Joint Capability Experimentation
Abstract
The FY 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) included as one of the Chairman’s responsibilities to address experimentation on future concepts and the National Defense Strategy Implementation Guidance directs that rigorous experimentation take place on concepts to ensure Department investments adequately address future requirements as well as those of today. Accordingly, the Joint Staff requires an experimentation capability to analyze and validate priority joint concept required capabilities. The Joint Staff will lead, plan, and execute the Global Integrated Wargame (GIWG) 23 events to examine the Joint Warfighting Concept (JWC) 3.0 operational logic and identified gaps to support delivery of an evaluated concept to the Secretary of Defense. Concept analysis and validation will have a multi-faceted nature to meet the Chairman’s Title 10 responsibility of, “identifying new joint military capabilities based on advances in technology and concepts of operation, and recommending investments and experiments in such capabilities.” Wargames will assess baseline mission and campaign level outcomes of the concepts as well as identify a tradespace of potential new capabilities. This tradespace of capabilities is further explored with quantitative models and software that identify the most efficient cost and capability tradeoffs to help meet the Title 10 responsibility of “advising the Secretary on new and alternative joint military capabilities, and alternative program recommendations and budget proposals, within projected resource levels.” The National Defense Strategy directs “early design tradeoffs in the requirements process to increase the speed of delivery.” The Joint Staff approach to tradespace exploration follows that guidance by providing a cost conscious and operationally relevant prioritization tradeoff technique early in the portfolio design process. Using this rigorous prioritization approach, the capability development cycle can efficiently focus resources on more detailed experimentation of specific capabilities to inform the requirements process. The analysis from the experimentation program will be used to provide foundational evidence to directly inform the Joint Military Net Assessment (JMNA), the Chairman’s Program Recommendation (CPR), and ultimately the Defense Planning Guidance for Joint Force development.
Document Details
- Document Type
- R2 Budgetary Justification
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2025
- Source ID
- 0603829J_6_0400_PB_2025
- Change Summary Explanation
- Adjustment to comply with the Department's economic assumptions. Small reduction to Research and Development contracts.
- Service Agency Name
- The Joint Staff
Entities
Organizations
- Joint Chiefs of Staff
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