Capability Disillusionment

Abstract

At the turn of this century, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld identified a problem with DoD's system of developing and delivering joint warfighting capabilities: There wasn t one. The Services were generating requirements for weapon systems and programs they wanted, but the combatant commanders (who, under federal law, are actually authorized to command multiple Service forces in military operations) had no voice. The system that emerged to correct this deficiency was called the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS). As DoD policy, JCIDS has certainly helped to correctly align the requirements-generation process with the way the military actually fights as a joint force. But JCIDS is more than policy; it is also an analytical process. The inventors of JCIDS, in effect, asserted a theory of requirements development and acquisition that has come to be known generally as capabilities-based analysis. The problem is that capabilities-based reality has never quite lived up to capabilities-based theory.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 2011
Accession Number
ADA564398

Entities

People

  • Michael F. Cochrane

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Agile Software Development
  • Application Software
  • Best Practices
  • Combatant Commanders
  • Command And Control
  • Communication Networks
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Gap Analysis
  • Information Operations
  • Military Acquisition
  • Military Operations
  • Operations Research
  • Software Development
  • Standards
  • Weapon Systems

Readers

  • Joint Military Operations and Doctrine.
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.