DEFENSE PLANNINGBetter Defense Planning Could Use Statistics to Try to See into the Future
The war in Ukraine is not the first time—nor will it be the last—that the Department of Defense (DoD) has been forced to respond rapidly to unexpected threats or to reorient priorities when the assumptions guiding its force planning changed.
In February, as the U.S. military was preparing for the release of President Biden’s first National Defense Strategy, Russia invaded Ukraine, sending tens of thousands of additional U.S. forces into Europe, creating new demands for U.S. military weapons and security guarantees, and raising questions about how best to update and adapt years of planning to a new strategic environment.
Before Russia’s invasion, the new NDS (PDF) was expected to identify China as the primary threat to U.S. interests, and the Pacific as the most likely theater for future conflict. While this prioritization will likely persist (PDF), it is now widely expected that the United States will also be more deeply involved in Europe for the foreseeable future. The war in Ukraine is not the first time—nor will it be the last—that the Department of Defense (DoD) has been forced to respond rapidly to unexpected threats or to reorient priorities when the assumptions guiding its force planning changed. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan forced the military to hastily increase in size, acquire new capabilities, and develop new ways of fighting for which it had not previously prepared.
DoD force planning (PDF), balancing risk and resource constraints, is inherently challenging. The process attempts to hedge against future uncertainty by using tools like wargaming and operational analysis to generate estimates of the types and numbers of forces needed for a range of contingencies. But these methods are only as accurate as the assumptions that underly them. If planners make the wrong assumptions about the most likely types and locations of future wars, then the military may end up unprepared down the road, regardless of the quality of the analysis conducted. DoD force planners face the added challenge of long time horizons of five or more years away, given the long lead times needed for investments in different weapons systems or types of personnel.
