This paper analyzes the Army's force management processes under the ARFORGEN framework, focusing on two key deficiencies: insufficient advocacy for military disruptive technology spending and inadequate intelligence regarding emerging disruptive technologies. The paper examines how critical skills for future forces must be identified rapidly and accurately, and introduces the concept of Black Swan events as a framework for understanding unpredictable but massively impactful threats. Drawing on Mitchell's six-stage model of military disruptive technology and Taleb's Black Swan theory, the paper argues that the Army must build stronger collaborative relationships between military intelligence, scientific, and commercial communities, and must actively engage Congress to fund next-generation disruptive military capabilities.
Change management in the short term is a substantive challenge for any organization. When change management extends far into the future, the challenges increase exponentially. To establish and field a mission-ready force, the Army must shape the force of the future. For the Army to be prepared for an uncertain future, change management theory and force management practice must coalesce into a sustainable, cost-effective plan. This force management plan must manifest a high degree of flexibility and agile responsiveness in order to be "prepared to combat uncooperative and adaptive enemies" (ARFORGEN, 2006). Overall, the Army must be able to "synchronize resources, predict the impact of future requirements on funding, and optimize the use and reuse of forces" (ARFORGEN, 2006).
The use of computer modeling has enabled predictive processes that can synchronize global Army capital, interfacing with the program objective memorandum (POM) of the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). The key benefit of machine modeling is the capacity to integrate the "actual force requirements with projected force structure" (ARFORGEN, 2006). While the machine modeling capacity is laudable, computerized systems are only as good as the data input for processing. There is a strong need to ensure that ARFORGEN systems protect the integrity of data and use high-quality data — such as that reflected in out-of-the-box disruptive military technology. Further, it is imperative that ARFORGEN processes include technology warning methodologies capable of heading off Black Swan events (Taleb, 2007).
This paper discusses and analyzes the processes employed to identify the projected force structure and critical skills needed by the force of the future, arguing that they are insufficient along two dimensions: (1) champions of spending on military disruptive technology, and (2) intelligence related to military disruptive technology. A model is proposed and discussed for addressing these barriers to achieving the goals of ARFORGEN.
The key challenges of a trained and ready force are training Service members in critical skills and determining projected force structure. The Army must be able to identify the skills that will be critical to the success of forces well into the future. Any lag time between the point when those skills are identified and the point when they are developed in the force is time the enemy can productively use. Critical skills must be identified correctly and as quickly as possible to ensure that Service members are trained and ready when those skills are needed. The Army must be able to assess its "capability to identify, recruit, train, retain, and sustain service members with these critical skills" (ARFORGEN, 2006).
Identification of critical skill sets must be followed by an action plan for achieving a match between Service members and those skill sets. The action plans must include components related to recruitment and retention, and must describe pathways that articulate how each objective will be met. The goal of this critical skills criteria designation is to generate a "vision of military strategy and responsibilities for the next 25 years" (ARFORGEN, 2006).
Critical skills identification and assessment must include methodology capable of discerning conditions that can lead to the military version of a Black Swan event (Taleb, 2007). A Black Swan event is fundamentally an improbable event characterized by three conditions: unpredictability, massively impactful consequences, and the tendency that "after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and even more predictable, than it was" (Mitchell, 2009, p. 76). The primary lesson related to Black Swans is that people underestimate uncertainty and overestimate their knowledge. When this theory is applied to the development of the force of the future, the implications are more than disconcerting.
The definitions of innovation commonly in use include: sustaining, evolutionary, revolutionary, and disruptive. In business terminology, a sustaining innovation does not impact existing markets. Evolutionary innovation is ongoing and changes the landscape in expected ways. Revolutionary innovation — also called discontinuous or radical innovation — is unexpected change that does not impact the existing landscape. The term disruptive innovation was first used in 1995 by Joseph L. Bower and Clayton M. Christensen to describe how new technology could upset and usurp established commercial technology. Disruptive innovation is unexpected, generates radical change through a different values set, and overtakes a sustained or entrenched landscape within a few short years, essentially before the disruptive innovation is broadly noticed in the marketplace.
Military disruptive technology — "providing strategic, operational, or tactical advantage over an adversary" — is the term that comes closest to the meaning of disruptive innovation in a defense context (Mitchell, 2009, p. 6). The Committee on Defense Intelligence Agency Technology Forecasts and Reviews (CDIATFR) suggested in 2004 that "there must be a way to evaluate new disruptive technologies that can be converted to military disruptive technologies when applied in tactical situations" (Mitchell, 2009, p. 5).
As Mitchell points out, the capacity to identify military disruptive technology holds strategic importance to national security, but the flip side of the issue is what the Services are "doing to negate or reduce technological surprise on the battlefield" (2009, p. 5). Military planners tend to be entrenched in the tactics of the previous or current war, emphasizing potential unanticipated events while failing to focus on unanticipated disruptive challenges that could have devastating effects (Pudas, 2006). While military procurement does not fit the corporate profit model, spending is still a critical concern. The upfront development expenses of disruptive military technology are high, and Congress may be unwilling to invest in technologies with the capacity to fundamentally change warfare (Dombrowski & Gholz, 2009).
The United States is able to maintain force superiority through its technological superiority — which is obviously not a static condition — and must continually identify, assess, and act on the emergence of disruptive technological advances. The CDIATFR concludes that commercial market pressures rather than military requirements will drive advances in potential disruptive technologies. Given this, the Committee recommends the establishment of collaborative relationships between military intelligence, scientific, and technical communities to focus on technology warning (Mitchell, 2009, p. 20).
Six stages of military disruptive technology have been identified (Mitchell, 2009):
"1. Cognitive ability to imagine the military disruptive technology or innovation."
"2. Intellectual, political, and financial effort to engineer the military disruptive technology into existence secretly or otherwise."
"3. Application of the military disruptive technology against an adversary."
"4. Development of counter-military disruptive technology by adversaries."
"Mitchell's six-stage model and Stage 2 vulnerability"
The development of military disruptive technology has strategic, tactical, and operational components. For instance, Mitchell argues that "almost all foreseeable military disruptive technologies are linked to power storage and generation," that nearly "all foreseeable military disruptive technologies are being kept from the battlefield by current power and energy production capability," and that the Department of Defense and the United States government are "pursuing better power generation and storage devices" (2009, p. 62). One of the issues related to the CDIATFR evaluation of disruptive technologies is that their perspective is national security, which is not synonymous with the military perspective. It is therefore possible for the CDIATFR to fail to recognize relationships between disruptive technologies and battlefield conditions.
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