Assessing Capabilities and Risks in Air Force Programming

Framework, Metrics, and Methods

Don Snyder, Patrick Mills, Adam C. Resnick, Brent D. Fulton

ResearchPublished Apr 1, 2009

The goal of the defense budget is to deliver a portfolio of capabilities to meet a spectrum of uncertain future security environments. Despite progress in recent U.S. Air Force capabilities-based programming efforts, many limitations persist, and there are many disconnects between capability assessments and programming. To help mitigate these limitations, 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 budgeting allocations. The capability metrics relate resources to operational-level activities in national plans, apply across a range of programs, and conform to programming boundaries. The algorithms provide the programmer with a means to quantitatively and reproducibly develop programming options in light of an uncertain future security environment, serving as a means to express capabilities and risks of resource allocations in terms of national planning objectives.

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Snyder, Don, Patrick Mills, Adam C. Resnick, and Brent D. Fulton, Assessing Capabilities and Risks in Air Force Programming: Framework, Metrics, and Methods. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009. https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG815.html.
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The research described in this report was sponsored by the United States Air Force and conducted by RAND Project AIR FORCE.

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