Capabilities-based planning enables military agencies to identify program needs, allocate resources, and track activities and outcomes. RAND develops methodologies and tools such as this to assist the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, and other defense agencies in evaluating their manpower, equipment, cooperative relationships with military partners, and other capabilities.
Research conducted by: RAND Arroyo Center; RAND National Security Research Division; RAND Project AIR FORCE
All Items (11)
REPORT
The Air Force and other Defense Department entities conduct a host of security cooperation activities with partner air forces. However, there is currently no process for systematically tracking all these programs and activities. This report supplies Air Force planners with more-accessible information about resources for security cooperation, the rules that govern their use, and their application methods.
REPORT
To effectively confront the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the United States relies on the will and capacity of international partners for assistance. It requires international cooperation, including security cooperation programs to enhance partner capacity. Assessing the impact of these efforts is inherently difficult. This report demonstrates how one assessment framework can be applied to these programs.
REPORT
The findings presented here reexamine capabilities-based programming by introducing a new definition of capability metrics and a new set of algorithms for building and evaluating programs. The tools provide the programmer with a means to quantitatively and reproducibly develop programming options in light of an uncertain future, serving as a means to express capabilities and risks of resource allocations in terms of national planning…
REPORT
The problem of multinational force compatibility requires a planning framework to guide the U.S. Army’s investments with partner armies. This report defines the Niche Capability Planning Framework, which provides a conceptual template for integrating the various considerations implicit in a strategy for cultivating compatible niche capabilities in armies that lack a stable, long-term, collaborative program of assistance with the U.S.…
REPORT
The Department of Defense in recent years has shifted from threat-based planning to structuring its forces to provide a range of capabilities. As such, the need has arisen for new methods to assess the Air Force’s manpower and materiel deployment capabilities. The authors outline a method for assessing Air and Space Expeditionary Force capabilities given certain policies and resource levels, and they illustrate how this method can…
REPORT
The Air Force’s transition from a threat-based to a capabilities-based planning posture suggests the need to calculate swiftly the manpower and equipment required to generate those capabilities. This book outlines just such a methodology for determining deployment requirements. The methodology employs a prototype research tool–the Strategic Tool for the Analysis of Required Transportation (START)–which generates lists of…
REPORT
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War — and then the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 — transformed the task of American foreign and defense policymaking. This book outlines the dimensions of that transformation and sketches new tools for dealing with the policy challenges-from modeling and gaming, to planning based on capabilities rather than threats, to personnel planning and making use of…
PEOPLE
Senior Principal Researcher; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Ph.D. in chemical physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; B.S., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
PEOPLE
Senior Operations Research Analyst; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School
B.A. and M.S. in industrial engineering, Texas Tech
PEOPLE
Senior Physical Scientist
Ph.D. in geology, University of California, Berkeley
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