Theater Analysis and Modeling in an Era of Uncertainty

Within the U.S. defense community, there is no agreed-upon perception of how warfare is evolving. This report presents the results of war gaming and analysis on the future of warfare. It structures its findings around four issues: (1) warfare will be dominated by uncertainty and variability; (2) adversaries will seek new patterns of warfare to effectively oppose the United States; (3) asymmetrical battles will characterize war; and (4) weapons of mass destruction cast a shadow over almost all future contingencies. It proposes that analysis and modeling must evolve to: (1) reflect the significant differences in the warfare environment that will exist between theaters; (2) focus on strategic and operational events, variations, and uncertainties; (3) adopt a "counter-capabilities" approach to defining military threats; (4) adopt a new approach of developing simple but more comprehensive models; (5) address issues associated with the regional shadow of weapons of mass destruction; and (6) develop new procedures for presenting the uncertainties of analyses to decisionmakers.