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Abstract: In order to more effectively analyze strategic, force structure, and systems choices associated with the national security environment of the 21st Century, the US Department of Defense is attempting to improve its approach to the development, management and application of Modeling and Simulation (M&S). It has established a new structure to oversee and integrate M&S activity and directed DoD communities to develop internal business plans to focus that effort. The Analysis Community has responded by identifying desired analytic M&S goals, measuring current capabilities, prioritizing capability gaps, and then outlining potential solutions. These activities are being captured as part of an analysis M&S business plan product and process. This paper notes that a key desired outcome is improved M&S to address three areas of particular concern: Irregular Warfare and the Global War on Terror; Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction operations; and Joint, Interagency, and Multinational operations. In these areas, the Department is seeking a broad, collaborative approach to engage interagency and allied partners in developing and using new analytic approaches and tools.
Keywords: Modeling and Simulation (M&S); Management; Strategy; Analysis; Business Plan; Irregular Warfare; Global War On Terror (GWOT); Stability, Security, Transition and Reconstruction (SSTR); Joint, Interagency, and Multinational (JIM).
Over the past decade, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has recognized a need for change, both in terms of its national security strategy and the models, simulations and analyses needed to support that strategy. As the Department completed its last major Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and articulated a new direction, it was apparent that the tools and analytic capabilities available to help shape key decisions were not as robust as needed to address the full set of options being considered. The Defense Modeling and Simulation Office (DMSO), which had been established in the mid-1990s to coordinate the development of modeling and simulation (M&S) across the Department, had not been successful in stimulating the creation of new tools that could better inform the strategic choices faced by the Department in the 21st Century. In 2005, DoD leadership began establishing a new structure to address the common M&S needs of the Department and reorganized DMSO to become what is now the Modeling and Simulation Coordination Office (MSCO). This paper outlines the specific concerns...