The past is done. Finished. The future does not exist. It must be created microsecond by microsecond by every living being and thing in the universe.
--Edward Teller
The Air University-hosted study 2025 is only one of several Air Force or joint long-range planning efforts currently under way.1 Gen Ronald J. Fogleman, Air Force chief of staff, initiated these study efforts to accomplish several objectives. One of his objectives is to improve long-range planning in the Air Force. Another, more concrete, objective is to discover high-leverage concepts and technologies the Air Force should pursue to ensure the US maintains the dominant air and space forces in the future.2 Even though the second objective explains some of the rationale for conducting long-range planning, the question remains, why does the Air Force need to improve long-range planning? This appendix seeks to answer that question. Additionally, it explains the linkage and differences between two of the current long-range planning projects: 2025 and efforts of the special assistant to the chief of staff for long-range planning (AF/LR).
Strategic planning is the process of looking for shapes in the fog. It is the process of transforming a leader's vision. Vision conditions planning, and planning improves a leader's insight into the most appropriate vision for the organization. Planning transforms vision into those activities that enable the organization to fulfill its central strategic purpose effectively, efficiently, and creatively. Strategic planning evaluates alternatives, seizes opportunities, preserves the organization's vitality, and helps the organization act with unity of purpose even while the environment changes. Strategic planning succeeds best in those organizations where it is an integrated process and where the chief executive officer and the chief operating officer are its champions. Strategic planning fails where there is no corporate vision, where it is not integrated with other forms of planning, where the chief executive officer and the chief operating officer are not its champions, or where the process of envisioning is not systematized or institutionalized.
Strategic planning is long-range planning.3 It focuses on what may be possible. The planning horizon for strategic planning extends far into the future and beyond the organization's investment and capitalization program. Strategic planning conditions an organization's present behavior in light of the future challenges and opportunities. The challenges strategic planning faces include uncertainty regarding the actual future environment, the constraints imposed by existing plans and programs, the conflicting priorities caused by the urgent need to address present problems and deficiencies, and the changes in corporate leadership that can be expected to occur over time. The interaction of existing creative thinking and analytical techniques, a multidisciplinary approach to planning, and continuous improvements in information technology and automated computational capability can reduce some planning uncertainties. Long-range envisioning and awareness of the effect present plans and programs have on future alternatives can mitigate some of the undesirable effects of existing constraints. Making strategic planning systematic and part of the organization can help organizational unity of purpose and continuity of behavior even as corporate leadership changes.
The opportunities that strategic planning provides include increased awareness of the future consequences of present behavior, the ability to see emerging alternatives and seize opportunities, and the ability of the organization to preserve its vitality by increasing its institutional mental agility in coping with environmental changes. Strategic planning does not eliminate the possibility of surprise or dramatic environmental changes; it does, however, diminish the destructive consequences of surprise. Having envisioned a variety of possible future environments, the organization is able to adapt rapidly to the effects of dramatic changes already creatively foreseen and deliberately assessed. Strategic planning expertise also helps foster the mental agility necessary for adapting rapidly to unforeseen changes. In organizations like the Air Force, where rapid technological change must be assimilated effectively and efficiently, strategic planning helps discover technological opportunities relevant to the organization's central strategic purpose.
Martin Libicki of the National Defense University presents several reasons for planning. He observes that "a fundamental tenet of decision-making is to postpone all decisions until the cost of delay in reducing options exceeds the benefit of greater information." In other words, "there are certain long-term processes that are affected by current events" and so decisions affecting those processes cannot be delayed. These include processes with very long lead times, path-dependent processes, and processes with long tails.4 An example of a long-lead-time process is a research and development effort. A path-dependent process might be the selection of a programming language for a computer project which becomes the standard for several follow-on activities. A process with a long tail would be retaining expensive capital equipment and the supporting infrastructure, such as a ship-building project not really needed for its own sake but needed to retain ship-building capability. Planners should identify which of these processes is involved in the strategic planning effort because that insight determines which questions need answers and thus what level of forecasting should be accomplished.5
The most important function of long-range planning is forecasting to produce informed technology decisions about long-lead R&D efforts (e.g., should an advanced fighter be pursued?). Less important is forecasting to inform program acquisition decisions (e.g., which of two advanced fighter variants to develop?) because the focus there is more medium-term. Finally, the least important application of long-range planning is forecasting to determine capital retention decisions (e.g., how many fighter wings to retain?) because the focus is more near-term.6
How is 2025 Different from Today?
People often remark how things today do not really seem too different from 30 years ago.7 People in 2025 will likely repeat the same thing about 1996 being similar in many ways to 2025. This phenomenon occurs because people tend to use common points of reference to compare the present to the past. In other words, many things 30 years from now will be much like they are today. But just as 1996 is very different in many ways from 1966, so 2025 will be very different from today. For instance, in 1966 man had not landed on the moon, computers weighing tons still took engineers to operate, a bipolar world existed, and there was a draft for US military service.
The future will be a product of what exists today, modified by trends extended, trends retarded, countertrends, and surprises. "Poor futurists think of the future as the present; mediocre ones take existing trends and extend them." Few take trends retarded, countertrends, and surprises into account, but they should.8 The Alternate Futures team took all five of these influences into account in creating the alternate futures for 2025. By spending months exploring with futurists, science-fiction writers, technologists, and senior leaders, the Alternate Futures team developed an appreciation for all of the influences that could affect the future. An important step in the alternate futures development was the incorporation of "wild cards" to consider the potential consequences of possible surprises.9 Later, this appendix discusses specific wild cards and their potential impact on the future. Appendix B discusses some of the trends considered by the Alternate Futures team.
Different Models, Different Features
A number of different models are possible for long-range strategic planning, each one incorporating different features. No attempt is made here to provide fully developed models. Rather, the discussion of different models focuses on the key features that could be incorporated. Models for strategic planning are either centralized or distributed, with possible variations. Each model must meet the norms required for effective long-range strategic planning. The model should identify the principal decision maker(s) and describe how the decision maker is served, show the interfaces and correspondence between and among planners at each level, and describe and fix responsibility for the products of each of the four kinds of planning described earlier. There are at least four basic models to consider, with one model being the current planning apparatus used by Air Force headquarters and its subordinate organizations.
The planning structure now in use is a centralized model with duplicative planning entities at each hierarchical layer. Although the planning done in organizational layers beneath the superior headquarters results in the presence of some of the features normally associated with distributive planning, it is a centralized model because critical force structure resource allocation decisions are made by the Air Force Headquarters. This model might be described as centralized with the Air Staff dominant. However, the process of hierarchical duplication is not complete because some of the planning entities in subordinate organizations do not correspond to planning entities in the headquarters. The Air Staff, for example, has a deputy chief of staff for plans and operations (AF/XO). Some subordinate organizations may have separate entities for planning and for operations, others may have operations but not plans. The initial addition of revolutionary planning as a responsibility of the AF/XO attempted to incorporate maverick and opportunity planning, but neither category of planning has yet been institutionalized or systematized in the sense that is recurring or formalized. Moreover, at this point it is not clear whether or not there will be a designated champion to exploit the ideas produced by the Air Force's long-range planning processes. The newly created office of the special assistant to the chief of staff remains Air Staff dominant, but may propose other organizational forms in the future.
A second alternative is a centralized structure at the Air Staff for policy with distributed and decentralized planning done by the major air commands. This model might be characterized as MAJCOM-dominant.10 In this alternative, the responsibilities for planning, to include requirements planning, are separated from those of operations. The Air Staff structure corresponds to the Joint Staff structure, with Joint Staff responsibilities reflected in the distribution of duties within the Air Staff.
According to historian Herman Wolk the "air staff" became the "Air Staff" in 1941; the original structure was built along the Army staff lines with A-1, A-2, an Air War Plans Division, and so forth, reporting to the chief of the Air Staff.11 The chief of the Air Staff was subordinate to the chief of staff of the Army Air Forces. Subordinate to the chief of the Air Staff was the commanding general of the Air Force Combatant Command, whose staff included G-1, G-2, G-3, and G-4 "sections" along with "other staff offices." When the Army Air Forces were reorganized in 1942, the Air Forces were commanded by a commanding general, Army Air Forces, with a subordinate "Chief, Air Staff." The Air Staff included A-1, A-2, A-3, A-4, "Plans," and the "Air Inspector." The "A-Staff" designations were dropped in a 1943 reorganization. Thus, one approach would be to create an Air Staff structure that mirrored the Joint Staff with the MAJCOM staff structure corresponding completely with the Air Staff structure. Such an approach appears in figure A-1.
Figure A-1. Centralized, High-Correspondence Alternative
Besides the advantage of high correspondence among and between all the echelons of planners, this model has the advantage of high empowerment for the product divisions. However, unless this model promises to harvest the fruits of maverick and opportunity planning, the combat effectiveness of Air Force systems will not necessarily be high. Consequently, there appears to be a role both for Air University (AU) and for some form of revolutionary planning in this model.
AU could assist by educating and training long-range strategic planners in all of its colleges, but primarily through the School for Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS). SAAS could be reorganized into an upper division for postgraduates of Air War College and a lower division for postgraduates of Air Command and Staff College. The upper division would also house the intellectual and technology node for Air Force maverick planning. The upper division's annual product would be "special studies," a combined report elaborating ideas generated by the faculty and students of the upper division and the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT). Planners at the Air Staff and the major air commands would be "virtually present" in the SAAS upper division via Internet and videoteleconferencing.
CADRE's Wargaming Institute could be connected to the Air Force Studies and Analyses Agency and the war-gaming apparatuses of the other services. CADRE could run seminar war games for concepts of operations and analytical war games for force structure and program objective memorandum (POM) decision making. It is important to note here that the vision, central strategic purpose, and mission of AU is professional military education. Creating a special institute, or the recurring assignment of special studies, risks imperiling AU's primary mission unless the necessary resources and change in mission accompany the assignment of significant additional tasks. Even so, AU can contribute. Important caveats to this assertion follow later in this paper.
Decentralized models are also possible and may even be advantageous if one believes that the dramatic increases forecast in information technology will be realized in the next several years. Just as the global missions of the Air Force envision "virtual presence," information technology and "groupware" may allow a "virtual" and highly decentralized planning structure. The potential of such a structure has been demonstrated during the 2025 study.
The "blender" in figure A-2 is the nexus where all four kinds of planning are coordinated and evaluated and the candidate corporate plan is built. Under the present architecture this might be the Plans Directorate, assisted by the long-range planning office or even some new entity that serves the front end of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC). Although the CORONA meeting of four stars could be used for this kind of work this may be less effective than some more structured system. A limitation of the recent revolutionary planning model, for example, may be its reliance on the CORONA meeting to decide which revolutionary ideas will be incorporated into the mission area planning system. A template for decentralized models appears in figure A-2.
Figure A-2. Generic Decentralized Model
In the decentralized model depicted in figure A-2, there is a high level of correspondence between Joint, Air Staff, and MAJCOM planning entities (as depicted earlier in fig. A-1), with AU serving as a contributing node. Note that this need not be an architecture involving only "military" strategic planners. As national security issues become more complex and increasingly correspond to international security issues, there may be a convergence of national capabilities to correspond to national interests. Thus, other nodes need to be envisioned outside of the armed forces. To structurally and formally include these other nodes today would be a dramatic reframing of the strategic planning problem. To include them through AU, however, would be well within Air University's charter.
Figure A-3. AU Hub Model
Figure A-3, although titled as the "AU Hub Model," actually represents two variants of the same, highly distributed model. One variant is a highly decentralized and distributed network, with the Air Staff serving as the "master node" and other nodes in the network serving as responders. In this architecture there would be no long-range strategic planning "offices" required below the Air Staff level, except for maverick planners at AU and opportunity planners at the Air Force Materiel Command and its laboratories. The MAJCOMs would participate through selected individuals attached to the planning apparatus. Recall that the discussion aims at long-range strategic planning, not day-to-day or current mission area planning. Even in the decentralized architecture it is possible that day-to-day or current mission area planning will still need to be done at the MAJCOM level.
A fourth alternative, a variant of the third, is to change the location and identity of the master node for strategic planning. Given the resources and mission change, AU could house the strategic planners for the Air Force, cross- and interconnect them to other planning entities, and assume responsibility for maverick planning, opportunity planning, and analytical and evaluative planning in the form of war gaming. The third and fourth alternatives are highly decentralized, but may require periodic meetings and physical presence for product production. Although AU has the capacity to make significant contributions to maverick planning, opportunity planning, and analytical planning, these responsibilities would so change the mission of AU that professional military education might suffer.
There are, of course, more variants than these. Hybrids can be created combining whatever are believed to be desirable features in any number of alternative models. The criteria for alternatives or combinations will help guide the selection of the most appropriate model.
Criteria for Selection of a Model and Its Features
There are eight important criteria that any long-range strategic planning model needs to satisfy. These criteria are framed as questions to be asked of any model and its advocates. Before applying the criteria it is first necessary to determine whether each of the four types of planning described earlier add value to the Air Force. Then it is necessary to determine whether any of the four are neglected in the present architectures or in different architectures. Historically, "opportunity" planning is neglected when scientists and technologists are combined with logistics planners.
One might expect that placing research and development under materiel could have some shortcomings, and it did. During the war years, Air Materiel Command, or its predecessors under different titles, had been much more concerned with production, logistics, and maintenance than with research and development. In the postwar period the Air Force continued to subordinate research and development to maintenance and support of those things produced.12
This "fox-in-the-hen-house" problem is compounded if no Air Force or Joint Staff entity is charged to provide the "operational pull" of new concepts of operation, employment, and organization. These are the innovative discoveries that the OSD Office of Net Assessment hopes to make for the services.13 Thus, the criteria for selecting "how" might be as narrow as "what seems to work" or as broad as a Joint Staff-Air Staff-MAJCOM staff reorganization. The eight criteria for selecting an approach are summarized in figure A-4.
Figure A-4. Criteria for Selecting a Model and Its Features
Is the model comprehensive? Said another way, does it encompass all the strategic long-range planning responsibilities of the organization and all four kinds of strategic long-range planning that must be accomplished? Does it include planners and operators at all subordinate operating levels? Does it make the best use of the Air University including the Air Force Institute of Technology? What is the role of the Scientific Advisory Board? How does the model serve the Joint Requirements Oversight Council?
Will the model work in the joint arena? This is an important criterion, especially if analyses of the tectonic shifts occurring in strategic planning are correct. The services organize, train, and equip forces for employment by the unified combatant commanders. The JROC and the Joint Staff increasingly are involved in the creation of binding policy for the services. Service chiefs need to ensure that their vision and planning harmonizes with that of the chairman and the Joint Staff. Since the Department of Defense fights with combined arms, concepts of operations must be joint and combined. Any long-range strategic planning model that does not generate and serve joint and combined concepts of operations is less likely to add value.
Are activities integrated harmoniously, and are they timed or synchronized to occur in such a way as to be mutually supporting? Planning cycles should serve customer and decision maker needs. The model selected should have each of the four types of planning occurring in a way that supports the overall objective.
Are responsibilities clearly identified, and are champions designated for each step of the way from envisioning to implementation? Unless the model results in a plan of action, the effort expended to generate ideas, search for opportunities, and analyze may be wasted. Thus, champions must be identified for each planning activity.
Is there high expectation that the alternative selected will have enduring value even as the responsibilities of the organization evolve, or is it merely trendy and immediately attractive as a near-term or temporary solution to a perceived problem?
This criterion deserves some elaboration. Cyert and March point out in A Behavioral Theory of the Firm, that organizations look for solutions to problems in ways that are themselves problematic.14 They call this phenomenon "problemistic search." That is, the search for solutions is most often motivated by awareness of some problem presently vexing the firm. The search for solutions commences immediately and with a sense of urgency. Thus, the search is sometimes biased or simpleminded, and the organization often selects the first solution that appears to be "adequate." While the first adequate solution may offer a solution in the near term, it may prove to be inferior to those undiscovered solutions that could have been found by more complex ad less biased searches. If the search for solutions to Air Force problems is contracted out for example, additional biases may be introduced unintentionally. This certainly may be the case if a contractor from a firm specializing in strategic planning has been employed to propose a solution to its client's strategic planning problem without sufficient long term interaction. The right answers to a complex problem rarely emerge from a single meeting or a single advisor, and intuition often proves inferior to analysis.
If an organization uses the problemistic search mode routinely, an array of temporary solutions and workarounds may eventually result in a cascading failure brought about by sudden changes in the environment. Critics have argued that the Mission Area Planning System and the revolutionary planning process that followed it, like the reorganization of the Air Force and the "old new uniform," arose as apparently adequate solutions to problems. It would be most unfortunate to use the simpleminded problemistic search to fix Air Force long-range strategic planning.
These are especially important considerations if shifts in the strategic planning landscape seem to be occurring. If change is afoot, the persistence of the model selected may be the most important criterion. Prototyping may be helpful even after the most rigorous analysis suggests that one approach ought to be superior to another. In the case of the Air Force, there is now some evidence that the Joint Staff desires to increase its "political power" (as defined previously in the section on the dimensions of the strategic planning space for strategic planning) by marginally disempowering the services. Indicators are that the growing authority of the JROC, a change endorsed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, will change acquisition authority and alter the "power" of the individual services. The "Joint Vision 2010" project within the Joint Staff also aims at enhancing the authority of the Joint Staff through its policy-making power. Whether these observations correctly anticipate a diminution of service power and decision-making autonomy remains to be seen. Nonetheless, planners should consider this possibility when selecting an approach.
Do the structure, processes, and products serve the needs of the principal resource allocation decision maker? If process, products, and structure are made obsolete because the principal resource allocation decision maker has changed, restructuring the process, or products, or structure (or all three) may be required.
Is organizational turbulence minimized? If a change is contemplated, and unless only a radical change can solve the problems perceived, then the model that promises less turbulence should be selected. Turbulence can be reduced by "fly-before-buy" prototyping or incremental transition to a new model.
Does a new process, set of products, or structure assure new joint concepts of operations and employment? Unless the model has features that create new joint concepts of operations to provide the operational pull, there is no assurance that technological push will improve long-range strategic planning within the Air Force. Likewise, if long-range strategic planning improves only within the Air Force, the JROC process may cause some Air Force requirements to change or Air Force acquisition plans to be modified.
In sum, it is important to select the right solution to the real problem. Fortunately, creative thinking can generate a wide range of possibilities. Planning norms and criteria, buttressed by rigorous analysis, can evaluate these ideas and help point toward solutions. Every model has advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and dangers, dependent on the characteristics of the model and its features. These characteristics and features are summarized in figure A-5. Once the solution, including a hybrid of several solutions, is selected, it too must have its implementation champions.
Figure A-5. Characteristics
A study of successful innovation completed by Chip Pickett of the Northrop Analysis Center identified 11 characteristics of successful change. Applying 10 of these to the problem of a dysfunctional or not adequately functional planning system within the Air Force yields some useful observations. (The 11th characteristic, "Resources match progress in innovation," does not pertain.).
There is a clear threat. The threats to the Air Force may be the risk of disempowerment, the danger of stultifying innovation and creative thinking, the costs of lost opportunities, the lack of vision, or structures and processes that fail to help meet the central strategic purpose of the Air Force. Additionally, if senior leaders believe "planning is broken," that constitutes a threat.
The top level of the organization leads and supports the change. Because it was the chief of staff of the Air Force who initiated the dialogue on envisioning solutions to the problems extant in Air Force planning and implementation, there is high confidence the top level of the organization leads and supports the process of change.
Vision drives the process. A new vision statement is in the process of development. Thus, there can be high confidence that vision will drive the process.
The impact that changing the long-range strategic planning structure and process will have on the operations of the Air Force is understood. This may or may not be the case. The process of envisioning the alternative futures affecting Air Force long-range strategic planning do not appear to have been assessed or understood except intuitively. There is some evidence that impacts are being examined since the formation of the long-range planning board of directors has involved senior leaders across the service. The risk of this group becoming another corporate layer must also be weighed. The need for change may not be understood and the particular solution to the problem, not having been selected, has not yet been articulated and advocated.
The structure (form) changes to correspond to any changes made in function or process. This characteristic cannot be evident until an alternative is selected. This characteristic should be evident, however, if the approach selected supports the norms and meets the criteria advanced earlier.
Change advocates are created and protected. If the chief of staff of the Air Force is the champion of change, experience shows that the advocates of what others may view as even undesirable changes will be created and protected. If a desirable change is advocated, we can expect the same attributes to be present. If, however, the Air Staff and the MAJCOM staffs are reorganized to improve interfaces and increase correspondence with the Joint Staff, we should anticipate some resistance. Where there is resistance, there also must be protection.
Both junior and senior organization members are involved in the development and the implementation of the change. Many of the alternative models discussed earlier, especially the highly decentralized ones, involve a large and diverse number of organization members. This characteristic will be present in all but the "no change" or highly centralized models.
Innovation is tested early and frequently. To avoid the problems attendant with a simpleminded problemistic search, the search for solutions should not be rushed unnecessarily. Any changes to Air Force long-range strategic planning, for example, can safely be delayed until a new vision statement is crafted. After that, the process and structure selected must be tested against the criteria from its implementation onward.
Internal and external resistance is offset. If the Air Force adopts a strategic long-range planning process that frustrates the JROC process, the Air Staff deputies, or the MAJCOM commanders, internal and external resistance will combine. The goal should be an alternative assessed as "win-win," with the support of the Joint Staff, the Air Staff, and the MAJCOM commanders. It is possible, for example, to reorganize the Air Staff and MAJCOMs to align these staffs better with the Joint Staff and the CINC staffs, as long as the Air Staff and MAJCOM commanders see this change as taking workloads or requirements out of their processes and adding value to the corporate Air Force.
Technology progresses at a rate sufficient to support the change. Some alternative long-range strategic planning models, especially the highly decentralized distributive models, place great reliance on information technology. This technology would need to be in place before the most decentralized and distributive model could be safely selected. The 2025 study afforded the opportunity for testing some elements of a distributive model. In the case of 2025, technology acquisition anticipated and led the beginning of the study but was delayed and not yet fully developed. Information technology proved highly useful for generating and collecting ideas. Technology which was available subsequently was insufficient to maximize a decentralized approach to developing and analyzing the concepts. It may be that sufficient technology will soon exist within the Air Force to allow some modest form of decentralized or "virtually" centralized planning alternative.15
What Are the Benefits of Planning?
It is difficult to recall a time when the level of uncertainty about the future and the debate regarding the raison d'etre of America's armed forces was greater. In this era of constrained defense budgets and changing world structure, it is vital that defense leaders at all levels conduct planning. But until the world's evolution becomes clearer, it is difficult to conduct detailed planning. Instead, it is possible-and imperative-to start thinking about long-term and path-dependent processes which depend on long-range planning.16
In addition to institutionalizing strategic planning, the Air Force must conduct planning that is robust. The remainder of this appendix discusses the linkages and differences between the Air University-hosted 2025 study and the efforts of the Long-Range Planning Office on the Air Staff.17 This appendix shows how the alternate futures produced by 2025 study and the "future operating environments" proposed by AF/LR are complementary, but also how the alternate futures are more robust than the future operating environments.
Requirements for Robust Planning
There are three requirements for robust strategic planning. The first is that the products created should adequately stress the systems of interest. Second, the vision of the future should be broad enough to ensure that the entire range of challenges is adequately captured. The third requirement is that the products should contain sufficient detail and richness to be useful for planning. The remainder of this appendix compares future operating environments from AF/LR to the alternate futures generated by 2025 across each of these requirements.
Tom Clancy said the "one difference between fiction and history is that fiction needs to be plausible." David Hume said there is "no necessary connection between logic and fact." These two statements sum up the danger and limitations of most strategic planning. Because of the difficulty of thinking "outside the box" and making projections from today about the future, most long-range planning results in a fairly constrained strategic planning space as illustrated in figure A-6. This constrained planning space can lead to "rude surprises."
Figure A-6. Current Long-Range Planning Results
In contrast, avoiding surprises is a key metric in the strategic planning space produced by the 2025 Alternate Futures process (fig. A-7). By beginning in 2025 and then "backcasting" to today, we achieved discontinuous jumps in logic that would not be possible using simple trend projections from 1996. Additionally, the interaction of three drivers creates alternate futures that cannot be easily projected using standard strategic planning techniques. It is important to achieve discontinuous jumps because history is full of these jumps. For instance, Germany's rise in the 1930s to nearly dominate the world in the 1940s was a discontinuous jump. So was the US putting a man on the moon in less than 10 years. The collapse of the Soviet Union is the most recent example.
Figure A-7. Alternate Futures Strategic Planning Space
The alternate futures developed for 2025 have as an enduring strength the incorporation of wild cards to capture discontinuous jumps in history. In the alternate future of Zaibatsu, the rise of strong multinational corporations creating a relatively benign but unstable world is so different from today it is unlikely traditional long-range planning would have projected it. Yet such a world is logically created from the 2025 Alternate Futures process by incorporating wild cards and considering the current trend of the growing strength of MNCs. Two technology-based wild cards, development of a computer-human nerve interface microprocessor and safe nuclear fusion, drive this world into accelerated economic development. The combination of these wild cards and the current trends regarding MNCs results in a world of reduced threats to US interests and a new world power structure. This world presents the US with strategic decisions which normally would not be considered under traditional long-range planning, yet presents some challenging alternatives that need to be considered in evaluating alternate air and space forces.
For instance, in Zaibatsu the military has to preserve core competencies and "outsource" the rest because nearly everything has been privatized. Because economic power is more important than military power in most situations, the State Department and the Department of Commerce take the lead in crisis resolution, thereby leaving the secretary of defense out of most decisions until conflict erupts. Because the Zaibatsu believes anti-satellite (ASAT) systems and submarines are destabilizing to the peaceful economic uses of space and the oceans, these weapon systems are officially prohibited. However, suspected cheating by some leads to covert ASAT and submarine programs by many. Finally, the geographic CINC system is replaced with standing joint task forces.
Clearly, Zaibatsu is a very challenging world for the military and contains aspects not present in any of the other future operating environments. Additionally, each of the other future worlds also contains aspects not easily represented by the future operating environments. For instance, in Gulliver's Travails, a rise in nationalism spawns terrorism in the US involving weapons of mass destruction. The wild card of a chemical weapon terrorist attack on US soil inflicting 150,000 casualties motivates the US to become globally involved. This wild card is combined with the current trend of balkanization to create a world in which the US is heavily engaged worldwide. Although this challenge is captured in the future operating environments, what is not captured is the concomitant high operations tempo in this world. The challenge in Gulliver's Travails is to fight terrorism while being nearly overwhelmed with worldwide commitments.
Digital Cacophony contains the challenge of a fast-moving, technologically driven world where military threats are primarily dealt with using on-line virtual forces as opposed to forces providing physical presence. This world is created by combining several wild cards with the current trend towards increased information and communications connectivity. The wild cards are a genetics breakthrough yielding abundant food and a high-energy-radio-frequency attack wave that destroys Wall Street's financial databases. This information warfare attack against US economic assets is met by increasing the military's roles. Cyberspace warriors become the primary frontline protectors of US security.
King Khan is somewhat similar to the high end global competitor (also known as a superpeer competitor) of the future operating environments, but adds the aspect that the US is far less capable than today because of internal domestic concerns, and thus is greatly outmatched by the superpower. In King Khan, the US has no peer; Khan is vastly superior but seems benign. The wild card in this alternate future is a collapse of the Mexican economy which generates excessive demand on US social systems because of an influx of illegal immigrants. This increased demand results in a US depression which lasts nine years. During this period, US military forces are slashed to a third of today's forces. The military challenge in this world is to determine which core competencies to retain and which capabilities to reconstitute once economic recovery begins.
The worlds of Halfs and Half-Naughts and 2015 Crossroads present many of the challenges present in the other four alternate futures, with the exception that 2015 Crossroads contains a major regional conflict where airpower has to "go it alone" due to time constraints and the main belligerent's threat of using weapons of mass destruction. Half and Half-Naughts experiences as a wild card a California earthquake that kills 150,000 and leaves millions homeless. This event forces the US to look inward temporarily to solve a significant domestic problem. The US focus is pulled outward when China seizes the Spratly Islands. In 2015 Crossroads, the death of Saddam Hussein sparks a series of events which leads to a major regional conflict. Each of these worlds poses new challenges not completely captured through the future operating environments approach. In addition, each contains sufficient detail to create a rich war-gaming environment.
Across the Spectrum of Conflict
Future operating environments can be thought of as types of military operations or levels of warfare. Future operating environments appear to be military operations which can be depicted along the spectrum of conflict, as shown in figure A-8.
Figure A-8. Spectrum of Conflict
| 1. High end global competitor | 6. Peace enforcement |
| 2. Low end global competitor | 7. Dangerous nuclear/ industrial activities |
| 3. High end regional competitor | 8. Large-scale NBC proliferation |
| 4. Low end regional competitor | 9. Nonstate terrorism |
| 5. Counterinsurgency |
The depiction of the future operating environments across the spectrum of conflict represents a "best-guess" and "first-cut" at this exercise. Of note and interest is the scarcity of future operating environments at the lower end of conflict. Even though the level of risk to national survival is very low at this end, notice that the probability of occurrence is very high. Further, the risks to interests may also be high and increasing if the relatively more benign alternate futures prove more likely. Under future fiscal constraints, it is not clear that the right types and numbers of forces will be available to conduct operations such as humanitarian relief, foreign assistance, and peacekeeping unless the US plans for them. These are levels of military operations that could present very challenging conditions to US forces, especially in a world of high operations tempo such as in Gulliver's Travails and 2015 Crossroads.
Alternate futures can be "mapped" across this same spectrum of conflict as shown in figure A-9. Notice that the entire range of military operations are represented by the set of alternate futures. Also of interest is the amount of overlap at certain points along the continuum. These areas of interest give insight as to the weight of effort or concern that should be applied to various military operations. The difficulty with future operating environments is that no such weighting is implied. This observation provides additional rationale for using alternate futures in long-range planning.
Figure A-9. Alternate Futures and Spectrum of Conflict
As seen in figure A-9, each world can be characterized by the range of military operations that have occurred or are likely to occur. Taken as a set, they represent a full range of military operations that future forces and organizations need to be equipped to handle. Of some interest is to note that the last two worlds created, Halfs and Half-Naughts and 2015 Crossroads, were requested so that less "extreme" worlds would be available for planning. Figure A-9 illustrates that the worlds may be less extreme, but there is a higher likelihood for a broader range of military operations to occur in these worlds than in the others. This fact, in and of itself, makes the last two worlds at least as challenging as the original four (corners of the box).
Figure A-9 provides a good framework for comparing future operating environments and 2025 Alternate Futures. It is obvious that each alternate future contains multiple future operating environments and that each future operating environment can occur in more than one alternate future. Thus it is clear there is a connection between the two, but they are not the same thing. Since alternate futures already contain plausible histories which can be used as a lead into a war game and provide sufficient detail to create a ready-to-use scenario, it seems logical to use alternate futures as the mechanism for conducting war games to discover challenging environments. In many cases the new environments or strategic challenges will mirror the future operating environments, but it is likely that in some cases new ones will be discovered. The end result of using the 2025 Alternate Futures, which by their nature contain future operating environments, will be a better learning experience for the senior decision makers, which will lead to richer thinking and more robust choices.
Internal Consistency as a Critical Metric
The most important distinction between 2025 Alternate Futures and techniques such as future operating environments or other forms of scenario or future building is the key metric of internal consistency. When planners use internal consistency as a key metric, they make conscious judgments about the causes and effects of forces at work in shaping the organizations' operating environment. Planners also clearly identify the linkages between these forces so they better understand and gain insight from the environment. One can imagine a global American world view. One can also imagine a severe downturn in American fiscal health. But, American support for global military involvements when faced with severe recession or even depression is not very plausible. By testing for such inconsistencies and removing them from alternate futures, planners not only create more plausible scenarios, they clarify their understanding of the linkages, in this instance, between wide spread external military activity, public support, and fiscal well being. Future operating environments which use key actors as "drivers" and fail to accomplish such rigorous tests require that the users specify how to accommodate for internal inconsistencies.
A corresponding benefit to using alternate future drivers and internal consistency is the new insight into relationships and interactions the method offers. Using drivers to develop a named world creates a clear "logic of the model." The value of a model is that it clarifies the conditions under which key features interact. Thus, in the logic of the Digital Cacophony model where all Americans are "wired," the potential for direct individual involvement in American governance is greatly enhanced. In fact, the future describes a netocracy where voters vote on policy issues rather than for elected representatives. This model suggests a future insight that planners might explore; fickled voters might cause greater fluctuations of policy than a more muted representational system. In contrast, the economic concentration of power in Zaibatsu creates a different model even though DTeK is also exponential. Corporate interests would seek to mute political volatility by increasing the apparent power of political representatives and channeling a high tech populace from being wired into the political process directly. Such insights may not be directly relevant to near term military planning, but they provide a rich detail about possible relationship in a plausible future that deserve modest exploration to avoid shock and surprise in the long term.
Some might have argued that the economic and social changes occurring in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s were minor details in terms of military planning. Yet, such details and the declining legitimacy of the Soviet Communist Party combined to change the strategic landscape. Understanding the consequences of rich planning details can minimize surprise.
One additional advantage of alternate futures is their richness in detail. Many types and levels of detail have already been developed for the six alternate futures, but the real advantage is that unlimited detail can be added. By using the three drivers and analyzing their interaction, planners can easily infer additional events and details in each world. In contrast, once future operating environments have been constructed, it might be more difficult to infer additional information without the assistance of the script writers.
As an example, a new piece of knowledge about one of the worlds can easily be created. Any relevant subject can be selected and enriched in any of the six worlds. For instance, envision the nature of strategic attack in Gulliver's Travails. This is a world where the American world view is Global, DTeK is Constrained, and the World Power Grid is Dispersed. Because DTeK is Constrained, strategic attack methods and targets are generally limited to those which exist today. It can be postulated that no new ways will be discovered that can paralyze and defeat an adversary. In fact, the nature of conflict in this world, involving rapidly shifting alliances and small terrorist groups, indicates that the use of strategic attack may be severely limited by political and military realities. For instance, the US might not want to destroy a country's electrical power system, because in six months that country could be a coalition partner in a different conflict. Additionally, the destruction of the electrical power system would do little to deter a nationalist movement which uses terrorist attacks against its own people and neighbors. Finally, the combination of a dispersed World Power Grid and constrained DTeK leads to a world where most conflicts do not involve a highly industrially developed state that can be attacked at the strategic level. Taking all of the drivers into consideration leads to the conclusion that strategic attack will have limited utility in this world; thus a B-3 bomber would not be a high-priority weapon system to develop or procure.
It is clear from this simple example that the amount and level of detail that can be added to alternate futures are nearly boundless. To attempt to write the same level of detail into a future operating environment would be time-consuming and frustrating. The result might be scenarios that do not fully capture all of the aspects of that future environment necessary and useful to the decision makers. In order to make the scenarios usable, they must lend themselves easily to the inclusion of additional levels of detail.
This appendix discusses Air Force long-range planning efforts and attempts to present some rationale for institutionalizing long-range planning in the Air Force. Additionally, it presents the linkage and differences between alternate futures created by the 2025 study and future operating environments created by the Air Force Long-Range Planning Office. The crux of this discussion is that long-range planning is vitally important to ensure the US maintains the dominant air and space forces of the future.
Notes
Back to 2025 Home Page
Back to Table of Contents
Back to Chapter 9
Forward to Appendix B