Supporting Effects-Based Operations with Information Technology Tools: Examining Underlying Assumptions of EBO Tool Development Practices
Abstract
Throughout the course of history, great leaps in progress and understanding have been facilitated through the questioning of basic assumptions. In an effort to uncover critical opportunities and vulnerabilities within effect-based operations (EBO), similar questions must be posed to our current assumptions underlying EBO tool development practices. Required for these assumptions to be examined is a shared understanding of strategy formulation as an intensely human process. The breadth of approaches used in recent years to help commanders formulate effects-based courses of action (CoA) is quite diverse including expert systems, Bayesian networks, and scenario analysis. All of these approaches represent best guess assumptions of how to codify aspects of the strategy development process, often with out regard for the principles of automation. The adverse unintended consequences made possible from this neglect are wide ranging, including the potential to inadvertently foster convergent vs. divergent thinking, conditioning commanders and policy makers to accept a dangerously limited view as an accurate model of real world threats. Imperative to avoiding this conceivable eventuality is a strategic perspective on EBO tool development practices. Identified in this paper are four major paradigms or schools of thought of strategic decision support: autonomous, directive, predictive, and emergent. The proposed paradigms are offered to illustrate how recent EBO tool development approaches may be classified and subsequently characterized based upon their inherent gravitation to a particular decision support paradigm.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA466810
Entities
People
- Thomas Triscari
- William J. Wales
Organizations
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute