Download - FINAL (full-length)
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 1 4/15/2023DRAFT
TOWARD A THEORY OF FORCE DESIGN:
The Foundation of Capability-based Defense Planning
Salvador Ghelfi Raza1, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
Emerging from a millennium capped by a half
century of defense thinking dominated by Cold War-
era necessities, now tainted by the aftershocks of
September 11th and aware of the inadequacy of
traditional rigid defense structures (whatever their
military might,) every nation state is finding a
need for a new concept and framework for defense
theory. Force Design--a complex-yet-taxonomic
decision making process which amalgamates policy
formulation, modernization of military hardware, and
organizational restructuring with changes in the
decision-making processes—fulfills that need.
In conjunction with effective decision-making
processes that recognize long-term goals (as well as
1 Dr. Salvador Ghelfi. Raza is professor of National Security Affairs at the Center for Hemispheric Studies (CHDS) in the National Defense University. He received a Ph.D in Strategic Studies from the University of Rio de Janeiro, and has a M.A from the University of London. He is a member of the Group for Strategic Studies (Grupo de Estudos Estratégicos) of the University of Brazil (UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro). His current research and teaching interests include force design, defense analysis, games and simulation, and crisis management. The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied do not reflect views of any agency, organization or government. ([email protected]).
1
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 2 4/15/2023DRAFT
procedures that can guide its execution,) Force
Design affords the two-way flow of critical
information and assessments needed both at the
political level and within defense ministries and
their subparts. Through Force Design a professional
defense sector can be created, appropriately sized,
based on an efficient use of resources, working
within precise guidelines and therefore subject to
democratic control.
Absent Force Design, decisions are taken based on
a set of foundations seen axiomatic and absolute
only because they remain unexamined; as a result
ministries and the political leadership often appear
to respond to events as they unfold. When problems
arise, the problem becomes the focus of attention.
In such situation, the urgency of decision making in
and of itself pushes aside the seemingly abstract
notion of force design.
Unless Force Design is addressed head on, unless
a system competent to address force design is
already in place, choices offered by ministries to
the political leadership are often no broader than
2
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 3 4/15/2023DRAFT
between building “more of the same” (easier than
doing a comprehensive review) and developing an
entirely new approach (generally hinged imprudently
to some form of “technology”).
Lacking an existing force design capability,
inappropriate defense decisions taken in a hurry
generally fail to take into account the various
tradeoffs cannot systematically examine their
interaction(s). That is, decisions made tend to
result in capabilities later to be found incapable
of meeting defense objectives, i.e., operational
failure.
What is Force Design? This paper attempts to
depict the dynamic which it is. Its foundation is
capability-based defense planning. Upon this
foundation is a set of coherent concepts and a
framework that make them practical in both term and
significance. The resultant analytical construct
abstracts military capabilities into their component
elements, explicating concept and relationships.
Framework and concept to form a hierarchy which
articulates processes that allow ways and means to
3
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 4 4/15/2023DRAFT
develop and choose defense alternatives--even when
limitations of knowledge and information exclude the
possibility of assessing all expected outcomes.
The final goal of Force Design is to accomplish a
system of concepts manifest within a framework which
is an open-ended measurement tool capable of 1)
assessing the changing relationship between
capabilities requirements and defense demands –
properly addressing the challenge of defense
planning in an era of uncertainty of threats and
information technology and 2) specifying
capabilities to be added that might lead to
different choices under three concurring
perspectives - adaptation, modernization and
transformation.
4
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 5 4/15/2023DRAFT
INTRODUCTION
The demise of the Cold War, information
technology trends, and other contemporary factors
are associated causes for the emergence of new
uncertainties and threats to the State’s security
goals. However diffuse and asymmetric in their
impact, these causes have imposed defense reforms in
order to face a broad and more complex nexus of old
and new tasks, associated with efforts to eliminate
redundancy and inefficiency in the defense resource
allocation process. Such accounts often fail to
predict correctly that defense reforms effort in is
determining required military capabilities,
connecting present fiscal possibilities with future
demands of the use or threat of force towards
politically oriented objectives.
The term defense reform sounds like an aggressive
approach to get military superiority and
organizational strength. In fact, it is usually just
the opposite – an attempt to break out of a
5
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 6 4/15/2023DRAFT
deteriorating situation, more likely to reflect a
recognition that one has fallen behind than an
attempt to exploit new possibilities.
The most telling basis for judging the complexity
of defense reforms is the degree of uncertainty of
political objectives, evolving technological
possibilities and resource allocation priorities,
considering that defense can both inhibit and
stimulate economic growth2. A few examples might
give the sense of the manifestation of these reform
trends and goals in the Western Hemisphere3:
Argentina recently changed in its military
conscript/professional personnel ratio and is
endeavoring to integrate planning, programming, and
budgeting procedures in its defense planning and
2 There is a lack of consensus in the empirical literature on the positive and negative economic effects of defense spending. On one hand, it is assumed that defense spending divert resources from private and public non-defense investments (crowding out); on the other, it is assumed that defense spending increases the utilization of capital (crowding in). The latter position is support by the Benoit Thesis, referring to a positive association found between defense spending and growth for 44 less developed countries over the 1950-65 period.
See Benoit, Emile, Defense and Economic Growth in Developing Countries. Boston, USA: Heath, 1973. Sandler, T. E Hartley, K. The Economics of Defense. Cambridge, Ma: Cambridge University Press, 1995. pp. 200-220. review the literature and tabulate models alternative to that of Benoit arrising at different conclusion.3 The object of analysis for this paper was limited to the Western Hemisphere – The Americas. However, its conclusions and the proposed theoretical model it offers have higher ambitions in their possible applications.
6
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 7 4/15/2023DRAFT
resource management system, struggling to maintain
its operational military capability4.
Bolivia, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic
are endeavoring to produce Defense White Books
within the context of new roles for their Armed
Forces; whereas Chile is in the stage of revising
its White Book.
Peru is reforming its defense organizational
structure. And the Paraguay is struggling in the
political arena to approve its Defense Organization
Law that would redefine military roles and mission
and reorganize the defense sector, eventually
changing the responsibilities of the Ministry of
Defense.
Brazil faces complex civil-military relations
in the wake of the creation of its Ministry of
Defense (1999) and its National Defense Policy
(1996), with impacts on its defense command and
4 Argentina, Cámara de Diputados de La Nación, Ley 24.948 de 18 de febrero de 1998. Reestructuración de las fuerzas armadas. For Directives of Military Planning, see http//www.ser2000.org.ar/protect/Archivo/ d000 cbd2 htm. (Oct/02/9). And for operational capabilities, see http://64.69. 09.103/mic/eabstract.cfm?recno=8796 (Jun/ 25/2002).
7
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 8 4/15/2023DRAFT
control structure. Brazil’s National Multi annual
Plan PPA, explicitly declares that5:
“The modernization of the Defense National System
will be the main objective of the project for
reequipping and adjusting the Brazilian Army, the
Brazilian Navy and the Brazilian Air Force, together
with the project for managing the armed forces
policy. Both projects will contribute to reequip and
adjust force structure to a new technological
pattern, assuring the country higher protection”.
In the US case, particularly, 11th catalyzed,
albeit drastically, post-Cold War demands for
reform. As early as February 2001, the Project on
Defense Alternatives of the Commonwealth Institute
at Cambridge already pointed out four causes of
inefficiencies of the US Armed Forces, demanding
reforms in the context of the Quadrennial Defense
Review:
“One type of inefficiency is manifest in excess
infrastructure – a Cold War residue. Today, the US
5 Brazil, National Government. Plano Plurianual. http://www.abrasil.gov.br/anexos/links/links.htm . For an oeverview of current status of Brazilian Defense Reforms, see http://www.estado.estadao.com.br/edicao/ especial/militar/militar/militar16.html; and http://www.estado.estadao.com.br/edicao/especial/militar/militar/ militar11.html. (Oct 2001).
8
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 9 4/15/2023DRAFT
Armed Forces still maintain 20 percent of excess
infrastructure. Crude, costly and seemingly
intractable, this problem has had little political
salience. The support of excess infrastructure
drains money away from training, maintenance, and
quality-of-life accounts. A second type of
inefficiency derives from inter-service rivalry and
redundancy. A third type of inefficiency involves
having military “tools” and procedures that do not
correspond closely to today’s operational
challenges. Persistent shortages despite the
expenditure of more than $250 billion on procurement
during the past five years indicates a failure to
configure our armed forces to meet current needs. A
final type of inefficiency results from the failure
to fully exploit information-age technology and
organizational principles, which could reduce
structural redundancies in our military and increase
its flexibility. By contemporary business standards,
our military remains an industrial age organization”
6.
6 The Commonwealth Institute. The Paradoxes of post-Cold War US Defense Policy: An agenda for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. Project on Defense Alternatives, Briefing Memo # 18. 5 February 2001. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. pp. 6 Captured at
9
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 10 4/15/2023DRAFT
What is extraordinary are not these changes in
themselves, since defense has an evolutionary
nature, been future oriented; but the scale and
scope of current defense reforms, with countries
endeavoring simultaneously to:
Define organizational requirements in
association with new decision-making, control and
oversight mechanisms aiming at a higher degree of
political control over defense issues and
priorities.
Increase the efficiency, efficacy and economy7
of defense resource allocation, with a focus on the
processes and criteria used for the formulation,
spending and evaluation of the defense budget.
Define affordable military forces, balanced
against multiple axes, to hedge against uncertainty
in the current and future threat environment.
http:://www.comw.org/pda/0102bmemo18.html. (8/28/2001). 7 Efficacy is defined as a measure of task accomplishment: the degree to which the activity/process and resultant output delivered met the desired expectation. Efficiency translates the best combination of resources to maximize efficacy. It is measured as a relationship of outputs to imputs, usually expressed in terms of a ratio. A higher efficiency ratio translates a situation where changes in defense capabilities for a small change in resources are balanced across all resources used to produce those capabilities. Economy reflects the degree to which efficiency is obtained with lesser fiscal spending
10
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 11 4/15/2023DRAFT
These overarching themes are linked into mutually
determinant chains of cause and causality, making
few of the decisions in security requirements and
defense planning either simple or noncrontoversial.
Previously unnoticed is the necessity of an
articulated set of concepts and its associated
analytical framework for planning defense
alternatives based on military capabilities. That is
why the following questions are always present: What
criteria oriented the identification of military
capabilities? What strategies do those capabilities
support and how do those strategies support
political objectives? How are budgets related to
those capabilities?
All these questions pertaining to the defense
reform debate – in its different shapes and
perceived priorities – have a common goal and a
common assumption. The common goal is to determine
credible military capabilities that connect current
fiscal possibilities to future alternatives of
possible military action, with an acceptable degree
of political risk. The common assumption is that
11
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 12 4/15/2023DRAFT
peace has yielded insofar as the strength and
credibility of military capabilities to deter
threatening intentions by others.
While these central arguments of defense planning
are rather common-sensical, it is important to keep
in perspective that defining requirements for
affordable and credible military capabilities is a
complex issue demanding a set of valid conceptual
propositions articulated by a coherent internal
logic.
Conceptual propositions breed from reasoning and
a critical examination of past events while setting
requirements for future register that will bring
empirical evidence which, eventually, will make them
invalid. No conceptual proposition that pretends to
be scientific may postulate eternal validity. The
internal logic of the conceptual system provides the
articulating rules of its component propositions,
establishing a causal relationship between concepts,
which provides the starting point and the
interdependency of the parts for the desired or
12
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 13 4/15/2023DRAFT
intended final product8. This logic is only valid
insofar as it is useful for instructing the
collection, organization and interpretation of
quantitative and qualitative information; orienting
the research of alternative solutions for the
assorted problems; flanking its analysis with
consistent and explicit criteria; and allowing the
precise communication of results.
The validity of a conceptual system and its
internal logic assures that the devised problem is
the real problem, and not that it can be solved
within its domain of existing competencies; and that
the solutions proposed consider the relevant aspects
of the problem. Without the support of a valid
conceptual system, defense reform propositions are
mere opinions, without any ways of ascertaining
which opinion is better.
The required mind set for approaching defense
reforms must take into account the fact that most
conceptual propositions and their articulating logic 8 This is the requirement of making the axiology of the method explicit as condition of scientific research. Without an axiological option explicated, the criteria used to define the problem, determine appropriate research and integrate results are methodologically flawed. For a theoretical discussion of axiological options and its relation with developing conceptual systems, see OLIVA, A. Conhecimento e Liberdade. 2 ed. Porto Alegre: Edipurs, 1999. pp. 124.
13
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 14 4/15/2023DRAFT
used for defense planning have their origin in the
last 50 years, in the wake of the Cold War, and are
already becoming either obsolete or inadequate. This
situation is potentially harmful for three
intertwined reasons:
It might harbor inefficiency, compromising
the effectiveness of military capability.
It might create misleading performance
evaluation criteria, masking capability
inefficiencies through methodologies deprived of
analytical rigor.
It might cause the breakdown of policy,
strategy and resource allocation into isolated
processes, breeding into stove piping capabilities.
The outcome of this condition entails risks that
are not always recognized, with defense planners
often trying to “purchase a breakthrough model”
through experiences taken from other cases.
Unfortunately, these models do not work properly
because they do not “import” the conceptual system
and the people who understand it.
14
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 15 4/15/2023DRAFT
Given post-Cold War demands of security and
defense, and the aftermath of September Eleven, past
conceptual system are to be taken with a grain of
salt. It seems appropriate and opportune to propose
a new conceptual framework for designing defense
alternatives. This would focus on the reevaluation
of the concepts of security and defense, taking into
consideration its evolving nature and diffused
contours; the mechanisms for forecasting
contingencies, within a framework that integrate
distinctive rising and falling patterns; and
requirements for efficiency and economy in defense
resource management. Such endeavor should more
properly be called Force Design.
This paper offers a conceptual framework for
force design with the identification and
relationship of variables required to understand and
plan defense reforms, accommodating three
potentially concurring circumstances: adaptation,
modernization and transformation. It proposes an
innovative approach for understanding defense reform
15
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 16 4/15/2023DRAFT
trends and possibilities, systematically
articulating concepts and processes to assure armed
forces efficacy, efficiency and economy, providing
unity of purpose, unity of effort and unity of
action for effectively wielding power in support of
national will. Its overarching thesis is that force
design must serve as a guide to defense planning,
contributing to armed forces accountability,
professionalism and civilian control. Thus, defense
reforms can play an important role in both preparing
for the use of force and in maintaining peace. Its
underlying assumption is that defense reform demands
emerge as the differential between current defense
capabilities and the outcome of defense planning
offer of future conditions.
The paper is organized in four parts. Part one,
“Force Design”, sets the stage. It defines force
design as the fabric of military capability and
develops a theoretical construct (an idealization
of a situation appropriate for a problem) that
abstracts capabilities components and identify its
16
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 17 4/15/2023DRAFT
relationships, discussing some tensions among these
components and its relationships. Part two, “Force
Design Framework”, presents three logical blocks,
articulated in an approach that examines the concept
of security and defense, presents mechanisms for
developing scenarios, and examining defense
superintendence requirements. Part three uses force
design concepts to present some judgments about
actual trends in defense reforms, taking a hard look
at current defense superintendence potential
mismanagement in the Western Hemisphere. Part four,
explores both the construct of capabilities and the
force design framework to present the concepts and
interrelationship of Adaptation, Modernization and
Transformation. The paper progress from a rather
conceptual approach in parts one and two to a
pragmatic proposal of a template in part five, to
conclude presenting Force Design as a new area of
study with its own articulated set of concepts and
hypotheses.
17
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 18 4/15/2023DRAFT
PART 1
FORCE DESIGN
Force design is the fabric of military
capabilities and, as such, it provides the
foundations for an integrated project of defense.
Its purpose is the conceptualization, development
and evaluation of alternative military capabilities
to attend defense requirements in response to
security demands, assuring that the proper set of
effective and efficient military is economically
identified, developed, organized, fielded and
supported.
Force design results – an integrated project of
defense - is the source of guiding principles that
contributes to communicate goals and plans that are
reinforced through rules and norms at all levels of
the defense organization. Such a project ties
objectives together and gives meaning and purpose to
18
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 19 4/15/2023DRAFT
operational procedures, enabling all parts of the
organization consistently contribute to the overall
effort even though they have to act independently in
an environment changing rapidly. Equally important,
it include an indication of what capabilities will
not be develop, retaining an appropriate focus in
building essential capabilities. The basic purpose
of an integrate project of defense is to provide
guidance to those whose actions can affect the focus
and development of the required military
capabilities.
Although subordinating all defense operational
processes to a common purpose force design allows
the necessary latitude for leadership and
initiatives serving as an umbrella over the various
functional activities developed within the defense
establishment, establishing the context within which
day-to-day decisions are made and sets the bounds on
strategic options. Further, an integrated project of
defense guides in making trade-offs among competing
requirements for short-term and long-term goals.
Finally, it provides consistency among programs
19
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 20 4/15/2023DRAFT
providing the instance of reference for resource
allocation.
These guiding principles are defined as the
pattern of decisions that determine the ultimate set
of military capabilities; being the blueprint for
force planning, programming and budgeting9,
underpinning all defense related functions, to
include procurement and acquisition; intelligence
gathering; operational training and evaluation;
personnel (civil and military); educational
requirements; and technology research. Essentially
it is because of the ability of these guiding
principles to coordinate operational activities with
policy requirements assuring consistency over time:
that military capabilities development evolve in a
directed manner renewing, augmenting and contracting
its components to reinforce and expand defense
possibilities.
9 The traditional methodological approach for determining defense requirements was through procedures commonly named either as force planning, strategic planning or military planning. These are methodological approaches inherited from the Cold War period, led by the US initiative under the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS). This System provided the benchmark for other similar national initiatives, like the Brazilian Navy Systematic for High Level Planning with its associated “Director Plan.”
20
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 21 4/15/2023DRAFT
Although force design mills operational
requirements into defense alternatives, it is not
merely the application of military planning at
ministerial level, warning those who enter its
domains about the inadequacy of military operational
planning10 concepts and methodologies for the
processes and products that fall under its purposes.
This requires attention to the organizational
structure of a ministry of defense, involving
determining the number and qualification of the
individuals on the force design team.
Force design provides a set of concepts and its
articulating logic required for swiveling political
options into military capability requirements and
for cranking these requirements into force
alternatives, assuring jointness and
interoperability. It provides a functional logic for
management of the defense system, disciplining the
relationships of its component parts.
10 Military operational planning refers to current practiced methodologies used to determine the best alternative form of assigning tasks and to direct actions to secure military objectives by the application or the threat of force.
21
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 22 4/15/2023DRAFT
Once an integrated project of defense has been
defined, it informs the development of subparts
related to individual services and defense agencies
that will converge to produce the required set of
military capabilities. The same logic that provide
focus on the required decisions at ministerial level
can help to divide responsibilities among multiple
agents, dedicating portions of effort to each
subunit of the defense establishment.
To insure that the alternatives chosen by
subunits is adhered to over time demands of an
integrated project of demand, force design provide a
systemic perspective in support of decisions
regarding preemptive additions or contraction in the
military inventory based of forecasted demands of
military capabilities required for the desired level
of efficacy; the exploitation of better integration
and synergy among component parts of the military
system in order to maximize its efficiency; and
exploit economies of scale and scope that compete on
the basis of price in order to assure economy within
acceptable levels of risk.
22
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 23 4/15/2023DRAFT
MILITARY CAPABILITY
Common sense, capabilities are understood as the
quality of being able to use of be used in a
specified way.11 However, for specific force design
purposes, a military capability is the potential
ability of force components to perform a defense
task under specific pre-determined conditions, with
an expected degree of success.
Military capabilities are designed to fulfill the
demands of the use of force for political purposes,
having no intrinsic value – their value derives from
the assessment of success in its intended use and
has, therefore, a political nature. The above
statement is crucial for force design, because it
casts light on the fundamental question: how much is
enough? Providing the understanding that the only
acceptable answer for this question results from the
political priorities for defense; which allows
developing criteria to pair wise anticipated tasks
with requirements of quantitative and qualitative 11 Ganer B. The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style. New York: Berkley Books, 2000. pp. 57
23
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 24 4/15/2023DRAFT
dimensioning of force components under resource
constraints and acceptable level of risk.
The nature of these capabilities – instrumental
in the practice of violence under state authority -
define individualizing competencies defense
components have to acquire and circumscribes its use
within the political realm. Therefore, military
capabilities are not absolute values that could be
measured in terms of such things as the currently
available quantity of military assets, the number of
military personnel, and the possession of weapons.
Their value results from the assessment of the
potential ability of successfully perform defense
tasks in the pursuit of politically defined
objectives.
Structure of relationships
Military capabilities emerge in the functional
relationship of force components and operational
tasks. This functional outline of military
24
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 25 4/15/2023DRAFT
capabilities determines its relationships with force
structure and concept of employment12.
Figure 1 depicts a general overview of elements
that converge to produce military capability as
currently found in the literature13. Force structure
defines the size, type, dimension, and stationing of
military assets. The performance of its components
depends on how they are organized, equipped,
trained, upgraded, maintained and supported.
12 The literature of force planning uses the term strategy as a synonym for concept of employment. This paper will use the latter to develop the capability construct, reserving the former to translate the use of combat for the purpose of war, in association with tactics, the use of force components in the engagements.13 For an in-depth discussion of defense planning, see, for example, DAVIS, P. K. e KLALILZAD, Z. M. A Composite Approach to Air Force Planning. California, EUA: RAND Corporation, 1996. DEWAR, J. e BUILDER, C. H. Assumption-based Planning. California, EUA: Rand Corporation, 1993. HAFFA, R. Jr. Planning U.S. Forces. USA: NDU, 1988. KAUFFMANN, W.N. Assessing the Base Force: How Much is Enough. Washington, DC. EUA: Brookings Institution, 1992.
Support MaintenanceTrainining
Support MaintenanceTrainining
Military Assets Military Assets
ObjectivesObjectives Missions
Operations
Missions Operations
Force Components
Force Components
Force Structure Concept of Employment
Operational Structures
CapabilitiesCapabilities Operational Tasks
Operational Tasks
Policy Guidelines
25
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 26 4/15/2023DRAFT
Figure 1: Structure of relationships
Force components are the functional aggregation
of force structure elements in combat and associated
support structures accordingly to practiced
doctrine.
The concept of Employment is a set of articulated
decisions that express the prioritization of
missions and operations, relating them with a
political logic. Objectives are elements, either
material or insubstantial, that must be worked over
through operations, in order to provide an intended
benefit that contributes to a specific mission.
Tasks are required actions to achieve objectives,
towards which there is some sort of opposition or
threat.14
Countries have their defense assets (number and
size) stationed or deployed in military bases.
14 These concepts will be retaken further on in this paper. Here they are stated with the purpose of supporting arguments to explain the nature of military capabilities.
26
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 27 4/15/2023DRAFT
However, these assets are not in themselves military
capabilities. It is meaningless to say, for example,
that Brazil’s aircraft carrier São Paulo is a
military capability. It is only an asset. Brazil’s
military capability reflects the scale and scope of
tasks that force components, where this asset might
be integrated, could perform with expected degree of
success.
One alternative of military capability for Brazil
could include the São Paulo in a force component to
contribute to defend Brazil’s sovereignty in the
Amazon area (defense objective), aiming to deter
international greed for the Amazon forest. The
resulting capability is conditioned by the
readiness15 degree of its component air wing, the
degree of training of its crew, and the ability to
sustain continuous operation for an extended period
of time.
The Aircraft Carrier São Paulo is based in Rio de
Janeiro, taking approximately 4 days to deploy (non-
stop) to the Amazon area, requiring the support of
15 At this point, it is proposed to understand readiness as the performance required to accomplish a mission with expected degree of success.
27
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 28 4/15/2023DRAFT
other assets with the technical ability for
replenishment at sea – tanker ships, in this case,
to refuel the escorts of the São Paulo. Similarly,
these tanker ships are not also in themselves a
military capability. Replenishment at sea is only a
technical requirement; the derived military
capability is the ability of the Brazilian Navy to
support continuous operation of its sea assets.
Brazil’s required military capability to defend
its sovereignty in the Amazon Area, exploring the
combat possibilities of air wing of São Paulo
aircraft carrier in a force capable to escort a
convoy transporting Army troops and material to the
region, would only be constrained by the
availability of tanker ships, if its defense posture
(relating the concepts of employment with force
structure), would demand short reaction time,
whereas keeping the São Paulo stationed in the Naval
Base of Rio de Janeiro (imposing non-stop deploy and
therefore requiring replenishment at sea).
If Brazil decides to station/deploy the São Paulo
to a northern naval base (changing force structure),
28
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 29 4/15/2023DRAFT
it would produce a higher operational response tempo
for the Amazon Area with fewer demands of
replenishment at sea, with the compromise of
reducing the responsiveness of that force component
(integrating the São Paulo) to anti-submarine
operations within a context of maritime warfare to
protect the national flow of petrol in the South
Atlantic. This would change Brazil’s defense
posture, signaling a higher commitment to defend the
Amazon Area and, at the same time, would impose the
necessity of developing expensive shipyard
facilities in the northern region of the Country, in
order to provide repair facilities to this extremely
complex ship.
The required technical, fiscal and political
costs would have to be weighed against the
effectiveness of a reduced operational tempo
associated with the lower demands of replenishment
at sea. In addition, since the Army troops and
material that the São Paulo would convoy to the
Amazon Area would be held in Rio de Janeiro, the
decision of re-deploying this asset to the northern
29
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 30 4/15/2023DRAFT
region should take into consideration the technical
characteristics and operational requirements of
Brazilian Army’s assets, increasing coordination and
control demands.
Referring to cost-effectiveness analysis, Brazil
could have decided, instead of convoying Army troops
and material using a force component integrated by
the Aircraft Carrier São Paulo, to use near-the-
shore maritime routes under the umbrella of the
Brazilian Air Force aircraft (changing the concept
of employment). In this case, the same task – to
protect the military flow of troops and material –
would be accomplished with other force components
and associated operations, without significant
changes in the defense posture.
The extensive list of possible alternatives
derived from Brazil’s case reflects the complexity
of force design. The mission potential of military
capabilities results from the assessment of task-
force functional aggregations to achieve assigned
objectives with force structure components.
Similarly, Mexico faces force design problems with
30
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 31 4/15/2023DRAFT
its two oceans; Argentina with Chile and
Falklands/Malvinas; Venezuela with Suriname borders;
Colombia with its internal conflict; to mention just
a few other cases.
Having outlined the purpose and several trends in
force design, it remains to present its operational
definition. Force design is a system of decisions
aiming that the proper set of effective and
efficient military capability is economically
identified, developed, organized, fielded, and
supported. Whitin this operation 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 the force as composite of military
capabilities explored to attend defense requirements
in response to security demands.
FORCE PLANNING
The specific and limited purpose of force
planning within force design is to determine the
31
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 32 4/15/2023DRAFT
quantitative dimension, organization, and spatial
distribution of military assets in association with
a specific concept of employment for a determined
theatre of operation.
Force planning has different approaches that
might include more or fewer components and
processes, depending on the aggregation criteria
ruled by specifics doctrinal understanding. Force
design does not dispute these aggregation criteria
or doctrine16; on the contrary, it recognizes these
efforts as a valid procedure to rationalize the
planning process, having as a reference the
guidelines it provides.
An example might help to clarify the distinction
between force design and force planning. Force
design might determine US capability requirements
for protecting America’s interests in Central and
South America, assuring combat efficacy against any
specific country or regional coalition, and
providing sea control and airspace interdiction
against drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
16 For an example, see Kent G. A Framework for Defense Planning. California: RAND Corporation, 1989.
32
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 33 4/15/2023DRAFT
The purpose of force planning for the Caribbean
Basin Theatre of Operation specifically, would
determine how many X surveillance aircraft and Y
patrolling surface vessels based in Norfolk (VA) are
required to deter and prevent illegal air and
maritime traffic under strict rules of engagement
limiting the use of force. Force planning would also
determine the command and control requirements
associated with an operational structure for these
air and maritime assets to assure the required
operational tempo. In addition, force planning would
consider the redeployment of old surface patrol
vessels from Norfolk to Guantanamo (Cuba) to reduce
transit time, allowing fewer ships to perform the
same tasks. It would also consider that the
redeployment of these old patrol ships near the
theatre of operation would contribute to lesser its
aging rate until faster and less fuel consuming
combat ships could be developed and stationed back
in Norfolk. Force planning also considers what
changes in the concept of employment these new
assets might demand and determine how many new ships
33
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 34 4/15/2023DRAFT
would be necessary and how enhanced air surveillance
detection aids (radar, for example) could reduce the
number of required surveillance aircraft.
During these processes, Force Design would shape
new rules of engagement and instruct Force Planning
about the changing defense roles and missions in the
Caribbean Basin, which would determine new tasks and
evolving readiness and doctrine requirements,
conditioning the specification, development and
deployment of these new assets. Force design is,
therefore, the instance of reference for force
planning. It provides planning guidance while
incorporating operational alternatives as a
condition of possibility for its designing purposes.
Although with complementary purpose, they do not
fuse into one all encompassing process. Force Design
is the master of force planning; recognizing that
its servant would makes its designing requirement
feasible. When these roles are inverted, or force
design simply does not exist, force planning starts
imposing limits to political alternatives. Politics
will do what the military says it can do and it can
34
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 35 4/15/2023DRAFT
do what it thinks should be done: the military
becomes the master of policy.
FORCE DESIGN ENVIRONMENT
The complex interrelationship between the
problems force design faces must be viewed and
understood against the background of the political
structure of the society in which they occur,
although this may not always give us a clear
understanding of every detail. Current mechanism to
enforce defense reform range from reorganization
acts, assuming the structuring principle that legal
boundaries can create conditions for effective
defense reform, to political guidelines provided by
defense policy or “white papers”. The question,
therefore, of what kind and what amount of
information is need head into the devilish question
of functional relevance. Applying these
considerations, the most import feature in analyzing
the force design environment is to ascertain the
35
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 36 4/15/2023DRAFT
place at the hierarchy of defense decision-making
from which its actions are guided.
Force design processes are related to defense
ministry functions, being deeply permeated with
settled and routinized situations and decisions in
situations that have not yet been subjected to
regulation.
Karl Mannheim, quoting the Austrian sociologist
and statesman Albert Schäffle, pointed out that: “at
any moment of social-political life two aspects are
discernible – first, a series of social events which
have acquired a set pattern and recur regularly;
and, second, those events which are still in the
process of becoming, in which in individual cases,
decisions have to be made that give rise to new and
unique situations”17. This distinction developed to
qualify the difference between the routine affairs
of state and politics, also apply to qualify
ministerial functions in the realm of administration
and the realm of politics. Notwithstanding the
boundary between these two classes is rather
17 Mannheim, K. Ideology & Utopy: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. London, UK: Hancourt, 1936. pp.112.
36
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 37 4/15/2023DRAFT
difficulty, a set of enduring characteristics is
present in the ministerial functions18:
To be the prime instrument for assuring
civilian control over defense alternatives.
To represent the nation’s defense
requirements and advise on the implications of
proposed alternatives.
To balance military expertise and
administrative-fiscal viewpoints on formulating
defense alternatives
Force design contribute to this ministerial
functions because it demands the explanation of the
assumptions that support the formulation of military
capability requirements, and determine making
explicit the articulating links between military
capability requirements and defense objective
demands, integrating and assessing those
assumptions, requirements and objectives with a
political logic.
18 Some of these functions are reflected in Huntington’s perspective of the “Departamental Structure of Civil-Military Relations. Huntington, S. P. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press: 2000. pp.428-455.
37
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 38 4/15/2023DRAFT
This is not without problems. For example, the
analysis of the definition of capability presented
by the Joint Pub 1-02 can explain a chain of
unexpected consequences of force design concepts in
the environment and vice-versa. This publication
defines military capability as: “The ability to
execute a specified course of action (a capability
may or may not be accompanied by an intention)19”.
This view transforms military capability in a self-
sufficient ability to perform operations. When
military instrumentality becomes dissociated from
political goals, it allows military control of
policy alternatives, jeopardizing the prerogatives
of popularly elected governments to decide upon
defense alternatives.
Richard H. Kohn suggests evidence for this trend
in the US:
“The U.S. Military is now more alienate from its
civilian leadership than at any time in American
history, and more vocal about it. The warning signs
are very clear, most noticeable in the frequency
19 USA, Department of Defense. Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. 12 April 2001 (As Amended Through 9 April 2002). pp.62.
38
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 39 4/15/2023DRAFT
with which officers have expressed disgust for the
President over the last year… Divorced now from
broad parts of American society, the military,
increasing Washington-wise, was determined never
again to be committed to combat without the
resources, public support, and freedom on the
battlefield to win… The military had accepted
“downsizing” and reorganization, but not changes
that invaded too dramatically the traditional
function of each of the individual armed services,
or that changed too radically the social composition
of the forces, or cut too deeply into combat
readiness, or otherwise undermined the quality and
ability of the military to fullfill its
functions”.20
One of the undisputed givens is that armed forces
are still a major player in national politics both
in the US and in the region, with influence through
expenditures, investments, and savings in the
economy and social environment to which they belong.
Thus, designing defense capabilities is an
20 Kohn, R.H. Out of Control: The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations. In The National Interests. Spring 1994, pp.3-17.
39
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 40 4/15/2023DRAFT
influencing factor in the national and international
arena.
Zackkrison’s21 study of the roles and missions of
the armed forces of Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, and Peru, brings a unique perspective to
force design environment:
Argentina has the most distance between the
arguments, with civilians generally debating the
need for armed forces and the military successfully
lobbying the government for money to maintain
international multilateral operations.
Brazil has the largest armed forces,
adequately funded, but has no real sense of missions
and not enough public support to push a specific
agenda.
Chile has perhaps the best funded military in
the region, and the best defined set of roles and
missions, but faces just enough public hostility
that the future after General Augusto Pinochet’s
departure is a big question.
21 Zackrison, J.L. Drawdown to Instability: Defense Budgets and Mission Glide.
40
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 41 4/15/2023DRAFT
Colombia has the most urgency in defining an
adequate role for its armed forces because of the
threat to national survival at the hand of the
Marxist insurgents and drug traffickers.
Peru faces the popular perception of having
lost a recent border skirmish against a much smaller
military, an increasing threat of insurgency, and
pressure from the armed forces for more funding and
better military equipment.
These facts should be understood in the
constantly changing configuration of experience in
which they actually lived. Notwithstanding, they
give an example of the ever- flowing stream of
trends that shape force design environment.
The measure of the relevance of this trends have
need of an analytical model that can assure that the
result to be achieved with force design do not
become detached from the environment it belongs. It
is needed to model the components and relationships
of military capabilities understanding that the
constituting characteristics of the whole will
41
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 42 4/15/2023DRAFT
emerge through the relationships of the individual
characteristics of its component parts.
The goal is to understand not just the function
of individual military assets, doctrine, tasks,
objectives, but to learn how all of these components
interact within capabilities possibilities hoping
then to use this information to generate more
accurate defense planning methodologies that will
help to unravel the complexities of defense reforms
and the underlying mechanisms that provoke
inefficiency.
MODELING MILITARY CAPABILITIES
In order to design capabilities, first it is
required to understand that capabilities are a
measure of the resulting ability of force component
arrangements to perform a range of tasks. The
performances of these arrangements being depend on
the performance of its component parts and the
stability of its relationships. Secondly, it its
required to comprehend that abstraction is the first
step toward a model because it allows pointing out
42
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 43 4/15/2023DRAFT
and organizing aspects of the reality as the object
of analysis. As Bunge22 presents, “ abstraction is
indispensable not only to apply causal ideas, but
also to permit either empirical or theoretical
investigation.”
Both provisions were included in the formulation
of the construct of capabilities depicted in figure
2. This construct identifies military capability
components, stating its precise meaning with the
description of its basic qualities, delineating the
outer edge of its component against the context they
pertain. That means giving significance to the
abstracted object of analysis, defining its
variety23 as pertaining to a system24. 22 Bunge, M. La Causalidade: El Principio de Causalidade en la Ciencia Moderna. trad. Aernan Rodrigues. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Sudamericana, 1959. pp 189.
23 Variety is a concept developed by Ross Ashby within the Theory of Cybernetics. It is used to explain the distinguishable conjuncts, regardless of the order in which they appear, necessary and sufficient to describe the essential characteristics of the systems at the required level of abstraction. ASHBY, W Ross. Introduction to Cybernetics. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1970. Chap. 7.24Ludwig von Bertalanffy, who introduced the General Theory of Systems in 1925/6, provides the concept of system: a conjunct of interacting elements. The defense components are a system because they possess a mutual dependency and complementary relationship: the performance of the whole depends on the performance of its component parts. Bertalanffy, von L. Teoria General de los Sistemas: fundamentos, desarrollo, aplicaciones. Trad. Juan Almela. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1968, pag. 38.
There are authors, such Bertalanffy himself, who recognizes that the founder of Theory of System would be W. Kohler, with his work Die Phsischen Gestalten in Ruhe and in Staionaaren Zustand. Erlangen, 1924. Notwithstanding, the literature credits Bertalanffy for developing the Theory of System because Kohler’s work is restricted to applying the concept of system to biological phenomena, restricting its amplitude. For applications of the Theory, see Bertoglio, J. Introduction a la Teoria General de los Sistemas. México: Limusa, 1982. This theory provides an investigative methodology that could be synthetically described as: take the reality as it is presented, examine its component systems and enunciate valid regularities presented.” This methodology was named empirical-inductive. For a critique of the theory and investigation methodology, see Ashby, W.R.
43
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 44 4/15/2023DRAFT
The capability construct is an ideal25 model with
two purposes. The first purpose is to abstract the
complexity of the empirical reality in necessary and
sufficiently analytical variables; and explaining
how these variables interact, contract and maintain
relationships that enable a required capability to
be obtained. The second purpose is to explain the
sensibility of military capability to changes in the
security and defense environment, providing
assessment criteria of its efficiency, efficacy and
economy in adapting, modernizing and transforming
the defense sector in response to changes in the
security environment. The sensitivity analysis of
General Systems Theory as a New Discipline. EUA, General System, 3, 1958, pp. 1-6. Ashby proposes an opposite approach, named deductive: instead of studying the system in a progressive form, from inferior to superior levels of abstraction, he recommends taking the conjunct of all conceivable systems and reduce them to a unique system of acceptable dimension. Luhmann, N. Power. Toronto: John Willey & Sons, 1979, proposes interpreting a macro system – society as the most complex macro system - using the deductive methodology. He aims to eliminate the main restriction of Bertalanffy’s approach that in macro system the distinction between the surrounding environment and the objected system under analysis becomes blurred. Luhmann’s theory wasn’t completely accepted because it cannot be applicable to others fields that have more restricted objects of analysis. 25 Ideal models, according to Weber, are theoretical models resulting from a selective process that blocks some elements from the reality and explains its content unequivocally. Ideal models do not exist as part of the reality; they are only a proposition of a hypothetical relationship of elements abstract from that reality. Weber, M. Ensaios Sobre a Teoria da Ciência. Paris: Plon, 1965. pp.76. Ideal models are not a description of the reality, because they retain only some of its aspects, representing relevant aspects of the totality that are regularly presented in the object of investigation. They are not also an average term of the reality because ideal models do not emerge from quantitative notion. Popper converges to Weber’s understanding of ideal models and explains its utility in preventing contradictions and impreciseness when theorizing upon selected aspects of reality. Lévis-Strauss has a different interpretation of ideal model. According to him, an ideal model is a simulacra, a relational conjunct that simplifies reality in order to explains the totality of the phenomenon. See Bruyne, P. Herman, J. and Schoutheete, M. Dinâmica da Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais: Os Polos da Prática Metodológica. 5 ed. trad. Ruth Joffily Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves. pp. 48.
44
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 45 4/15/2023DRAFT
military capability to changes in the security and
defense environment requires making explicit
possible forms of its relationships and logical
consequences. That means supporting hypothesis
formulation and explaining its elements of
refutation.
The capability construct, as an ideal model – in
the sense o logical -, is not a hypothesis and,
therefore, can be neither true nor false but valid
or not valid depending on its utility for
understanding reality26. That means that it has its
own conditions of possibility; it contains its own
principle of constitution, encapsulating a conjunct
of defined predicative, arbitrarily created
accordingly to the necessity of the investigation,
that can be used – or not – as an instance of
reference to compare empirical data drawn from the
reality .
The construct models capabilities as an open
system. It assumes a flow of materials, information,
etc. from and to the surrounding environment,
26 Bruyne, P. Herman, J. and Schoutheete, M. Dinâmica da Pesquisa em Ciências Sociais: Os Polos da Prática Metodológica. 5 ed. trad. Ruth Joffily Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves. pp. 48, 182.
45
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 46 4/15/2023DRAFT
implying that its variety assumes different values
in time, as well as the relationship between its
component are dynamically reconfigure, whereas
keeping the system in a uniform state27. This
explains the characteristic of military capabilities
to retain its efficacy while its components are
reconfigured. It will also explain the limits and
possibilities of adaptation, modernization and
transformation trends.
Pragmatically, the construct will help in problem
definition in force design: what will (and will not)
be considered as inputs and outputs. This entails
defining the scope of the expected alternatives,
what procedures will be followed in generating and
evaluating alternatives, and in selecting the
alternatives to recommend to political decision.
27 The concepts of “closed and open system” are part of Bertalanffy’s General Theory of Systems. A system is defined as closed when it can be considered in an equilibrium state independent of the surrounding environment. Chemistry, for example, deals with physical-chemical reactions in isolated recipients; and thermodynamics affirms that its laws are only applicable to closed systems. Opens systems have in their animus the governing factor towards higher states of order and organization. This paper uses the same characterization for capabilities, having adaptation, modernization and transformation as trends to higher states of order and organization. The biologist Driesch uses this description to characterize a system of living organisms. A uniform state is achieved when an open system is in equilibrium. Closed systems equilibrium is dependent of the initial conditions. The final concentration of a chemical product depends on the initial concentration of its components. However, in open systems, uniform state is achieved based on the systems own parameters, and therefore is independent of its initial conditions. Drischel, H. Formale Theorien der Organization. Halle: Nova Acta Leopoldina, 1968, pp. 136, in Bertalanffy, von L. Teoria General de los Sistemas: Fundamentos, Desarrollo, Aplicaciones. Trad. Juan Almela. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1968. pp. 40.
46
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 47 4/15/2023DRAFT
Figure 2: Capabilities construct
Military capabilities alternatives are a
particular manifestation of a (intended) stable
relationship of three conjuncts28 of elements: the
conjunct of force components, the conjunct of
regulating factors, and the conjunct of concepts of
employment, all interacting with each other in
unique ways.
28 M.D. Mesarovic explains the concept of conjunct as the individualizing properties that provide to some type of cluster of elements within the environment its quality as system components. Each conjunct is, in itself, a system, defined by particular analytical criteria used to isolate them from the rest. Mesarovic, M.D. Foundations for a General System Theory. New York, USA: John Willey & Sons, 1964. pp. 1-24.
47
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 48 4/15/2023DRAFT
The concept of employment, force components and
regulating factors are mutually determined elements
of capabilities. The first assures the proper
relationship of tactical possibilities, strategic
alternatives and political goals. The second
determines the proper quantitative and qualitative
dimensioning of military assets and organizations,
being enabled by interoperability, jointness,
command, control, communications and computing (C4)
possibilities. The regulating factors link both
force components and concepts of employment,
assuring the external coherence of military
capabilities with the political will and internal
coherence between its component parts. By examining
these complex interactions, it is possible to shed
more light on how they alter defense reforms
possibilities.
THE CONJUNCT OF FORCE
The conjunct of force emerges in the articulation
of A) military assets possibilities, B) operational
48
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 49 4/15/2023DRAFT
structures, and C) its enabling elements, which will
make tactics and strategy possible.
A) Military Assets
Military assets are the means effectively used to
accomplish assigned tasks and the means necessary to
provide efficiency and sustain the tactical effort
for a certain period. For analytical purposes, each
military asset has three component elements: 1)
military hardware; 2) personnel; and 3) protocol of
operations29.
1) Military hardware
Military hardware is the machinery and equipment
of war, such as tanks, aircraft, ships, rifles, etc.
The identifying criterion for including an element
in the conjunct of military asset is its sufficiency
for a specific purpose. Such is the case with a war
ship, with its sensors, weapon systems, engines,
damage control systems, communication and command
centers integrated into a single platform with the
purpose of providing task efficiency.
29 For a typology of military assets, see Brzoska, M. et. al. Typology of Military Assets. Bonn, Ge: Bonn International Center for Conversion. Paper 16. April 2000.
49
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 50 4/15/2023DRAFT
A Boeing 747 initially conceived for civilian
airlines might become a military asset as a troop
transport; a merchant freighter may become a tank
carrier or an ordinary SUV may be converted into an
armed scooter. On the other hand, if it is
considered aircraft, warships or tanks originally
conceived as war-machines, the question would be
what are the distinguished features that typify a
corvette, a frigate and a cruiser other than their
size and weaponry? A corvette with sophisticated and
powerful weaponry might overcome a frigate in an
artillery duel, but the overweigh of this weaponry
could restrain its speed and performance, allowing
the frigate maneuver fast to overcome its weakness.
Similar propositions could be posed to the entire
war arsenal with its composing typology of fighters,
bombers, aircraft carriers, tanks, guns, etc.
Clearly, not only their aptitude to fly, navigate or
off-road traffic empowers these material components
as military assets. What defines these material
means as military assets is their ability to provide
tactical efficacy. However, because resources are
50
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 51 4/15/2023DRAFT
always constrained, efficacy should be associated
with efficiency. An efficient combat asset, for
example, will perform tasks with less fuel, which is
transformed into a wider deployment range or longer
periods on station without replenishment.
In other words, the criteria to define a military
mean is whether it is able to provide an
identifiable contribution to the required task,
being a lever of influence in the outcome. Military
assets are defined using four combining criteria:
Mobility and staying power: the ability of
military means to deploy and maintain continuous
operations. Mobility and staying power can be
enhanced by new transportation and communications
technologies.
Offensive and defensive firepower: offensive
firepower regards the ability to damage (neutralize
or destroy) adversaries’ fighting ability by
attacking targets such as missile launch sites,
airfields, naval vessels, command and control nodes,
munitions stockpiles, and supporting infrastructure.
51
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 52 4/15/2023DRAFT
Offensive firepower includes but is not limited to
physical attack and/or destruction, military
deception, psychological operations, electronic
warfare, and special operations, and could also
include computer network attack. Defensive firepower
seeks to affect the adversary’s ability to achieve
or to promote specific damage against our assets. It
includes all aspects of protecting personnel,
weapons, and supplies while simultaneously employing
frequent movement, using deception and concealment
or camouflage.
Sustainability: the ability to perform
tactical actions until successful accomplishment or
revision of the tasks.
Tactical Flexibility and Versatility: the
ability to adjust assets configuration to confront
changes in the environment, laying out a wide range
of interrelated response paths.
2) Military personnel
Military personnel are considered in force design
in its qualitative and quantitative dimensions. The
52
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 53 4/15/2023DRAFT
qualitative dimension of military personnel
translates both its total combat efficiency and the
individual ability to assess complex situations
making and implementing decisions within the domain
of their professional expertise, with reasonable
expectation of success. The quantitative dimension
of military personnel deals with the required mix of
active, reserve, professional and conscripts to
effectively operate, deploy, and maintain material
means required to attend a set of concepts of
employments.
The common trend in personnel reforms, supported
by most scholars as a by-product of the end of the
Cold War, has been downsizing the military and a
complement of civilians. This is a monumental
decision that has to be carefully throughout in its
impacts. David McCormick30 summarizes its
complexity:
“Judging the appropriateness of an army’s
downsizing objectives is more complicated than it
might appear. The logic behind each of the four
30 McCormick, David. The Downsized Warrior: America’s Army in Transition. New York: New York University Press, 1998. pp 75-76.
53
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 54 4/15/2023DRAFT
primary objectives – protecting quality, shaping the
force, sustaining personnel readiness, and
demonstrating care and compassion – is persuasive.
An officer corps of exceptional quality is obviously
crucial to a dynamic and effective military
organization, even more so given the uncertain
challenges of the post-Cold War era. Maintaining
promotion opportunities and enhancing professional
development opportunities as a means of retaining to
performers seems reasonable, too, especially since
downsizing organizations often lose their most
valued performers. Similarly, there is an obvious
and compelling need for shaping the officers corps
by precisely identifying the individuals with the
specific skill and expertise needed in a downsized
organization and for distributing officer cuts
across the entire officer corps…Sustaining personnel
readiness is also a reasonable objective. Personnel
readiness in the aggregate is a telling indicator of
the alignment between cuts in force structure and
cuts in personnel, two activities that should
ideally go hand in hand. Thus, personnel readiness
54
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 55 4/15/2023DRAFT
allows the army to gauge how effectively it is
managing this aspect of downsizing. In addition, at
the unit level, reasonably high levels of personnel
readiness are necessary for effective unit training
and operations. And, personnel readiness obviously
has significant implications for the army’s wartime
capabilities. Finally, a caring compassionate
approach to downsizing is justified on moral as well
as practical grounds. From a moral perspective, it
has traditionally to those who loyally serve. And,
as noted earlier, fair and compassionate treatment
of downsizing victims affects the attitudes and
performance of those who remain and influences an
organization’s ability to recruit new members.”
In the US case, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
believes that the military's personnel management
system might be a Cold War relic that encourages too
many service members to stay for 20 years, too few
to stay thereafter, and most members to scurry
between assignments at a pace harmful to unit
cohesion and to families. 31
31 Tom Philpott. Military Update: Longer Careers, Fewer Moves: Two Of Rumsfeld's Tougher Goals. http://www.militarylifestyle.com/home/1,1210,S:1100:1:1187,00.html. (June 19, 2002).
55
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 56 4/15/2023DRAFT
3) Operational protocols
Operational protocols are the instructions of how
to operate efficiently those material means,
exploring their technical characteristics to
maximize task effectiveness. An operational protocol
for five similar surface ships to deploy in calm sea
aiming sonar detection of low speed submarines would
recommend a pattern of simultaneous turning to have
a detection probability of 80%. Another protocol of
operation for the same class of ships operating in
rough sea would recommend another pattern for a 60%
detection probability32.
More efficient protocols of operations can be
developed by applying computational routines to a
generic “model”, modifying its parameters to make
military assets to satisfy performance requirements
appropriated to a wide variety of conditions, or to
make them to perform existing tasks better, or to
implement tasks never before performed.
However, one of the most difficult and expensive
activities of modern armed forces is exactly making 32 For methodological processes of developing operational protocols, see NAVAL WAR COLLEGE. Naval Operations Analysis. (2. ed.). Annapolis, EUA: NWC Press, 1989.
56
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 57 4/15/2023DRAFT
efficient protocols of operations. It demands
sophisticated centers of operational analysis and
complex processing. For this reason, not all
countries can afford such centers. The problem,
therefore, is that they might employ newly acquired
military assets with obsolete operational protocols,
virtually neutralizing their efficiency. However,
since they do not have such centers, they do not
realize their necessity, or simply deny this
problem. The error, therefore, is circular, with
increasing costs of acquiring and maintaining
technologically sophisticated assets with
diminishing returns in terms of effectiveness.
When defining the military assets conjunct, the
relevant variable is the tooth-to-tail ratio of
fighting assets to its supporting components.
Fighting assets are designed to maximize combat
ability relatively to foreseen opponents. Supporting
components are designed to assure the maintenance of
the cutting edge of fighting assets. The fighting
tooth needs refueling and ammunition supplies to
maintain combat ability. Without supplying vessels,
57
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 58 4/15/2023DRAFT
tank aircraft, depots and bases, the fighting
ability would be severed to the point of impairing
task possibilities. In US, for example, the fighting
tooth has required deployment of only 4% of active-
duty personnel33.
The conjunct of military assets, therefore,
includes both its cutting edge and its supporting
device categories. Training and motivation of
military personnel, the internal military
organization, communications systems, logistical and
other systems all may enhance or prejudice military
capability because they possible impact on the
possible tooth-to-tail ratio.
B) Operational Structures
The conjunct of operational structures creates
the ability of military assets to perform operations
in support of required tasks. They are designed,
therefore, to attend command and control
requirements, articulating military assets in order
to get task efficacy through the efficient
33 The Paradoxes of post-Cold War US Defense Policy: An agenda for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. Project on Defense Alternatives, Briefing Memo # 18 5 February 2001. http:://www.comw.org/pda/0102bmemo 18.html. . pp. 5. (8/28/2001)
58
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 59 4/15/2023DRAFT
performance of the parts. Its role is to make the
conjunct of military assets present in a military
capability become more than the sum of the parts.
For analytical purposes, operational structures have
two distintive components: 1) Combat structures, and
2) Support Strutures.
1) Combat structures
Combat structures allow parts of the conjunct of
military assets to be detached and deployed to
specific tasks, allowing expansion of the number of
possible tasks that the conjunct might perform.
Therefore, the synchronization of detachment and
reincorporation of those parts maximizes the
potential ability of military assets to accomplish
the envisaged concept of employment.34
2) Support structures
Support Structures are designed to fulfill two
simultaneous demands. The first refers to the
maintenance of military effort in time. In this
34 See Department of the Army, United States of America. 1986 US Army Field Manual 100-5, blueprint for the AirLand Battle. Washington DC: Brassey’s (US), Inc, 1991. To identify the impact of combat structure in force structure and warfare see Deichman, P.F. der. Spearhead for Blitzkrieg: Luftwffe Operations in Support of The Army: 1939-1945. New York, USA: IVY Books, 1996. Diechman’s book is also relevant to see the functional role of doctrine in the relationship of combat structure and the conjunct of military assets.
59
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 60 4/15/2023DRAFT
case, the purpose of support structures is to
provide the adequate logistical flow to maintain
both military means in their optimum technical
performance, and personnel adequate supplied in
order to assure the continuous validity of
operational protocols, providing for the expected
performance of military assets. The second demand
imposed on support structures is to prepare the
conjunct of military assets to attend operational
requirements. In the first demand, support
structures are articulated with combat structures,
timely linking, for example, depot resources with
theatre demands. In the second demand, support
structures group military assets by types and
classes, seeking a gain in scale in maintenance,
repair and training.
Decisions regarding military assets and the
organizational design are highly dependent on the
degree of require jointness, as well as on decisions
regarding how force components are deployed,
interconnected and specialized.
60
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 61 4/15/2023DRAFT
C) Enabling Elements
The range of possibilities provided by military
assets in response to tasks depends on the 1)
interoperability of their component parts, and 2)
the possibilities created by command, control,
communication, and computing. Together, they
contribute to achieve and jointness synergy.
1) Interoperability
Interoperability defines the degree of
compatibility between force components that permits
them to work together to produce expected tactical
results. It explores technical features incorporated
in military assets to perform operations.
Interoperability is a technology function. It
depends on a systemically integrated conjunct of
knowledge and instructions that fulfill or create
specific demands of force designing, and guide the
production possibilities of defense products and
processes though proper techniques35.
35 Literature offers a variety of definitions of techniques within an unresolved discussion about the difference with technology. Longo defines technology as the organized assemblage of all scientific, empiric and intuitive knowledge used in the production and commercialization of goods and services; and techniques as the purely empirical and intuitive knowledge. Longo, W.L. O Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico do Brasil e suas Perspectivas Frente aos Desafios do Mundo Moderno. Belém: UNAMA, 2000. pp. 11,12. For Morais, technology is derived from the
61
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 62 4/15/2023DRAFT
Technology differs from techniques in
continuously reconstructing and transforming itself,
having as reference all previous knowledge, whereas
techniques are specific knowledge circumscribed in
time and space oriented to use or produce required
products and processes. Technology supports the
presumption of certainty that force components will
produce expected results to tasks demands, and
determines the transforming rules of knowledge into
force components possibilities36.
2) Command, Control, Communications and
Computing (C4)
evolution of techniques. For him, techniques refers to Paleolithic, Neolithic, medieval or even modern humankind creative behavior used to provide human necessities though the transformation of the environment; and technology refers to more recent practice of objective human creativity. Morais, R. J.F. Ciência e Tecnologia. 2.ed. São Paulo: Cortez & Morais, 1978. pp.102. Munford has the same understanding of Morais regarding techniques: “through technical improvements we create a new environment and highly organized new behavioral standards that have attended human necessity of living in a orderly and predicable world”. Munford, L. Arte e Ciência. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1986. pp.14. Jacques Ellul has an inverted perspective of the concepts when he says that technology regards naïve activities oriented toward perfection; and techniques as the contemporaneous mentality oriented to efficiency as a supreme goal. Ellul, J. A Técnica e o Desafio do Século. trad. Roland Corbisier. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1968. pp. 445. Buzan sees in the technology the most important factor in determining the nature of military alternatives and means of force, isolated from political influence. Buzan, B. Strategic Studies: Military Technology & International Relations. London, UK:MacMillan Press, 1987. pp.7. Häbermas, on the other hand, thinks that technical reasoning does not abandon its political content. Habermas, J. Técnica e ciência como Ideologia. (trad. Arthur Morão). Lisboa, Portugal: Edições 70, 1968. pp. 46. 36 For a historical perspective of the composition and influence of technology upon force design, see: Macksey, K. Technology in War: the Impact of Science on Weapons Development and Modern Battle. London, UK: Armour Press, 1986. Creveld, M. van. Technology and War: From 2000 B.C to the Present. New York, USA: Free Press, 1991. Dupuy, T.N. The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare. Fairfax, USA: Hero Books, 1984. Jones, A. The Art of War in the Western World. New York, USA:Oxford University Press, 1987. O’Connel, R.L. Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons and Aggressions. London, UK: Oxford U.P., 1989. MacNeill, W. The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Forces and Society Since A.D. 1000. Chicago, USA: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
62
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 63 4/15/2023DRAFT
Command and Control, Communications and Computing
assure the processes transaction of operational and
support structures in a logical fashion, being an
integral part of force structure manifested in
military capabilities. They can lead to fewer
changeovers in force components and tasks to produce
required military capabilities, reducing cycle time
without changing military effectiveness or
increasing military effectiveness using lesser-
sophisticated conjunct of military assets. As the
size of force components increases, it can exploit
more and more tasks, but it also becomes
increasingly complex to select the C4 system that
makes it possible to provide effectiveness at a low
total cost/risk ratio and at the same time assure
interoperability37.
Properly identified, C4 requirements lead demand
growth of military capabilities with preemptive
actions to exploit current deployment of military
assets considering its different degrees of
37 For a in-depth discussion of Command and Control, see Weisman, R.M.L. A Conceptual Model for Military Command and Control. Ontario, Canada: University of Ontario,UMI Dissertations Services. 1992.
63
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 64 4/15/2023DRAFT
readiness tailored to expanding or contracting tasks
demands within a specific concept of employment.
THE CONJUNCT OF CONCEPTS OF EMPLOYMENT
The conjunct of concepts of employment define a
set of articulated decisions that express the
prioritization of objectives and its translation
into tasks requirements having operations as its
linking factors, whereas relating all of them with a
political logic.
In the US case, for example, the Navy has put
emphasis on network-centric operations, the Air
Force moves towards becoming an expeditionary force,
the Marines’s continuing experiments with concepts
such as Desert Warrior and Urban Warrior, and the
Army’s recently announced effort to develop medium-
sized brigades with increaded responsiveness38.
A) Objectives
Objectives are functionally sufficient
descriptors of foreseeable demands of the use of
force for political purposes. Each one encapsulates
38 Davis, P. Tranforming Military Force. California: Rand Corporation, 2002. pp. 231. http://www.rand.org/ contact/personal/pdavis/MR1306.1.sec6.pdf . (Mar/20/2002).
64
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 65 4/15/2023DRAFT
a comprehensive content that justifies its
individuality and permanence, supporting the
assumption that during the processes force design
guides those demands of force will not change.
There are five implicit premises in this
formulation. First, that the objectives, once
selected, are necessary and sufficient to achieve
the predetermined purpose. Second, that the
processes are logically articulated. Third, that if
those objectives were achieved, the envisaged
initial purpose would be accomplished. Forth, that
its formulation and execution are bounded by some
degree of sufficient rationality. Fifth, that during
the processes, the objectives and the rules of
transformation will not change.
These premises support the proper linkages
between national interests and defense capabilities
towards higher states of effectiveness, efficiency,
provided four conditions:
Intelligibility: the denotative content of
objectives are clearly defined and understood.
65
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 66 4/15/2023DRAFT
Feasibility: objectives are achievable within
the realm of practical possibilities and logical
reasoning.
Assessment possibility: the results are
measurable either quantitatively or qualitatively.
Compatibility: the effects are part of a
chain of causality addressing defense requirements
Intelligibility is the requirement for the proper
developing of plausible hypothesis related to a set
of accepted values and principles; and for clearly
communicated results. Assessment Possibility is the
requirement for determining the consistency of the
proposed objectives and its sensibility to changes
in the threat environment.
Attending intelligibility and assessment
possibility requirements are relevant to prevent
three common risks in defining defense objectives.
The first risk is making static a dynamic process.
The second, is that objectives, as Lodi39 put,
convey solutions in terms of re-scaling existing 39 Lodi conclusions are taken for business strategic planning methodologies. However, his analyis and conclusions can be transposed to force design because both fields explore similar articulating logic and general concepts. See Lodi, J.B. Admininstração por Objetivos: Uma Crítica. São Paulo: Pioneira, 1972. pp.25.
66
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 67 4/15/2023DRAFT
capabilities, increasing or downsizing, thus
restricting the emergence of new capabilities based
on different internal logic for rearranging force
components. Finally, objectives tend to focus on the
short term.
Compatibility is the enable of strategic
possibilities. It assures that the resulting effect
of operations – manifested in tactical use of
military assets in the engagements – might be
articulated toward the political goals though a
cascade of linked results.
B) Tasks
Tasks are a set of intended actions or desired
effects of the application of force towards specific
defense objectives. They are the building blocks of
the concept of employment, defining the intention
for using force components in a chain of linked
tactical actions, expecting that the aggregated
outcome of this chain will contribute to achieve a
cascade of intermediate objectives having at its top
the defense objective.
67
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 68 4/15/2023DRAFT
The political logic that links objectives and
tasks can be understood with the comprehension of
its relation with 1) Defense Missions and 2) Defense
Roles.
1) Defense missions
Defense missions are the assemblage of tasks
within the scope of an intended purpose. Each
mission is related to a specific outcome, in the
form a hypothetical combination of assumptions and
chains of future developments that serve as a
reference for the diagnosis of current and required
tasks. Defense missions are, therefore, a
proposition of reality aiming to anticipate
possible, probable and plausible contingencies where
the uses of military capabilities are considered.
Determining and prioritizing missions are a prime
political decision found in a set of compromises
seeking to reconcile, and where possible, to balance
conflicting questions of value. Once defined, they
orient the bulk of national effort towards the
political use of military capabilities in defense
68
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 69 4/15/2023DRAFT
related tasks. At least three important
characteristics are common to the use of the term
mission:
a) Time horizon: it defines a time horizon
for the anticipated impact of the tasks required to
carry out its mandate.
b) Focus: it required concentration of
effort on a narrow range of pursuits reducing the
resources available for other activities.
c) Chain of causality: in requires a series
of decisions supportive to one another following a
consistent pattern.
2) Defense roles
Defense roles are generic descriptors of the
nature of the effect, cause or consequence of
applied military capabilities in defense tasks.
Defense roles are usually categorized as nation
building, diplomatic, combat, constabulary, and
police; reflecting the different political rules and
legal framework that bounds defense tasks.
69
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 70 4/15/2023DRAFT
Nation building roles shape defense tasks towards
the social and economic development of the state
under democratic governance, civil law and economic
rules of market regulation. International law and
treaties bind diplomatic and combat roles in peace,
crisis and war, asseverating Clausewitz’s conclusion
that war is the continuation of policy with the
introduction of means of force. The importance of
diplomatic roles lies in the fact that nations judge
potential adversaries in terms of its military
responsiveness, reliability, consistency, and, most
of all, unity: unity of purpose, unity of effort,
and unity of action40. Constabulary and policy roles
are oriented to the maintenance of order and
enforcement of regulations, under national or
coalition legal mandate.
The priorities of defense roles reflect the
mandate of politics in defense issues. The
importance of clearly defined defense roles is the
assignment of functions for defense, making it
accountable for its results. Military capabilities
40 Foster, GD. The Postmodern Military: The Irony of "Strengthening" Defense. Harvard International Review; Cambridge, Summer 2001. pp. 24-29.
70
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 71 4/15/2023DRAFT
acquire fighting, diplomatic, police, or
constabulary roles depending on doctrine, the way
they are organized, deployed, trained, sustained,
commanded and controlled. The required status of
each of these requirements are assessed taking into
considerations topological characteristics of
possible areas of operation, national and alliances
fiscal and production possibilities to sustain
existing capabilities or incorporate others during
the course of operations. This, in turn, will
require a sustained degree of readiness41
articulated with expected tempo of the military
operations.
The relationship of objectives, roles and
missions, having tasks as its linking elements,
define a matrix of cross impacts.
Objectives
A B C D
Mission 1 TasksTasksTasksTasks A Roles
41 The concept of readiness will be retaken further on. Here, it is proposed to understand it as the degree of preparedness for a specific purpose.
71
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 72 4/15/2023DRAFT
2 TasksTasksTasksTasks b
3 TasksTasksTasksTasks c
4 TasksTasksTasksTasks d
Figure 3: Cross-Impact matrix of objectives,
tasks, missions, and roles
Strategy links tactical intended results with the
purpose of defense through a political logic; and
use tasks, missions and roles to both instruct its
formulation and assess its results.
Canada offers an example of the relationship of
mission, objectives, and tasks42:
Defense Mission:
Defend Canada and Canadian interests and values
while contributing to international peace and
security
Defense Objective:
42 Canada. Defense Planning Guidance 2001 – Chapter 2 – Strategic Directions. http://www.vcds.ca/dgsp/dgp/ dgp2001/chap2e.asp. (Jun/01/2002).
72
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 73 4/15/2023DRAFT
To conduct surveillance and control of Canada’s
territory, aerospace and maritime areas of
jurisdiction. This Defense Objective will be met by
Defense Tasks:
1. Protecting Canadian sovereignty through
surveillance and control of Canada’s territory,
airspace and maritime areas of jurisdiction; and
2. Mounting an immediate, effective and
appropriate response for the resolution of terrorist
incidents that affect, or have the potential to
affect, national interests.
Tasks determine the chain of operations and
actions [tactical] expected to be accomplished to
achieve an objective. Defense mission instructs
strategy formulation establishing the validity of
linked task results for defense objectives and
security goals. Defense Roles provide parameters to
assess the degree of efficacy of these valid results
to the envisage success defense and security policy
determine. That means that strategy completes itself
in the tactical possibilities and in the political
73
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 74 4/15/2023DRAFT
determinants; having no significance isolated from
any one. Finally, it should be kept in mind that
objectives, roles and missions are enormously
sensitive issues, for they means fiscal resources.
C) Derivative elements
Derivative elements mediate the process of
desegregating tasks attending both the criteria
formulated based on 1) Intelligence, Surveillance,
and Reconnaissance (ISR), and 2) the practiced
categories of operations. Together, they offer the
criteria for developing guidelines for making
decisions about the employment of the force
components, reflecting how decision-makers define
the hierarchy of tasks and describe through missions
their understanding of the country’s requirements of
security and defense.
1) Intelligence, Surveillance, and
Reconnaissance (ISR)
ISR ensures that threats will be detected well in
advance. Asymmetric threats, for example, such as
information and terrorist attacks, are more
74
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 75 4/15/2023DRAFT
difficult to predict than large-scale conventional
attacks, and therefore have significantly less
strategic warning associated with them. The response
to asymmetric attack, however, is unlikely to
trigger the requirement for national mobilization of
conventional forces. As a conclusion, readiness
requirements that anticipates a longer period of
increasing tension marked by hostile activities,
warning indicators and instances of crises prior to
the outbreak of a conflict, may be undertaken with
the expectation of warning time prior to the
emergence of a threat necessitating mobilization.
2) Operations
Operations are doctrinarly defined actions taken
in the pursuit of defense tasks, such as convoying,
combat air patrol, interdiction, reconnaissance, and
replenishment at sea. These actions inevitably
involve a degree of coordination; nonetheless, they
need not necessarily result in either desired or
desiralbe results.
75
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 76 4/15/2023DRAFT
The assemblage of practiced operations are
doctrinally defined and categorized, varying from
country to country and time to time accordingly to
the practiced conceptual system used to determine
those categories and the criteria used to allocate
operations within each category. Currently, the
general trend is to define two broad categories for
operations: one reflecting the bulk of the required
warfare effort against a specific type of assets
(submarine warfare, mine warfare, etc.); the other
reflecting required supporting actions to provide
efficiency of the operation in the first category
(replenishment, surveillance, intelligence, patrol,
etc.).
Across the spectrum of operations, small-scale
contingencies are the dominant trend in the current
defense environment, expanding its limits toward
war-like operations and diplomatic actions. The US
uses nine categories for smaller-scale
contingencies, which are defined as the range of
military operations: 1) beyond peacetime engagement
but short of major theater warfare; 2) opposed
76
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 77 4/15/2023DRAFT
interventions; 3) coercive campaigns; 4)
humanitarian intervention; 5) peace accord
implementation; 6) follow-on peace operations; 7)
interposicional peacekeeping operations; 8) foreign
humanitarian assistance; 9) domestic disaster relief
and consequent management; 10) no-fly zone
enforcement; 11) maritime intercept operations; 12)
counterdrug operations and operations in support of
other agencies; 13) noncombatant evacuation
operations: 14) shows of force; 15) and strikes.
These categories and the criteria to allocate
contingencies in each one of them have been a focus
of debate, making it a major issue in the post-Cold
War era to offer a public rationale for capabilities
needed to handle the full range of contingencies
without putting undue strains on budget and
political possibilities.
Combined as derivative elements of the capability
construct, ISR and operations attend four basic
purposes:
1) To collect authoritative information about
the security and defense context;
77
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 78 4/15/2023DRAFT
2) To provide criteria to identify required
tasks to be performed (application domain
decomposition);
3) To orient representational abstractions for
those tasks; and
4) To define interactions and relations among
objectives and tasks to ensure that a) constraints
and boundary conditions imposed by context are
accommodate, b) identify data to be collected and
appropriately addressed, and c) control the flow of
information that allow the derivation of tasks be
stopped or restarted, assuring that the scope and
scale of tasks are represented with discernible
details.
THE CONJUNCT OF REGULATING FACTORS
Regulating factors are the arsenal of normative
instructions linking the requirements of the
concepts of employment with the possibilities of
force components. This arsenal comprises A)
78
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 79 4/15/2023DRAFT
Doctrine, B) Readiness Guidelines, and C) Rules of
Engagement (ROE).
A) Doctrine
Doctrine is the acerb of experiences and
practices that guides the selection of operational
protocols, instructing the individual and collective
use of military assets towards higher levels of
efficacy and efficiency, and exploring operational
and support structures to perform military
operations43.
Doctrine is associated with tactical success,
while operational protocols are associated with the
technical performance of military assets. Military
commanders are expected to have the moral courage to
discard a doctrinal recommendation based on its
professional experience and even intuition, when
they perceive that current doctrine will not produce
the expected tactical success in the novel situation
he/she confronts. Operational protocols provide
guidance, but it is the ability to interpret its
43 For a discussion on military doctrine, see Drew, D.M and Snow. D.M. Making Strategy: An introduction to National Processes and Problems. Maxwell, Alabama: Air University Pres, 1988. pp.163-174.
79
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 80 4/15/2023DRAFT
adequacy and translate it into tactical success that
makes a general a master of war.
B) Readiness
Readiness is defined as the level of preparedness
for personnel and materiel to respond to considered
tasks. The time assigned to a force component to
reach the readiness level is the time required to be
fully manned and equipped at organizational
strength, including training and logistics stocks
necessary for the operations or actions assigned.
Readiness requirements are specified at three
levels: 1) tactical, 2) structural and 3)
mobilizational.44
1) Tactical Readiness
Tactical readiness determines the level of
training and maintenance necessary for timely
deployment of military assets. It explores
operational and support structure possibilities to
accomplish a predetermined range of tasks with
44 See Betts, Richard. Military Readness: Concepts, Choises, Consequences. Washington, DC. EUA: Brookings, 1995.
80
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 81 4/15/2023DRAFT
expected degree of success and acceptable level of
risk.
Higher degree of tactical readiness, either to
prepare to immediate deployment or simple to
communicate political intentions, demands military
assets be kept in higher state of alert with its
systems energized and manned, causing personnel
fatigue and increased rate of material damage. In
turn, personnel fatigue and higher maintenance
demands burdens the support structures, stressing
the logistics possibilities to the point that the
degree of expected tactical success can not anymore
be maintained.
2) Structural Readiness
Structural Readiness determines military
organizational architecture and logistic
requirements to avail, when demanded, large scale
and higher periods of tactical readiness, either
increasing the range of possible tasks or
diminishing risk probability. However, structural
readiness has its costs. Higher degree of structural
81
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 82 4/15/2023DRAFT
readiness immobilizes capital and resources for
future actions, inherently creating inefficiency.
Maintaining large repair facility mostly inactive
and enormous logistics structure are expensive;
similarly, structural readiness demands a top heavy
military personnel structure based upon the
assumption that it is more difficult and time
consuming to prepare officers than soldiers. In
addition, structural readiness bets on time for
bolstering military capabilities.
3) Mobilizational Readiness
Mobilizational readiness determines priorities
for the conversion of the peace time social,
technologic, industrial and economic national
possibilities into military assets and support
requirements to avail and maintain tactical efforts
through the organizational and logistic
possibilities created by the structural readiness.
Mobilizational readiness also has its costs, mainly
in terms of preparing and maintaining an inventory
of conversion possibilities.
82
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 83 4/15/2023DRAFT
The proper balance of tactical, structural and
mobilizational readiness requirements reflect
concept of employment possibilities and the
assumption of time available for deploying military
capabilities and the efforts to sustain that effort.
Location decision also impacts in readiness
alternatives. This balance, therefore, changes as
the concept of employment changes. US readiness
spending per person in uniform, for example,
averaged 22 percent more (in inflation-adjusted
terms) during the Clinton years than on the eve of
the 1990-1991 Gulf War45.
C) Rules of Engagement
Rules of engagement are directives delineating
the circumstances and limitation under which the use
of force would be initiated, continued and ceased.
These rules have a political nature with two
mutually complementary dimensions. The first one,
judicial, refers to the limitations imposed by
domestic and international law, in peace and war, to
45 The Paradoxes of post-Cold War US Defense Policy: An agenda for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. Project on Defense Alternatives, Briefing Memo # 18 5 Feburary 2001. http:://www.comw. org/pda/0102bmemo18.html. Downloaded in8/28/2001. pp. 5
83
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 84 4/15/2023DRAFT
the use of force. The second one, functional, refers
to the limitations imposed by the defense roles.
The choices regarding the degree of readiness
required depends of the size, location, and
specification of force components possibilities, the
spectrum of anticipated tasks made possible by
practiced doctrine and authorized by the ROE,
complemented by an understanding of the interaction
among these decisions. All issues related to force
designed are centered in these elements. The optimal
size of a given military is only possible to be
assessed affixed to its political determinants and
costs possibilities, the construct of capabilities
make explicit the tradeoff among the required
elements to produce this optimum.
The functional merit of the construct is in
reducing all military capabilities to the same
components abstracted into an ideal model;
recognizing that the difference among actual
resulting capabilities is directed by the scope of
84
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 85 4/15/2023DRAFT
its components and the relationship they establish.
The assumption here is that if the total parts
constituent of a construct and its relationships are
known, the nature of the whole is derivable from the
nature of the parts. The result determines a common
nature for all possible emergences of capabilities
belonging to the same system of knowledge.
The number and qualitative dimension of
personnel, the number of levels of organizations,
the characteristics of the technology employed, and
the articulation of tasks into mission within the
concepts of employment are all import determinants
of this an ever changing optimum. They are a
function of the political determinants for defense,
making military capabilities a living with changing
composite of relationships, whose linkages are
enacted by two inner factors: Jointness and C4I-SR
(Command, Control, Communication, Inteligence,
Surveillance, and Reconaissance). These factors
provide the “animus” of a military, allowing the
mechanisms at work within the capabilities to
attempt to improve continually its relationship to
85
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 86 4/15/2023DRAFT
produce the optimum levels of force and procedures
over time to enforce required tasks.
Jointness
The most succinct definition of jointness is that
offered by Gen Colin Powell, former chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff: “We train as a team, fight as
a team, and win as a team46”. Jointness is a major
factor that contributes to capability potential. It
is the idea of unity of effort and acting
accordingly. In the end, how integrated force
components are poses the essential question to
jointness, to encompass organizational expediency
requirements and statutory jurisdiction alike.
The current emphasis on jointness is on the
establishment of rules and conventions that allow
efficient control of military operations through
established mechanisms. Incremental demands for
jointness have created demand for flexible military
capabilities in their composition, generating raids
for new appropriations (operations and maintenance).
46 Joint Forces Quarterly. Summer 1993, pp 5. http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/jfq_pubs/jfq0301.pdf. (Jun/18/2002).
86
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 87 4/15/2023DRAFT
Force design sees this demand as a reactive-
corrective measure to improperly devised
capabilities. From the perspective of force design,
jointness determine the degree of integration of
force structure requirements and tasks possibilities
since its conception. Relatively homogeneous service
operational doctrine does not provide an indication
as to the degree of jointness if dissociated from
jointly designed capabilities.
Interoperability stems from good functioning and
close coordination of all force components in the
effort of providing adequate operational efficiency.
Decisions regarding technology in interoperability
are incorporated in specific pieces of assets
equipment, the degree of automation and the
connection between different equipment. Whereas
jointness depends on assuring cohesive operations
for extended periods with a focus in how best to
support task accomplishment.
Jointness, as a requirement of force design,
derives from the stability of those patterns of
relationship required to produce a capability, which
87
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 88 4/15/2023DRAFT
implies in the ability of its components to store
its own program of integration, devised for
operations that could last the range of combining
tasks, without reprogramming.
C4I-SR
Command and control, communications and
computers, are enabling elements of the force
components, which are linked through doctrine to
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,
constituting the enacting mechanisms C4I-SR,
designed to provide support for the employment of a
capability according to its specific operational
requirements. C4ISR is seen as an adaptative control
system seeking to influence selected aspects of an
operating environment, supported by a variety of
information systems47. Its functionally progresses
across the full range of possible tasks, directing
and monitoring operations at the joint and combined
level and supporting effective end-to-end
management. This includes space and terrestrial
communications, improved interoperability and joint 47 Alberts, D. et al. Understanding Information Age Warfare. Washington, D.C.: CCRP Publication Series, 2001. pp. 136.
88
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 89 4/15/2023DRAFT
capabilities, and automated information integration
to ensure that commanders are provided with the
information they will require.
Jointness and C4I-SR are influent factors in
facilitating the composite of relationships required
to produce a military capability. This two elements
exist in a continuum of interdependecies across the
spectrum of possible capabilities, configuring a
process support system of factors, which orient,
develop and constrain the dynamic organization of
military assets, operational organizations,
objectives and tasks in order to provide different
kinds of capabilities. Such system can be thought of
as a code of rationalization operating to articulate
interrelated processes limiting 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,
objectives and tasks, adapting itself and
influencing that relationship in response to changes
in the technological horizon and in the intellectual
89
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 90 4/15/2023DRAFT
superstructure that define security and defense
requirements. And, therefore, need to be reevaluated
periodically.
Jointness and C4I-SR enforce complementarities
and inhibit proprieties that produce antagonisms
between different structuring criteria used to
articulate military assets, operational
organizations, objectives and tasks. They provide
the principle of organization for the defense
construct.
Force components and the concept of employment
possess different structuring criteria. The former,
integrative, relies on technical performance of
individual assets and their degree of
interoperability to cluster elements, ranging in
size from single units to major aggregation, with
their upper limit circumscribed to the armed forces
total numbers. The latter, derivative, has its
origin in the collective goal of defense objectives,
desegregating in a hierarchy of subordinated
objectives, accordingly to practiced organizational
90
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 91 4/15/2023DRAFT
structure and criteria for allocating
responsibilities.
Force components are structured underlying an
ability to perform a task required to achieve a
politically oriented objective in observance of
prescribed rules of engagement. Because resources
are always limited, force structure and force
components seek to maximize efficiency, although
with different parameters. Force structure maximizes
efficiency through economy of scale, whereas force
components aim for economy of scope. The former
tends to concentrate military assets to optimize the
industrial production and repair potential of depots
and shipyards; the latter tends to maximize tasks
with fewer assets.
Determining and assigning defense tasks takes
into account force components potential within the
scope of practiced doctrine, the practiced degree of
readiness and the limits imposed by the Rules of
Engagement. Readiness, doctrine and ROE regulate the
way military assets are organized, deployed and used
to carry out assigned tasks. Doctrine is rooted in
91
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 92 4/15/2023DRAFT
military experience, whereas determining readiness
requirements is primarily a political decision that
reflects task priorities. The resulting effect of
the interaction of doctrine possibilities and
politically defined readiness requirements
determines the proper quantitative dimension of
military assets and its relation with operational
and support organizations, assuring the internal
coherence of military capabilities: the degree of
integration, synergy and completeness of force
components’ state and relationship throughout time.
However, assuring internal coherence of military
capabilities is not sufficient. It is also necessary
to assure external coherence, measured as the degree
of consistency between force structure possibilities
and alternative uses of the military assets.
The external coherence of military capabilities
is enforced through rules of engagement, in the form
of prescriptive instructions establishing the limits
of use of force for the achievement of military
objectives. Its ultimate goal is to assure the
proper relationship between the use of force and
92
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 93 4/15/2023DRAFT
political will in order to produce mission efficacy,
considering both the resulting benefits and its
opportunity costs.
To achieve external coherence demand changing the
pattern of decisions over time to react to status
quo-enforcing mechanisms used to assure internal
coherence. This causes a conflict between force
components search for stability and political search
for task-flexibility. The balance among this
competing trends is always contingent, providing the
characteristic forms and nature of military
capabilities.
FORMS AND NATURE OF MILITARY CAPABILITIES
Military capabilities assume an active form when
forces are effectively mobilized, deployed, and
engaged to achieve a purpose defined by their tasks.
In this form, the assessment of their potential
success is conditioned by technical and
incommensurable factors as endurance, maintenance,
leadership, and weather. All these factors can
affect the expected outcome of the engagements
93
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 94 4/15/2023DRAFT
changing the pre-condition where military
capabilities were designed. The art of the generals
is reflected in their ability to assess these
changes and adjust capabilities to reassure their
expectations.
Military capabilities assume a latent form when
its perceived value (translated as expected degree
of tactical, strategic and political success) is
considered only in the possible outcome of
engagements thought in the minds of the conflicting
actors, creating deterrent or compelence effects.
Deterrence effects are generated in two ways. By
means of denial, when aimed to prevent conflicts,
inducing the perception that the eventual use of
force would be opposed by a substantially powerful
defense. And that this defense could generate
unacceptable damages to the attacking party, whereas
subjecting it to a counterattack with plausible
expectations of disassembling its combat capability,
imposing the peace that its opponent considered
desirable. Or by retaliation, when intended to
prevent the start of the opponent action by making
94
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 95 4/15/2023DRAFT
evident that the attacked party would even retain
retaliation capability, and that this residual
capability would still ensure an unacceptable level
of destruction to the attacking party. Compelence
induce the reversion of an already initiated action
towards the initial situation, or towards other
situation still acceptable. Deterrence and
compelence, from a conceptual point of view, are
like opposite sides of a coin, linked by an internal
logic sustaining the credibility/plausibility of
potential military capabilities as suitable for
political purposes.
Active and latent capabilities either alternate
or coexist in the full spectrum of violence, which
ranges from a simple armed observation to major
conflicts involving all available resources,
operating simultaneously in the tactical, strategic
and political domains, according to the intended use
of force in the engagements for the purpose of war,
and in the use of combats for political purposes.
The relationship of military capabilities to the
spectrum of violence, explicating its simultaneous
95
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 96 4/15/2023DRAFT
impact in the tactical, strategic and political
domains, prevents the common error of seeing
capabilities breaking down into isolated segments
according to quantitative dimensions of military
assets employed (either in its latent or active
form). The error lies in segregating tactics from
strategy, and introducing a technical (or
technological) dimension into the tactical,
strategic, policy relationship.
The nature of military capabilities reflects the
nature of the relationship between tactics,
strategy, and politics, with its categorization
subordinated to the taxonomy used for tasks. This
connection entails tactical, strategic and political
capabilities to reflect the relationship of tasks in
the tactical, strategic and political realms;
tactical military capabilities provide the ability
of military assets to perform tactical tasks that
strategic military capabilities will explore for
political purposes.
96
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 97 4/15/2023DRAFT
Two patterns – convergent and divergent - emerge
as tactical and strategic possibilities from the
relationship of force components (FC) and tasks (T).
The divergent pattern emerges because of the
ability of the same force component to provide
different military capabilities, exploring their
integrated assets technical features and
organizational architectures in response to
different tasks, although with different
expectations of tactical success.
A Colombian force-component, for example,
integrated by infantry, artillery, engineer,
logistics, command, and air wing components, may
assume both:
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
T
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
FC
Divergent Pattern Convergent Pattern
Figure 5: Divergent and Convergent Patterns
97
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 98 4/15/2023DRAFT
a) The capability to hold in force, for 20
hours, a superior Venezuelan military capability on
its eastern border. Ground combat and close air
support operation would be sustained until forces
stationed near Bogota could be mobilized and
deployed to the border (20 hours requirement). The
task of defending the eastern border contributes to
the defense objective of detering Venezuelan
aggressive actions and, should deterrence fail, to
provide mobilization time to gather forces for
counter-attack.
b) The capability to prevent FARC’s guerrilla
action on the eastern border (same region). To
suppress guerrilla action to acceptable levels would
demand intelligence gathering and random patrolling
associated with police-type operations. There is no
specific time limit imposed by logistic re-supply
and the attrition might be expected to be low
because the FARC are not powerful in that region.
A trained mind could provide a reasonable success
assessment of the Colombian military capability in
both situations. This mind would be computing a
98
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 99 4/15/2023DRAFT
nexus of interrelated variables (readiness,
organization, doctrine, ROE tactics, elements of
weather and terrain, expected attrition levels,
training, logistics, leadership, etc.) that underpin
those force components to perform both tasks. This
mind could summon these capabilities simply
expressing theirs asset components; but only because
it has already integrated all those variables into a
declaratory value.
A conceptual error takes place when this
declaratory value of military capabilities is
expressed as the nominal dimension of force
structure elements only, reducing capability to its
assets components. The error is to take effects per
one causal factor only. Military capabilities are
not intrinsic characteristics of military assets;
they are reconvened in the dual relation of assets
with their enabling factors and of those with
objectives integrated into tasks.
The convergent pattern emerges as possibility of
the same task to be accomplished with different
99
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 100 4/15/2023DRAFT
force-components, with specific expectations of
tactical success.
In the above example, the task to defend the
eastern border of Colombia could be accomplished
either by that mentioned conjunct of assets, or by
another one, also derived from the Colombian force
structure, as a centered in a light tank brigade
supported by helicopters.
These two patterns reaffirm the understanding
that aircraft carriers, destroyers, tanks and
aircraft are only military assets; and squadrons,
battalions, etc., are only organizing structures for
these assets. A capability emerges in the
relationship of these assets to a specific task,
when an aircraft carrier with its escorts or an
aircraft wing with its tankers, or a battalion with
its combat service support, are considered to
perform specific operations aiming a desired
political effect. Denying this logic would both
assign an intrinsic political value to military
assets, refuting the subordination of the war to
policy, and providing leeway for military autonomy
100
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 101 4/15/2023DRAFT
in deciding what assets to have and defining its
intended political purposes.
There is, therefore, no military capability
independent simultaneously of political, strategic
and tactical considerations. Military capabilities
breed each time military assets are assembled and
oriented with a political purpose to act in force.
When it is said that a country has the capability to
control its borders or deny the use of the sea, or
deter an adversary, or gather intelligence, or
patrol its economic zone, it is assumed that it has
ability to assembly a conjunct of military assets
with a specific political purpose translated intos
defense objectives. Once this animating purpose is
removed, military capability ceases to exist, given
place to assets’ technical possibilities only.
EVALUATION OF MILITARY CAPABILITIES EFFECTIVENESS
Military capabilities are made of a political
tissue and can only be measured through political
101
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 102 4/15/2023DRAFT
criteria. When a capability is dissociated from its
political intention, the use of force become
dissociated from its political purpose. The
unwillingness to accept this paramount aspect has
led to a common error in evaluating military
capabilities effectiveness - to take criteria that
suggest itself; that is, a tendency to measure what
a capability can do rather than what it should do.
Once this pitfall is realized, and preconceived or
early ideas about the solution are given up, three
ways of assessing capability effectiveness can be
formulated.
The first way is goal attainment - the extent to
which the instrumental role of military capabilities
in military actions, does, in fact, contribute to
the state's political aims. The second is the extent
to which military capabilities contribute to the
effective management of political perceptions. The
latter is especially important because military
capabilities are ingrained in the creation and
projection of the national image, supporting the
102
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 103 4/15/2023DRAFT
construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of
defense policies in support of national interests.
On another level, the perceptual dimension of
strategic effectiveness reflects the fact that the
military not only possesses capabilities and
performs functions but also projects a certain image
of itself. Reorienting the use of military
capabilities, and thus transforming their image,
contributes to the promotion and protection of a
conception of security. Thus, military spending must
be balanced between providing for defense objectives
and contributing to national development,
considering that when resources are diverted from
other critical national needs to support mammoth and
unrealistic military needs, security is diminished
rather than strengthened.
The third assessment criterion is sustainment,
defined as the ability to maintain operational
effectiveness, measured in days of operations at
anticipated usage rates at the expected operational
tempo. Force components will normally maintain
sufficient supplies of combat commodities such as
103
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 104 4/15/2023DRAFT
ammunition, fuel and rations for a limited number of
days of operations at the tactical level. Support
organizations will expand the number of days with
supplies in theatre, and mobilizational process will
provide the stocks required to sustain operations
beyond this point. Sustainment is, therefore, the
effect and consequence of readiness possibilities
and operational demands within a determined
framework used as a reference for assessment.
These three ways of assessing capabilities
effectiveness demand mechanisms for its execution
phased with the design and implementation cycles of
defense alternatives. The recommended choice would
be a permanent assessment system, with standardized
mechanisms that feedback its results into the
defense system. Other alternative, instead of not
assessing at all, would be to phase this assessment
with presidential elections, within the defense
reviews process. Although this type of interval
assessment (or any other criteria used to determine
intervals) might be at least a precautionary action,
defense reviews are expensive and cause some
104
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 105 4/15/2023DRAFT
instability in the defense sector that wave out into
the industry of defense, foreign policy and even
into the government itself.
CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE CONSTRUCT OF
CAPABILITIES
No matter how the construct of capabilities
strive to maintain standards of scientific inquiry,
determining its components and establishing its
relationships cannot be turned into an exact
science. Expert judgment will always be relevant in
deciding what interrelations between components to
choose as relevant, and in analyzing and
interpreting the results. The demands of this
construct, particularly in an environment
highlighted by political uncertainties, are
magnified by the highly specialized nature of
military capabilities, at the same time that its
condition of possibility are advanced by
technological developments.
105
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 106 4/15/2023DRAFT
The objective of the construct is primarily to
recommend – or at least to suggest – rather than
predict. Thus, it is like to engineering, for the
purpose of using its results to make defense
alternatives effective, efficient and economic. Such
an approach typically stressess the selection of a
scheme – a framework – for carrying out possible
alternatives, in which the difficulty lies precisely
in deciding what ought to be done, not simply in how
to do it.
Learning to use such construct provides expertise
to assess structural relationships among force
components and tasks, systematically addressing them
to enhance the likelihood that the appropriate
decisions will be made.
106
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 107 4/15/2023DRAFT
PART 2
FORCE DESIGN FRAMEWORK
Section two presented a conceptual model for
military capabilities. However, it is necessary to
translate the complex relationships of the processes
involved in force design, providing a conceptual
framework that organizes the variables involved.
Such a framework is offered in the hope that it will
bring some assistance for force design and,
ultimately, for defense reforms, contributing to the
formulation and implementation of an effective
military.
The force design framework is a conjunct of
knowledge presented in the form of propositions and
assumptions logically ordered, assumed as valid for
investigating problems-type with expectations of
obtaining a stable anticipated solution-type. The
logical ordering of its components is provided by
107
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 108 4/15/2023DRAFT
the axiology used, which emphasizes the existence of
a common set of concepts derived from the construct
of capabilities.
A framework is conceptually different from a
methodology. The former is an abstraction of the
intended desired effect of processes within the
complex of relationship to which they belong. It is,
therefore, eminently relational and explicative.
Whereas the latter is a hierarchy of processes
required for achieving some desired effects
specified by the framework it refers. Methodologies
are, therefore, eminently prescriptive, oriented to
the selection of techniques that can perform the
required procedures it determines48.
There is a conceptual hierarchy among frameworks,
methodologies and techniques, progressing downwards
with decreasing degrees of abstraction and
increasing degrees of specificity. A framework is
associated with designing, meaning the development
of guidelines with logically necessary details for
its comprehension as an articulated set of decisions
48 For a detailed discussion of the distinction between construct, framework, methodologies and techniques, see Lakatos and Marconi (1995, 17, 81).
108
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 109 4/15/2023DRAFT
oriented to a clearly defined purpose, and with
logically sufficient details to verify whether the
outcomes it promotes fulfill the objectives which
that purpose instructs. Methodologies49 are
associated with planning, meaning a hierarchy of
articulated procedural instructions. Techniques are
specific ways of performing an action implying
precise deliverables at the end.
Figure 6 depicts the force design framework and
its components logic blocs – Cogitare, Prospicere,
Renovatio50 whose purpose 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.
49 For other understandings of methodology, see Jolivet, R. Curso de Filosofia. 13. Ed. Rio de Janeiro: Agir, 1979. pp.71. Bunge, M. La Ciência, su Método y su Filosofia. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veinte, 1974. pp. 55. And Cervo, A. L. e Bervian, P. A. Metodologia Científica. 2.ed. São Paulo: McGraw-Hill, 1978. 50 Latin terms are used to avoid existing – and segmented – understanding of current practices and terminologies.
109
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 110 4/15/2023DRAFT
Figure 6: The force design construct
The architecture of decisions component of this
framework define a set of operational processes
through which military capabilities requirements are
conceived, developed, and produced to assure timing
and effective relationships between force components
and tasks, and, ultimately, those reasons that
justify the existence of armed forces.
110
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 111 4/15/2023DRAFT
These operational processes, it is relevant to
notice, are instrumental to the purpose that each
logical block determines. Therefore, they can be
arranged/combined accordingly to the organizational
structure and practiced methodologies/techniques
that each country adopts. The goal of the force
design construct is to provide a reference for
selecting those methodologies and techniques,
arranging/combining processes within a common and
articulated purpose. Different arrangements can be
articulated and processes can be mixed and matched
to build defense alternatives.
Operational processes are servants of the
purposes that each block determines; however, this
is not always observed. If the academic curricula of
war colleges in the Hemisphere is taken as an
analytical reference, assuming that the practice of
force design will follow the conceptual teaching
developed in these schools, it will be observed that
this logic is usually inverted, making processes the
master of purposes; determining whatever they
produce as valid outcomes of a designing goal.
111
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 112 4/15/2023DRAFT
Despite the intention of these institutions to
teach at graduate level, this logical inversion
makes its endeavor doctrinaire, teaching what to
think instead of how to think. Until academic
curriculum reflects the logic of force design,
force-planning techniques will prevail as tools to
enforce services doctrine and parochialism, serving
only as instrument to corroborate results already
determined by traditions and customs. There is no
joint education unless force design philosophy
becomes instrumental in designing the curricula of
military schools.
COGITARE (Reflect about)
The Cogitare block defines an articulated system
of decisions aiming to interpret and transform
intended political purposes into defense objectives
that could be pragmatically achieved though rational
actions and available means. To achieve its purpose,
this logical block determine what are the valid
rules of transformation of information, products and
processes required to achieve defense objectives;
112
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 113 4/15/2023DRAFT
and orients the formulation of evaluating criteria
for the relationship between those objectives, the
transformation processes and its outcomes.
The literature51 summons this purpose into two
generic procedures: political-strategic evaluation
and defense policy formulation, oriented to define
the intended use of force, to establish a set of
sustained political objectives that comes out from
the intercourse of security and defense interests
and commitments, and a set of self-relied design
guidelines to instruct the development and
evaluation of military capabilities.
The problem, one should recognize, lies within
these procedures through which political objectives
are defined and the legitimacy that the designing
guidelines absorb in the process of its formulation
and implementation to represent defense demands. In
recognition of the importance of conceptual, as well
as for reuse of the conclusions obtained from these
operational processes, the Cogitare Block offers the
51 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, EUA: RAND Corporation, 1997. Fox, R.J. The Defense Management Challenge. Boston, EUA:Harvard Business School Press, 1988.
113
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 114 4/15/2023DRAFT
Security and Defense Matrix as a basis for judgment
about the appropriateness of data for all conditions
not specifically tested.
The Security and Defense Matrix
Security and defense52 are commonly used terms
permeated with discordance. They are incorporated
into scholarship and statecraft, but there is not an
agreed consensus on its meaning, resulting from
distinctive usages taken arbitrarily from historical
contexts, analytical criteria or functional
purposes.
For force design purposes, a state of security is
a perceived or intended state of equilibrium between
a desired way of life and forecasted threats to
statecraft, organizations and means that accounts
for the feasibility or maintenance of that
equilibrium53. Defense alternatives are the possible
52 The epistemological question of what defense and security are is an ontological problem, being out of the force design realm. The answer for this question would provide an explanation for its nature. For force design functional purpose, the relevant is the concept of defense as practiced by each country (each one being a particular manifestation of a general phenomena), how it evolves, and how this evolution influences the conceptualization and development of military capabilities. Other disciplines deal with these ontological questions, establishing a theoretical and practical relationship between force design and other areas of study. 53 Another common understanding of security translates the police role of providing material and individual safety; commonly referred as public security. This is a restrictive and limited
114
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 115 4/15/2023DRAFT
assemblage of human, material, organizational and
information resources developed, sustained and used
by the States aiming a desired state of security.
Each perceived and intended state of security is
a transitory situation in which there is a
collective agreed upon expectations. The expression
of national intended state of security breeds in the
political realm and pertains monopolistically to
empowered government. It is a matter of politics
that some states of security are preferred
(prioritized) to others; and it is a matter of
policy whether certain defense alternatives are to
be banned entirely in view of the intended security
state. Alan K. Simpson explains the nature of
politics which domains force design: In politics
there are no right answers, only a continuing series
of compromises between groups resulting in a
changing, cloudy and ambiguous series of public
decisions, where appetite and ambition compete
openly with knowledge and wisdom. That's politics54.
understanding of security.
54 Alan K. Simpson, the former U.S. senator from Wyoming who holds the Lombard Chair at the John F. Kennedy, School of Government at Harvard University http://globetrotter. Berkeley.edu/conversations/ Simpson/simpson4.html (24/11/01).
115
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 116 4/15/2023DRAFT
The definition of defense alternatives in
association with possible security states reflects a
mutually complementary relationship: each endeavored
defense alternative changes security goals as it is
accomplished; whereas each state of security exists
in the present and extends into the future subjected
to feasibility of capabilities and acceptability of
risks55 derived from the selected defense
alternative.
Force design demands defense alternatives be in
accordance with the political goals and priorities
of each State reflected in its intended stated of
security. The nature of security goals and the
effects of the instrumentality of defense
alternatives find a common denominator in politics,
providing coherence for the assessment of their
relationship.
The range of security states and associated
defense alternatives establish two spectrums of
possibilities defined by their logical extremes. 55 For a discussion about the “state of security”, see Lippman W. U.S.Foreign Policy. Boston, EUA: John Hopkins Press. 1943, pp. 51. Wolfes us.es Lippmans concepts to review the Defense Policy of the USA. Wolfers, A. “American Defense Policy”. Baltimore, EUA: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965. pp. 3. For the application of the term in the context of policy formulation, see Proença, D. and Diniz, E. Política de Defesa no Brasil: uma análise crítica. Brasília: UNB, 1998. pp. 55.
116
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 117 4/15/2023DRAFT
Security states spectrum
This spectrum of
possibilities is defined
between the Broad Security and
Narrow security states
Defense alternatives
spectrum
This spectrum of
possibilities is defined
between the Broad Defense and
Narrow Defense
Broad Security describes a
state of equilibrium were
individuals perceive
themselves with freedom to
access information, products
and processes they consider
proper to foster their
development, express their
political preferences and
decide about the social and
economical organization
required to produce it,
feeling satisfied with the
results.
Broad Defense encompasses
all available human, material,
organizational and information
resources everything that
States can use to protect
itself from external attacks
and domestic insurrection,
including but not limited by
the Armed Forces
instrumentality.
Narrow Security describes a Narrow Defense defines
117
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 118 4/15/2023DRAFT
state of equilibrium not
menaced by eminent possibility
of having to wage an external
war or confront an internal
convolution for its
maintenance.
restrictively the instrumental
capability of the Armed Forces
to conduct wars only in the
pursuance of the intended
state of security.
The range of security and defense significances
between its logical extremes defines four quadrants
depicted in the figure 7.
(1)
Broad Security
Broad Defense
(2)
Narrow Security
Broad Defense
(3)
Broad Security
Narrow Defense
(4)
Narrow Security
Narrow Defense
Figure 7: Security and Defense Matrix
118
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 119 4/15/2023DRAFT
Quadrant (1) and (4) brings together the logical
extremes of security and defense, contrasting the
exclusiveness and inclusiveness criteria in their
relationship. Exclusiveness shortens security state
to one qualifying criteria only: the absence of war;
whereas inclusiveness widens security states towards
an imprecisely defined and all encompassing common
good. In quadrant (1), Broad Defense alternatives
are inclusive of everything that contributes to
obtain security, whereas security is everything that
brings defense to be unnecessary. In quadrant (4),
Narrow Security state is exclusive of any other
parametric variable than war; whereas Narrow Defense
alternative is defined exclusively in terms of the
required armed forces to provide the understanding
of security it is associated with. In the quadrants
(1) and (4), the distinction between military
function and responsibilities become blurred with
national governance. In quadrant (1), defense merges
in security; and in quadrant (4), security merges
into defense.
119
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 120 4/15/2023DRAFT
In quadrant (2), the instrumental role of the
military comes dingily close with national
governance, entailing the military control of
politics. Quadrant (3) produces the opposite effect,
distancing to meanness the military role in
politics. In the left side of the diagram, were
Broad Security is the common denominator, force
design leans toward the support role of military
capabilities, whereas in the right side the combat
role is the prominent variable to consider in force
design. In the upper side of the diagram, were Broad
Defense is the common denominator; the tendency is
to balance functions of the armed forces among
multiple axes; whereas in the lower side, combat
becomes the leading trend in defining armed forces
roles and missions.
Inside these four quadrants, a spectrum of
transitory states is defined. Each one of these
states gaining its individuality and permanence
though an assemblage of defense objectives that
translates into pragmatic intentions (missions) a
political will. Defense missions, therefore
120
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 121 4/15/2023DRAFT
integrate objectives that represents the position of
each specific country its position in the Security
and Defense Matrix.
When the relationship between defense alternative
and the intended security state is reduced near to
quadrant (1) one, military capabilities become an
instrument of national development towards the
envisaged common good, forcing the bulk of military
capabilities to lend towards, for example, disaster
relief, where a combat role is not required. When
those objectives translate the relationships near
quadrant (4), military capabilities become war
oriented.
The variance of this relationship between defense
alternative and security states within these four
quadrants – like a metal ball attracted by four
magnets - is pushed and pulled by the combining
effects of political military relations and
interagency dynamics. The former refers to the
political identity and prerogatives of the military
as a political actor within the defense policy
formulation process. The latter refers to the
121
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 122 4/15/2023DRAFT
organizational cultures and interests that shape the
same process.
Civil-military relations and interagency
cooperation are specific field of study, each one
with its own analytical framework and working
hypotheses intermingle with force design regarding
its ability to explain and predict defense
objectives outcomes and trends. Civil-military
relation and interagency cooperation will explain
and anticipate possible tendencies of defense
policies in a web of competitive priorities
alternatives, attitudes and preferences. In this
context, the task of force design is to structure
and manage itself so as to mesh with, reinforce, and
enhance defense capabilities, being capable to help
think about what the priorities are, because if
resources are diverted to low-priority objectives,
some capabilities that are really important simply
will not get done.
The political environment continually forces
countries to reevaluate their understanding of
security and the concept of defense, adjusting their
Bolivia
122
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 123 4/15/2023DRAFT
priorities in force design accordingly.
Understanding the national preferences, and their
implications for decision patterns (and biases) in
the formulation of defense objectives is a
prerequisite to realizing the full potential of the
security and defense matrix. As an example, two
notional charts are presented with the estimated
position of hemispheric countries in this diagram in
the early 70’ and 200256.
56 To develop these notional charts, the following aspects were considered: a) the type of government; b) military forces deployed abroad; c) internal conflict involving military forces or policy; d) active and latent borders disputes; e) the inclusion/exclusion of police forces within the structure of the armed forces; f) civilian or military ministry of defense; and g) the attribution of constabulary tasks to the armed forces or policy (federal policy/gendarmerie/coat guard). All variables were equally weighted from – 5 to + 5 for defense and security (-5 Narrow, +5 Broad). Aggregated results were plotted using the standard deviation (the center of the matrix = 0,0 defense - 0,0 security). The analytical value of the results is circumscribed to its notional purpose only, limited by the analytical limits of a single valuator and the arbitrary aggregation criteria used.
(2)Narrow Security
Broad Defense
3)Broad SecurityNarrow Defense
(4)Narrow SecurityNarrow Defense
(1)Broad SecurityBroad Defense
(2)Narrow Security
Broad Defense
3)Broad SecurityNarrow Defense
(4)Narrow SecurityNarrow Defense
(1)Broad SecurityBroad Defense
1970
Haiti
Honduras Nicaragua
Pananma Uruguay Dom. Rep.
Guatemala USA Canada Peru Ecuador Uruguay
Mexico Paraguay
Colombia Costa RicaBrazil Venezuela
Chile Argentina
Colombia Costa Rica Panama
Dom.Rep. Nicaragya
Honduras Peru Ecuador Uruguay
Guatemala
Haiti Argentina Venezuela
Paraguay
Canada
Mexico
USA Chile Brazil
2002
Figure 8: Notional chart for selected countries
123
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 124 4/15/2023DRAFT
Contrasting these two charts, it would be
possible to correlate the position of those depicted
countries in the early 70’ with the influence of the
Soviet threat, border disputes and internal
conflicts. These were primary forces shaping the
concept of security and defense toward the right
side of the Security and Defense Matrix, were Narrow
Security is dominant.
In the early 2002, Colombia is isolated in the
upper left corner of the chart, struggling to solve
its internal conflict using not only the military
but also all possible resources available, as
reflect in the Plan Colombia. Costa Rica and Panama,
formally without armed forces, tend explicit and
124
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 125 4/15/2023DRAFT
emphatically to a concept of wider defense. Paraguay
still has a strong perception of the influence of
its Armed Force in providing security goals,
although moving fast to a wider concept of defense.
Brazil’s maintain a declaratory posture of do not
directly involve the military in functions and roles
other than its professional combat orientation,
being kept in the lower part of the matrix of
security and defense, where narrow defense is
dominant.
One can dispute the particular position of a
specific country in the charts. However, two aspects
are undisputed. First, the understanding of security
and the concept of defense evolved, pressed by the
perception of the treaty environment. Venezuela is a
remarkable example, with its 1999 Constitution
imposing the armed forces a role in the development
of the country. Second, there is a marked clustering
of countries widening its concept of defense to
include other roles and function to the armed
forces, adjusting the design of its military
capability alike.
125
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 126 4/15/2023DRAFT
The latter aspect provides an indication of
possible convergence of a group of countries towards
Broad Defense alternatives and Security State’s
alike. Whether this imply or not a more peaceful
world is arguable, Broad Security shifts the
emphasis of force design from war oriented roles of
the armed forces to support functions and activities
like disaster relief and law enforcement (a
constabulary role). Furthermore, it provides an
indication that the geographical/regional approach
becomes an inadequate criterion for foreign policy
formulation, when the use of force might be
considered as an alternative, such as in regional
security or defense alliances.
In a globalized world, developing foreign policy
based upon countries geographic positioning is not
anymore a valid criterion. It is not only contrary
to evidences of others and more important clustering
criteria; it lacks efficacy and harasses national
indigenous perception of their willingness to auto-
determination.
126
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 127 4/15/2023DRAFT
Whereas the latter aspect - clustering tendency
of countries - might impose changes in foreign
policy formulation, the former aspect is paramount
for force design. It implies that each country will
transform its own concept of defense reflecting how
it perceives the nexus of threats molding his
desired security state. Threats, therefore, are the
parametric variable in force design. They are
anticipated relationship of possible events required
for that an undesirable result or consequence
happens. Force design identify and assess threats in
order to find out whether they have influence or
modify military capabilities ability to attend
defense objectives.
The adequacy of the policy formulation process
can only be judged accordingly to its functional
sufficiency in providing guidelines for force
design. Its formulation is driven by the legacy of
past practices, the inertial factors derived by the
nature of object it orients the conception, and from
the ambient where defense takes is purpose. There
are, therefore, no principles for designing defense
127
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 128 4/15/2023DRAFT
objectives; its craft cannot be reduced to
enforceable rules. This is warning for those
practitioners who search for objective-making
principles and a precaution for those who try to
conceptualize its component processes relationships.
It must be borne in mind that the task of policy
formulation is the bulk of a creation and
prioritization of stable and viable defense
objectives able to capture the position and trend of
each country regarding its understanding of security
and concept of defense. Whatever compromises this
process might entail; engineering defense objectives
cannot fail to fully consider its practical
achievement taking into consideration civil military
relations and the interagency bargaining process.
That implies that force design can neither escape
things political when it seeks to affect policy nor
when it seeks to be supported by policy.
When policy formulation does not play its
functional role in identifying adequate defense
objectives, the results are defective capabilities
inarticulate with strategies and inadequate
128
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 129 4/15/2023DRAFT
organizational structures that do not provide
required jointness.
One hypothesized chain of events could explain
how a defective defense policy concurs for the lack
of internal and external coherence and sufficiency:
defense purposes are not clearly defined, provoking
vague and even conflicting objectives; without
clearly defined objectives, the responsibilities of
States’ agency become blurred. Interagency conflicts
tend to stovepipe processes accordingly to their
operational procedures and institutional goals. The
resulting products of these stovepipe processes
become inarticulate and even conflicting.
When a defense policy is defective, wasteful use
of national resources tends to occur. The US
experienced this situation in the 1960’s with
duplication of projects within the Armed Forces when
five over imposing and simultaneous U.S projects for
nuclear capabilities were simultaneously developed.
The democratic institutions may suffer alike from
defective defense policy because of the guidance
129
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 130 4/15/2023DRAFT
vagueness provides excessive autonomy for the Armed
Forces to define its own missions. Brazil’s Defense
policy of 1989, for example, although recognized as
an important contribution, was very much criticized
for its vagueness. Beside, in the worst case, the
State’s own existence may be threaten because a
defense policy fails to provide the adequate
capabilities or conveys the wrong message, changing
the fragile equilibrium of peace.
PROSPICERE (Look ahead)
The prospicere block purpose is to provide
referent scenarios for both evaluate the validity of
policy guidelines and current capabilities, and
anticipate future capabilities requirement. Its
primary function is to serve as the mechanisms by
witch objectives are transformed into detailed
capacity requirements. This is an epistemological
necessity of a framework oriented to develop
hypotheses about the future. The variety of
component elements of these hypotheses depends on
two factors: dimensions of complexity and time.
Dimensions of complexity regard the numbers of
130
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 131 4/15/2023DRAFT
chains of events considered to represent objected
hypothesis of future. The wider and complex the
objected hypothesis, the bigger the probability of
chains of events present differentiated logic.
Longer the time ahead considered bigger the
bifurcation of chain of events. The combined effect
of these two factors can generate such a number of
chains of events that can end up conflictive.
The Prospicere block provides the Diagram of
Futures as “authoritative” information about the
domains that future defense capabilities are to
address. It provides plausible representation of
contexts and references to sources that define tasks
possibilities, ensuring that these sources do not
employ contradictory assumptions or factors.
The Diagram of Futures
Force design deals with uncertainties. March and
Simon57 propose three categories of uncertainty: 1)
unacceptability of alternatives, when the
57 March, J.C. and Simon, H. A. Teoria das Organizações. 2.ed. trad. Hugo Wahrlich. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1970.
131
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 132 4/15/2023DRAFT
distribution of probability between alternatives is
not know; 2) incompatibility of alternatives, when
the distribution of probability between alternatives
is know, but one cannot decide about the most
favorable one; and 3) unpredictability of
alternatives; when the distribution of probability
that relates choices and outcomes is unknown. Davies
and Klalilzad58 categorize uncertainty as
programmed, when one is able to recognize its
possibility but not its time-occurrence; and
catastrophic, when one cannot anticipate either its
nature or its time-occurrence. Force design
categorizes uncertainties accordingly to ends, means
and the relationship between ends and means.
Uncertainty of ends
The uncertainty of ends reflects the fact that
defense objectives may emerge, disappear of
transform at the same time force is threaten or
used, conditionally changing the desired end state
for what these threats and uses were intended for.
58 Davies, P. K. and Klalilzad, Z. M. A Composite Approach to Air Force Planning. California, EUA: RAND Corporation, 1996. pp.6.
132
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 133 4/15/2023DRAFT
Uncertainty of means
The uncertainty of means reflects the spectrum of
possible forms that acts of force may assume pending
on the relationship of the components of the force
and the permanency of these relationships over time.
Each form derives from the (re) configurations of
constituent elements of the force, exploring the
integrative and derivative patterns of military
capabilities, qualitatively changing its expected
tactical efficiency and effectiveness. In addition,
those possible configurations reflect: a) the
evolving production structures and technological
horizons of States; b) and the interdependency of
factors that define and prioritize allocation of
national resources between defense and other States
interests.
Ships, aircraft, combat organization, and other
military assets, only receive their purpose as means
of force when incorporated into political
determinants. These determinants possibilities lend
to the force its nature as States’ will and explain
133
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 134 4/15/2023DRAFT
why it is never an end in itself. Uncertainty of
means, in force design, is, therefore, an attribute
of tactics, having in its possibilities the building
blocks of strategies aiming anticipated ends.
Uncertainty of the relationship between
means and ends
The uncertainty of the relationship between means
and ends regards the use of engagement outcomes for
political purposes. Each relationship intending an
anticipated concept of employment that reflects the
nature of forecasted conflicts in which it will
develop itself.
The convertibility of means into ends, whereas
means and ends are changing, entails an spectrum of
conflict possibilities ranging from simple unarmed
observations to situations where an adversary has to
be completely de-armed and submitted to the will of
its adversary.
The evolving nature and relationship of mean and
ends explains the limits of a spectrum of conflict
134
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 135 4/15/2023DRAFT
with predetermined category, and challenge the
concept of escalation as a single line progressing
from present to future. Military capabilities
emerge, and keep its existence in this end-means
uncertainties.
Force design deals with ends, means, and its
relationships simultaneously, taking its cross-
impacts in conjunct with considerations about
required changes in functions, responsibilities, and
institutional organization of defense. The practical
implication of this challenge is the building of
armed forces with unity of purpose, unity of effort,
and unity of action for effectively wielding power
in support of national will. When different clusters
of assets, for example, can provide the same degree
of tactical success for the same task, there is an
indication of redundancy in force structure
components. This redundancy might be either
intended, when associated with multiple and
simultaneous similar tasks; or undesirable, being a
warning for improper force design.
135
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 136 4/15/2023DRAFT
These three types of uncertainty reflect the
clausewitzian construct. Uncertainty of ends is
about politics, uncertainty of means about tactics
and uncertainty of the relationship between means
and ends about strategy. In the same way, one cannot
distinguish tactics, strategy and politics except
for analytical purposes; these three types of
uncertainty cannot be separated. It is under this
understanding that the concept of event has to be
acknowledged.
Events
Schwartz59 gives meaning to events as “the
building blocs of forecasting”. Events help 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,
Bunge60, analyzing those links, concludes that
events are an abstraction of reality, an arbitrary
simplification of reality.
59 Schwartz, P. The Art of The Long View. London, UK: Cunerry, 1991. pp. 32.60 Bunge, op. cit. 1959. pp. 187.
136
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 137 4/15/2023DRAFT
Force design recognizes both the utility and
limits of events. From an ontological perspective,
events are a defective selection of expected
attributes of the future. Each event derives from
many others in an infinite progression, from which
one extract only those that are currently judge as
important. Therefore, any suggestion that
forecasting should take into consideration all
events do not correspond to the logical
possibilities of current human capability of
identifying and linking events. There will always be
interconnections rich in important that would not be
properly recognized or considered. Notwithstanding,
from a methodological perspective, events are a
necessity. They support the formulation of
hypothesis about the future, for what they are a
research and analysis imposition. The methodological
rigor of force design demands recognizing this
necessity and its limits, in the same way others
fields of science does. The validity of any
conclusion based on events is limited by the
expectation of its no vulnerability. Under this
137
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 138 4/15/2023DRAFT
understanding, events can be categorized in four
terms61.
Dependent Events
Dependent events are those events that appear,
disappear, or change when researchers add, remove,
or modify other events. They are, therefore, the
factor or propriety that is effect, result, or
consequence to what was manipulated.
Parametric Events
Parametric events are those events required for a
determined result or consequence to happen. They are
selected and manipulated in order to find out
whether they have influence or modify dependent
events.
Relational Events
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.
They demand when hypothesizing through abstracted
61 This categorization uses criteria presented in Lakatos, Eva and Marconi, M. A. Cientific Methodology. 2 ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 1991. pp.172.
138
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 139 4/15/2023DRAFT
elements of reality, to make results relative with
its measuring criteria. That is, to make clearly
discursive what surges from intuition and analysis;
allowing assessing equally valid arguments whereas
averring their validity as function of its utility.
The role of relational events can be expressed in
a simple formulation: 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 accurateness of
measurement refers to the sensibility of measuring
method and take into consideration conditions of
permanence of the object under measure for the
stability of derived conclusions.
Control Events
Control events are those intentionally
neutralized to prevent that its occurrence translate
a logical obstruction for designing capabilities. An
extreme situation of control event would be the
139
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 140 4/15/2023DRAFT
possibility of disappearance of men. Less extreme
examples are more difficult to establish, although
more important, as the continuation of the system of
states and the role of force as a political
instrument.
The mechanics of forecasting
Forecasting mechanics can be made explicit using
the relationship between events. Its goal is to
describe with some degree of confidence, the most
likely future strategic environment, in the form of
design scenarios:
Control events are established in order to
neutralized uncertainties that would preclude force
designing; 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 others events not neutralized. If
140
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 141 4/15/2023DRAFT
forecasting is established above authorized
conditions of relational events, they mean nothing
and are an error.
Parametric events establish three types of link:
projection, prospective and prosficcion. The
importance in recognizing these types is to
preventthe transitivity between phenomena of
distinctive nature.
Projection and the projective horizon
Projection is explained by the Theory of
Causality, formulated by Bunge62, as a causal
relation that can be empirically verified. Temporal
series, for example, are projections. Chains of
projection link present facts to future events
through a tendency depending on two factors: how
much can be retreated to capture the necessary
information to construct temporal series, with the
identification of its periodicity; and the selection
of the appropriated technique to construct and
interpret these series.
62 Bunge, op. cit. 1959.
141
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 142 4/15/2023DRAFT
According to Wright63, projection validity can
only be claimed upon parts of future, and not upon
the future as a totality. The time-limit of these
parts define the projective horizon.
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 derivative of a set
of rigid and inexorable causal laws. The projective
future has, indeed, some degree of freedom, but this
degree is restricted, being subjected to the
possibilities authorized by regulatory elements of
the construct of capabilities, which will determine
the limits of adaptation in defense reforms.
Force design assumes that in this part of the
future that projection is utile there is a dynamic
equilibrium – said homeostatic equilibrium – between
the demands of defense and the defense system. The
63 Wight, M. International Theory: The Three Traditions. London, UK: Leicester U.P., 1994. pp.11.
142
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 143 4/15/2023DRAFT
time length of the projective horizon – and
therefore the continuity of the homeostatic
equilibrium – is determined by the expectation that
some aspects of the past will continue in the
future. The assumption of continuity, as stated by
Makridakis64, which depends on the availability of
sufficient information about the past. In The Medium
Age, for example, the projective horizon established
a temporal context extremely long, derived from the
relative inertia of warfare practices derived from a
relative stability of costumes, techniques and
production capacities (feudal structure). Present
projective horizons are much shorter, with a
diversified variation caused by the acceleration of
technical developments enhancing tactical
possibilities65.
The risk in force design is the auto-compensation
of elements, artificially enlarging the projective
horizon; structure and budgets proceedings,
production capabilities and military bureaucracy,
64 Makridakis, S.G. Forecasting: Planning and Strategy for The 21st Century. London, UK: Free Press, 1990. pp.9.65 For warfare practices in the Medium Age and its relation with feudal structure, see Howard, M. War in European History. London, UK: Penguin, 1983.
143
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 144 4/15/2023DRAFT
for example. Within this horizon, warfare practices
are determined by a grammar that produces no
comparative advantage between forces under the same
state-of-the-art.
The accepted degree of dispersion of projections
translates the level of risks politics is willing to
accept. This acceptable level of risk establishes
the limits of the projective horizon and it is for
determining its occurrence that projective
assumptions are constructed. This understanding
contradicts that of Chuyev and Mikhaylov66, who
suggest as prediction interval the medium time
between weapons systems cycles of development and
acquisition. It is conceivable that the development
of a complex and time length weapon system could be
artificially precluding changes, imposing inertia to
tasks and missions for which that weapons system is
inadequate or inefficient.
Projection has its problems. First, as expressed
by Henry Kissinger, because it projects the familiar
66 Chuyev, Y. and Mikhaylov, Y. Soviet Military Thought.nr.16: Forecasting in Military Affairs. trad. DGIS Multilingual Section Translation Bureau – Secretary of State Department – Canada. Moscou, URSS.: Washington, D.C., EUA: U.S Government Printing Office, 1980. pp.4.
144
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 145 4/15/2023DRAFT
into future. Second, because it induces an
incremental changes in defense capabilities,
inhibiting creativity and precluding peripheral
vision that should be used for rethinking the rate
and form of these changes. The conclusion is that
projections make analysts see only what they
illuminate; but, due to its nature, they cannot
illuminate their own discontinuities.
Prospective and the prospective horizon
The conceptual foundation of prospective is the
Theory of Propensity as explained by Popper67. He
presents the concept of propensity as 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 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.
67 Popper, K.R. A Lógica da Pesquisa Científica. trad. Leonidas Hegenberg. São Paulo: Cultrix, 1972.
145
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 146 4/15/2023DRAFT
The judgment of new occurrences is a function of
previous judgments. Prospective is concerned more
with the structure of the conditional relation
between present facts and future events than with
the accuracy of the premises. Therefore, prospective
does not restrain itself to what effectively may
happen in the future, but is concerned with possible
events that could happen under probable conditions.
The prospective, in fact, present a story where some
data are occult, but assume that this story is
sufficiently coherent to infer conclusions.
The prospective differs from the projection in
the morphology of the chain of events. Projective
alternatives disperse from a common origin in the
present within a cone of possibilities authorized by
the links of causality. Prospective alternatives
derive along the path, creating a tree-like
structure; each new branch being judged accordingly
to the qualification of its pertinence to envisaged
ends.
The prospective horizon delimits a temporal
context where the regularities observed in the past
146
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 147 4/15/2023DRAFT
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
become vulnerable. Vulnerable prospective
assumptions condition defense alternatives by
turning obsolete doctrine, readiness requirements
and strategic concepts. It signals a qualitative
change in the forms and means of war: it heralds an
on going revolution in military affairs, which
determines the possibilities and limits of
modernization in defense reforms.
Prosficcion and the prosficcional horizon
The concept of prosficcion emerges within force
design as a methodological requirement. The Theory
of Probabilistic Induction, in Reichenback68 terms,
explains Prosficcional links between parametric
events. It allows explaining the induction of
probability of truth where the links are
68 Reichenbach, H. Experience and prediction. Chicago, USA: University of Chicago Press, 1938. Kaplan says that the probabistic induction is based on the notion that exists an expectative of truth in chains of events if the links of thinking sequences were sufficiently strong and the links sufficiently short. Kaplan, M. Decision Theory. Massachusetts, EUA: Cambrige U.P., 1996. pp. 235, a indução probabilística fundamenta-se na noção de que existe uma expectativa de verdade se as ligações entre elos das seqüências de raciocínio forem suficientemente fortes e as cadeias suficientemente curtas.
147
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 148 4/15/2023DRAFT
sufficiently strong and the sequence of events
sufficiently short.
Prosficcion uses a plan of concepts accepted in
the present to think in different categories of
concepts and its logical arranges in the future.
Prosficcional links varies without preconceived
plans, measuring standards, or statistical
tolerances. It accepts temporal bifurcation to
propose and explore logical relationship and create
new possibilities. Its limits are the plausibility
of alternatives – the possibility of its existence
-, which is a marked subjective limit. Prosficcion
produces thought experiments aiming to explore
logical extremes of possible futures. It is not an
attempt of predicting the future; it is a research
of possible innovations through questioning ends,
means, and its relationships using an illustrated
mind. The different between prosficcion and mere
guest – wherever illustrated the last could be – is
a contrast that gives sense to acquiring knowledge.
Mach69 calls this knowledge Phantasie-Vorstellung –
69 Apud. Bunge, M. Intuition and Science. New York, EUA: Prentice Hall, 1962. pp.77.
148
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 149 4/15/2023DRAFT
derived from pure reason, but not its substitute –
that is manifested when is necessary to make
apparently conflicting alternatives to be concurrent
in their utility.
Prosficcional parametric events are intuitively
conceived. The choice of its expression of synthesis
is informed by functional considerations of
representatives of the conceived object and by the
informed judgement of its feasibility. There is no
denial of the intuition phenomena as part of
creative action. Although its probation is a
controversial issue in the realm of philosophy, its
epistemological functionality is accepted as an
attribute of method in science. It is utile for
advancing knowledge though the critic of false or
non-existing problems70 .
Moles71 provide the limit of a temporal context
defined by prosficcion: the distance of coherence,
the limit of propagation of causal truth. The
important is not what is over these limits, but what
70 Bruyne, P. et al. Dinamica da pesquisa em ciências sociais: os polos da prática metodológica. 5 ed. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves. 1991. pp. 57. 71 Moles, A. As Ciências do Impreciso. trad. Glória Lins. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1995. pp.125.
149
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 150 4/15/2023DRAFT
it circumscribes. The distance of coherence
determines the limits of transformation alternatives
in defense reforms. Over this limit, the mind cannot
intuitively believe in the proposed chain of events
and see growing changes of contradiction in parts of
the cognitive process. Within these limits,
prosficcion see links between events that otherwise
would not be evident though projection or
prospective lens. Terraine72, for example, concludes
that I Word War trench phenomena were not evident
though a projection from past trends neither from
prospective formulation but though intuitively
conceived links between the new industrial
production possibilities and evolving forms of war.
In the same line, Clark (1993,83) quotes la Guerre
au vingtième siècle as evidence for the trenches73.
The ordainment of dependent events is done within
three reference axes: time, acts of force and
topology, creating the foundation for looking ahead
72 Terraine, J. The Smoke and the Fire: Miths & Anti-Miths of War: 1861-1945. London, UK: Leo Cooper, 1992. Cap. XIX.73 For further examples, see Dyson, F. Mundos Imaginados. São Paulo: Scharcz, 1998; and Malone, J. O futuro ontem e hoje. trad. Ricardo Silveira, Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro, 1997. Prosficcion can be siphon out in Clark, I.F. Voices prophesying war: future wars, 1763-3749. New York: Prentice Hall, 1993. pp.224-262.
150
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 151 4/15/2023DRAFT
guided by a coherent and articulated set of concepts
ensuring that scenarios which will be extracted do
not employ contradictory assumptions or factors.
Time
The first ax is the time line. It superimposes
the three project horizons – projective, prospective
and prosficcional. All chains of events, and
therefore the three horizons, start from the same
point in the present, but have different length
depending on the particular form that the relation
between events is established. These horizons
represent distinct expectations that their related
chains of events have as qualities that hold the
past; coexisting on this first ax until projective
Time
Acts of ForceTopology
Figure 9: Space of Capabilities
151
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 152 4/15/2023DRAFT
assumptions make projective chains vulnerable, or
prospective assumptions make propensity chains
vulnerable, or prosficcional assumptions have
determined the limit of coherence of forecasting.
Projective assumptions establishes criteria for
evaluating the acceptance of dispersion of temporal
series; prospective assumptions establishes a
reference for judging the acceptance of preserving
propensity based relationship between prospective
events; and prosficcional assumptions are used for
judging limits of validity of induction of truth in
inductive links. Together, these assumptions are
used to establish the conditions of possibility of
force design alternatives, regulating, respectively,
adaptation, modernization and transformation
possibilities.
Reality entwines together these three horizons.
The diagram of future isolated them for analytical
purposes only. Making these three horizons explicit
allows resolving the apparent paradox of force
design, expressed by the simultaneous necessity of
military capability requirements to be sufficiently
152
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 153 4/15/2023DRAFT
stable for planning purposes and sufficiently
dynamic to take into account a continuous process of
change in the environment force design environment.
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 time intervals.
These intervals say nothing but a pseudo-scientific
category imposed upon uncertainty. In other terms,
an error – that improperly transfers to a not
verifiable category the impreciseness of the process
of defining forecasting limits.
It was explained that procurement is not a proper
criterion for establishing forecasting horizons in
force design. Clearly, assuming an “a priory” force
design horizon is not only an epistemological but
also a methodological mistake, entailing inevitably
a highly imperfect process. The fragility, for
example, of a directive stating 12 years as force
planning horizon is evident with the question: why
not 13, or 15 or 20?
153
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 154 4/15/2023DRAFT
The specification of the time length for force
design, and therefore the limits of forecasting, is
an integral part of the process of designing defense
alternatives, limited by relational events
(assumptions) which offer criteria for assessing the
vulnerability of the proposed scenarios.
Force design horizons are defined by the
possibility of considered assumptions being
vulnerable. They demand making explicit data that
otherwise would be implicit. They impose
transparency in expected capabilities, and provide
control and oversight of budgeting and management
through required performance indicators clearly
articulated with political goals. Finally, they
contribute to national development, since onerous
political and financial costs of defense reforms can
be rationally explicated as necessary, and not
automatically derived from budgeting cycle or
electoral periods.
154
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 155 4/15/2023DRAFT
Topology
The second ax distinguishes particular topologic
contexts contained in the dependent events that
provide specificity to forecasted conflicts.
Topologic is used in a wider sense; it implies not
only the traditional partition of land-sea-air
segments, but also space, informational and
cybernetic segments alike.
Acts of force
The third ax distingue the nature of forecasted
conflicts. Dunningan and Macedonia74 offer a
perspective though which those acts of force could
be considered. Creveld75, as well as Dunningan and
Nofi76, Belamy77, Simpkin78, Grove79 and Brown80 also
offer their perspectives. All provide situations
where the natures of future acts of force are
anticipated. The problem, therefore, is not the
74 Dunningan, J. F. and Macedonia. R.M. Getting it Right: American Military Reforms after the Vietnan to the Gulf War and Beyond. New York, USA: Willian Morrow and Company, Inc., 1993.75 Creveld, M. van. The Transformation of War. New York, USA: The Free Press, 1991.76 Dunningan, J. F. e Nofi, A.A. Shooting Blanks: War that Doesn't Work. New York, USA: Willian Morrow and Company, 1991.77 Bellamy, C. The future of Land Warfare. New York, USA: ST Martin's Press, 1987.78 Simpkin, R.E. Race to the Swift; Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare. New York, USA: Brassey's, 1985.79 Grove, E. The Future of Se Power. Annapolis, EUA: Naval Institute Press, 1990.80 Brown, N. The Future of Air Power. New York, USA: Holmer & Meier, 1986.
155
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 156 4/15/2023DRAFT
existence, or not, of distinctive natures of these
acts, but how to translate them into patterns. That
is exactly part of force design.
These three axes create a space named space of
capabilities81. Each segment of this space is
recognized by its functionality to force design
purposes, and thus defined as a valid scenario
subjected to the linking codes of its events
(projective, prospective and prosficcional). The
structure of the rules of these codes is explained
by its functional interdependency with the
formulated scenario (what technique was used, for
example, for deciphering the code of tendencies).
Particular rules of auto-development determine
the peculiar structure of each formulated scenario,
this rules being external to the causal nexus of
events. That means that the techniques for
81 The use of this term “space of capabilities” mimics the term space of phase used in the Theory of Complexity denoting a multidimensional set of variables that represents the characteristics of a point in a complex system. But it also recognizes its similarity with space of combat used by the USA as a doctrine. See USA. Joint Chiefs of Staff. Doctrine for Planning Joint Operations. EUA, 1995. It also has similarities with the term scenario-space created by Davies, P. and Finch, L. Defense Planning for the Post-Cold War: Giving Meaning to Flexibily, Adaptiveness, and Robustness of Capability. California, EUA: Rand National Defense Research Institute, 1993. As well as the same term used by Bennet, B et al. Theater, Analysis and Modeling in an Era of Uncertainty. California, EUA: Rand Corporation, 1994.
156
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 157 4/15/2023DRAFT
developing scenarios should not interfere in the
development of the chains of events.
Each particular area in the diagram of future –
each space of capabilities – animates a scenario,
providing the required reference for force design to
create a full-spectrum of capabilities that could
dominate future battlefields; in whatever nature
they might emerge.
Scenarios
Scenarios are hypothetical interpretation of
combining missions at a specific time and space with
previously determined purpose. As an intellectual
representation, the scenarios can be seen as a draw
in a canvas made by a light bean. The distance of
the canvas from the lamp (time effect) will
illuminate more or less details (dimensions of
complexity). Forecasting explains the internal
structure of the bean – the chains of events; it
allows anticipating shadow patterns and colors, but
it says nothing about the projected draw.
157
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 158 4/15/2023DRAFT
Because of the diversity of decisions that must
be made over time based on scenarios, an organizing
framework that groups them into categories is
useful.
War scenarios encompass missions that demand
the violent use of force either offensively or
defensively. In spite of many efforts, there is no
acceptable war categorization and no legitimacy in
adherence to past practice and usage in warfare.
Political objectives vary as well as commitments to
use force as an alternative to compel the enemy to
do our will. Politics ordains the exercise of force
in the clash of weapons and wills, endeavoring
adversaries to bound for the peace it intended, when
it decided to use force in order to achieve its
objective; whereas tactical results inform policy
alternatives.
Crisis scenarios 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
158
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 159 4/15/2023DRAFT
accepted by the parts in conflict. Mission in crisis
scenarios are oriented either to actions of
presence, performed in a routinely way, with
concealed and indirect intentions or though mission
carrying deliberate exercise of limited force.
Luttwak calls the latter suasion, with the
approximate meaning of coercion. In both forms,
crisis missions’ aims to evoked specific reaction by
means of deliberately planned and executed actions
or signals82.
Environment shaping scenarios aims to prevent
either crises or war though the manipulation of the
perception of benefits and priorities of using force
for 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 of the target state.
Disaster relief scenarios depict after-effect
missions in the case of natural disaster, or
82 For a discussion about crisis and crisis management, see Raza, S. Crises e Manobra de Crises Internacionais Político Estratégicas. in Aeroespace Power Journal, Spring 2002.
159
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 160 4/15/2023DRAFT
missions related to the prevention and reaction for
search and rescue of material and lives. The use of
military capabilities to fulfill 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 usually adequate
degree of readiness.
Law enforcement scenarios define missions
related with public security, borders control
(immigration and custom), and counter-narcotics.
Defense law enforcement missions support, substitute
or complement police activities.
As implied by these different categories, an
effective conceptual system is not necessarily one
that promises the maximum perfection in developing
scenarios, but rather one that fits the needs of
force design, striving for consistency of the
representational entities being sought through the
relationships of events. Translating events into an
160
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 161 4/15/2023DRAFT
appropriate collection of scenarios requires a solid
epistemological foundation to ensure they are
supportive of force design goals and functions.
The Diagram of Futures identifies the component
elements of these representational entities within
the domain of its assumptions needed to ensure that
capabilities specification in the next logical block
– Renovatio – fully satisfy the requirements of the
use of force for political purposes, allocating
specific tasks in each category with the definition
of its relative importance and occurrence.
One of the most critical functions in force
design is to define the scenarios that will be used
to size the force and offer a public rationale for
this decision. In the US case, for example, for the
past eight years, the primary criterion for sizing
conventional forces has been two nearly simultaneous
Major Teather Warfare (MTW) and Forward Presence
(for naval forces). Critics argue that these
scenarios are problematic for three reasons. “First,
despite important differences between then, both
scenarios are cases of aggression involving large
161
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 162 4/15/2023DRAFT
armored invasions on land, but not every plausible
MTW would take this form. Second, different MTW
scenarios might involve different endstate
objectives. Whereas one case might involve restoring
the international border between victim and
aggressor and imposing a sanctions regime, another
might involve removing the aggressor from power,
ushering in a new regime, and helping to restore
post-conflict stability. Third, the two canonical
MTW cases do not represent the full range of
challenges that the U.S. military could face in the
futre – even the near future- such as more capable
regional foes employing antiaccess strategies to
thwart U.S. power projection”83. These critics
suggest the need for new planning scenarios for the
U.S. The diagram of futures offers the conceptual
foundations for its development with associated
methodologies, like for example “Capabilities Based
83 Flournoy, M. A. (Project Director). Report on the national Defense University – Quadrennial Defense Review 2001 Working Group. Washington, D.C. Institute for National Strategic Studies, November 2000. pp. 11. For other criticisms of the two-MTW, see Krepinewich, A. D. in The Botton-up Review: An assessment. Washington, D.C. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, 1994. O’Hanlon, M. Rethinking two War Strategies. Joint Forces Quarterly, nr 24. Spring 2000, pp. 11-17. For a defense of the of the two-MTW, see, Secretary of Defense, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review. Washington, D.C: Government Printing Press, May, 1997, pp. 12-13.
162
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 163 4/15/2023DRAFT
Planning” with a proposed framework developed by
Paul K. Davis, David Gompert and Richard Kugler84.
It is worth recovering here the definition of
defense missions: the assemblage of tasks within the
scope of an intended purpose in the form a
hypothetical combination of assumptions and chains
of future developments that serve as a reference for
the diagnosis of current and required tasks. Defense
missions are, therefore, a proposition of reality
aiming to anticipate possible, probable and
plausible contingencies where the uses of military
capabilities are considered. Scenarios are the
foundation of missions; and should not fusion
dependent events. On the contrary, they must prevent
a cause and causality relationship between ordains
of different nature. This is a relevant conceptual
aspect of the diagram of futures, since there is not
a theory that supports the fusion of chains of
events of different nature. As Allport85 explains in
84 Davis, P. et al. Adaptativeness in National Defense: The Basis of a New Framework. California: Rand Corporation, 1996. http://www.rand.org/publications/IP/Ip155/. (Jun/12/2002).85 Allport, F.H. Theories of perception and the concept of structure. Londres: John Wiley & Sons. 1955. pp.622.
163
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 164 4/15/2023DRAFT
1956, chains of events of different nature, although
always related, are distinct and must not be
interchanged or substituted. Stevenson and
Inayatyllah86 said the same thing 43 years late when
they affirm the epistemological necessity of
explicating premises in studies about the future,
making explicit distinct chains of significance
hidden in the scenarios.
This is exactly what the diagram of futures
prevents. Moreover, when the diagram of futures
recognizes dissimilarities in chains of events, it
avoids taking the expectation of time length of the
longest chain of events as the expectation of time
validity of the resulting scenario. Coherently, it
takes the expectation of vulnerability of the
shorter horizon, derived from the vulnerability of
its related relational events (assumptions), as the
assessment criteria for the expectation of validity
of the resulting scenario.
The diagram of futures circumscribes a field of
possibilities that is neither undefined (although it
86 Stevenson, T.and Inayatullah, S. "Future-oriented Writing and Research". Futures. V.30, Feb. 1998. pp. 2.
164
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 165 4/15/2023DRAFT
may be unknown in parts) nor unlimited (relational
events provide those limits). The scope and
dimension of this field derive from the possibility
of blocking the variety of events, whereas
possessing the articulating logic for dependent
events that wasn’t blocked. This limit constrain and
determine what are valid and non-valid decision in
force design allowing the acquisition of the real
stage of the force though the confrontation of
defense political objectives with the possibilities
offered by the technology, conditioned by resource
allocation priorities and assessed degree of
acceptable risks.
It is the collective pattern of decisions based
on parcels of the diagram of future that determine
concepts of employment, ascribing strengths and
weakness of current and future military
capabilities. These strengths and weakness are the
direct result of the pattern of decisions pursued,
typically viewed as structural in nature because of
the difficulty of reversing them and the fact that a
substantial investment is required to alter or
165
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 166 4/15/2023DRAFT
extend them. This latter aspect has led defense
reforms to rely primarily on fiscal resources for
reviewing structural decisions. This diagram of
future deny this logic, explaining the necessity of
interrelated decisions regarding the capability that
is incorporated within each of the projective,
prospective and prosficcional arena are taken,
considering how their cumulative impact can
contribute to defense objectives.
RENOVATIO (Reengineer)
The Renovatio block of the Framework is the
designer way of identifying capabilities profile,
presenting its most noteworthy characteristics;
decompose this profile in capabilities requirements
and translate them into programs demands and budget
requirements. In a broad sense, the purpose of this
block is to facilitate the allocation, coordination
and utilization of fiscal, material, human,
organizational and information resources. It assures
implementation dependency of theses resources,
making certain a fundamental traceability link
166
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 167 4/15/2023DRAFT
between designing requirements and implementation,
integrated in a composite of defense reform
requirements.
Active decomposition of capabilities
Active decomposition is carried out for breaking
capabilities into subparts that relate to functional
possibilities among its multiple components. The
construct of capabilities is vital for this process,
explicating what the components of capabilities are
and what are their possible relationships through
the tactical, strategic and political realms, while
assuring its relationship with tasks demands and its
integration into mission requirements. This is not
without difficulties.
Decomposing capabilities is a complex function
with no widely accepted principles for determining
minimum levels of fidelity. The fundamental aspect
of decomposing capabilities is not to produce
independent elements that must interface with each
other. Instead, capabilities are decomposed into
dependent producing units which all interface
167
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 168 4/15/2023DRAFT
directly to each other and to the context they
pertain. Such process is called active
decomposition, because, to a larger extent, defining
capabilities requirements for a parcel of the
diagram of futures will interact with other
requirements for other parcels.
The pervasiveness of this requirement is not
always appreciated, abstracting capabilities
requirements away from the supposed domains of its
application. To be effective, military capabilities
requirements must support, through a specific and
consistent pattern of decisions, the tasks being
sought by 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 that emphasizes long-term
mobilization. Similarly, research and development
decisions as the selection of technologies to be
pursued, whether to be high professional/weapons
system intensive rather than a conscript/labor
intensive personnel structured military.
168
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 169 4/15/2023DRAFT
Central to active decomposing of military
capabilities are both a model that abstracts
capabilities components and relationships and the
supporting techniques articulated into a
methodology. The former was offered in the
capability construct and the diagram of futures. The
real problem lays in the latter, rooting
multifaceted drawbacks, inefficiencies and
inadequacies.
There is an array of methodologies associated
techniques; most of them raised in realm of
operational analysis/system analysis87, such as
finite element simulation, difference equations or
execution rules, evolving into sophisticated
procedures exploring information technology (IT).
However, currently, there is no validated set of
techniques capable of acquiring knowledge of the
real-time state of the cross-impact of actively
decomposing capabilities, recognizing the coming
together of its individual outcome. Currently, the
best results are provided through gaming/simulations
87 Quade, E. S. and Boucher, W.I. System Analysis and Policy Planning. New York: American Elsevier Publishing Co, 1968.
169
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 170 4/15/2023DRAFT
supported by system analysis (with its inclusive
subordinated techniques and analytical tools),
exploring IT in processes active modeling to gather
data, search for patterns and display results.
Peter Perla, in a seminar work about the “Future
Directions for War Gaming”, express that:
“To deal with constant change in the geopolitical
and military environment, policymakers, strategists,
analysts and operators are all looking for means to
overcome the clouds of uncertainty that obscure the
future. As defense budgets decrease, it becomes more
critical than ever to identify new technological,
operational, and political directions that will
become most profitable to pursue. As truly
integrated joint operations become the norm rather
than the exception to the rule, the Armed Forces
must find the tools to help them fit together
seamlessly – doctrinally, technically, and
operationally… But wargaming is not a panacea. It is
only one tool – albeit a powerful one – among many
that we can employ to explore the changing world.
When used appropriately it can contribute to an
170
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 171 4/15/2023DRAFT
understanding of where we are and where we should
go. In particular, it can help build truly joint
forces from the capabilities of various service
components. Misused or overused, wargaming can
dangerously lead us to self-fulfilling prophecies
and delusions of self-proclaimed messiahs.”88
How the characteristics of capabilities subparts
are defined determines the accuracy and precision of
programming and resource allocation. The greater the
separation between subparts, the easier is for
configure specific needs of assigned objectives.
However, carried to its extreme, it can lead to the
separation of parts that should be dedicated to a
common objective, hampering the relationship among
parts and compromissing the outcome.
It cannot be overemphasized that it is the
pattern of decisions actually selected with the
diagram of futures, and the degree to which that
patterns supports objectives representative of the
countries’ position in the matrix of security and
88 Perla, P.. Future Directions for Wargaming. Washington, D.C: Joint Forces Quarterly: Summer 1984, pp. 77-83.
171
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 172 4/15/2023DRAFT
defense, that constitutes the base for devising the
required military capabilities.
Programming
Programming is the process by which force design
assures a conscious appraisal and formulation of
activities to carry out capabilities requirements
(decomposed into its functional subparts) and that
required resources are allocated effectively and
efficiently in the accomplishment of defense tasks.
As a practical matter, programming serves to needs
of management control, dedicated to be a translator
between expected capability outcomes and associated
budgets.
Programming processes are found in many
activities other than force design. Engineer
explores its logic for meaningfully scheduling
production activities. In force design, programming
is fundamental for linking capability requirements
to budget possibilities, providing the homomorphism
from a set of intentions to a similar system of
fiscal and production possibilities. Programming is,
172
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 173 4/15/2023DRAFT
therefore, an agent of transformation of one set
(force components) into another (budget) that
preserves in the second the interrelations between
the members of the first set. Projects then
implement initiatives for the modification,
enhancement, or development of to meet programs’
requirements and interfaces. Some projects may
develop the technical infrastructure and some may
develop fiscal management functionalities.
Programming is forked into two complementary
actions. The first refers to program engineering:
the definition of a set of programs, each one
comprising entities and processes that must be
present to accomplish specific capabilities
requirements identified through the process of
decomposition. The second, control management,
refers to phasing the prioritization of programs
over time, assuring that their outcome attends
strategic demands of military capabilities.
173
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 174 4/15/2023DRAFT
A. Program Engineering
Given the importance of programming, it usually
takes a sequentially approach, based on a series of
discrete programs and its component projects by
which decisions can be analysed, evaluated, and
implemented as needed and affordably possible. Such
an approach, named program engineering, makes
efficient the use of resources and reduces the
likelihood that important details will be
overlooked.
Program engineering decisions are made about the
level of aggregation of entities and processes
requirements appropriate to assure specific
capabilities requirements, determining whether its
outcome be represented as a single entity, as a
composite of subsystem entities, or a composite of
composites of ever smaller entities (to whatever
level of aggregation is needed for the purpose of
force design). These decisions are taken in
attendance of three principles:
174
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 175 4/15/2023DRAFT
The aggregation criteria influence how
the 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 program engineering
is essentially a craft that has not yet matured into
methodologies. As programs grew in size and
complexity, following the diversity of demands of
capacities for the post-Cold War with new threats
and emerging technologies, attitude towards
programming changed. Instead of meticulously codes
for programming and rigid categories, force design
increasingly distend projects component of programs
in an array of capability-packages. Just as
dwellings are built with standardized fittings,
programs integrated by capability-package projects
are built out of modular, interchangeable elements.
This is not only good engineering practice; it is
175
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 176 4/15/2023DRAFT
the only way to make something the size of a defense
system work at all.
Programs content may assume several forms related
to the type of budget practiced. For example: a
program-budget will have programs as descriptors of
goals (measurable results activities and actions -
constants); a performance-budget89 will have
programs communicating performance information. The
US Coast Guard, for example, set as its Performance
Goals for National Security: Reduce drug flow by
denying maritime smuggling routes, Reduce
undocumented migrants from entering via maritime
routes, Eliminate illegal EEZ encroachment, Achieve
and sustain complete military readiness, Provide
core military competencies.
Program engineering is called upon to deal with a
conversion process that change or combine resources
to obtain a desired output typically addressing the
following issues:
89 US Department of Transportation, United States Coast Guard. Budget Estimates – Fiscal year 2002. pp.5
176
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 177 4/15/2023DRAFT
1. The definition of the capability to be
produced and its desired output level determined by
the required degree of readiness, practiced doctrine
and enforced rules of engagement.
2. The production facilities and
technology required to produce military assets, the
mix of their protocols of operations and the tasks
that will not be required of the military assets.
3. The interrelationship between these
military assets and other military assets as well as
maintenance levels, and operation and deployment
policies to be adopted.
4. A provision for the subsequent
expansion or contraction of the program considering
other programs that might be schedule.
5. The overhead defense functions,
processes and procedures to be followed and its
control systems.
Standard procedures are seldom applicable in such
process because defense program engineering results
in unique customized products. While it is important
177
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 178 4/15/2023DRAFT
to understand the differences between defense
programs and civilian programs (usually
characterized by continuous flow processes like for
example oil refineries), it is also necessary to
recognize that both are subjected to the same
constraints imposed by technology.
Once the program is clearly defined, it must be
evaluated along financial dimensions, considering
its cost-benefit as well as events that would cause
a change in the common set of assumptions taken for
this analysis across all programs. This evaluation
should also consider the impacts of potential
failure to develop the capability assumed in the
financial analysis of each option.
The major objective of program engineering is to
define appropriate measures of individual
capabilities, as well the set of capabilities as a
whole. Such measures must take into account the
considerable uncertainty as to the functionally of
resulting capabilities to defense objectives.
178
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 179 4/15/2023DRAFT
B. Control Management
Programming is supported by control management
initiatives expressed as a series of linked actions
dedicated to govern the choice of programs, its
production schedule and performance evaluation which
would place each decision in the context of a
sequence of such decisions as they define and
implement the selected alternative of force design.
For this reason, control management does not
consist simply of a line drawn to indicate different
dates in which a capability will be needed. It
requires a policy statement defining what kinds of
capabilities are to be provided in conjunction with
specific projective, prospective and prosficcional
scenarios describing their likely evolution over
time.
Control management is fundamental in determining
the scope of representation of the linkage between
program component requirements and budget
possibilities over time. For this purpose, it
develops a milestone that supports reasonable
179
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 180 4/15/2023DRAFT
judgment about the affordability of required
capabilities minimizing costs duplication and
overlap. In addition this milestone provide a
meaningful perspective of future force components,
providing a comprehensive relationship between
designing assumptions (implicited in forecasting)
and intended capabilities allowing critical analysis
about overestimation of requirements and
underestimation of costs.
This milestone schedule programs components in
order to provide coherence and articulation among
parts functionally conceived. It gives significance
to programs components outputs within defense,
forcing designers to evaluate priorities and measure
risks, taking into account the degree to which
various constituencies within the defense system
support its implementations. Its most important role
is to provide a set of specific capabilities
required over time to attend defense objectives,
rather than define a simply time frame for
developing military assets for existing concept of
employment in existing scenarios. A planning process
180
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 181 4/15/2023DRAFT
of this milestone is creatively defined and should
consider three significant aspects:
1) How individual programs are related
directly to military capabilities priorities in each
project horizon (projective, prospective, and
prosficcional) with an explicit definition of the
assumptions that will change that relationship.
2) The phasing of programs and projects
over time presents a broad variety of options. These
options should be evaluated in terms of the overall
performance of the defense system and not only on
the performance of a specific major program.
3) The selection of an option should fit
into the overall pattern of decisions contained in
the integrated project for defense, addressing the
full set of military capabilities need to support
defense objectives.
In developing this milestone, force design is
confronted with the need to make changes that render
existing force components, concept of employment or
regulating factors obsolete. These changes are
181
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 182 4/15/2023DRAFT
enforced through a variety of ways. The most obvious
is reducing investments, which will delay replacing
old equipment, or allowing the performance of force
components to deteriorate by reducing maintenance.
Other, less obvious, is persistently replacing
assets based on the same technology.
A compelling justification for the usefulness of
force design is that programming decisions cannot be
made on a decentralized basis. They should be
integrated through a guidance provide by an
integrated project of defense with appropriated
criteria to measure the interaction of various
resource constraints and the overall efficiency with
such resources should be consumed.
This necessarily implies the definition of
defense objectives within the context of the
security and defense matrix; some assumptions to
develop the diagram of future and select the
scenario to be employed as proactive tools for
achieving long-term goals; and the expect production
of force components over time according to expect
tasks requirements, assuring that the proper set of
182
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 183 4/15/2023DRAFT
military capabilities are made available within
fiscal constraints and political determinants.
The development of these requirements demands
making explicit those designing elements,
assumptions and driving forces, providing the
necessary transparency to the designing process
through with politics enforces its control over
military decisions. Using the three horizons make
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 resources, production and fiscal resources
among various competing programming outcome
possibilities.
Human resource allocation is about the assignment
of qualified personnel that oversee the complexities
of force design providing the crucial linkages
between production possibilities and fiscal
resources within which schedules are developed and
183
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 184 4/15/2023DRAFT
modified as the programs proceed and develop. The
acquisition and deployment of valuable human
resources should be well integrated with control
management requirements in order to strength the
defense establishment ability to identify and
negotiate acquisition opportunities, fighting
unwelcome fusion of projects an divesting lines that
are inappropriate for the envisioned goals. The
ultimate function of skilled human resources in
force design is deliberating critical decisions that
involve complex technological and capability
requirement tradeoffs, cutting though the
complexities of scheduling activities while standing
aloof of the details, moving quickly in
repositioning production resources either to
orchestrate a takeover or a divestment.
Production resource allocation is just as
important as human resources allocation, exercising
interaction among industrial possibilities and
operational functions. It consist of creating a
pattern of decisions that affects the manufacturing
of military assets, and should be reflective of
184
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 185 4/15/2023DRAFT
policy with careful attention 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 deciding about fiscal
resources allocation that maximizes the efficacy of
programs, the efficiency of programs engineering and
economy in management control to assure that the
outcome of these processes – the required military
capability – attend the objectives they should
serve.
One test of budgeting appropriateness which
aspires more than specialized technical competence
in a restrict domain of accountability is its
ability to comprehend the political environment in
which it is developed. Petrei90 presents two central
approaches explaining how public budgets are
prepared:
90 Petrei, H. Budget and Control. Washington, D.C: Inter-American Development Bank/The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. pp.3, 15.
185
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 186 4/15/2023DRAFT
“One school of thought believes that the state
intervenes to increase overall satisfaction and
operates on the basis of an aggregate utility
function (that is, the sum of the individuals
utility functions of members of the society). The
other school of thought believes that the budget is
the product of political forces guided by voluntary
exchange among individuals and that, to perfect a
budget, one must understand that political process”.
After discussing those schools of though, Petrei
concludes:
“… several methods can be used to decide what
measures to take. Decision-makers, or people
involved in preparing and evaluating alternatives.
Some analysts have tried to quantify various
objectives, but these efforts have never gone beyond
a theoretical exercise that is probably too
complicated for everyday use. In most cases,
compromise is the solution: those who opt for a
particular alternative know that in order to achieve
their objective they must sacrifice one or several
other goals of economic policy. Decisions generally
186
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 187 4/15/2023DRAFT
take the form of a political option in which actors
engage in trade-offs to achieve their objective…thus
the budget must be put into perspective, and the
need to use it in harmony with other instruments
must be recognized.”
Whichever measure is used of the appropriateness
of the budget, once defined it becomes a surrogate
for all of the resources required to meet
programming requirements at desired readiness
levels.
Distinctly from decomposing capabilities, program
engineering and production planning, budgeting has
an array of best practices that provide guidance for
its development, presentation and communication. The
inability to sustain this claim gravely compromises
force design outcome. In the US, although accounting
categories existed for preparing and presenting
budget requests to Congress, there is not uniformity
among the services and other Government
Institutions. The US. Coast Guard (subordinated to
the Department of Transportation), for example
practices performance-budget, whereas the Services
187
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 188 4/15/2023DRAFT
(subordinated to the Department of Defense),
practice program-budget.
When a ceiling budget drives the design of
capabilities, fiscal resources allocation tends to
be equated between Services, leaving them alone to
identify defense requirements. When it occurs, the
Government abdicates its prerogatives of specifying
how, when and for how long its instrument of force
should be used. The outcome is the risk of each
Service to procure material accordingly to its own
perspective, promoting the absence of
interoperability with statements of requirements
detached from empirical assessment of concrete or
potentials threats.
Since there is no specified political purpose for
the instrumentality of the use of force the military
offers, the coherence between military capability
and defense objectives are at stake; and because the
budget was evenly distributed, balancing the force
becomes the implied policy (equity often serve as
the rationale for justifying bad policies), with the
services pledge of assuring interoperability though
188
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 189 4/15/2023DRAFT
more resources, retrofitting the process virtually
guaranteeing perpetual shortfalls in the funding of
“requirements” and inducing what is described as the
“disciplinary gap”.
Lewis Kevin91 and Builder92 describe this gap. The
Armed Forces required financial resources over and
above what would be necessary whereas planning
current alternatives with less. The difference among
requested and provided resources becomes a debt the
Government has with the Military. When the debt is
paid, the military tends to expand abnormally or
improperly its infrastructure; resulting
inadequacies are evidenced when the State faces a
crisis: current military capabilities drive
political possibilities, forcing strategic options
that could be neither desired nor appropriate.
The budget orients strategic preferences,
constraining and compressing programs alternatives
by fiscal realities, whereas programs express hard
choices and accepted major risks derived from 91 Lewis, K. "The Disciplinary Gap and other Reasons for Humility and Realism in Defense Planning". in New Challenges for Defense Planning: Rethink How Much is Enough. ed. Paul Davies. California, EUA: RAND Corporation, 1994. pp.21.92 Builder, C. H. Military Planning Today: Calculus or Charade? California, EUA: RAND: 1993. pp.93.
189
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 190 4/15/2023DRAFT
adopting a parcel of the space of capabilities and
associated concepts of employment in response to
defense objectives.
Programming is a composite of processes, being an
utterance of political intention towards required
capabilities and possibilities. It constitutes an
intervention in the background of force design,
growing out of resource allocation possibilities
that regulate the kinds of programs that will be
accepted, specifying, in advance, how and where
breakdowns in capabilities will be accepted,
creating or banning military assets, organizational
structures, doctrines, etc., that will show up in
everyday practice.
In programming, force design is doing more than
asking what can be built. It is engaged in a
reflection about what defense capabilities are and
what they can be, creating the tools to actions that
will bring then forth. In order to define the
resources force design might use, it looks backwards
190
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 191 4/15/2023DRAFT
to the trends that has formed current capabilities
and looks forward to as-yet-undeveloped adaptation,
modernization and transformation of military
capabilities, maintaining or/and bringing forth
different kinds of commitments, opening up a space
of communicative actions, within the context of a
network of interests, concealment and resistance.
Translating defense requirements into budget
demands requires time and management perseverance to
ensure literally hundreds of decisions mutually
supportive. It is the collective pattern of these
decisions that determines the integrated project for
defense. Because of the diversity of these decisions
that must be made over time, an organizing structure
is for its superintendence.
Defense Superintendence
Decomposing capabilities, programming and
resource allocation follow a logic pattern regulated
by its own results; each one stimulated and derived
from the other. As programming is developed to
satisfy capabilities requirements, inconsistencies
191
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 192 4/15/2023DRAFT
among requirements and lack of balance among
requirements (some very lax and others stringent in
similar area) 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 programs requirements, especially if
there has not been a rigorous validation of
requirements before initiation of development, or if
program-engineering practices have not been employed
adequately. Programming may review inconsistencies
where the budget developer is left to his own
initiative about what the capabilities the programs
should generate.
This shows just how these three processes are not
truly neutral, that their substantive content
affects the independence of the purposes they serve.
In conjunct, they belong to an elaborate complex of
related activities that crystallizes around a common
goal of superintending the allocation of defense
resources. Its major management objective is to
remove bottlenecks to expand or contract over time
192
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 193 4/15/2023DRAFT
capabilities possibilities without major new
investments. It depends, therefore, on the time
horizons that are appropriate for the capability
programming naturally linked to the duration of the
projective, prospective and prosficcional segments
as defined temporally by the vulnerability of
projective, prospective and prosficcional
assumptions.
The superintendence of defense networks processes
on a vast scale, managing knowledge information in
order to influence the powers that control it. Its
great need is to make work together all operational
processes, expanding and contracting their
relationships as the needs develops. Because of its
role, the superintendence of defense resources
allocation is what makes the concept of system to
emerge from the interrelation of operational
procedures.
Systems, as explained, are a conjunct of elements
in interactions where the performance of the parts
conditions the performance of the whole. Defectives
operational procedures and defective linkages
193
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 194 4/15/2023DRAFT
between operational procedures are the prime causes
of disjunctive decisions, contributing for stovepipe
capabilities, shortfall, or redundancy in fiscal
resources allocation. In sum, the goal of
superintending the allocation of defense resources
is to make processes functions effective, reflected
in tree aspects: the speed of problem solving; the
accuracy of problem solving and the adequacy of the
solution proposed to the problem depicted. The
defense superintendence exists as a system only if
each agency or department of the ministry of defense
is engaged and adopts a common set of goals and
convergent planning procedures governed by common
concepts and frameworks across all the defense
establishement.
The efficiency with which resources are utilized
provides a measure of the success of defense
superintendence, demanding a performance review
system to provide evidence that the proposed
investments will be properly used. This system has a
larger share in providing transparency in defense
issues, assuring that the required data is provided
194
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 195 4/15/2023DRAFT
to attend control and oversight requirements, while
assuring that the processes involved in identifying,
developing, organizing, fielding and supporting
military capabilities are properly accomplished
effectively, efficiently and economically.
This installment is even more prominent in making
as explicit as possible the costs and consequences
of defense decisions; insisting upon the use of the
best practices for systematically validate
capability requirements, ensuring that deficiencies
uncovered are corrected with appropriate
modifications, and compelling a rationale for
defense expenditures fully integrated and balanced
with defense programs.
The predictability of defense superintendence
results refers to intrinsic uncertainties (such as
the amount of resources required and programs
lifetime) and extrinsic uncertainties that might,
for example, drive a program to be discontinued if
key assumptions become vulnerable. To reduce
uncertainties, based on the expected values of the
different variables defining program engineering,
195
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 196 4/15/2023DRAFT
control management, and resource allocation, defense
superintendence demands a stock of knowledge to deal
with the generation of alternatives that might
control selected aspects of the diagram of future,
the development of criteria through which those
alternatives would be able to be compared, the
assessment of these alternatives, and the correction
of the process and its outcome based on the result
of this assessment. Defense superintendence manage
information, through which it maximizes the
efficiency with which it plans, collects, organizes,
controls, disseminates, uses and disposes of its
information, and through which it ensures that the
potential value of intelligence is identified and
exploited to the fullest extent.
Foundered on the incremental development,
iterative refinement, and ongoing evolution of
process description, defense superintendence assures
that the nature of the finished integrated project
of defense – the object of force design – emerges
from a process of developing shared interpretation
of capabilities requirements among the parties
196
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 197 4/15/2023DRAFT
involved in decomposing capabilities, programming
and budgeting, who must wrestle with hard choices
about how to allocate limited resources to provide
defense and advance national social and economic
interests.
Defense superintendence constantly offers
enduring patterns that can guide force design
processes as they progress through the defense
organizational structures. The magnitude of the
importance of organizational structures for force
design was encapsulated in 1982 by General David
Jones’s testimony to U.S. Congress, when he said:
“We do not have, currently, an adequate
organizational structure. It is not sufficient to
have resources, dollars and weapons systems; we
should also have an organization that allows us to
develop the proper strategy, the necessary planning
and an effective fighting capability”93.
The requirements for defense superintendence
change constantly, organizational structure change
only with great deliberation and much effort. Yet,
93 (verify text– in Locher, 1999,13)
197
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 198 4/15/2023DRAFT
it is essential to ensure that defense
organizational structure allows the best decisions
be formulated, reflecting national requirements for
defense rather than separate, often differing,
perspectives of military services, or preferences of
bureaucratic servants in the ministry of defense, or
been influenced by industrial forces external to the
ministry of defense.
Defense superintendence is supported by oversight
process expressed as imposition that regulates
budgeting procedures to enforce practices of
accountability and codes of conduct over fiscal
expenditures to assure the proper allocation and use
and of public funds. Its function is to regulate the
proper linkages between programming milestone
expected outcomes, commitments, and procedures. In
this role, defense oversight crafts provision and
assist the assessment of results with the final goal
of assuring fiscal economy within legal boundaries.
To design defense alternatives, allocate and
manage fiscal and human resources that will traduce
those alternatives in force components, defense
198
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 199 4/15/2023DRAFT
ministries are bounded for the necessity of
translating defense superintendence requirements
into methodical processes – to make practical
theoretical determinants.
Defense superintendence sets 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 that it helps to
understand the purposes and meaning of reform
actions, helping to set in place the proper amount
of effort to overcome the problems involved in
designing and marshaling military capabilities.
The resulting effects of defective defense
superintendence are brokered layers of normative
orientation (policy guidance, planning guidance,
fiscal guidance, etc.) offering little guidance to
determining objectives and formulating scenarios,
and with little relevance to decomposing military
capabilities, programming and budgeting. Because of
vagueness and incomplete information, services make
choices that they believe best attend corporate
199
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 200 4/15/2023DRAFT
vision and best satisfy service needs, resulting in
stove piped capabilities. Enthoven and Smith explain
the American Defense Services stove piping processes
in the context of the Cold War: “In 1961, the
airlift, the sealift, the bases, the prepositioned
equipment, the planned deployments and the readiness
was the responsibility of a different group of
people in the Defense Department. The elements were
seen as separate and unrelated entities”94.
However inarticulate and conflicting, defense
superintendence justifies the existence of
bureaucracies that creates its own assessment
criteria though organizational and procedural
mechanisms. This inertia preclude the defense sector
react to new demands posed by the evolving political
environment and its internal elements adjust defense
objectives to installed assets and organizations.
Finally, self-sufficient capabilities become
inarticulate with political purposes and assumptions
are created to sustain that inadequate relationship,
in an effort to validate the status quo of the
94 Apud, Haffa, R. Jr. The Half War: Planning U.S. Rapid Deployment Forces to Meet a Limited Contingency, 1960-1983. Colorado, U.S.A: Westview Press, Inc. 1984. pp. 147.
200
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 201 4/15/2023DRAFT
current strategy and force structure. This status
quo, once justified, provide the rational for the
policy.
These serious questions increase the difficulty
of force design, directly influence the alternatives
of adapting, modernizing and transforming the
defense sector, creating bothersome discontinuities
where coherence and harmonic transients for defense
change are required. The key function of the
Renovatio block in force design is deciding about
the requirements and priorities of adaptation,
modernization and transformation.
201
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 202 4/15/2023DRAFT
PART 3
ADAPTATION, MODERNIZATION AND TRANSFORMATION
In the exploding uncertainties of the information
technology era, defense superintendence compels goal
attainment and processes integration preventing them
to scatter, travelling at an accelerated rate
farther from its purpose of integration, evaluation
and assimilation of required changes in defense
capabilities. These responsibilities are harmonized
into three simultaneous patterns that explain armed
forces adaptation, modernization and transformation
as alternatives constituents of defense reforms, in
an interplay between current possibilities and
future uncertainties in constant redefinition.
Although adaptation, modernization, and
transformation cannot be isolated from one another,
except in most extremes conditions, it is important
to recognize its analytical requirements because
202
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 203 4/15/2023DRAFT
they differ for different parts of a defense policy
that evolves simultaneously through the projective,
prospective and prosficcional horizons.
Adaptation
Adaptation seeks to maximize the efficacy of
military capabilities through changes in the
relationship of existing defense components and
using existing military assets more efficiently.
Adaptation possibilities are a function of the
enacting factors, implying that these factors
determine the variance of possible military
capabilities. Within these limits, adaptation
explores interoperability, jointness and C4
(enabling elements) to establish alternative links
to integrate military assets and operational
structures, as well as it derives alternative tasks
to fulfill defense objectives exploring the range of
possibilities provided by the derivative (ISR and
operations) elements. The combining possibilities of
these integrative and derivative structuring
criteria are regulated by the scope of doctrine,
203
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 204 4/15/2023DRAFT
readiness requirements, and rules of engagement
(regulating factors).
Adaptation possibilities are limited to the
projective horizon. Within these limits, emphasis is
on better results from force planning, efficiency in
defense resource allocation and management, and
better control and oversight practices associated
with structural reorganization to respond to new by
making quick and effective changes in how they are
organized and operate. However, improvements sought
through adaptation only might be proven grossly
insuffficient, degenerating into a costly series of
actions that fail to secure cumulative improvements,
attacking causes rooted in modernization
requirements.
In essence, adaptation believes that by confining
force components to its existing forms and shapes
provide the required military capabilities to
respond effectively to the need of particular tasks.
A defense system that defines itself in this way
often finds it very difficult to venture outside the
dominant orientation of current concepts of
204
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 205 4/15/2023DRAFT
employment, since they incorporate implicitly, if
not explicitly, judgments as to the importance of
operational functions in achieving defense goals;
establishing strong mind-sets as real constraints
for change.
Modernization
Modernization replaces aging weapon systems and
changes the dimensional characteristics of force
structure components, creating other rearranging
possibilities of military capabilities that would
not 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, the validity of
possible military capabilities is only retained
valid as a function of its utility in relating the
outcome of tactical actions with the political
purpose that initially oriented its assignment.
205
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 206 4/15/2023DRAFT
Modernization changes the variance of military
capabilities exploring demonstrated technologies
within the prospective horizon. The act of
modernization often is seen as propelled by
procurement of sophisticated - state of the art -
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 to increase
operational readiness.
Modernization only, however, may fail to see
opportunities for larger gains by means of
possibilities geared to new ways of thinking.
Further, particularly in a fast changing
technological environment, modernization can be
dangerously myopic insofar as the actions taken to
achieve gains may acquire a momentum that is
difficult to reverse.
In essence, modernization seeks patterns of
diversification closely interrelated with the
predominant system of concepts and planning
206
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 207 4/15/2023DRAFT
framework, reflecting a preference to concentrate on
a relatively narrow set of changes rather than
spread broadly over many.
Over time, the ability of the armed forces to
compete on the basis of technological superiority
only may become eroded, tending to make military
capabilities less effective when confronted with the
need to make changes that render existing ways of
thinking technology obsolete.
Patterns of exploring technology has the tendency
to make designers to react in predicable ways.
Capabilities born of usual circumstances become the
norm creating imitative designs with reducing
returns in performance bonuses for changes in force
components able to cut through the competitive
defense environment. Despite the appeal of more of
the same, when the frontier is gone, one must
develop ways of thinking that nurtures new
technologies, organizations and processes that
prevents dampening the innovativeness of
capabilities that might be brought by
transformation.
207
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 208 4/15/2023DRAFT
Transformation
Transformation changes patterns of thinking force
design, creating new assessing parameters of
efficiency and efficacy. Transformation seeks to
create a differential of capability against
competing forces, making obsolete all previous
capabilities, regardless of its efforts of
adaptation and modernization. As Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld told students Jan. 31 at the
National Defense University: Transformation is
“about new ways of thinking … and new ways of
fighting."95
Transformation elects uncertainty over
predictability and unsettled relationship among
force components and defense tasks in place of 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 sensible accrued, they make
obsolete existing force components and even
intuition in creating tasks possibilities. A 95 Garamone, Jim. Flexibility, Adaptability at Heart of Military Transformation. American Forces Press Service Washington - Feb 1, 2002. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-02b.html
208
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 209 4/15/2023DRAFT
striking feature of these results is a differential
of military capability that enhances the defense
ability to develop new alternatives or improve the
uniqueness or quality of existing possibilities.
The qualitative and quantitative dimensions of
transformed military capabilities demand rethinking
not only specific technologies incorporated in
products and processes, but also doctrine and
organizational culture with its implication in
tactical, strategic and political possibilities
alike. In the prosficcional horizon, new forms of
defense organizations and weapons systems will be
less prone to be characterized as “purely” military
with their own shortcomings, and so on, with no end
in sight.
Transformation, therefore, is more than exploring
aspects of demonstrated technologies derived from a
revolution in military affairs (RMA). It goes beyond
the rhetoric of changes and gradual advancements in
incorporating new assets or revising tasks.
Transformation excites imagination, encouraging
“outside the box” thinking needed to respond to
209
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 210 4/15/2023DRAFT
unexpected challenges with a menu of choices to do
anything different. It causes the rupture of the
anemia stemming from the lack of innovative vitality
in defense thinking and derogates the lethargy of
conceptual systems and analytical frameworks who
have not actively explored ways to improve their own
ability to produce transformed military
capabilities.
The role and importance of transformation is a
third factor influencing force design alternatives,
through which defense confronts changing
opportunities. In essence, transformation is an
attitude toward assuming a competitive pattern of
decisions to keep up with uncertainties. This need
tends to take precedence over established
competitive advantages creating other dimensions of
effectiveness.
Transformation actions, however, should not
ignore the possible risks and costs of attempting to
create a variety of options and to retain as much
flexibility as possible, disregarding relatively
210
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 211 4/15/2023DRAFT
simple adaptation and modernization rules for coping
with complexity and uncertainty.
Adaptation, modernization and transformation
processes develop simultaneously over time; each one
regulated by different factors and affecting
specific components and relationships of force
design components. Neither the diagnosis of
situations nor the choices of action for dealing
with them are rigidly prescribed and determined by
only one of those three processes. The complexity of
military reforms is in the simultaneity in time and
space of those three processes, combining
tendencies, propensities, and daunting prosficcional
challenges.
Adaptation, modernization and transformation
serve to shape policy maker’s effort to engage in
rational processing to the complexity and
uncertainty that are the characteristic of defense
reforming. Determining which programs should be held
constant for a given period become a difficult
211
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 212 4/15/2023DRAFT
problem because it involves tradeoffs between
immediate needs in adherence to past practices and
focus the effort in those areas where competitive
advantages are promised in the future. The evolving
demand of old and new tasks posed by the threat
environment is not easily followed by military
capabilities.
Defense reforms are, currently, greatly addressed
to correct the lag between new defense objectives
and existing military capabilities. The choice of
adaptation, modernization and transformation demand
tradeoffs that a designer has to make. By its
nature, transformation is destructive, whether in
the form of personnel skills, programs, budgeting
systems or force components. It may require unique,
tailored organizational structure that cut across
traditional defense segments, disrupting
responsibilities and cannibalizing military assets.
Modernization is readily adaptable to existing
tasks, fitting with existing segmentation of force
components and concepts of employment. Adaptation is
relatively well know and predictable facilitating
212
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 213 4/15/2023DRAFT
cost reduction through streamlined procedures that
affords maximum use of existing facilities,
processes and procedures.
It is a matter of policy that the selected force
design alternative reflects an attempt to stay ahead
of demanded defense in adding capabilities; or it
may prefer to lag behind, trading-off present
adaptation possibilities to future transformed
technology. Such choices reflect important aspect of
force design: when capabilities are to be added or
reduced, in conjunction with the sizing of such
changes, and how they are expected to affect defense
overall effectiveness.
Although coexisting in the present, adaptation,
modernization and transformation progress into the
future with different motions and patterns, each
one, simultaneously, affecting and being affected by
changes in the others, in a futurist process of
experimentation that creates its destiny at the same
time it develops its own valuation criteria.
213
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 214 4/15/2023DRAFT
The greater the capability provided in the
projective horizon, the greater the likelihood of
multiple tasks and the ability to faster deployment
requirements without the prejudice of overtime and
the disruption resulting from the need to reschedule
force components; however, unused capability is
expensive. One reason a country might be willing to
incur this cost is that such surplus would make it
possible to respond to unexpected demand surges,
like those of crisis that suddenly appears. The
greater the capability provided in the prospective
horizon, the greater the expectation to match, as
nearly as possible, anticipated demands. This
decision would also build time to develop programs
expected to be fully utilized, for example, in 7
years, if the lead time to develop force components
were five years, them control management might delay
building the new capability for about 2 years. The
greater the capability provided in the prosficcional
horizon, the greater the likelihood of making
potential adversaries find themselves stocked with a
large inventory of obsolete military assets. The
214
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 215 4/15/2023DRAFT
risk of technological obsolesce increases if
capabilities are built before they are needed. This
same conclusion is applied by Hayes R. and
Wheelwright96 for the industrial arena:
“In many industries, major technological advances
occur with shocking suddenness. Although this is
particularly true of industries that depend heavily
on electronics or computer technology, no industry
is immune to such disruption. The technology of
plate glass production, for example, was completely
overturned in the lat 1950s when the float glass
process was introduced by Pilkinton Glass, Ltd., a
relatively small English firm. And the newspaper
industry, whose technology had been relatively
stable for more than 200 years (since Gutenberg,
according to some industry observers), experienced a
series of profound technological changes between
1960 and 1980 that made much of its traditional
production equipment and skills obsolete”.
The decision to adapt, modernize or transform,
accepting or rejecting some alternatives, signals,
96 Hayes R.H. and Wheelwright, S.C. Restoring our Competitive Edge: Competing Through Manufacturing. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1984. pp. 68.
215
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 216 4/15/2023DRAFT
in a fundamental way, the kind of defense is
preferred, being both an input to defense reform
guidelines and an output to confront the continually
changing demands of the security and defense
environment. Although one alternative may be priced
higher than other, or may not offer the highest
efficiency, or the latest technology, they may work
if delivered on time, and the defense systems stands
ready to change its degree of readiness instantly to
ensure that any failure are corrected immediately.
It is up to the defense superintendence decide when
a capability reaches its final stages of usefulness
within a project horizon. It can be a period of
renewal, during which the force components continue
to adapt to lesser demanding tasks or of evolution
through modernization or to a more radical
transformation. Or it can be a period of
degeneration into a downward spiral that ends it the
extinction of useful capabilities for military
purposes, signaling the admission by defense
superintendence that it has failed to develop a
viable long-term set of capabilities and that it is
216
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 217 4/15/2023DRAFT
unwilling to make the investments necessary to turn
it into one.
The importance of considering three simultaneous
time horizons in force design is asseverated when
confronted with the risks of a linear forecasting
(one single forecasting horizon divided into short,
medium and long term). If linear forecast is wrong,
then defense not only may have enough or a shortage
of some capabilities, but also may incur the cost of
unused resources or the risks of not having adequate
capability. Alternatively, if linear forecast is
proved right in the short term, it precludes changes
based on the assumption that it will know exactly
what force components will be demanded and in what
quantities.
However, linear forecasting cannot provide
neither the same speed of response than the
concurring possibilities in simultaneous adaptation,
modernization and transformation, nor prevent
incurring the risk of obsolete inventory and the
cost of unused capital resources. Using three
simultaneous horizons in force design provide the
217
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 218 4/15/2023DRAFT
tradeoffs between the speed of response and the
investment required, helping decide whether to hold
inventories in the projective horizon or provide
additional capabilities in the prospective horizon,
or to gain a transformed differential of
capabilities in the prosficcional horizon.
Consequently, slower response time for capabilities
with less committed investments does not imply
immediately in defense weakness. It may only signal
a decision to the least risk of inefficiency in the
present to the full necessary provision of
additional capability when demands are expected to
grow.
Adaptation, modernization and transformation can
be formidable competitive programmatic alternatives,
and a key to doing that is the development of a
coherent control management within defense
superintendence. It is important to recognize that
defense superintendence is a mean to an end: the
proper management required in order to carry out
policy decisions. The proper mix of adaptation,
modernization and transformation initiatives should
218
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 219 4/15/2023DRAFT
be jointed conceived and directly linked to defense
objectives.
Repeated adaptation, modernization, and
transformation have a cumulative effect on defense
system complexity, and the rapid evolution of
technology quickly renders existing technologies
obsolete. Eventually, the existing force components
become too fragile to modify and too important to
discard. For this reason, force design must consider
adapting, modernizing and transforming these legacy
force components to remain viable. Understanding the
strengths and weaknesses of each possibility is
paramount to select the proper solution and the
overall success of a reformation effort reflected in
at least four two alternatives. An alternative that
competes of the basis of task-force flexibility
emphasizes its ability to handle nonstandard
contingencies. Smaller defense systems often make
this their primary basis for force design. Other
alternatives compete through their ability to juggle
force components to meet demands for simultaneous
tasks.
219
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 220 4/15/2023DRAFT
It is difficult (if not impossible), and
potentially dangerous, to try to offer superior
performance along all dimensions of the diagram of
future simultaneously.
Short-term task-force flexibility simply
readdressing new tasks to existing assets has two
immediate consequences. First, the expected
efficiency is limited because those assets were
usually engineered with other operational
parameters. Second, as a corollary, their
maintenance requirements tend to increase, burdening
the defense budget. However, with decreasing defense
budget (because a Broad Defense concept would
prioritize other governmental areas), the required
increase in appropriations to support those new
maintenance demands would not be provided,
increasing the rate of damaged material. This rate
would burden other assets still operational to
fulfill the existing operational demands for using
the armed forces in the newly created tasks,
increasing the aging rate of material, thus
reinforcing a vicious circle. This is one the
220
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 221 4/15/2023DRAFT
reasons of currently obsolescence and limited
operational readiness of military assets in most
countries: a task obsolescence that induces
exponential aging rate.
Developing countries without a defense industrial
base that could provide indigenously develop
material tailored to its needs face the alternative
of acquiring assets made available by opportunity.
However, rationally, if these materials were made
available, they are usually either at the end of
their life cycle, with higher and costly demands of
maintenance, or task obsolete. On the other hand, a
properly allocate production function makes economy
of scale to arise. Programs derive from many
different elements of total costs and over time most
of the relatively fixed costs of defense are
difficult to change quickly (salary, maintenance,
etc), increasing the volume of production will not
cause costs to increase proportionally.
The cross impacts of these conditions create a
chain of pair-wised force component-tasks
relationship crossing over the tactical domains,
221
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 222 4/15/2023DRAFT
that find their assessment criteria in the demands
posed by defense objectives. Because of tactical
uncertainties, the more force components are
dedicated to perform multiple tasks (divergent
pattern), the more sophisticated and expensive their
technological requirements become in order to
maintain the same level of efficiency across the
range of possible strategies to fulfill evolving
defense objectives.
On the other hand, the alternative of task-
dedicated capability (convergent pattern) may
increase fighting efficiency; however, as capability
gains efficiency it loss flexibility to adapt to
others tasks that may derive from changing political
priorities or an evolving threat environment. Task-
dedicated capabilities increase the problems of
interoperability when military components belonging
to different tasks-dedicated capability category
have to be clustered in response to more complex and
demanding tasks. Interoperability requirements are
based on the assumption that a complex task can be
disaggregated into smaller components. In order to
222
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 223 4/15/2023DRAFT
respond to multiple tasks, more dedicated
capabilities are required, increasing redundancies
and consequently reducing resource allocation
efficiency.
Technology alone – and more specifically,
information technology - however, is not sufficient
to cover all environment-determined elements of
efficiency. It is also necessary to consider the
human factor, which explicates some of the pragmatic
difficulties in determining, under a rational costs
and risks reasoning, required defense capabilities
aiming a desired state of security. Furthermore, it
is also fundamental consider the form and extent of
required jointness effort.
Beniger97 explains that obsolescence emerge in
defense when new technologies create unbalance
operational possibilities and information
processing. He calls this unbalance as Crisis of
Control. Chandler98 provides empirical data for that
hypothesis, when he explains the combined role of
97 Beniger, J. The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society. Cambridge, USA: Cambridge U.P. 1986. pp.87.98 Chandler, A.D. The Visible Hand: the Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambrige, USA: Cambridge U.P. 1977.
223
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 224 4/15/2023DRAFT
railroads and telegraph, in the context of the
Prussian War. These new technologies provided new
possibilities for the mobilization, deployment and
sustainability of huge amounts of personnel and
material, expanding the limits for size the as a
function of the production possibilities of the
State and the socio-demographic structure of the
population. Prussia Defense Reform of 1862 addressed
this changes though universal conscription
(Landwehr) centrally controlled by The Prussian War
Ministry, and the development of a military
organizational structure that could control the new
tempo of operations.
If Chandler data is abstracted and transposed to
the contemporary ambient, the crisis of control
emerges with new technologies influencing the
defense and security environment supported by a
variety of information systems that transforms
operational possibilities. This experience makes it
clear that National Defense Systems are being
transformed; that Hemispheric Countries are emerged
into designing defense alternatives to attend those
224
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 225 4/15/2023DRAFT
new functional capabilities and new forms of
organizations required.
Although the phenomenon is recognizable, its
conceptual and practical treatment is defective,
allowing self-explanatory criteria be deliberated
created to explain others questions that requires
those criteria for its justification. The result is
a non-end circle of empirical generalizations that
do not solve any problem, but are considered a
solution anyhow because it carries the justification
for its own existence.
The problem of justifying technology requirements
is essentially the same as that of deciding upon
requirements for adaptation, modernization and
transformation within force design. After
formulating the problem and establishing assessment
criteria, it is feasible to examine alternatives for
accomplishing objectives, establishing the
anticipated impacts of technology in each element
component of the capability construct, and how each
one will affect the over-all performance of the
system. With this information, it is possible then
225
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 226 4/15/2023DRAFT
to be able to determine the cost of technology and
its associated benefits, determining, given a budget
level, the scope and scale of reform that technology
drives in a specified time-length.
Specifying the scope of defense reforms through
the requisites of adaptation, modernization and
transformation requires a statement of missions,
objectives and its evolving possibilities as decided
in coherence within the cogitare and prospicere
blocks. Such a statement – the defense project - is
necessary not only to prevent direct competition
among defense components but alto to focus the
effort on programs that are likely to enhance
military capabilities. A given defense project might
achieve advantages using one of a variety of
approaches to produce innovation and unique features
or customize force components for selected tasks.
To be effective, such an approach must be
sustainable using the proper allocation of defense
resources taking into account forecasted changes in
the environment to fit selected segments of the
diagram of futures. To be efficient, such a project
226
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 227 4/15/2023DRAFT
must support, through a specific and consistent
pattern of decisions (defense superintendence), the
capabilities being sought, making all subparts of
the defense system maximize its performance either
related to single functions or related to
subfunction to the overall goal of force designing.
That strives for consistency between objectives and
the capabilities being sough within the projective,
prospective and prosficcional horizons.
Force design provides an articulated pattern of
decisions with the primary function of planning and
managing the defense system, putting together the
set of force components that will enable carrying
out the tasks required to attend defense objectives.
Being able to move from the level of specific
decisions about procurement and acquisition to
defense objectives within the security and defense
matrix, and back again, is central to developing and
implementing effective military capabilities. The
notion is that force design can be a competitive
tool for the assemblage and alignment of decisions,
providing a cohesive guide to help defense reforms
227
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 228 4/15/2023DRAFT
to attain a desired competitive advantage within the
projective, prospective and prosficcional horizons.
Clear priorities must be attached to each horizon,
and these priorities will determine how defense
positions itself relative to other state’s
priorities. Specifying and clarifying these
priorities in the first step in force design – the
purpose of the Cogitare block - since the assessment
of whether an integrated project of defense is
appropriated is whether it displays a consistent set
of decisions through the pattern of preferences it
makes over time.
228
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 229 4/15/2023DRAFT
PART 4
A TEMPLATE FOR FORCE DESIGN
Force design framework compiles a complex
inventory of articulated processes aiming an
integrated project of defense. Clearly, no matter
how well crafted and managed these process are,
there is no guarantee that its result are precisely
right, but it can never be afforded to got it very
wrong.
The difficulty of mapping the relationship of
force components shows the need for a template that
better links them together with a functional
purpose. Such a template attempts to develop a
mechanism that allows decisionmaking to be more
closely reflected in defense alternatives.
The likelihood of defense effectiveness,
efficiency, and economy is greatly increased when
the elements presented in the template offered below
229
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 230 4/15/2023DRAFT
are contemplated in the final project presented for
political scrutiny. Its usefulness is in developing
military capabilities across different time periods,
respecting the projective, prospective and
prosficcional circumstances and, therefore, allowing
any resulting defense alternative to adapt to
changing political preferences.
This template is not prescriptive; it is only a
reference, drowned from several force design
experiences currently developed, with emphasis on
that practiced in Canada and developed by the U.S.
Coast Guard. Some countries in the Hemisphere are
still struggling to produce a “defense white paper”
or equivalents “defense policy” or “national
security policy”, with the main goal of gathering
political consensus upon the necessity of an
integrated project of defense. This template
provides a perspective of what comes next.
The final document should provide a framework for
translating government direction into a capable and
efficient set of programs and associated budget that
deliver affordable and capable forces, and
230
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 231 4/15/2023DRAFT
superintendence guidance to align the defense
planning cycle to its intended milestones. The
political nature of this project determines that its
results are limited by its logically necessity99.
Logical necessity derives from the perception of
functional sufficiency. There is not how to validate
the functional sufficiency of a defense project,
since the question of “which components are
sufficient?” is in the same category of “Is it
true”? Therefore, it is necessary to assess the
utility of this template as a function of the
perception of its comprehensiveness for its purpose.
This template is hardly a technique for defense
planning, for such a creation would be impossible.
This template develops a straightforward logic.
It demands a systematic investigation of the problem
and the relevant criteria for deciding among
alternatives that promise to offer a stable
99 Logical necessity does not confound itself with intuitive validity. The former admits the verifications of the necessary outcomes from what it determines, whereas the latter appears from habits and traditions, taking as reference regularities from the past, and do not have the ability to distinguish among valid and not valid outcomes. For further details, see Mitchell, D. An Introduction to Logic. London: Hutchinson University Library, 1962. pp. 155. Although intuition is admitted as a cognitive process in hypothesis formulation, it does not assure possible outcomes. For this specific distinction, see Goodman, N. Fact, Fiction and Forecast. 4 ed. Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press, 1983. pp. 59-83 and pp. 196-8. This is a relevant distinction for the implementation of the template presented in this paper. Although intuition is admitted as a cognitive process admitted in hypothesis formulation, it is not taken as assuredness of possible outcomes.
231
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 232 4/15/2023DRAFT
solution. Identifies alternatives accordingly that
attend the requisites posed in the three
simultaneous horizons – projective, prospective, and
prosficcional - and examines its feasibility.
Compare these alternatives in terms of its cost and
effectiveness, weighting the results against
acceptable levels of uncertainty, for which
assumptions are established to determine its
possible vulnerability. And measure the extent to
which the selected alternative attains the initial
purpose, translating its results in terms of costs
and risks100.
The template offers a description of
deliverables, in terms of its properties and
measures that affects force design, and points out
tradeoffs, benefits, risks and limitations that may
arise in various situations of use. Descriptions are
not meant to be comprehensive - each description
provides enough knowledge to know what questions to
ask in gathering more information. What it seeks is
to lay out the elements of the force design
100 For similar efforts, see, for example, McGin, J. et al. A Framework for Strategy Development. California, USA: Rand, 2002.
232
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 233 4/15/2023DRAFT
framework in a logical and transparent way, in which
defense planning can display options and inherent
tradeoffs between the construct of capabilities
components, debating the merits of competing
choices.
I – COGITARE
This ultimate goal of this section is to provide
a general description and background of the project,
what was anticipated when originally conceived and
quality measures required.
1) Purpose of the project and the reasons for
its development, with an assessment of the
international and regional environment. Describe
commitments with considerations about trends that
might influence future developments and influence
the security and defense environment, including
technological, economic, political and social
aspects. This assessment must be in consonance with
the Defense Policy, expanding and detailing aspects
relevant to force design.
233
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 234 4/15/2023DRAFT
2) Fiscal context. Describe conditioning
factors and critical aspects that might affect the
integrity of the defense programs, including
economic adjustments and additional funding required
for activities where the costs exceed an agreed
level. Portray the estimated total budget for future
years.
3) Military inventory, organizational structure,
defense superintendence procedures, explicating its
relation with military capability. This should
provide a clear audit trail on how military
capabilities achieve objectives; how readiness
requirements are maintained over time in face of
different concept of employment; and how demands for
operational tempo attend the most likely tasks.
4) Defense mission, objectives, and tasks.
Defines the nature and scope of the Ministry of
Defense responsibilities, the results it expects to
achieve, and the monitoring and reporting
requirements through which it will answer for the
authority vested in it. Anticipate changes in
mission, objectives and tasks in reaction to changes
234
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 235 4/15/2023DRAFT
in the position of the country in the security and
defense matrix.
5) Consolidated defense challenges, with the
justification of the the reasons for a new project,
explaining why evolutionary adjustments in current
project (through adaptation, modernization, or
transformation) cannot attend those challenges:
detail vulnerable assumptions (parametric events of
former project).
II – PROSPICERE
The final goal of this section is to provide a
general description and brief background of
designing scenarios, recognizing that scenario is
right for every situation, and each scenario has
associated costs (monetary and otherwise).
1) Strategic vision and selected scenarios for
the projective, prospective and prosficcional
horizons with the statement of its assumptions and
considered time horizon. These scenarios span the
spectrum of conflict and describe operations
representative of those anticipated.
235
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 236 4/15/2023DRAFT
2) Nature of operations, envisioned
commitments or far-flung operations that would
required the use of force with the description of
associated topological environments. Requirements
for readiness, sustainability, and deployability
will be derived from the scenarios in conjunction
with military objectives and tasks.
3) Description of anticipated ways the
scenarios might evolve and expected changes in the
nature of operations.
III – RENOVATIO
This section provides information and critical
assets that should be incorporate, systems that must
be updated continuously to reflect evolving
superintendence practices.
1) Concepts of employment and associated
operational tempo within each project horizon.
Linking guidance and attainable goals that should be
completed within the project horizons.
2) Changing guidelines. Sets objectives that
direct defense adaptation, modernization and
236
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 237 4/15/2023DRAFT
transformation within the project horizons, and
assign responsibilities These changing guidelines
will direct decision-making across the whole range
of defense endeavors, orienting the harmonic
evolution of defense reform along the three
horizons, and instructing the derivation of
capabilities and programming with corporate
priorities and superintendence requirements.
3) Required capabilities and associated major
programs with associated performance indicators.
Major programs must reflect the attainability of
defense objectives and contain assigned leader
management service and accountabilities
responsibilities. Program description must include
component projects and its relationship, and
associated fiscal costs (current and future).
4) Force structure. It includes the
specification of all assets (combat, combat support
and combat service support units, all naval
combatant ships, and airforce fighter, maritime
patrol, maritime and tactical helicopter, and
transport squadrons, police and cost guard, etc),
237
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 238 4/15/2023DRAFT
tied to readiness requirements and weighted against
the formation of units or/and re-deployment of
military assets. Military assets earmarked for
disposal. Personnel annual adjustments and
distribution priorities to balance current and
future operational effectiveness, and distinctive
required competencies. Numbers of personnel, by
occupation and rank, required to meet operational
requirements; recruiting, education, training, and
career management in order to sustain and renew the
skills and knowledge base. This includes the
established colleges, schools, and operational
training units.
5) Procurement Priorities. Procurement
Priorities provide guidelines linked to readiness
levels and expected operational tempo. It is not
expected that any capability will be lost or become
unavailable in any quantity for prolonged periods
due to the application of these priorities.
Procurement Priorities are designed to facilitate
services resource leveling, and the effective
apportionment of scarce resources. The underlying
238
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 239 4/15/2023DRAFT
principle should be of cost-effectiveness and
utility (the ability to serve multiple functions and
critical tasks in practice).
6) Balance. Refers to the overall resources
deemed necessary, indicating the relative relevance
of projects and its relationships with demands of
adaptation, modernization, or transformation.
Results of sensitivity analysis with elements for
judging priorities and relative importance. Programs
are placed on a schedule, and the schedule is
compared to the fiscal possibilities, sequencing
fiscal years.
7) Macro planned resource allocations and
Milestone. Indicate significant defense spending (in
capital equipment, construction, procurement,
miscellaneous requirements, contributions to
pensions and other personnel benefit plans, etc.)
associated with a milestone providing guidelines to
generate, support, and maintain the forces required
to meet assigned tasks.
239
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 240 4/15/2023DRAFT
8) Resource allocation priorities and
accountability structure. This are elements against
which reports and accounts for the resources
received and results achieved will be provided
(internally as well as externally to control and
oversight agencies and Congress). Provide
instructions and restrictions for transferring
capital funds and establishes priorities for the
funding approval and details on the budget
adjustments.
9) Superintendence requirements. This are
fundamental elements to develop, implement and
maintain force design process and technical
architectures required to provide the framework
necessary for advancing programming and budgeting,
including the manner it is to be progressively
employed as an enabler in support of operational
functions. Collectively these architectures,
together with the associated standards, are
essential for the effective acquisition, integration
and management of processes within a framework of
240
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 241 4/15/2023DRAFT
reformation to meet defense requirements for the
present and into the future
10) Performance indicators and Risk Assessment.
Performance indicators are the reference through
which defense superintendence will monitor
performance against assigned tasks. Assessment
criteria with precise measure and control mechanisms
will permit the establishment of trends and provide
senior management the opportunity to provide
steerage. Measures and indicators should include:
Sustainability of operational Forces; Leadership,
Professionalism & Values; Resource Management; and
Contribution to national growth and social
development. Risk Assessment indicate consequences
whether portions of programs are not adequately
resourced attributable to project delays, unexpended
funds, account imbalances due to historical trends,
overestimation, as well as a variety of external
factors affecting revenue and timely expenditure.
Recommendations for changes to readiness levels and
the resulting effect on sustainment.
241
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 242 4/15/2023DRAFT
The code for gluing together all these elements
is a coherent conceptual system and its articulating
logic. An adequate design in the final product
reflects an adequate code in the process of creating
it. However difficult may be the attempt,
rationality and prudence demand that the effort be
made.
Pre prevailing viewpoint in the above discussion
is that the cornerstone of force design is a
critical assessment of an appropriate measure of
requirements for adapting, modernizing and
transforming the defense system. On this view, force
design is essentially concerned with a decision
process with a twofold purpose: to provide necessary
information for a well-informed decision, and to
present this information in a concise and
intelligible form.
242
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 243 4/15/2023DRAFT
PART 5
APPLYING THE FRAMEWORK
Looking across countries’ defense alternatives
within the framework helps to identify strategic
decisions and trends. To indicate this trend, this
section explores force design concptual system
(construct of capabilities and framework) to
differentiate Argentina, Chile, and Brazil military
reforms; and attempts to consolidate the problems
confronting Western Countries’ defense
superintendence.
Argentina, currently, focus on adaptation,
endeavoring to maximize efficiency with the
implementation of a planning, programming and
budgeting system within actual resources constrains.
Its emphasis on peace operations and its changes in
operational structures explore the enacting factors
to generate required capabilities, in response to
243
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 244 4/15/2023DRAFT
new tasks posed by redefined defense objectives,
without significant changes in military assets. This
analysis provides the conclusion that Argentina is
willing to accept higher risks to its defense
objectives, assuming the maintenance of the
projective horizon for an extended period. Its
defense policy is clearly oriented to support this
goal, being dedicated to create confidence-building
measures with Chile and Brazil.
Chile and Brazil, currently, defense reforms
processes focuses on capabilities that could provide
continuous territorial presence and borders control,
assuring a degree of success in deterring and
protecting their countries. Both assume a large
prospective horizon where events could activate
threats currently dormant. Chile’s concerns are,
primarily, events that might change its relation
with Peru and Argentina or impact in its objectives
regarding the control of its National Air Space and
Oceanic Territory (Mar Chileno – Chilean Sea)101.
While Brazil’s concerns are, primarily, with a
101 Chile. Libro de La Defensa Nacional de Chile. pp.89,114,119.
244
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 245 4/15/2023DRAFT
coalition that would threat either the Amazon area
or the its maritime flow of petrol and goods.
Brazil military reforms lend towards adaptation,
as an effect of its position in the inferior part of
the matrix of security and defense, echoing an
understanding (more traditional than rational)
initiated in its Escola Superior de Guerra (Superior
War College)102.
For Brazil, the current security environment do
not impose major changes in its defense objectives,
producing scenarios that emphasizes the continuously
validity of past practices. Brazil’s Ministry of
Defense faces a challenge in information management.
It still do not have a clearly defined force design
framework (reminding that force design finds its
purpose and instrumental functionality at defense
ministry level), but rather services force planning
methodologies, with results integrated (with some
difficulty and not explicitly defined criteria),
resulting in a tendency to stovepipe capabilities as
an effect of Service initiatives in providing its
102
245
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 246 4/15/2023DRAFT
own force structure requirements. Jointness and
interoperability, although recognized as a
requirement, does not found support in a coherent
doctrine, and readiness requirements present a
conflict between operational and structural demands
because of the absence of an integrated concept of
employment: the Brazilian Army founds its designing
reference in a concept of employment that privileges
the Amazon area, whereas the Brazilian Navy holds
traditional missions in the South Atlantic.
The declaratory policy orienting the defense
reform process in Chile, although impulsed by
jointness requirements and interoperability at force
component levels and concept of employment, is
inertialized by service doctrines that still holds
its Navy, Army and Air Force looking for independent
actions. Going beyond Chile example, hemispheric
military systems are built around the services,
which are the depository of traditions and expertise
in matters ranging from doctrine formulation and
technical specifications. Not surprisingly,
246
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 247 4/15/2023DRAFT
modernization becomes accomplished within the
separated services.
Transformation, in most countries and
particularly in the US, has become an umbrella
rubric used for many reform-related activities. The
jury is still out on determining what exactly it
means and a good deal of groundwork has to be laid
before it could be agreed that a quintessentially
transformation action is gaining momentum. The US
has had a lengthy action on adaptation to new tasks,
revising its doctrine and organizational structure.
It has also attacked problems from a modernization
perspective, with the exploitation of state-of-the-
art technology; but truly innovative thinking about
defense alternatives has yet to be demonstrated.
Albeit some efforts toward adaptative joint command
and control associated with rapid decisive
operations based on joint strike force concepts
against critical mobile targets has been developed,
the US defense system has not yet pointed out
related changes in program categories, measures of
effectiveness to its department’s routinezed
247
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 248 4/15/2023DRAFT
planning, programming, and budgeting system that
could make those efforts more than rhetorical
efforts.
Transformation is still a work in progress in the
US, with priorities clearly allocated to identify
how the Department of Defense might improve
leadership and department oversight in services and
joint organizations. The results might transcend
current force configurations and increase reliance
of information dominance, featuring smaller, leaner
and intelligent weapons systems.
The American expression of defense planning is
widely known by its acronym PPBS, for Planning,
Programming, and Budgeting System the Planning. This
system is initiated with a Defense Planning Guidance
published by the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
which translate the National Military Strategy
prepared by the Joint Staff in reference to the
National Security Strategy led by the National
Security Council through an interagency process.
Proposed programs by the services and defense
agencies, to attend those planning guidance in
248
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 249 4/15/2023DRAFT
observance to fiscal guidance allotted separately
the Office of the Secretary of Defense, are
evaluated and adjusted to ensure compliance with the
strategic directions and other policy documents
creating the Future Years Defense Program. The
services and defense agencies repackage the first
two years of the Future Years Defense Programs into
appropriations format used by the Congress in
legislating the annual defense budget.
These processes, in the US case,. The PPBS has
served American needs since 1961, being installed by
former Defense Secretary Robert S. MacNamara and his
Defense Comptroller, Charles J. Hitch. Its
functional logic has the merit of providing
credible, managerial system during the relative
stable period of the Cold War. However, its
foundational concepts and articulating logic has
become complex and bureaucratic, resulting in lack
of clear rationality for the increasingly
undisciplined relationships of its components
parts103. 103 For a detailed discussion of how the U.S. Department of Defense develops military capabilities, see Kent, A.G. and Thaler, D.E. A New Concept for Streamlining Up-Front Planning. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, MR-271, 1993. Thaler, D.E. Strategies to Tasks: A Framework for Linking Means to
249
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 250 4/15/2023DRAFT
Henry Mintzberg concludes that PPBS "proved to be
an impediment to effective strategic thinking and
action, whether one favored hawkish military
strategies or dovish political ones"104. Although
the PPBS has become complex and cumbersome, with
countless critics claiming for its revision,
including Secretary of Defense Donald S. Rusfeld, as
he stated in January 2002 at the National Defense
University:
“The way the Department of Defense runs, the
budgeting system, the planning system is, broken. It
is not serving the department or the country well.
And yet it is inexorable. It just rolls along, like
the freight train coming from San Francisco with the
wrong things for New York. And there are plenty of
people who look at it and don't know it's wrong. I
sat in meeting after meeting, and people said,
"Well, that's the way we do it. This is how it
works. This is what it is." And, "Don't you
understand that the only way to affect that is to
Ends. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, MR-300-AF, 1993. kauffmann, W.N. Assessing the Base Force: How Much is Enough. Washington, DC. EUA: Brookings Institution, 1992.104 Henry Mintzberg, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. New York: The Free Press, 1994. pp. 120.
250
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 251 4/15/2023DRAFT
reach back 2-1/2 years ago and load it properly?"
And of course my answer is, "Don't you understand we
didn't have -- we don't have 2-1/2 years to wait to
change? We need to get at it" 105.
Being able to move from the level of
methodologies and techniques is central to
developing and implementing effective military
capabilities. Albeit, it is surprising to discover
hemispheric countries endeavoring to emulate the
PPBS model in theirs defense superintendence
process. The model, for the US, albeit critics, has
its validity and utility, existing good reasons to
believe that it can be made to work effectively;
however, copying the model, with only a cursory
description of its general purpose and objectives is
doomed to fail, unless officials and senior defense
civil servants recognize the centrality of force
design in superintending defense, and its intricacy
with the organizational structure that supports its
development and evaluation.
105 Secretary Rumsfeld Speaks on "21st Century Transformation" of U.S. Armed Forces”. (transcript of remarks and question and answer period). National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., Thursday, January 31, 2002. http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2002/s20020131-secdef.html. (Jun 2002).
251
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 252 4/15/2023DRAFT
It is difficult to overemphasize the uniqueness
of each country force design and associated
problems. There is relatively little systematic
research on the nature and consequences of these
problems, forcing, therefore, analysis to rely
largely upon impressionistic data in order to
discuss their importance. With this qualification in
mind, it is possible to consider the following list
of problems and issues found – although in different
degrees and shapes – in 14 hemispheric countries
analyzed106:
Reluctance in re-evaluate management
practices and resistance to force design, fearing a
transfer of power within the Ministry of Defense
from the services to the Minister and his force
designing staff, failing to effectively reshape the
military to meet future demands, whereas supporting
the existence of a culture that accepts redundancy
as synonym of security rather than inefficiency.
106 The countries were Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republica, United States, Canada and Mexico. The data for this list was collected over one a half year in the Center of Hemispheric Defense Studies, with fellow students. The rules of no-attribution preclude mentioning specific sources. However, the registers are consistent with most of the ostensive literature, providing valid examples, and a useful reference for further research. The data is also consistent with the U.S. experience of the past decades, suggesting that most countries are manifesting similar problems and that they could profit from the U.S. lessons learned.
252
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 253 4/15/2023DRAFT
Official documentation on defense
superintendence and force design divergent from
actual management, planning, programming and
budgeting actions and routines, with a tendency of
budgeting followed by capabilities requirements
followed by defense policies, essentially reversing
the logic of force design.
Major decisions on force structure not
adequately identified with force design results and
defense acquisition systems focusing on a wide range
of relative near term, unconnected issues, rather
than specific outcomes related with decisions on
adaptation, modernization, and transformation linked
requirements.
Absence or inadequate criteria and organized
procedure for integrating and assessing programs,
translating its result into a budget that reflects
capability requirements, with a tradition of secrecy
preventing defense programs being criticized in open
forums.
253
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 254 4/15/2023DRAFT
Defense budget profile reflects appropriation
cycles, institutional determinants and spending
patterns, rather then defense capability
requirements to attend national objectives,
resulting in a sterile endeavor for bureaucratic
efficiency focusing on accounting procedures.
Existence of relatively inter-service
secretive bargaining manners to adjust the budget
before submission, with frantically attempt to
establish a “pre-approved” package in order to not
compromise services’ resource pre-allocated, with
consensus found in advocating more funds rather that
program reductions.
Vague or incomplete criteria for distributing
funding levels to the services, and imperfect
criteria for effective resource allocation, allowing
services make procurement choices that they believe
best satisfy their needs, resulting in military
capabilities either inappropriate for the defense
environment, inconsistent with the national
interpretation of security demands, or incompatible
with foreign policy demands.
254
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 255 4/15/2023DRAFT
Defense budgets unrelated to concepts of
employment, with the latter dissociated from
requirements of defense infrastructure, logistical
support, and maintenance, producing major
limitations for force components to produce useful
outputs as capabilities.
Capabilities evaluation seemed less an effort
to determine current abilities to perform envisaged
task, than a means to justify current and
anticipated force structure. In this context,
readiness is not evaluated because of the absence of
guidance on what tasks force components were
supposed to be integrating to produce a valuable
capability, concurring to breaking down rational
linkages between current force structure and future
capability requirements.
Defense superintendence operates semi-
autonomously from national security decision-making,
failing to shape defense priorities thoughtful
debates on issues that affect national defense
capabilities.
255
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 256 4/15/2023DRAFT
Defense budgets derived from a predetermined,
arbitrary ceiling rather than integrated programs
requirements, creating resistance to revisiting
prior decisions, and making only marginal
adjustments from an existing base, resulting in the
absence of flexibility for military preparation.
Programs priority are decided by compromise
rather than based on explicit criteria of capability
requirements and analytical tools, resulting in a
not fully integrated and balanced conjunct of
defense programs, with vested interests of defense
industry and services parochialism.
Lack of procedural discipline among officials
and defense civil servants in the daily activities
of defense superintendence, the absence of overall
organizing logic for force design and relative
indifference of senior national leaders with
security and defense risks associated with this
situation, other than those immediately and
explicitly related to fiscal resources.
256
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 257 4/15/2023DRAFT
Force design purpose and functional
instrumentality atrophied with delayed decisions on
the position of the country in the security and
defense matrix, vague defense objectives that do not
serve as gauge against capabilities could be
derived, and tendency to lack of specificity and
delay in program developments.
Failure to adjust military and defense civil
servants education to overall demands of force
design and defense superintendence, perpetuating
many earlier defense customs force design is
intended to eliminate, creating a vicious circle
that deprives countries of needed efficiency,
efficacy and economy in designing force alternatives
and superintending its development, management and
assessment.
There are unknown conditions under which Western
Hemispheric Countries make their defense reforms
decisions. Although at different levels, the
complexity of decision-making is intensifying the
257
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 258 4/15/2023DRAFT
demands for adopting force design practices and
concepts in the formulation of defense alternatives.
Generalizations from these findings must be made
cautiously, however, if allowed to persist, these
conditions would degrade armed forces’ ability to
defend their countries. Thus, as indicators, they
serve to convey the growing requirements for care in
the process of designing defense alternatives,
acting as a reminder of certain points already made:
major changes occurred in the security and defense
environment have intensified the sophistication
required for concepts dealing with forecasting; the
optimal allocation of resources depend on how the
problem is defined; decomposing capabilities,
programming and budgeting become intertwined
demanding timely decision; and the need for
ingenuity in hedging decision on adaptation,
modernization and transformation has grown over.
These aspects stress complementarities in
designing capabilities and the need of determining
how variations in the specifications of a particular
defense alternative affect the requirements of that
258
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 259 4/15/2023DRAFT
alternative for resources. The scope of the
discussion indicates the necessity of a guide for
allocating efforts to provide the kind of
information needed to be made available for
decision-makers.
259
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 260 4/15/2023DRAFT
FORCE DESIGN AS AREA OF STUDY
Throughout this paper, it was argued that force
design must take a proactive role in defining
military capabilities that are to be pursued with
defense reforms. It must communicate clearly to the
decision makers the constraints it operates under,
the abilities it can exploit within the three
simultaneous horizons (projective, prospective and
prosficcional), and the options available to it
(adaptation, modernization, and transformation). And
it seek collaborative relationships with other state
functions. While seemingly complicated, force design
can be a useful decisionmaking tool for developing
an articulated system of concepts exploiting
rationality to produce coherent defense alternatives
that could be judged with a political logic.
The focus of force design is defense reform,
eliciting that defense reform is not an end in
260
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 261 4/15/2023DRAFT
itself, but rather an action needed for reasons of
both opportunity and necessity. The complex
possibilities of arranging force components in a
stable capability solution offered to a perceived
problem are the challenges force design faces as an
area of study. The objects of its study are the
components and processes involved in the design of
military capabilities, the assumptions that supports
conclusions and its sensibility to changes in these
assumptions.
As result, a system of concepts and procedures
that makes useful those concepts in its own terms
are distilled, and made available to support
organizational reforms, to foster methodological
changes, and for the reconsideration of current and
future capability requirements. Theoretical concepts
and practical actions are mutually complementary in
the goal of producing a system of articulated
decisions aiming the conception and justification of
defense alternatives.
Force design is an area of study and field of
practical action delved into a complex of practices
261
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 262 4/15/2023DRAFT
and academic disciplines that interface with defense
issues. Military history, Defense Economics;
International Relations; Management and
Organization; Political Science; Military Sociology;
Operational Analysis – to mention just a few – are
part of this complex.
Force Design functionally adapts concepts derived
from these areas, whereas creating its own concepts,
integrating all of them in a theoretical construct
with its own hypothesis and methodologies. The
resulting theoretical construct configures an inter-
related nexus of propositions aiming to:
a) Research the field of force design and
instruct the search for solutions for the perceived
problems. A precise object of investigation helps
the identification of what is relevant to observe
and instructs the gathering of information. The
conceptual components of the theoretical construct
offer elements for developing plausible hypothesis
related to a set of accepted values and principles.
262
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 263 4/15/2023DRAFT
b) Assess those solutions found. The
assessment processes aim to identify the coherency
and the degree of relevance of the proposed solution
to the perceive problem, forked into two
complementary approaches: a theoretical approach
that research the logical consistency of the
proposed solution; and an empirical approach, when
it exams the consistency of the theoretical model
with the observed reality.
c) Contribute to clearly communicate
results. The efficacy of communication of force
design results derives from a clearly defined set of
terms.
What is important is the basic point that
deciding about defense issues cannot preclude a
solid theoretical base. Notwithstanding this
evidence, it is usual to have defense reforms
initiatives drowned by intuition into the diversity
and complexities of force design.
263
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 264 4/15/2023DRAFT
Force design results – an articulated project of
defense - is a political issue. It express the
declaratory posture of the States 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 it were, the State’s
willingness to apply force to assure its protection.
It this role, Force Design is servant of foreign
policy, carrying out messages that may range from a
vague statement towards peace to a firm commitment
to war. Moreover, Force Design may contribute to
internal politics, placating demands though a
declaration of intentions.
The two overarching roles of force design – to
guide the conception of defense capabilities and its
intended use, and to be a political instrument of
the State - are always linked. The former relates to
the necessity of classify and systematized before
foreseen and deciding about defense alternatives;
the latter refers to the disputed and uncertain
cross impacts of interests and perspectives aiming
an accord where alternatives get its purpose and
264
Salvador Raza\\RLH Comments Page 265 4/15/2023DRAFT
toward what its results are oriented for. In the one
hierarchy and order is expected; in the other, self-
esteem to exercise independent decision is jealously
preserved from all authority.
These two tendencies are far from conflicting;
they are mutually supportive. Systematic ordeal
independence of decision, forcing politics to
explicit a stable goal force design needs to fulfill
its tasks; and force design prepares a field where
policy affords to exercise its guidance. Once a
project of defense is selected and empowered as
policy, it is considered as the source of almost all
guidance to conceive defense functions, roles and
missions, instruct its organizations, and explain
the limits of validity of roles, missions and
organizations as a function of changes in defense
functions resulting from differences in the security
ambient.
Because the results of force design – an
integrated project of defense – is so portentous,
this is an endeavor that must be guided wisely. The
construct of capabilities, the diagram of futures
265