Part Iii. New Tools for Defense Decisionmaking

RAND and other analysts have developed and refined a number of techniques for coping with uncertainty and making decisions that will have consequences over years, even generations. These techniques might be thought of in three broad categories: exercises, strategic products, and " groupware. " Drawing on earlier work in Europe, war-gaming for U.S. military planners was developed at the Naval War College in the late 19th century as a way of " getting into the minds " of potential military adversaries in order to develop and test alternative operational strategies. 1 In war games, the flow of events is affected by and, in turn, affects decisions made by players representing more than one " actor " or " side " that relies on less-than-perfect information. Simulations are different. Here, players represent only one actor, and some events may be determined before the game is played. Players can have incomplete and possibly misleading information—based on what sensors and human intelligence happen to provide—or they can be assumed to have complete and accurate information. Both war games and simulations are referred to, in shorthand, as exercises. Such exercises can be conducted with educational or analytic objectives in mind: typical educational objectives include learning new lessons, reinforcing old lessons, and evaluating the understanding that has been gained; typical analytic objectives include developing strategy, identifying new issues, building consensus, or setting priorities. Exercises exist to test and refine human interaction, not to calculate outcomes. They explore decisionmaking by forcing players to make decisions; they achieve value by producing qualitative assessments of decisions that are made and not made and the effects of those decisions. Exercises are generally • Based on scenarios—i.e., credible, internally consistent, scripted events that set the scene and scope for players (although exercises can also be used to develop scenarios). • Tolerant of some oversimplification and artificial assumptions. • Designed by people acknowledged as experts in a particular area. • Guided by rules and procedures to assure the logical flow of cause and effect. Exercise play is most fruitful when participants free themselves from the constraints of " conventional wisdom " and suspend disbelief, much as they would when reading a well-written work of fiction. Getting the most out of games requires exposure of participants to a structured process of post-game analytic feedback. A well-structured exercise whose players have relevant experience and good information should yield insights about • The feasibility …