and tasks,

adapting itself and influencing this relationship in response to changes in the technological

horizon and in the intellectual superstructure that define the security and defense

requirements. And, therefore, they need to be revaluated periodically – if not on an

ongoing basis.

Jointness and C4ISR enforce complementariness (and inhibit customs that produce

antagonisms) between different structuring criteria used to define military assets,

operational organizations, objectives and tasks. They provide the principle of organization

for defense transformation.

INTELLECTUAL VULNERABILITY: “ENDERS GAME ”

The epic science fiction Ender's Game3 anticipates the powerful role for computer

networks in the world of the future and the “mind game” in which mankind has to train

people to become soldiers and commanders to fight. The information age has taken a few

steps in transforming the military in the direction were virtual interaction can influence

policy, strategy and tactics.

Going beyond an attempt to define the term transformation, what stands out clearly

today is the powerful alliance of technology, strategy, and business which has created a

culture whose primary principles are based on innovation, efficiency, and self-regulated

expansion. The latter implies that transformation doesn’t simply adapt to given security

condition where it takes root; it changes those conditions and stabilizes them to as to

perpetuate itself. Similarly to the Gaia Hypothesis proposed by Dr. James Lovelock in

collaboration with Dr. Lynn Margulis4, defense transformation exist in a containment at

homeostatic equilibrium, not simply adapting to given conditions but changing these

conditions so that they are adaptive to defense transformation. Defense transformation can

thus be seen as a system regulating its own vital variables as it adapts to change.

The unprecedented powerful new tools of information technologies propelling

defense transformation are provoking defense assumptions and concepts to go through

rapid accelerating epistemological changes, and in the process, education is becoming

those tools for managing and adapting to change. The future military will face the

unwieldy condition where reliable certainties about the nature of the defense problem will

be stripped by new ways of doing things.

Underlying these principles is defense education as the path to reveal the nature

and form of the future assembly of military capabilities and using that knowledge to

leverage power. Under this circumstance, nothing more pertinent and relevant than Steven

Kenney’s assertion at the Conference on Professional Military Education and the

Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs in 1995: “the future will demand individuals

need to learn new ways of thinking about things that can help equip them for a new and

very different world5 (PME and RMA, p. 52).

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The phenomenon of information fusion anticipate the need posed by the generally

agreed understanding that the defense education pos-RMA will demand a curriculum

capable of delivering senior military able to identify patterns of logic within the dizzying

rate of information that creates uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in the decision

environment in such a magnitude that could provoke the fragmentation of their knowledge

system. This condition increases the perception of the emergence of a new type of threat:

intellectual vulnerability.

Intellectual vulnerability denounces the incapacity of the military strategic decision

making to thrive in a complex environment of imperfect information and opaque rules of

operating logic to adapt to rapidly evolving conditions, and to reorient their thoughts to

produce real time quality decisions to confront environment emergences that may not be

what they seem. Leaning intellectual fuel, the senior military becomes deprived of their

ability to wage cognoscenti fusion of data with the precipitous speed that the future will

demand to allow superior decision time to leverage events in a timely manner. In short, the

future conflicts may give birth to "intellectual warfare" as the exploration of adversaries

intellectual vulnerabilities to leverage military advantages (having situation awareness –

the cornerstone of network warfare - as the first derivative) in favour of political gains.

Defense education curriculum design faces the imperative of to prepare the future

senior military intellectually to deal with a different set of questions they did in the past:

What in the security environment supports dynamic defense patterns formation? What

explains the values of the parameters that determine the properties of defense capabilities,

including the strength of the interactions they establish? What explains the change in the

ratio of scales need to access military efficacy during evolving patterns of combat? What

is the sensitivity between changes in defense organizational layout and the logical function

of assemblies of capabilities task-forces? These questions continue, and deepen the

understanding not only of what will make defense capabilities but also what will modify it

and get its components to the right form.

The S-PME institution curriculum should be able to educate strategic decision

makers formulate and search for answers for this type of question, understanding what are

the important environment factors in which the particular answers are set become shaped

by institutional and individual perceptions of emerging patterns of informational

interaction.

SELF REINFORCING PATTERNS OF OBSOLESCENCE AND

INADEQUACY IN THE ARTICULATING LOGIC OF CURRENT S-PME

CURRICULUM

Concerns with S-PME are not a 21st Century transformation issues. Janowitz was

already claiming the need for a new intellectualism among military professionals in the

earlier 60s.6 Analysis of pre- Second World War education for generals and senior officers

recognize that it failure to produce effective long-term planners and thinkers, imposing

serious limitations on the strategic thrust of the Forces. Corbett explained the inadequacy

of British Naval Education to prepare senior military at the down of the industrial age

warfare7, which emergence was anticipated in the form of the IWW trench war by ..

Delbruck, was among the first to emphasize the importance of reviewing how the

military learn from history as indispensable for an understanding of the fundamental

causes of war. (Bauer, 110). Moltke led the Prussian educational reform of the late 19

Century8 .. This list go back in history with less discerning features of formal PMEs but

with a constant concern of military efficacy existing in the interface of intellectual

enlightenment and professional development.

Continuing the same lineage of Moltke, Delbruck, Corbett, and Janowith, several

efforts have been developed by institutions and individuals to revamp S-PME in response

to anticipated demands to educate the postmodern military. Lieutenant-General Évraire

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evinced the problem in Canada’s S-PME when he noted that many of the Generals and

Senior Officers lacked the base and skills requirements for which no formal education

existed. 9

Moskos, Allen and Segal10 derived the post modern military qualifications from the

its ability to integrate small, volunteer, multipurpose forces highly permeable with civilian

society. As such, they associate the future profile of military personnel with the type of the

force they will integrate. In essence, they provide the broad rationale for shaping the future

military profile is response to the design of the force. This paper frames this rationale with

a focus on senior military, seeking to answer the basic question: what should be

considered the bedrock of the S-PME curricula.

An answer for this question would likely to emerge from the implicit consensus

embedded in practiced S-PME curriculum: the interlocked stages of strategic planning

developed incrementally.11 However, the same analysis expose severe flaws in this

presumptive bedrock.

The strategic planning arbitrarily isolates a segment called strategy from the

continuum of policy, strategy and tactics. Strategy only exists in the complex relationship

with policy and tactics. Isolating strategy from policy and tactics distorts the empirical

reality to fit programmatic interests. To further isolated strategic planning from the reality,

S-PME curriculum imposes a doctrinaire segmentation of warfare – operational – as a

level of war. It may be as many levels of warfare as required to fit doctrine and

organizational requirements (temporarily and arbitrarily defined as a function of efficiency

tactical, strategic and policy efficiency), but the continuum of policy, strategy and tactics

suffix to define the phenomenon of war. A definition of operational art as grand tactics,

fleet tactics, etc, only add a factor of power to the same realm defined by the use of the

engagements for the propose of war - which can unfold from a mere armed observation to

a full fledge armed violence in the cognitive, informational and space-time realities.

The cleavage of the policy, strategy, tactics continuum to befit military education

curriculum [in association with organizational structure - senior officers study strategy at

war colleges, junior officers study tactics (transmutated in and operational art) at staff

colleges] is not only a distortion of the empirical reality of war but a malaise to the

intellectual development of the officers it should educate. Nothing more improper,

inadequate and

A former recommendation for this in Skellton panel…. Albeit references were not

clearly identified for other countries, it is the hypothesis of this paper that the

segmentation of PME in accord with the an arbitrary cleavage of the policy, strategy,

tactics continuum is a spawned tradition based on a “dangerous” implicit doctrine that

isolates policy from the realm of the military. A Moltkean heritage denounced by the

revision of Clausewitz translation, with serious implication in shaping the military mind

for self sufficiency and a self justification of the existence of PME institutions.

This paper will recommend that staff colleges must reorient their curriculum to

address the policy, strategy and tactics continuum. Officers attending these schools are

adult, mature individuals (average in their 30s and 40) that must be treated as adults

capable of taking serious decisions on tactics and strategy. Strategy is not anymore (if it

was anytime?) the solely realm of generals. The information age officer will be exploring

the policy, strategy tactics spectrum in its entirely domain and scope of possibilities and

outcome. S-PME should focus on force design12. Before presenting force design, it is

relevant to comprehend the limits of strategic planning in order to prevent the risk of

unconsciously replicating its features in the review of S-PME curriculum

The strategic planning as currently teached at S-PMEs is an overly complex,

interactive system dominated by competition among several interests building up their

independence from others in a network of bureaucratic specialists. The modus operandi of

all strategic planning analyzed is implicitly based on an Institutional Rational Choice

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Framework for how to repeatedly make decisions within the constraints of a set of rules

used to structure patterns of interactions across subsystem organizations. Rationality is

assumed within the context of solutions developed in response to clearly defined

problems, following an incremental evolution in the organizational streams that fit the

accepted (and institutionally enforced) set of rules.

The strategic planning logic served a useful purpose during the Cold War by

dividing the very complex requirement processes into parcels and by stimulating some

interaction within specific parcels. It succeeded as long as its parameter coincided with the

equilibrium of the Cold War. With this period ended, the decision-making monopoly

harbored at the top systematically dampens the pressure for change, with institutional

actors tempted to present their evidence selectively and to distort the data to their

advantage.

The sequence of stages became descriptively inaccurate, whereas choices

encourage a search for solutions within the scope existing rules to problems already in

existence. Consequently, the processes promote causal mechanisms that link possible

solutions to opportunities. The propensity for solution provides the institutions with a

sense of competence, notwithstanding that solutions and problems are marginally

redefined and their coupling likely to be doctrinally reinforced though normative

commitments and causal perceptions across the entire institutional domain.

In summary, the S-PME still lives in the Cold War, with strategic planning

resisting any efforts for change, institutionalization and reinforcement of stability. Hence,

it does not identify a set of causal drivers that govern the transformation processes within

and across stages. Instead, work within each stage has tended to develop on its own,

almost totally without reference to other stages. The system became a stochastic process,

and it became extremely difficult to specify a precise causal linkage among all of the

variables that interact interdependently to produce changes in all of the programs and in

budgetary distribution.

Strategic planning as founding logic of S-PME ends up promoting training of

senior officers for billets at ministries of defense. Although creative thinking and critical

thinking are found as learning objectives, there is no way to demonstrate that students are

effectively developing these cognitive skills at the level required for information fusion.

Our study broadly suggested that S-PME exists only because training for senior positions

at ministries of defense is not enough.

The analysis of the S-PME curricula also suggested that strategic planning might

be responsible for the emergence of behavioral patterns that gave origin to a type of

animism. Since measuring to high precision the efficacy of strategic planning as the

foundation logic of S-PME demands a large span of time, conservative tendencies have

time to retard progress, perpetuating a Hegelian tradition of seeing the S-PME curricula

not as a educational planning and management tool, but rather as a spiritual organism

having a will and personality of its own. This animism is often inculcated by officers in

control of the education of young military, who were professionally trained in strategic

planning, but who are in many cases unfamiliar with academic rigor and scientific

thinking, unprepared to foster meta-cognition advances both at the faculty and students

levels. The result is a gap of the intellectual culture of challenging defense education able

to transform its own premises as fast as technologies and information fusion are

transforming defense institutions, military capabilities, defense posture and concepts of

employment.

In essence, a critical element is missing today as the articulating logic for

curriculum design of S-PME and will be lacking even more tomorrow. That is the

existence of a strong point of reference for the S-PME. In other words, the need for a

repository of knowledge capable of providing the intellectual compass, a conceptual

framework that would fully satisfy the professional education requirements of senior

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officers. The current articulating logic of S-PME curricula does not address this particular

requirement adequately.

No matter how creative the new generations of senior military students are, they

will hesitate to work on something not understood by the powerful experts on their field.

Thus, in order to think about what force requirements will be like in the future they use

languages these experts taught them. This creates an environment of doctrinal self

reinforced conditions that preclude critics and transformation, thus bringing the risk of

making specialists in defense planning tend to see political problems only in terms of an

efficient military machine with which to assure national objectives.

In the face of unchecked assumptions, the defense planning methodology lead to a

corporative sense of what is best for the services long term interest; rather than providing

students with insights in what the nation will need in the future. The distinction between

critical thinking and wishful thinking becomes rather artificial, serving only as the channel

by which to channel past bias down to future generations. As a consequence,

unfortunately, the S-PME has not seen fit to take a serious approach to competency

development that would allow the inventory and assessment of new cognitive flexibility

required to confront the uncertainties of the future and determine how to face threats that

are not yet clearly defined. Glenda Nogami of the U.S. Army War College capture the

domain of cognitive flexibility when she argued, "what [will be] different is not

necessarily the type of skills, but rather the increased emphasis or increased importance

some skills/knowledge [will take] on as the world [. . .] is predicted to change." 13

Several other authors14 also contributed to the identification of the skills senior

officers must develop to be capable of operating in the challenging environment of

tomorrow. However, the vast intricacy of these requirements does not allow a succinctly

catalog representative of the motion of causal relationships that provide ground for S-

PME. As a consequence, there is no surprise in such catalogs never succeeding in gaining

a large acceptance in the educational arena.

In this context, the exaggeration of military complexity gives the impression that

the main causes of S-PME blunders (when effective assessment drops the veil of

inadequacy and obsolescence) are related to defective instructional objectives, and the

tendency to minimize the non-methodological factors of S-PME is often exaggerated by

improper instructional methodologies. Nevertheless, the links from the strategic planning

process to the resulting patterns are impossible to follow, which constitutes a chief

weakness of S-PME curricula.

These failings are due to the predominance of the existing S-PME articulating logic

which overwhelms and undermines the articulation of critical thinking with creative

thinking. Instead of inquiring minds, current S-PME serves to reward conformity.

Something else than strategic planning is needed to overcame this stagnant situation. That

something else is an interpretative system that makes sense of the code to reform defense

and understand how it tames technology into defense transformational possibilities.

Defense reform results when sufficient domestic or external changes cause the

leadership of a nation’s government to revise its assessment. Defense reform addresses

these same issues of spending and saving. In its most simplistic form, defense reform can

take the form of a budget cut of a specified percentage. Or it can be left to the Armed

Services, which all too often spend as much time and energy assessing how the other

branches are faring as they do buttressing their own positions. Or, alternatively, modern

management ideas and science can be applied.

It is another hypothesis of this paper that the series of analyses and processes

outlined herein and collectively called “force design” offers useful thinking regarding this

last alternative. The utility of force design is to provide separate, even contradictory

defense reform alternatives without trying to impose a resolution of such conflicts when

there is no compelling one to be found.

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FORCE DESIGN

Force design is a decision making system designed to ensure that the proper

assembly of future effective and efficient military capabilities is economically identified,

developed, organized, fielded, and supported to be instrumental in policy alternatives

backed by strategic possibilities. Within this operational definition, “design” is related to a

proposed solution to a perceived problem, presented with necessary and sufficient details

to guide a course of action and evaluate its outcomes, and “force” is the composite of

future military capabilities which have been formulated to attend to defense requirements

in response to strategic demands needed in enforcing the nation-state’s right to self-

determination.

Force design elicits the concept that defense reform is not an end in itself, but

rather an action needed for reasons of both opportunity and necessity. Solving an equation

by integrating the complete array of possibilities for arranging force components to meet

future strategic needs is the challenge that force design faces.

The specific and limited purpose of force planning within force design is

determining the quantitative dimension, organization, and spatial distribution of military

assets in association with a specific concept of employment for a determined theater of

operations, based on a given defense mission and a desired state of security (generally

expressed in terms of budget allocation). Force design, therefore, is the reference example

for force planning. It provides planning guidance while incorporating operational

alternatives as a condition of possibility for its designing purposes. Although they have a

complementary purpose, they do not fuse into one all-encompassing process. Force design

is the master of force planning; recognizing that, one can see that the servant enables the

designing requirements of force design. When these roles are inverted, or when force

design simply does not exist, force planning begins to impose limits on political-level

alternatives. The tail wags the dog; politicians can do no more than what the military says

it can do (or thinks it should do), making military planners the master of policy.

Force design results – an articulated defense project -- is a policy statement, policy

made manifest. It expresses the declaratory posture of the state regarding its perception of

a desired state of security, in which its citizen’s values, way of life and expectations are

not threatened and, if they were, the state’s willingness to apply force to ensure their

protection. In this role, force design is the servant of foreign policy, carrying messages that

may range from a vague statement towards peace to a firm commitment to war. In this

manner force design can be seen to contribute to the state’s political debate, i.e., meeting a

popular demand though a declaration of intentions backed by defense capabilities.

Force design changes the way we think about defense planning. It is a shift away

from rote practice based on doctrine texts and toward engagement with the flux

relationship of theory and experiment, the cutting edge of conceiving knowledge. It is the

way of bringing consistency to bear upon chance, learning to be open-ended and

constantly evolving in concept formation to describe common traits and competing

hypothesis.

Force design link the routinely assessment, planning, resource allocation,

evaluation, and control activities and major structural reforms into a single theoretically

consistent process. Central to this streamlined approach is a coherent process for making

trade-offs between competing alternatives in the designing horizons, as they horizons are

defined within the force design process as dependent variable. Deliberate and informed

judgment are made effective in determining the point at which further increments in

performance requirements no longer are achieved with additional increment in currently

practiced force structure components and no longer justify the additional increment in

cost.

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The force design framework institutionalizes a procedure whereby review groups

are able to establish and change capabilities features in a timely and orderly manner. At

the core of this proposition is a conceptual framework which integrates three simultaneous

planning horizons that accounts for the rationale for adaptation, modernization and

transformation. In conjunction, they promote a more perceptive discourse among defense

agencies fostering purposeful joint actions, which asseverates Eugene Bardach’s

assessment that “Jointness creates several possible sources of new value”.15

While accepting that the operational configuration of existing methodologies for

defense planning has not to change radically, their foundations might be determined by the

adaptative logic on which force design depends. In the perspective of this logic, the

capabilities and its required readiness necessary to succefully perform a selected range of

tasks can clearly be achieved with different (eventually smaller forces) without a

necessary corresponding revision of underlying policy conceptions. That would certainly

include exercising much more robust managerial control over the processes and

procedures used to create the force.

In short, force design promotes a substantial shift in conceptual perspective,

offering the possibility of linking the up-front analysis, concept development, planning,

programs development and integration, milestone defragmentation, budget building and

systemic evaluation of defense capabilities into a single theoretical consistent framework

in advancing national defense objectives.

A FRAMEWORK FOR FORCE DESIGN

The force design framework – the criterial structure of the methodology - is a

conjunct of knowledge, presented in the form of propositions and assumptions, logically

ordered, and assumed to be valid for investigating problem types with the expectation of

obtaining a stable, anticipated solution type. The logical ordering of its components is

provided by the axiology used, which emphasizes the existence of a common set of

concepts linked to a major utility model that simplifies the complex interaction of the

force design processes. This axiology is a utility function that provides a chronology of

constantly changing events that creates recurring patterns (dependent variables) after

causative variables (dependent variables).

Figure 1 depicts the force design framework’s logic blocks for components –

Cogitare, Prospicere, Renovatio,16 the purpose of which is to specify the scope and scale

of military capability, translating them into force alternative requirements in association

with the condition for its intended use.

Figure 1: Force Design Framework Logic Blocks

COGITARE (Reflect upon) The Cogitare block defines an articulated system of decisions aiming to interpret

and transform the intended and defined national purpose into defense objectives that could

be pragmatically achieved though rational actions and available means. To achieve its

Cogitare

Prospicere

Renovatio

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purpose, this logical block determines the valid rules of transformation of information,

products and processes required to achieve defense objectives in order to orient the

formulation of criteria for the evaluation of the relationship between those objectives, the

transformation processes and its outcomes.

The literature17 divides this reflective process into two generic categories: political-

strategic evaluation and defense policy formulation, oriented to define the intended use of

force, to establish a set of sustained policy objectives that results from the intercourse of

security and defense interests and commitments, and to promulgate a set of self-reliant

design guidelines to instruct the development and evaluation of military capabilities.

History has shown that the problem within extant approaches to the Cogitare block

lies within those procedures through which policy objectives are defined and the pseudo-

legitimacy that the designing guidelines tends to acquire through the process of

formulating and implementing the decisions taken.

It is inherent that decisions made at this preliminary stage become the defense

demands applied to successive stages of “analysis”, i.e., analysis in fact ends at the

Cogitare stage, setting in motion the actions required to deliberately regulate and direct

changes in military capabilities, but they do not thereby make all desirable things possible.

The value of this set of actions is in that it helps to understand the purposes and meaning

of reform actions, helping to put in place the proper amount of effort to overcome the

problems involved in designing and marshaling military capabilities, but it is not an end

unto itself.

PROSPICERE (Look ahead) The purpose of the Prospicere block is to provide reference scenario-space (or

mission-area) both for the evaluation of the validity of policy guidelines and current

capabilities and for the anticipation of future capabilities requirements. Its primary

function is to serve as the mechanism by which objectives are transformed into detailed

capability requirements for anticipated mission areas.

This is an epistemological necessity for a framework capable of developing

hypotheses about the future. The variety of component elements within these hypotheses

depends on two factors: the dimensions of complexity and time. The dimensions of

complexity deal with the numbers of chains of events18 considered representative of the

objective hypothesis about the future. Wider and more complex objective hypotheses

make implicit a more broadly possible/probable chain of events, requiring an analysis

using differentiated logic (differential equations). Similarly, hypothesizing longer time

spans implies a repeated bifurcation in the chain of events as actions cause reactions that

create further reactions.

Adaptation

Adaptation19 seeks to maximize the efficacy of military capabilities, exploring

interoperability, jointness, and C4ISR to better integrate military assets and operational

structures, regulated by the scope of doctrine, readiness requirements, and the rules of

engagement (regulating factors). The emphasis is on operational forces capable of

responding quickly and decisively to the needs of specific tasks.

A defense reform that defines itself in this way often finds it very difficult to

venture outside the dominant orientation of the current concepts of employment, since

they incorporate implicitly, if not explicitly, judgments of the importance of operational

functions in achieving defense goals.

Patterns of technology exploration have a tendency to make designers react in

predictable ways. Capabilities born of usual circumstances become the norm, creating

imitative designs with diminishing returns in terms of performance bonuses for changes in

force components with the ability to cut through the competitive defense environment.

11

Improvements sought through adaptation only might be proven grossly insufficient.

However, if they are, the exercise degenerates into a costly series of actions that fail to

secure cumulative improvements, which establishes a strong mind-set against real change.

Despite the appeal of “more of the same”, when the frontier of adaptation is gone,

one must develop ways of thinking that nurture new technologies, organizations and

processes that will prevent dampening the innovativeness of capabilities that actually can

be generated by modernization.

Modernization

Modernization20 replaces aging weapon systems and changes the dimensional

characteristics of force structure components, creating other possibilities for

rearrangement of military capabilities that would not otherwise exist. The final size

(dimensional requirements) and scope (possibilities created though the reform of defense

components without a dimensional modification) of force structure components define the

range of tactical possibilities in response to defense objectives. However, any premise for

supposing possible future military capabilities remains valid as a function of its present

utility only as long as the evolving orientation of all political forces adheres to the pattern

currently woven into its fabric. Rules do change.

The act of modernization often is seen as being propelled by the procurement of

sophisticated, state-of-the-art, and technologies. Yet its effectiveness can be enhanced

through relatively less expensive technologies that increase interoperability and jointness

so that assets from all services become better able to work together or through measures

designed simply to increase operational readiness.

Modernization alone, however, may fail to see opportunities for larger gains

through those possibilities geared toward new ways of thinking. Furthermore, particularly

in a fast-changing technological environment, modernization can be dangerously myopic

in that actions taken to achieve gains may acquire a momentum that will be difficult to

reverse. In essence, modernization seeks patterns of diversification closely interrelated

with the predominant system of concepts and planning framework, reflecting a preference

for concentrating on a relatively narrow set of changes rather than one spread more

broadly.

Over time, the ability of the armed forces to compete solely on the basis of

technological superiority may become eroded, tending to make military capabilities less

effective when confronted with the need to make changes that render existing ways of

thinking technologically obsolete.

Transformation

Transformation21 changes patterns of thinking, creating the new parameters for

assessment of efficiency and efficacy. Transformation seeks to create a differential of

capability against competing forces, making obsolete all previous capabilities, regardless

of its efforts toward adaptation and modernization.

Transformation elects uncertainty over predictability and unsettled relationships

among force components and defense tasks over a proven, efficient structure. The

investment in leadership is likely to be higher, and some time may elapse before a net

benefit is obtained. However, when these benefits are perceptibly accrued, they make

obsolete the existing force components and even intuition in the creation of tasking

possibilities. A striking feature of these results is a differential in military capability that

enhances the ability of defense in developing new alternatives or improving the

uniqueness or other qualities of existing possibilities.

The qualitative and quantitative dimensions of transforming military capabilities

demand a rethinking not only of specific technologies incorporated into products and

processes but also of doctrine and organizational culture, with its implications for tactical,

12

strategic and political possibilities alike. In the prosficcional horizon, new forms of

defense organizations and weapons systems will be less likely to be characterized as

“purely” military, with their own shortcomings, and so on, with no end in sight.

Transformation leads to concepts not yet dreamed of, but also to a new understanding of

the limitations of current theories

Transformation, therefore, is more than exploring the aspects of demonstrated

technologies derived from a revolution in military affairs (RMA). It goes beyond the

rhetoric of changes and gradual advances in the incorporation of new assets or the revision

of tasks. Transformation excites the imagination, encouraging thinking “outside of the

box,” necessary for responding to unexpected challenges with a menu of choices to do

something different. It causes a rupture of the anemia stemming from the lack of

innovative vitality in defense thinking and derogates the lethargy of conceptual systems

and analytical frameworks that have not actively explored ways of improving their own

ability to produce transformed military capabilities.

The role and importance of transformation is a third factor influencing force design

alternatives, a factor through which defense confronts ever-changing challenges and

opportunities. In essence, transformation is an attitude toward assuming a competitive

pattern of decisions in order to keep up with uncertainties. This need tends to take

precedence over established competitive advantages that create other dimensions of

effectiveness. 22

Transformation actions, however, should not ignore the possible risks and costs of

attempting to create a variety of options and retain as much flexibility as possible,

disregarding relatively simple adaptation and modernization rules for coping with

complexity and uncertainty.

Cross Impacts

Adaptation, modernization, and transformation processes develop simultaneously

over time, each one regulated by different factors and affecting specific components and

relationships of the force design components.

This simultaneity allows the resolution of the apparent paradox of force design,

expressed by the simultaneous necessity of military capability requirements sufficiently

stable for planning purposes and sufficiently dynamic to take into account a continuous

process of change in the environment force design environment. Projective assumptions

establish criteria for evaluating the acceptance of the dispersion of temporal series;

prospective assumptions establish a reference for judging the acceptance of preserving the

propensity-based relationship among prospective events; and prosficcional assumptions

are used for judging the limits of validity of the induction of truth in inductive links.

Together, these assumptions are used to establish the conditions of possibility for the force

design alternatives, regulating adaptation, modernization, and transformation possibilities,

respectively.

The coexistence of these three horizons refutes the traditional assumption of a

unique and continuous horizon with a hierarchy of segmented elements: short, medium,

and long term intervals. Such intervals are arbitrary, nothing but a pseudo-scientific

categorization imposed upon uncertainty. In other words, error that improperly transfers to

Category-z, non-verifiable, brings impreciseness to the process of defining the limits of

forecasting.

The simultaneity of these processes hedges against risks at many levels, yielding the

flexibility that defense reform initiatives are likely to need. Neither the diagnosis of

situations nor the choices of action for dealing with them are rigidly prescribed or

determined by only one of these three processes23. The complexity of military reforms is in

the simultaneity in time and space of those three processes. This complexity becomes a

limitation to forecasting only in the absence of a fully developed force design capability.

13

The combined effect of these three horizons (or either horizon taken to an extreme)

generates a host of uncertain possibilities and probabilities, making results meaningless or

even conflictive. Thus, an organizing criterion, grouping mission areas into categories, is

useful as “authoritative” information on the domains that future defense capabilities are to

address, ensuring that this information does not employ contradictory assumptions of

factors24.

War scenarios-space encompass missions that demand the violent use of force either

offensively or defensively. In spite of many efforts, there is no accepted war

categorization and no legitimacy in adherence to past practice and usage in warfare. A

state’s objectives will vary, as will its commitment to use force as an alternative to

compel an enemy to do its will. The majority of the world has ordained the exercise of

force to insure the survival of freedom within democracy when naught but force will

accomplish its objective of “survival in the present form”

Crisis and OOTW scenarios-space anticipate a situation where both means and the

intention of violent use of force are limited, this limitation being contingent and

temporally determined in accordance with values, customs and practices implicitly

recognized and accepted by the parties in conflict. Missions in crisis and OOTW

scenarios are oriented either to actions of presence, performed in a routine way, with

concealed and indirect intentions, or though missions involving a deliberate exercise of

limited force. Luttwak calls the latter suasion, with the approximate meaning of

coercion. In both forms, crisis missions aim to evoke a specific reaction by means of

deliberately planned and executed actions or signals25.

Environment-shaping scenarios-space aim to prevent either crises or war though the

manipulation of the adversary’s perception of the costs and benefits of using force, at

the least possible cost to one’s own political stability, economic development and

social welfare. The emphasis in environment-shaping missions is on molding patterns

of thinking or behavior, where it is assumed that the desired resulting effect will come

though the system of values held by the target state.

Disaster relief scenarios-space depict after-effect missions in the case of natural

disaster, or missions related to prevention and reaction for search and rescue of lives

and material. The use of military capabilities to fulfill the task requirements of disaster

relief scenarios emphasizes the peacetime use of the command and control and the

logistics components of force structure, exploring its permanent organization and its

usually adequate degree of readiness.

Law enforcement scenarios-space define missions related to public security, border

control (immigration and customs), and counter-narcotics. Defense law enforcement

missions support, substitute, or complement police activities.

Though it may seen unlikely at first glance that these categories could held any

possible future demand of use of force for political purposes which are to be found in our

contemporary culture, the fact is that they provide the core logic of rationality for

prototype decisions. These categories yeld sets of scenario-space (or mission-area)

instructive for building intellectual logical inferences which give compelling coherence to

set of required capabilities, and instructive to reflect upo the relationships of the defense

construct which will contribute to this momentum.

From an ontological perspective, scenarios-space are a defective selection of

expected attributes of the future. Each scenario derives from many others in an infinite

progression, from which one extracts only those that are currently judged as important.

Therefore, any suggestion that force design should take into consideration all possible

scenarios does not correspond to the logical possibilities of current human capabilities in

identifying and linking events. There will always be interconnections rich in importance

that will not be adequately recognized or considered. Notwithstanding, from a

14

methodological perspective, scenarios are a necessity for supporting the formulation of

hypotheses.

These scenario-space serve to define problem which receive intellectual scrutiny;

they identify what data are pertinent enough to justify the effort required to develop an

keep defense capabilities; they provide coherent explanation for the central phenomena

with which force design concerns itself. In short, scenario-space provide a necessary

coherent intellectual framework for organized design endeavor.

Each set of scenarios-space is therefore recognized by its functionality for force

design purposes, and thus defined as valid (or not), subjected to the ruling structure that

links its development codes. These codes will limit constraint and determine the valid and

non-valid decisions in force design, ascribing the strengths and weaknesses of current and

future military capabilities within three simultaneous patterns: adaptation, modernization

and transformation.

RENOVATIO (Reengineer) In the Renovatio block, force design is doing more than asking what can be built. It

is engaged in reflection about what defense capabilities are and what they can be, creating

the tools for the action(s) that will bring them forward. In order to define the resources that

force design might use, it looks backward to those trends that have formed the current

capabilities and looks forward to the as-yet-undeveloped technologies, maintaining or/and

bringing forth different kinds of commitments, opening up a space for communication

actions within the context of a network of interests, concealment and resistance.

It provides the designer a way of identifying each capabilities profile, presenting its

most noteworthy characteristics; decomposing this profile in capabilities requirements and

translating them into program demands and budget requirements. In a broader sense, the

purpose of this block is to facilitate the allocation, coordination and utilization of fiscal,

material, human, organizational and information resources. It assures an implementation

dependency of theoretical resources, ensuring a fundamental traceability link between

design requirements and implementation, integrated into a composite set of defense reform

requirements.

The pervasiveness of these requirements is not always appreciated. To be effective,

reengineering military capabilities requirements must support (through a specific and

consistent pattern of decisions) the tasks being sought by the force components. For

example, decisions to increase tactical readiness would be very different if the desired

capability were instrumental for a concept of employment dedicated to a scenario

emphasizing long-term mobilization. Similarly, research and development decisions

regarding the selection of technologies to be pursued, whether to concentrate intensively

on highly professional weapons systems or, in the other extreme, to be conscript/labor

intensive with regard to personnel.

How the characteristics of capabilities subparts are defined determines the

accuracy and precision of (1) normative forecasting and (2) resource allocation. The

greater the separation between subparts, the easier it is to configure specific needs for

assigned objectives. However, carried to the extreme, it can lead to the separation of parts

that should be dedicated to a common objective, hampering the relationship among parts

and thereby compromising the outcome.

Normative forecasting

Normative forecasting26 deals with the built and relationship of programs and

projects for linking capability requirements to budget possibilities, providing

homomorphism to a similar system of fiscal and production possibilities from a set of

intentions. Normative forecasting, therefore, is an agent of transformation from one set

(force components requirements) to another (budget), which preserves in the second the

15

interrelationships between the members of the first set [thus the relevance of the capability

construct]. Projects then implement initiatives for modification, enhancement, or

development in order to meet program requirements and interfaces. Some projects may

develop a technical infrastructure, and others may develop fiscal management

functionalities.

Normative forecasting decisions are made regarding the level of aggregation of

entities and process requirements appropriate for assuring specific capabilities

requirements, determining whether its outcome will be represented as a single entity, as a

composite of subsystem entities, or as a composite of composites of ever smaller entities

(to whatever level of aggregation is needed for the purpose of force design). These

decisions are made in attendance to three unyielding principles:

Aggregation criteria influence how a problem is attacked and how a solution

is shaped.

Every program may be expressed at different levels of precision.

No single program is sufficient to refer to all military capabilities.

These principles suggest that normative forecasting is essentially a craft that has

not yet matured into methodologies. As programs grew in size and complexity following

the diversity of capacity demands for the post-Cold War, with its new threats and

emerging technologies, the attitude towards programming changed. Instead of meticulous

codes and rigid categories for programming, force design increasingly distends the

projects component of programs in an array of capabilities packages. Just as dwellings are

built with standardized fittings, programs integrated by capabilities-package projects are

built out of modular, interchangeable elements. This is not only good engineering practice;

it is also the modern way of making something the size of a defense system work

exceptionally well.

The major objective of defense reengineering – renovation - is to define the

appropriate measurements of individual capabilities, as well the set of capabilities as a

whole. Such measurements must take into account the considerable uncertainty as to the

functionality of the resulting capabilities in terms of defense objectives. In programming,

force design is confronted from time to time with the need to make changes that render

existing force components, concepts of employment or regulating factors obsolete. Force

design must also take into account that “change” has costs, whether made or ignored.

Change reduces investment, delays replacement of old equipment, allows the performance

of force components to deteriorate by reducing maintenance, etc. Yet “not to change”

demands the persistent replacement of assets based on the same technology – reducing the

state’s level of security vis-à-vis an evolving threat capability.

The development of these program requirements demands making those designing

elements, assumptions and driving forces explicit, providing the necessary transparency to

the design process through which the policy level enforces its control over military

decisions. Using the three horizons defined by adaptation, modernization, and

transformation possibilities, makes it easier to identify the types of decisions required for

each program and highlights the needs of proper resource allocation.

Resource Allocation

Resource allocation is deciding how to allocate human, production, informational,

and fiscal possibilities among various competing programming outcomes.

Human resource allocation, in the force design model, begins with the assignment

of qualified personnel to oversee the complexities of force design, thus providing the

crucial linkages between production possibilities and fiscal resources within which

schedules are developed and modified as programs proceed and develop. Beyond that, the

acquisition and deployment of valuable human resources should be well integrated with

control management requirements in order to strengthen the defense establishment’s

16

ability to identify and negotiate acquisition opportunities, fighting the unwelcome fusion

of projects and divesting lines that are inappropriate for the envisioned goals. The ultimate

function of skilled human resources in force design is the deliberation of critical decisions

involving complex technological and capability requirement tradeoffs, cutting though the

complexities of scheduling activities while avoiding the quagmire of the details, moving

quickly in the repositioning of production resources either for the orchestration of

acquisition or the divestiture of function.

Resource allocation in production is just as important as the allocation of human

resources, providing interaction among industrial possibilities and operational functions. It

consists of creating a pattern of decisions that affects the manufacturing of military assets

and should be reflective of policy, with careful attention given to the potential interaction

and driving forces within the national and international defense industrial base. If properly

allocated, production resources can play a unique role in defining, supporting, and

enhancing the success of a defense project, operating in concert with all its functions.

Budgeting is the process of allocating fiscal resources in a manner that ensures that

the required set of military capabilities attend to the objectives it should serve. Budgeting

is an estimative process. One way of testing for a high standard of budgeting

appropriateness is the measure of its ability to comprehend the political environment (from

grass roots to the head of state) in which it was developed. The inability to sustain this

claim of comprehension gravely compromises the outcome of force design. When a

“ceiling” budget drives the capabilities design, fiscal resources allocation tends to be

equated between services, leaving them alone to identify their own defense requirements.

When this occurs, the government abdicates its prerogative of specifying how, when and

for how long its instrument of force should be used. The outcome is the risk of each

service procuring material according to its own perspective, promoting the absence of

interoperability with requirements statements detached from the empirical assessment of

concrete or potentials threats.

Since any given potential instrumentality of the military use of force exists

independent of the range of purposes for which it could be used, the coherence between

military capability and defense objectives is always at stake. Because budgets tend to be

evenly distributed between the branches, balancing the force becomes the implied policy,

with equity often serving as the only rationale for justifying policy and with the services

pledging assured interoperability though increased resources. This cycle evolves to

include “retrofitting”, virtually guaranteeing perpetual shortfalls in the funding of

“requirements” and inducing what is described as the “disciplinary gap”.

Lewis Kevin27 and C.H. Builder28 describe this gap. The Armed Forces request

financial resources over and above that which would be necessary, while planning current

alternatives with that which is “expected”. The difference between requested and provided

resources becomes a debt the government has with the military. When the debt is paid, the

military tends to expand its infrastructure abnormally or improperly. Resulting

inadequacies are evidenced when the state faces a crisis: current military capabilities

(however skewed or distorted) limit policy options, forcing choices between strategic

actions that could be less than desired or even inappropriate.

The collective pattern of the decisions taken into the Renovatio blocks follows a

stream of logic regulated by its own results; each one decision stimulated and derived

from the other. As programming is developed to satisfy capabilities requirements,

inconsistencies among requirements and a lack of balance among them (some very lax and

others more stringent in similar areas) become apparent. Although budgeting should

follow programming, it may begin before its completion because of different federal

budgeting and appropriations cycles. Budgeting may reveal problems with program

requirements, especially if there has not been a rigorous validation of requirements before

the initiation of development, or if program-evaluation29 practices have not been

17

adequately employed. Programming may review inconsistencies, where the budget

developer is left to his own initiative about what the capabilities the programs should

generate.

This installment is even more prominent in making as explicit as possible the costs

and consequences of defense decisions, insisting on the use of the best practices to

systematically validate capability requirements (field-testing, games and simulations, etc.),

ensuring that deficiencies that are uncovered are corrected with the appropriate

modifications made, and compelling a rationale for defense expenditures that is fully

integrated and balanced with defense programs.

Concluding remarks on the force design framework The force design framework provides a set of critical relationships underlying the

bewildering complexity involved in designing military capabilities, and the attributes used

in structuring choices in support of future strategies under advanced C4ISR based on

information fusion. It enumerates stages (logical blocks) and explains causal drivers

within and across the component processes of these stages as they relate and amalgam into

space of capabilities. Through these attributes, the framework forces the designer to

explain assumptions and clearly states propositions addressing the relevant uncertainties

under which a given choice is proposed, examined, carried out, and eventually executed.

Equally as important, the framework discusses questions about priorities and interests,

resource allocation criteria and institutional arrangements involved in defense decision-

making. It acts as a device to help divide transactions into segments, distinguished by their

individual actions and purposes.

The force design framework provides a code that can be used to compare and

contrast strategic planning methodologies, providing the general elements that any

methodology relevant to the same purpose would need to include, thereby helping to

generate questions that need to be addressed in order to diagnose problems, explain its

processes and predict outcomes. Thus, it allows precise assumptions to be made about a

limited set of parameters and variables, which simplifies the process of multiple,

interacting cycles involving numerous decisions at multiple organizational levels. Provide

a stable conceptual environment in which stability and change coexist, alternated with

either a number of modest adjustments having the same attributes used in structuring a

choice or major changes in choices, with a radical departure from the past. Permit parallel

processing within the defense system so that operational process can be conceptualized as

being linked to outcomes, thus allowing the decision-making process to move outward,

from the crafting of a narrow list of alternatives from which a choice is to be made, to the

actual choice itself.

The force design framework is support in itself by a theory of defense planning and

resource management, which, in turn, defines the realm of practical actions of senior

officers in policy guidance formulation for defense reforms within the combined

possibilities of adaptation, modernization, and transformation.

Based on the force design framework, policy guidance for defense reform can then

assume choices, being expected to control process dynamics at all levels of aggregations,

with clear causal chains and assumptions for making specific predictions for particular

strategic issues (transformation, for example), taking into consideration the magnitude and

facets of the problem, its causes, and the probable impacts of various solutions. Policy can

act discretionarily in deciding exactly how national policy gets translated into dominant

programs with an increased knowledge of problem parameters and the factors affecting

them. The capabilities construct makes a major contribution in reducing the transaction

costs involved in reaching a common understanding of the problem and identifying the

means for resolving it, since subsystems will be interpreting the evidence using a similar

set of concepts.

18

Force design, therefore, offers an approach for thinking the future forces based in a

logic that is different from that of the traditional planning, programming and budgeting

system (PPBS). Its focus is on capabilities subsystems as a unity of analysis instead of as a

multitude of projects initiated at all levels in the organization (often used by the

organizational components in pursuit of their own goals). By questioning the conventional

wisdom created over the past fifty years and bringing dissenting concepts to the forefront

of change, force design offers a new paradigm on which to base policy decisions, a

paradigm that alters the context of choice associated with defense resource allocation (at

all levels of the budget). At any given point in the force design process, organizational

components will be associated at a nontrivial degree with coordination activities with

respect to desirable resource allocation rules and performance evaluation criteria aimed at

greater precision in delineating the boundaries for capabilities subsystems, changes in

subsystem composition over time (the domain of nascent and mature military capabilities)

and for the interaction of related subsystems. Its reasoning is fairly straightforward:

determining which components in the defense construct become more internally

interrelated (efficiency), more consistent with the defense objectives (efficacy) and

experience a relatively low cost (economic) over time.

Force Design as the foundational logic of S-PME curriculum Instead of belated attempts to justify deranged national military strategy though a

deranged strategic planning methodology, force design allows students to engage in a

penetrating study of empirical evidences through a framework that interweaves critical

thinking and creative thinking into logically consistent set of processes. 30

The remarkable complexity and diversity of human cognition required to design

future forces makes the demarcation between critical thinking and creative thinking rather

artificial.

It is not possible (yet) to predict that interwoven critical and creative thinking will

arise from particular force design activities. Nevertheless, complex cognition patterns with

accounts for critical thinking are expected to arise in the reflexive process of dynamically

structuring capabilities requirements. And once these capabilities requirements are

structured, they make sense in terms of the parts of the defense system and their pattern of

interactions.

As students give account of future force alternatives they have to appreciate how

the course of events are influenced by the interaction of military feasibility with political

possibilities, and how this relationship is captured into an axiology of objectives, thus

bringing the past into intimate relation with the present, that would allow denouncing

future possibilities that simply conform to doctrine.

The powerful alliance between force design an technology prepares the mind for

the unexpected so that the path for transition is facilitated even if it cannot be foreseen.

This alliance expands rationality to liberate creative thinking from bondage. The

expansion engine of rationality lurks in the wings of the diagram of the future – the

diagram that integrates in a three dimensional representation, adaptation, modernization,

transformation alternatives, time spans in project, prospective and prosficcional horizon

and selected space of capabilities.

The apparent complexity of the diagram of futures is deceptive: out of it come

high-level patterns, “emergent capabilities”, in which the link from the laws to the

resulting patterns become impossible to follow without the science of complex systems.

The stock market, for instance, has many agents who interact trading stocks. Out of this

interaction emerges the financial network. The education of the military will be

revolutionized by throwing away the current “linear” planning methodologies and

introducing force design framework whose structure more accurately reflects the real

world.

19

Through the development of adaptation, modernization and transformation

alternatives, students deduce the dynamic pattern formation of the structure of the

uncertainties, a kind of “calculus of uncertainty” that replace the interminable

extrapolation of values of tactical and strategic alternatives in support of policy

possibilities.

Policy can then assume choices, being expected to control process dynamics at all

levels of aggregations, with clear causal chains and assumptions for making specific

predictions for particular policy issues, taking into consideration the magnitude and facets

of the problem, its causes, and the probable impacts of various solutions. Policy can act

discretionarily in deciding exactly how national policy gets translated into dominant

programs with an increased knowledge of problem parameters and the factors affecting

them. The force design framework processes makes a major contribution in reducing the

transaction costs involved in reaching a common understanding of the problem and

identifying the means for resolving it, since subsystems will be interpreting the evidence

using a similar set of concepts.

Force Design as the articulating logic of S-PME will foment learn and extend the

scope knowledge as students drew insights into the nature of things in defense in search

for the questions and answers that lead to the build of supporting rationale for future force

capabilities across the spaces of capabilities.

Enhanced S-PME curriculum based on force design concepts will assist military

educational institutions by making them better able to explicate the multi-dimensional

nature of the environment in which the next generation of defense decision-makers will be

called to operate by allowing them to apply finely honed critical faculties and knowledge.

It pprovides the laboratory in which the future senior defense decision-maker can gain

fluency in every aspect of applied technology and tame organizations formative behavior

and procedures to follow functional possibilities of adaptation, modernization, and

transformation as they relate to the future status of qualities of defense.

MANAGING CHANGE

The present military higher educational system is not capable of producing the type

of qualification senior officers will needed for the information environment of the future.

In the process of redressing this problem, an attempt should be made to establish force

design as the source of the skills, competencies and specialized knowledge needed for

senior officers and defense civil servants to operate effectively protected from intellectual

vulnerability within the future multi-dimensional security and defense environment.

The goal of S-PME become to aid in the rejuvenation of the military establishment,

through the proper combination of adaptation, modernization and transformation.

Educated officers in force design will possess the skills to learn to judge all measures

independently on their own merits through an independent and nonpartisan critical attitude

and dispassionate evaluation posture, never hesitating to be innovative – thinking beyond

doctrine - and expressing their views, regardless of the consequences.

A shift in S-PME of this magnitude is not going to happen overnight. It calls into

question the relevance of the stock of knowledge of established S-PME and education

organizations. The concepts of force design to replace this stock of knowledge will not be

self-evident; and changes will requires political might and institutional determination

joined to responsible action.

Honing senior military in force designers virtuosos will span through a generation.

Changes though education are measure in decades, until new cognitive skills, judgement,

broad knowledge and sensitivity – all in the face of adversity – raise to supplant the

tradition in which so many generals have been educated. Adversity, here, will not abridge

to institutional culture only but should outstretch to include individuals without adequate

20

intellectual background (some of them faculty), who will bitterly lament and oppose

shaping S-PME to the force design logic.

Notes

1 The Defense and Security Coopeation Agency defines Professional Military education in the U.S as a

“progressive levels of military education that prepares military officers for leadership. It includes various

basic level courses for the new and junior officers, command and staff colleges for the mid-level officers,

and war colleges for the senior officers”. Examples of PME courses include.http://www.dsca.osd.mil/ home/

professional military_education.htm This paper deliberately circumscribes his analysis and prescription to

war college equivalent educational level institution.

2 Alberts, D. et al. Understanding Information Age Warfare. Washington, D.C.: CCRP Publication Series,

2001. p. 136.

3 The Enders’ Game is an awarded winning novel by O. S. Card. The original short story was published in

August 1977. For details see http://www.ender.com/ender.

4 The Gaia Hypothesis spill out of the quest for the understating of what processes enables the unlikely

terrestrial atmosphere - and what maintains these processes at this equilibrium that is chemically far from

equilibrium? The hypothesis took its initial form based on the understanding that the earth transfigured and

transformed as a self-evolving and self-regulating living system.

5 Steven Kenney, at the Conference on Professional Military Education and the Emerging Revolution in

Military Affairs in 1995.

6 Janowitz, Morris. The Professional Soldier - A Social and Political Portrait. New York, The Free Press,

1960. p. VIII.

7 Till, G. Maritime Strategy and The Nuclear Age. 2.ed. London: MacMillan Press, 1984.

8 See Howard, M. The Franc-Prussian War. London: Methuen, 1961.

9 Évraire, General and Senior Officer Professsional … , p. 77. This manifestation in Canada, particularly,

cast shadow perspectives for S-PME in other countries. Canada has kept an outstanding awareness and

initiative in PME review in an attempt to innovate and adequate the education and development of the officer

corps. Major changes in Canada PME were started in the early 1970s, after the Rowley Report, with the

formation of a combined Canadian Forces Command and Staff College, the introduction, in 1975, of a self-

study Officer Professional Development Program (OPDP), followed with a three-tiered Officer Career

Development Plan (OCDP) in 1976. The Senior Officer Development Report of 1986 recognized the

requirement in order to bolster senior level education. In 2000, Canada developed the Canadian Officership

in the 21st Century - OPD 2020 Statement of Operational Requirement. Although this document do not

make evident the required internal logic of a S-PME that would attend the vision stated, it is a benchmark in

senior military education requirement.

10 Charles C. Moskos, John Allen Williams and David R. Segal (Eds.) The Postmodern Military: Armed

Forces After the Cold War, New York, Oxford University Press, 2000. Moskos arrives to the postmodern

military exploring the contrast among the military that emerged in the 19th

Century associated with mass war

and the impact that the structure and culture of postmodern civilian society brings to bear on the its military

servant.

11 It is a hypothesis of the authors that the strategic planning as practice in most of the Hemispheric S-PME

schools are submitted to a process of diffusion, as described in Sabatier, P. A. (ed.) The Theories of the

Policy Process. California: Westview Press, 1999. The diffusion model is used to explain variation in the

adoption of specific policy innovation. It is argued that the adoption is a function of both the characteristics

of the specific political system and a variety of diffusion processes. For the S-PME, students exchange is a

major diffusion processes within policy goals.

12 There is a noticeable trend in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in developing countries, to associate S-

PME with MBA university degrees. These initiative wanders away from the nature of military education in a

search for qualifying officer for their retirement. It is the explicit acknowledgement of the inability to deal

with the demands of military education, posing question on the actual need of such institution defined as

military. This is reason enough for not considering MBA (or equivalents) as substitutes for S-PME dedicated

curriculum that educate senior officer to take decision in the realm of defense related issues.

21

13

Nogami, G., Baun, L., and Vetok, J. U.S. Army War College 2000: Army Senior Officer Education,

Carlisle, PA., 1992, p. 45. Data presented in this document is based on 18 broad educational objectives used

to assess the War College education curriculum in the early 90s. The survey asked approximately 300

general officers to provide their view of the senior officer environment in the year 2020 and the skills they

felt senior officers would need to function in that environment.

14 The list of authors/documents is impressive. However, one of those more some influential for this paper

can be selected from: Remarks on Conference on Military Education for the 21st Century Warrior. in

Conference Proceedings: Military Education for the 21st Century Warrior Monterrey, Ca. Naval

PostGraduate School and Office of Naval Research, 15-16 January 1998. The Report of the Senior Military

Schools Review Board on Recommendations to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Regarding

Professional Military Education in Joint Matters. Washington, D.C.: JCS, May 7, 1987. USA. Chairman of

the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction. Officer Professional Military Education Policy (OPMEP). CJCSI

1800.01A. Dec. 2000. Stiehm, J.H. U.S. Army War College: Military Education in a Democracy.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002. Nogami, G., Baun, L., and Vetok, J. U.S. Army War College

2000: Army Senior Officer Education, Carlisle, PA., 1992. BRACKEN, Paul. "The Military After Next."

The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 16. Autumn 1993. Canada, Department of National Defence. Senior

Officer Professional Development. An NDHQ Study for the Officer Professional Development Council,

Ottawa, 30 April 1986. ECCLES, H.E. "Military Theory and Education." Naval War College Review, Feb

1969. EVRAIRE, R.J. "General and Senior Officer Professional Development in the Canadian Forces."

Canadian Defence Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3, Winter 1990. HACKETT, John (General Sir). The Profession

of Arms, London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983. KENNEY, Steven, H. "Professional Military Education and

the Emerging Revolution in Military Affairs." Airpower Journal, Maxwell Airforce Base, Fall 1996, pp. 50-

64. MOSKOS, Charles C., John Allen Williams and David R. Segal (eds.) The Postmodern Military:

Armed Forces After the Cold War. New York, Oxford University Press, 2000. SKELTON, Ike. "JPME:

Are we there yet?" Military Review, Fort Leavenworth, January/February 1997, pp. 96-101. Van

CREVELD, Martin. The Training of Officers, New York, The Free Press, Inc., 1990

In general, these authors/reports made a case for senior officers to have a comprehensive knowledge of

national and international security affairs, public administration and policy formulation process, the social,

economic and political environment, and a shrewd appreciation of the of the structure of uncertainties in

strategic planning. Their recommendations promise to foster reasoning which should lead to intellectual

competence and the capacity to think logically in order to brought to bear solutions to military problems.

For a comprehensive analysis of the joint curriculum of S-PME in the US, see Deare, C., Fishel, J. and Raza,

S. Educating for “Jointness;”an Analysis of the Joint Professional Military Education System of the United

States. Spanish version published in Educación para la Acción Conjunta: un análisis de la evolución del

sistema de Educación Militar Profesional Conjunto de los Estados Unidos. Política y Estrategia, Santiago,

Chile, v. 91, n. Septiembre, p. 58-90, 2003.

15 Bardach, E. Getting Agencies to Work Together: The Practice and Theory of Managerial Craftsmanship.

Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Pess, 1998. p.9 16 The Latin terms are used in order to avoid the existing – and segmented – understanding(s) of current

practices and terminologies as expressed in modern languages.

17 See, for example, Lewis, K., Khalilzad, Z. M. and Roll, R.C., New-concept Development: A Planning

Approach for The 21st Century Air Force. California, U.S.A.: Rand Corporation, 1997.; and Fox, R.J., The

Defense Management Challenge. Boston, U.S.A.: Harvard Business School Press, 1988.

18 Schwartz [see Schwartz, P., The Art of The Long View. London, UK: Cunerry, 1991. p. 32] gives

meaning to events as “the building blocks of forecasting”. Events help in reducing the complexity of

decision-making under uncertainty, isolating discrete elements and establishing its links in a trend that

emerges in the present, progressing into the future. On the other hand, Bunge [in Bunge, M., La causalidad:

El Principio de Causalidad en la Ciencia Moderna. translated by Aernan Rodrigues. Buenos Aires,

Argentina: Sudamericana, 1959], analyzing those links, concludes that events are an abstraction or an

arbitrary simplification of reality.

The methodological rigor of force design demands that this necessity and its limits be recognized, in the

same way other fields of science do. The validity of any conclusion based on events is limited by the

expectation of its invulnerability. Under this definition, events can be categorized into four terms: (1)

Dependent Events: those events that appear, disappear, or change when researchers add, remove, or modify

other events. They are, therefore, the factor or propriety that is the effect, result, or consequence of what was

manipulated; (2) Parametric Events: those events required for a determined result or consequence to happen.

They are selected and manipulated in order to determine whether they have influence or modify dependent

22

events; (3) Relational Events: establish a test factor for the limits of inference and expectation. Relational

events are assumptions that incorporate into force design the ability to make explicit its own limits. When

hypothesizing through abstracted elements of reality, the require results to be made relative to its measuring

criteria. That is, to make what surges from intuition and analysis clearly discursive, allowing the assessment

of equally valid arguments, whereas averring their validity as function of its utility.

The role of relational events can be expressed in a simple formula: if the assumption turns out to be

vulnerable, the relation between parametric and dependent events is corrupted, and inferences derived from

this relation are no longer valid. In this role, relational events fulfill the fundamental demand of force design:

that the accuracy of measurement refer to the sensitivity of the measuring method and take into

consideration the conditions of permanence of the object being measured in terms of the stability of the

derived conclusions. (5) Control Events: those events that are intentionally neutralized to prevent having

their occurrence translate into a logical obstruction for designing capabilities. An extreme example of a

control event would be the possibility of the disappearance of man. Less extreme examples are more difficult

to establish, but are more important as the continuation of the system of states and the role of force as a

political instrument. This classification uses criteria presented in Lakatos, Eva and Marconi, M. A.,

Scientific Methodology. 2 ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 1991. p.172.

The mechanics of prediction can be made explicit, using the relationship between events. Its goal is to

describe, using scenarios and with some degree of confidence, the most likely future strategic environment:

control events are established in order to neutralize uncertainties that would preclude force design; a set of

relevant parametric events are stated and hypothetical chains of future developments are established,

converging to dependent events. Finally, relational events are established to provide evidence of a possible

vulnerability of these hypothetical chains, depending on the change of the state of parametric variables or the

occurrence of other, non-neutralized events . If prediction is established outside the authorized conditions of

relational events, they mean nothing and constitute an error. 19 Adaptation is rooted in the assumption of continuity, as stated by Makridakis [Makridakis, S.G.,

Forecasting: Planning and Strategy for The 21st Century. London, UK: Free Press, 1990. p.9], which

depends on the availability of sufficient information about the past. It reflects, therefore, the projective

nature of the linkage between events. Projections are explained, in the Theory of Causality, formulated by

Bunge, as a causal relation that can be empirically verified. [Bunge, M., La Causalidade: El Principio de

Causalidade en la Ciencia Moderna. Translated by Aernan Rodrigues. Buenos Aires, Argentina:

Sudamericana, 1959. p. 187]. Temporal series, for example, are projections.

Chains of projection link present facts to future events through a tendency that depends on two factors: the

amount that can be recovered to capture the necessary information for the construction of temporal series,

with the periodicity identified; and the selection of the appropriate technique to construct and interpret these

series. The projective horizon delimits a temporal context where practices from the past ascertain regularities

that impose a degree of inertia to changes. Therefore, although the projective future is not absolutely

undetermined, it is also not unique in its determination, in the sense that the course of the present would be a

derivative of a set of rigid and inexorable causal laws. The projective future does indeed have some degree

of freedom, but this degree is restricted, being subjected to the possibilities authorized by regulatory

elements of the construction of capabilities, which will determine the limits of adaptation in defense reforms.

The accepted degree of dispersion for projections indicates the level of risk politics is willing to accept. This

acceptable level of risk establishes the limits of the projective horizon, and it is for the determination of its

occurrence that projective assumptions are constructed. This understanding contradicts that of Chuyev and

Mikhaylov, who suggest as a prediction interval the medium timeframe between cycles of development of

weapons systems and acquisition. It is conceivable that the development of a complex and time constrained

weapons system could be done artificially, precluding changes, imposing inertia to tasks and missions for

which the weapons system is inadequate or inefficient. Chuyev, Y. and Mikhaylov, Y., Forecasting in

Military Affairs. Soviet Military Thought.nr.16: Translated by the DGIS Multilingual Section, Translation

Bureau – Secretary of the state Department – Canada. Moscow, U.S.S.R.: Washington, D.C., U.S.A.: U.S.

Government Printing Office, 1980. p.4.

20 Modernization reflects the prospective nature of the linkage between events. Prospective events came

through propensity, the probabilistic outcome derived from a condition of possibility, posed by a conjunct of

probabilities that are neither fully empirically supported nor totally tested. The conceptual foundation of

prospectivity is the Theory of Propensity, as explained by Popper [Popper, K.R., A Lógica da Pesquisa

Científica. translated by Leonidas Hegenberg. São Paulo: Cultrix, 1972].

The prospective does not fill empty spaces in the chain of events; it creates probable alternatives,

each one presented as a relationship that confirms the following, with regressive degrees of certainty. The

judgment of new occurrences is a function of previous judgments. Prospective is concerned more with the

23

structure of the conditional relationship between present facts and future events than with the accuracy of the

premises. Therefore, prospective does not confine itself to what effectively may happen in the future, but is

concerned with possible events that could happen under probable conditions. Prospective, in fact, presents a

story where some data are hidden, but assumes that this story is sufficiently coherent to make some

conclusions. The prospective horizon delimits a temporal context where the regularities observed in the past

condition the future together with a set of significant parametric variables that could alter the chain of

events. The limit of this horizon is given by the possibility of prospective assumptions becoming vulnerable,

which determines the possibilities and limits of modernization in defense reforms.

21 Transformation possibilities reflect the limits of linkage between prosficcional events, addressing an

epistemological requirement of formulating hypotheses about the future, explained in Reichenbach terms.

[Reichenbach, H., Experience and Prediction. Chicago, U.S.A.: University of Chicago Press, 1938.] Kaplan

says that the probabilistic induction is based on the notion that an expectation of truth exists in chains of

events if the links of thinking sequences were sufficiently strong and the links sufficiently short. [Kaplan,

M., Decision Theory. Massachusetts, U.S.A.: Cambridge University Press, 1996. p. 235].

Prosficcional events vary without preconceived standards of measurement or statistical tolerances, accepting

a temporal bifurcation in order to propose and explore logical relationships and create new possibilities. Its

limits are the plausibility of alternatives – the possibility of its existence -, which is a markedly subjective

limit. Prosficcion produces thought experiments aiming at exploring logical extremes of possible futures. It

is not an attempt to predict the future; it is a research of possible innovations through questioning the ends,

means, and relationships, using an illustrated mind. The choice of its expression of synthesis is determined

by functional considerations of representatives of the conceived object and by an informed judgment of its

feasibility.

The important aspect is not that which exceeds prosficcional limits, but what the limits circumscribe, that is,

determining the limits of transformation alternatives in defense reforms. In exceeding this limit, the mind

cannot intuitively believe in the proposed chain of events and sees growing, contradictory changes in parts of

the cognitive process. Within these limits, prosficcional events provide alternatives that otherwise would not

be evident through projection or the prospective lens.

Moles [in Moles, A., As Ciências do Impreciso. Translated by Glória Lins. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização

Brasileira, 1995. p.125] provides the limit for a temporal context defined by prosficcion: the distance of

coherence and the limit of the propagation of causal truth. The important aspect is not that which exceeds

these limits, but what the limits circumscribe. The distance of coherence determines the limits of alternatives

for transformation in defense reforms. Terraine [in Terraine, J., The Smoke and the Fire: Myths & Anti-

Myths of War: 1861-1945. London, UK: Leo Cooper, 1992. Ch. XIX], for example, concludes that Word

War I trench phenomena were not evident through projections from past trends, nor through prospective

formulation, but through intuitively conceived links between the new industrial production possibilities and

the evolving forms of war. In the same vein, Clark [in Clark, I.F., Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars,

1763-3749. New York: Prentice Hall, 1993. pp. 224-262] quotes La guerre au vingtième siècle as evidence

of the trenches. For further examples, see Dyson, F., Mundos Imaginados. São Paulo: Scharcz, 1998; and

Malone, J., O futuro ontem e hoje. Translated by Ricardo Silveira, Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro, 1997.

22 In the U.S. case, particularly, Transformation is a policy which prioritizes options over modernization and

adaptation. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the nature of transformation for students at the National

Defense University on January 31, 2002, transformation is “about new ways of thinking … and new ways of

fighting."22 He is correct in terms of its nature, but mistakenly assumes that transformation can have a logic

of its own, encompassing all other alternatives. The current state of epistemological knowledge about the

logical links among future events does not support such understanding. See previous notes on the foundation

of adaptation, modernization, and transformation. There is not a unique conceptual system that support

transformation as encompassing modernization and adaptation. 23

To further explore this theme with a practical perspective (U.S.-centered), see Bruce, R.N. and

McNaugher, T.L., The Army: Towards the Objective Force.; and Binnendijk, H., Transforming America’s

Military. Washington, D.C.: NDU, 2002. ch. 4.

24 There is no theory that supports the fusion of chains of events of different natures. In 1956, Allport

explained chains of events with different natures, though always related, as being distinct and not to be

interchanged or substituted. Stevenson and Inayatyllah said the same thing 43 years later, when they

affirmed the epistemological necessity of explaining the premises in studies about the future, making the

distinct chains of significance hidden in the scenarios explicit. Allport, F.H., Theories of Perception and the

Concept of Structure. London: John Wiley & Sons. 1955, p. 622. Stevenson, T. and Inayatullah, S., Future-

Oriented Writing and Research. Futures. V.30, Feb. 1998. p. 2.

24

25

For the rationale that support the concept of crisis as a type of limited war, see Raza, S., Crises e Manobra

de Crises Internacionais Político Estratégicas, Aeroespace Power Journal, Spring 2002.

26 The term normative forecasting was initially defined by.. (Project Management and System Analysis, see

book at home)

27 Lewis, K., The Disciplinary Gap and other Reasons for Humility and Realism in Defense Planning. New

Challenges for Defense Planning: Rethink How Much is Enough. ed. Paul Davies, California, U.S.A.: Rand

Corporation, 1994. p. 21.

28 Builder, C. H., Military Planning Today: Calculus or Charade? California, U.S.A.: Rand: 1993. p. 93.

29 Program evaluation practices are rooted in system analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis. Quade and

Boucher explain system analysis as a “systematic approach to helping a decision maker choose a course of

action by investigating his full problem, searching out objectives and alternatives, and comparing them in the

light of their consequences, using an appropriate framework – in so far as possible analytically – to bring

expert judgment and intuition to bear on the problem. Quade, E.S and Boucher, W.I., System Analysis and

Policy Planning: Application in Defense. New York: Elsevier, 1968. p. 2. Cost-effectiveness is a technique

(analytical) that seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the resources expended across various optional

programs. System analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis must be supplemented by informed military

judgment for the treatment of the broad questions typical in force design, showing that the consequences of

various approaches might be different from what they seem.

30 Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality, 1929), David Ray Griffin (Unsnarling the World-Knot:

Consciousness, and the Mind-Body Problem, 1998)