Engineering a Parent-System, Designed to Generate Complex Sub-Systems in the Field of Defense Planning

The main message and added value of this analysis lies in the development of a possible structure of defense planning, plus process logics, and in providing inherent functional principles of a “system-generating system” in the field of defense planning in a broader sense. This includes the identification of the interrelations of the researched basic principles. The present research starts with the hypothesis that system development, particularly in highly aggregated social entities, is usually initiated by organizational structures that represent a complex system in themselves. This paper attempts to address the inherent functional logics of this specific “system of systems”, which is the precondition for a successful development and for any control of systems and system-modeling per se. The described system focuses on creation, control and further development of those sub-systems that provide an adequate reaction to existential threats and future challenges in unpredictable, uncertain situations. Functional principles of military system-planning will be deduced, analyzed, and presented in an abstraction that still allows for practical application in the private decision-making sector, as well. A possible civilian benefit might be gained, where these sets of skills (a specific military “unique selling proposition”) are in demand. Military system planning is based on specific functional principles that are tailored to leadership-decisions and system control in threatening, time-critical, and unforeseeable situations, usually in a volatile environment. Attempting to explain according to which military scientific deductions a “system-generating system” in the area of defense planning could be developed, it will be shown in which areas military/leadership-science can offer research results also to civilian system development and where defense planning could benefit from other scientific branches. Into the direction of private economy an insight is to be given, according to which system-logic military decisions are made respectively which basic principles guide planning-/ defense procurement-processes. 1 Good reasons to maintain independent, uniquely “military”