Game-Structured Analysis as a Framework for Defense Planning,
Abstract
This paper is the outgrowth of an invited speech to the German Strategy Forum in Bonn-Bad Godesberg, West Germany, on December 3, 1984. It is addressed to those who are already inclined to believe in the desirability, importance, and feasibility of conventional defense for NATO. The debate about NATO's defense options has changed little in more than twenty years, with even less convergence of views. This nonconvergence has its principal origins in politics, economics, and the sociology of democracies, but the problem has been exacerbated by the absence of a coherent analytic framework within which to force issues toward resolution. Fortunately, the environment is now changing and the prospect exists for a more enlightened approach that would regularly bring together military officers, historians, technologists, and quantitative analysts--both those concerned primarily with simple models and resource issues and those concerned primarily with the phenomena of warfare and simulation models. The improved environment includes increased interest in analytic realism, operational relevance, combined-arms planning, and in actually solving military problems. With this background, then, the major point of this paper is that defense planning in the new environment should increasingly make use of conceptual structures akin to global political-military war gaming.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1985
- Accession Number
- ADA156731
Entities
People
- P. K. Davis
Organizations
- RAND Corporation