Today's operational environment consists of uncertainty, chance, friction, and complexity. Change and adaptation that once required years to implement must now be recognized, communicated, and enacted far more quickly. To effectively respond to the...
Chaos theory is a poorly understood concept in social science and in military analytical decision making systems. Military decision makers require a multidisciplinary approach of mathematical analysis, modeling and simulation, topology, and...
Military practitioners are often asked to make plans that could have enormous strategic effects without having a good understanding of their operational environment. It is exactly this relationship between the plan, the environment, and the end...
Self-synchronization is an idea that comes directly from Network-Centric Warfare but its foundations lie in complexity theory and the ideas of self-organization and emergent behavior. In order to understand self-synchronization the basics of...
This work proposes a novel approach to military transformation, 'Adaptive Transformation,' that accounts for an inescapable reality in the current and future operational environment: uncertainty. Military planners and decision makers have to face...
In 1996, Joint Vision 2010 (JV2010) established a template for transforming the armed forces that continues to define sustainment transformation within the U.S. Army, while the publication of Network Centric Warfare in 1999 provided the theoretical...
A common perspective among U.S. interagency partners today is that any step towards more effective and coordinated responses to contemporary security challenges requires an improved and shared understanding of the nature of the conflict and the...
Causal claims are unavoidable in military affairs. However, causal claims are also insufficient when attempting to understand and intervene in complex environments. Hence, notions of conventional causality must be supplemented with an understanding...
With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the grip of
superpower strictures loosened resulting in an increase in complexity and dynamism that marks today's security environment. The rapidly changing and uncertain...
While it is no secret that Islamic terrorists utilize the internet, the assertion that the internet is a virtual safe haven more important than any geographical safe haven is rarely made. As a result of the expansion of the Internet capabilities...
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relevance of Adaptive Campaigning to recent Australian Army operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The context for Adaptive Campaigning is set by reviewing Australia's way of warfare and the evolution of...
How can the Interagency Conflict Assessment Framework (ICAF) be improved in order to better understand the operational environment? The application of the ICAF requires good intellectual habits that encompass an appreciation for abductive reasoning...
How might military practitioners incorporate social science concepts within the intelligence analytical framework to better define and understand the human dimension of an area of operation? Current military intelligence doctrine vaguely prescribes...
The strategic and operational environment in which the United States military will operate in for the foreseeable future is characterized by its complexity. Historically the United States military has taken a linear approach to understanding the...
The attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, originating from Afghanistan, and the earthquake in January 2010 that devastated Haiti illustrate the different dangers that weak and failed states represent to the international...
This monograph shows how understanding three conceptual tradeoffs of complex versus complicated, complexity at large-scale versus fine-scale, and exploration of potential problems versus exploitation of known solutions can help the military...
This monograph addresses how humans think and make sense of the world, and whether the current logic used by the U.S. military is still useful for understanding and influencing a world where complexity continues to increase. Drawing from elements...
The American and Filipino guerrillas that fought against the Japanese occupation of the Philippines were key in providing direction to resistance efforts and in the eventual liberation of the islands. The guerrillas escaped the aggressive...
Social media has become an additional element within the operational environment within which nearly anyone with an Internet connection can participate. The speed at which participants can add content, truthful or not, to that battle space has...
Since 2006, there has been a shift in United States policy, advocating for the intervention and prevention of mass atrocities. This shift in policy provided the momentum for the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and the Peacekeeping and Stability...