Assumption Based Planning For Army 21

This report presents results of one phase of a project called Future Combat Development Concepts. The project supports the Training and Doctrine Command's (TRADOC's) work toward understanding future combat development and doctrine issues. This particular report is intended to help TRADOC develop Army 21, a vision of the Army and an operational concept appropriate for 15 to 30 years in the future. The Army 21 effort entails the development of a set of plausible alternative worlds that could eventuate within that span of time. The results of this study are most relevant to those interested in future Army concepts and doctrine. Since Army 21 is an integral part of the Army Long-Range Planning System, the report will interest Army long-range planners. However, the methodologies used in this study are more general and should also be of interest to other long-range planners looking for an alternative to trend-based approaches to futures planning. Section 2 of this report describes the methodology the authors developed for Army 21 specifically and for long-range planning in general. It includes a description of the methodology and a comparison of that methodology with a more common approach to long-range planning that concentrates on trend extrapolation. Section 3 describes the implementation of the first step of the methodology: identification and analysis of the assumptions underlying AirLand Battle-Future (ALB-F). Section 4 describes the identification, by means of an innovative Delphi exercise, of plausible changes in the world in 25 to 30 years that would affect the Army and its operational concept. These steps are critical in the generation of alternative future scenarios that stress the ALB-F Umbrella Concept. Section 4 also explains how the assumptions and plausible changes are combined to generate the alternative future scenarios and describes the scenarios thus generated. Section 5 offers conclusions and observations. (5 tables).

This report describes a long-range planning methodology developed for Army 21 - an Army planning exercise designed to envision how the Army will fight between 15 and 30 years in the future - and demonstrates a partial implementation of the methodology by generating a set of alternative futures. In applying the methodology to the AirLand Battle-Future (ALB-F) concept, the authors found that the scenarios generated can be properly used to do two things: think about actions that should be taken in current planning to begin preparing for the eventuation of any of the scenarios, and identify "signposts"--Events or trends that would suggest the world had taken an important turn toward one of the challenges to the ALB-F concept. The authors also found the methodology could be improved by developing a rudimentary theory of assumptions to guide their discovery and formulation. Finally, the authors found the ALB-F concept to be robust because it was difficult to come up with assumptions underlying it that might be violated; such a finding implies that doctrine writers will be challenged to develop the concept into a compelling guide to force structure development, training, etc.

Force XXI is the Army's ongoing process to define the Army of the next century. RAND was asked to apply its Assumption-Based Planning methodology to assess its robustness into the future.

This report documents a strategic planning methodology, Assumption- Based Planning, the RAND has developed over the last four years. It distills long-range planning work for the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Research Activity and the Manpower, Training, and Performance Program (now the Manpower and Training Program) of RAND's Arroyo Center and was funded as Arroyo Center exploratory research. This work was conducted to aid the U.S. Army with its long- and mid-range planning. As argued, the method is particularly suited to planning in the military. It should also be of interest to anyone engaged in long-range or strategic planning. This report is intended to describe the fundamentals of Assumption-Based Planning and to provide numerous examples, although it is not a complete user's manual.

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United States Army - Issues, Background, Bibliography