Alternative Futures and Army Force Planning. Implications for the Future Force Era
Abstract
Predicting the future is almost always fraught with uncertainty. However, Army force developers working to plan a force capable of meeting the challenges of the 2025 timeframe (the Future Force era) face more uncertainty than most. Today's world, especially in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war, exhibits a level of dynamism and change not seen during the comparatively static decades of the Cold War-times when the drivers of U.S. security policy were relatively fixed and their demands upon the Army easily identified. This study has attempted to help the Army deal with the task of long-term force planning by using the tool of alternative futures analysis. Rather than positing a single point estimate of the 2025 future and trying to defend it, we chose to help the Army bound the future by laying out a representative spectrum of different "future worlds" in the hope that they would illustrate the complete universe of future missions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA433039
Entities
People
- Brian Nichiporuk
Organizations
- RAND Corporation