New Issues and Tools for Future Military Analysis

This Note reports on a workshop held at RAND in May 1991 to discuss the new concerns analysts must face following the changes that have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia since 1989. The workshop produced a number of specific recommendations to the military analysis community and its sponsors: (1) continue to discuss issues of military analysis in open forums; (2) develop a quick reaction analysis approach with supporting tools; (3) reinstitute basic principles of systems analysis (attention to uncertainty, multiple scenario analysis, parametric analysis, comparative analysis, etc.), which may have atrophied because of the relatively stable planning scenario of the Cold War era; (4) promote basic research on complex phenomena, such as qualitative factors (training, morale, leadership), behavior of C3I systems, and new types of conflict; (5) promote multiorganization analysis of complex issues as well as multiple analyses of the same issues; and (6) promote education of analysts in the synthesis and solution of defense problems and education of decisionmakers in the use and limitations of analysis.