Paratus Futurum

For more than two decades, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has been using its Project Evergreen strategic foresight initiative to prepare for the missions of the future.

Over time, the Office of Emerging Policy (DCO-X) has organized scores of workshops with both USCG personnel and subject-matter experts to explore a variety of scenarios portraying what the executive branch, Congress, and the public might expect from the service decades into the future and how the service might respond.

This effort has hit its stride.

DCO-X rolled the dice on a strategic game — Paratus Futurum (Latin for "ready for the future") developed by the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) — to play out future scenarios. Senior leaders, as well as midlevel personnel who will be the leaders of tomorrow, have played the game. Players agreed that gaming clarifies the stakes and trade-offs involved in virtually every future move the USCG might make. This brief provides an overview and key findings from the first two years of conducting Paratus Futurum.

How Evergreen Operates

Evergreen VI works by tapping into the expertise of USCG personnel.

Activities

Scenario development

DCO-X and HSOAC researchers create scenarios of global and regional changes that might occur in 15 to 25 years.

Paratus Futurum

Small groups of USCG personnel play out how these scenarios could interact with existing strategies and statutory missions and discuss nearterm decisions the USCG could make to respond to or prevent negative events.

Outputs

Quick looks at key themes

After each game, researchers publish key themes from the discussions in quick looks for DCO-X to present to senior leaders.

Desired Outcomes

Insights for senior leaders

These collective insights allow senior leaders to make informed decisions that prepare the USCG to meet its missions, ensure mission relevance, and develop the right workforce for the future.

Evergreen V

Scenarios to inform the Commandant's strategy

Game 1:

Jan. 2022

Game 2:

Mar. 2022

Evergreen VI

Scenarios to explore the Commandant's strategy

Game 1:

Dec. 2022

Game 2:

Feb. 2023

Game 3:

May 2023

Game 4:

Aug. 2023

Background

Evergreen serves as the USCG's strategic foresight initiative.

For Evergreen V, RAND researchers developed a framework for creating scenarios, then built several future worlds with different representations of the effects of climate change, technological advancement, competition with China, U.S. economic decline or stability, pandemics, and increased cooperation on the global commons (for example, global fisheries enforcement). During multiple workshops over the course of Evergreen V, teams of participants brainstormed how the USCG might respond to each scenario.

In the last year of Evergreen V, RAND researchers created and tested the new strategic game, Paratus Futurum.

The game uses the scenarios developed and discussed through the prior workshops but makes the decisionmaking more explicit:

• Teams allocate resources that are never enough to address every contingency over their 20-year horizon.
• They experience midgame plot twists that foil their best-laid plans.
• They discover the unintended consequences of their decisions.
• They assess how their decisions will land with the public, policymakers, other agencies, and the USCG's own workforce.

Importantly, players make decisions in a safe-to-fail environment, and they leave the game with experience and insights that will benefit them as they climb the Coast Guard career ladder.

Beyond the Horizon

• Rapid climate change
• Competition with an emboldened China
• Pressure on fisheries
• More-confrontational sea transit
• U.S. economy in decline
• United States seeking to rebuild international partnerships

Steady Growth

• Increasingly aggressive China in geopolitics and gray-zone activities
• United States focusing on international partnerships
• Advances in green energy and space helping sustain economic growth
• Politically and socially stable United States

Diverging Paths

• United States turning inward during stable economic prosperity
• China dominating the Arctic
• Fear of future climate effects
• More-assertive China
• Not fully materialized societal changes from a gig economy and new technology

Increasing Disorder

• Global effects of climate change and a new pandemic
• China strengthening partnerships in Central America
• Rebounding U.S. economy benefits from advancements in global technology

Gray zone refers to coercive action that does not reach the level of armed conflict but is beyond ordinary relations (RAND Corporation, "A New Framework for Understanding and Countering China's Gray Zone Tactics," RB-A594-1, 2022, p. 1). These are summary statements for at least a 20-year time frame, but events and shorter-duration trends can run contrary to a broader trend (e.g., one can describe an economy as being prosperous over a couple of decades, but that economy could still see a shorter-lived downturn or recession).

Gameplay and Methods

During each iteration of Paratus Futurum, each of the four teams is assigned one of the four scenarios developed by RAND researchers.

Teams prioritize missions and geographic regions based on their scenario and use chips to allocate resources. Each gameplay is three to six turns, with each turn representing four years into the future. At the start of each turn, teams receive indications and warnings that create uncertainty and challenge the decisionmaking environment.

In terms of methods, the games are, in effect, treated as interactive experiments. Researchers familiar with game theory, service operations and culture, and qualitative analysis take notes on interactions, gameplay, and discussions; analyze the observations; and identify patterns in how the teams respond. The results are shared with participants and service sponsors, then further analyzed for research reports that are publicly available.

In the first year of games, the players were given a future scenario and a specific strategic mission to implement. Running each scenario multiple times, with varying strategies, allowed the researchers to identify common themes, such as how the USCG should prioritize or deprioritize, and highlighted key friction areas in USCG operations and culture. This input was valuable in helping the new Commandant of the Coast Guard develop her vision and potentially enduring strategy for the next four years and beyond.

In the second year of games, the players were not told the future scenario until partway through the game but were tasked with implementing "Commandant's Intent" and the 2022 Strategy.^[1] The central goal of Paratus Futurum in the first year of Evergreen VI was to understand how Strategy would perform under a variety of plausible futures and when treated as a long-term strategy for the USCG.

Key Findings

Analysis of the game and comments from participants resulted in several findings.

The game helps participants switch their mindset from thinking about short- and near-term planning cycles to thinking purposefully about the USCG's long-term direction or generational planning cycle.

With a heavy emphasis on search-and-rescue (SAR) missions, law enforcement, and marine environmental protection, the USCG is constantly in a state of readiness and response. This operational focus means that it is often reacting to immediate needs and emergencies, leaving little time for long-term strategic planning or consideration of broader issues on the horizon.

When given the opportunity to operate in a safe-to-fail environment, participants in the game often made decisions that diverged from the traditional practices of the USCG.

They appeared willing to take risks in areas in which the service had historically been risk averse, sparking discussions about the suitability of the current mission set for the future USCG. Teams reflected on such issues as deferred maintenance, organizational culture, and surge efforts, aiming to make choices that would prevent future personnel from encountering challenges similar to their lived experiences. These departures from past practices involved acknowledging the potential negative effects on stakeholders, but participants deemed the trade-off worthwhile. Despite facing negative consequences in the game, many players expressed a steadfast commitment to their decisions, stating that they were ultimately in the best interest of the USCG

The players' discussions and selections highlight how different types of stakeholders (e.g., homeland security and national defense) pull the service in multiple and often-conflicting directions.

This tension forces players to consider how the USCG should think about itself as a service — that is, how to balance the USCG's identity with what it might look like in the future. Players repeatedly noted that it would be beneficial for other services and agencies to play the game to gain a better understanding of the types of trade-offs and multipolar pulls that the USCG faces.

When given the 2022 Strategy, players could arrive at very different decisions and justify them using the same vision and strategy documents.

At the same time, players consistently identified clear priorities for the USCG of the future: missions that secure maritime trade, allow freedom of navigation, maintain international alliances, or provide direct support to people as no-fail missions.

Players initially followed the strategic visions that they were assigned in Evergreen V. They focused on either global or domestic missions as directed, then expanded or contracted as new plot twists were introduced.

As they encountered new demand signals in the scenarios, players showed increasing willingness to accept risk for high-priority missions, such as SAR.

Players said that thinking about future investments in assets and resourcing helped them clarify the trade-offs between the future and the present.

They said that future investments were a means of buying down risk, gaining flexibility or efficiencies, and implementing each group's broader strategy. But doing so meant taking on risk to mission in the present and required developing the future force necessary to take advantage of these investments.

Notable Takeaways from Gameplay

The regions that teams prioritized reflected the tension between homeland security and military missions.

Teams selected continental United States (CONUS) Atlantic, CONUS Pacific, the Indo-Pacific, and the Arctic in almost equal measure. The CONUS regions reflect the need to execute homeland missions in concert with the rest of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The Indo-Pacific and Arctic selections reflect the USCG's role as a military service and as an entity with capabilities and partner relationships that the other services do not have.

Teams consistently identified several no-fail missions across games.

Emergency management and disaster response (EMDR) and international engagement (IE) were the two most–heavily prioritized missions. EMDR was noted as being a mission that had high visibility, high consequences, and a strong association with the USCG as a humanitarian service. IE, by contrast, is not a core statutory mission for the USCG. At the same time, players discussed the myriad ways in which IE is perhaps the key mission for the USCG overseas.

Teams acknowledged SAR's importance to the USCG brand, but the priority levels given to this were mixed.

Participants had lively discussions about the SAR mission's importance to the USCG identity and to public awareness and opinion of the service; the mission's role as an enabler of the capabilities and capacities needed for contingencies, such as hurricane response; and the mission's influence over training, aircraft configuration, and stationing. Some teams were adamant that SAR be resourced regardless of the indications and warnings, but others argued that, although SAR is one of the USCG's most-visible services, unsuccessful SAR missions have not historically received significant blowback. SAR was often thus the bill payer for elevating the priority of other missions, which demonstrates how demand signals can override the taboo of accepting risk in missions.

Participants noted that, although the principal USCG mission set might not change, the ways in which missions are performed or accomplished might be different.

For example, new opportunities to leverage new technologies, such as unmanned systems or service providers from the private sector, could change the USCG's activities. This included taking the "search" out of "search and rescue" and having SAR tasked to different entities in the future. Furthermore, although USCG operations facilitate trade while maintaining safety, other mechanisms, such as funding grants or developing industry standards, have historically been used for these purposes.

Deciding which regions or missions to deprioritize seemed counter to what the USCG is and does.

Paratus Futurum did not, and is not designed to, address which missions the USCG should prioritize or deprioritize. However, the exercise of requiring players to set areas of priority and areas in which they were willing to take risks was a key component of crafting a long-term USCG strategy. Still, deprioritizing missions was a struggle that players said felt unnatural. Players noted that, although the USCG recognizes that it must consistently operate at risk because of its extensive responsibilities and stretched resources, it is very infrequently given explicit direction to deprioritize a mission. Although developing such direction is difficult, the players said that receiving this type of direction from senior leadership would be valuable to allow the USCG to stop doing the things that are deprioritized and avoid stretching the service so thin that many of the missions have an unacceptable chance of failure.

Rather than the USCG buying assets based on immediate demand and availability, planning investments in the broader context of the USCG, future demands, and how the investment would fit into the future service could help support and solidify the USCG's identity and its ability to meet the challenges that it might face in an uncertain future.

Getting out of the planning-cycle mindset and thinking purposefully about the long-term direction of the USCG, as the game requires players to do, are difficult. Yet players expressed a picture of both long- and short-term investment needs derived from Strategy. Players said they saw existing capabilities and infrastructure being stretched beyond capacity as one of the USCG's biggest existing challenges.

Players acknowledged that their ability to take risks in mission areas to fund these priorities did not reflect actual USCG behavior. They said that operations and maintenance (O&M) and facility modernization were the areas in which the service had decided to accept risk, and they frequently commented on the long-term negative effects of that decision. Players also said that the USCG was already behind the curve in adapting technological advancements and that the service must begin making technological investments today to build technological capacity for the long term.

Players reported that culture, including change management and institutional adaptation, was increasingly seen as a means of sustaining the service and the missions.

In the game, culture is a broad term representing the adaptations required for new investments (e.g., new operational concepts, organizational structures, and training) and the behavioral norms, values, and practices that guide the service's expectations and actions. Players' initial approaches to culture in the game were mixed. Some teams kept the minimum requirement for culture, while others said that it was what they called a "compounding risk" to leave the culture lagging and continued to invest in it. Over the course of the game, the teams that did not invest in culture faced challenges that outpaced the USCG's ability to adapt to the shifting world around it. Often, the teams expressed a need to improve the service's institutional adaptability to keep executing their strategies, which players said resonated with them as a reflection of the realities that the service faces today.

Participants Said That the Game Is Valuable

Bringing diverse players and perspectives into the room proved valuable for USCG leadership analyzing the game — and for players.

Junior and midcareer officers frequently said that the game gave them a rare opportunity to think beyond the scope of their daily mission sets and consider the entire USCG enterprise across missions and regions and that it provided useful insight into the types of trade-off decisions senior leaders face. Senior leaders noted that the game reflected the friction points with which they grappled regularly and that the game provided them space to think about what the service could do, not just what it had traditionally done. They noted that it affected the way they thought about the service's capabilities.

Participants said they valued engaging with colleagues who hailed from other parts of the service and had different perspectives and that they developed a greater appreciation for the hard choices that must be made across the enterprise. Players remarked on their regular struggles to carve out time for activities outside their demanding roles, citing the difficulty of stepping away for a full day to participate in the game. However, after engaging in the experience, players noted that the game provided valuable insights and perspectives that ultimately made it a worthwhile endeavor.

Players from outside the USCG noted that they were surprised at the types of prioritization choices the service faced and the underlying reasoning and requirements for different missions. The game also provided non-USCG players a clearer picture of USCG missions and its unique capabilities and authority. Additionally, they noted that they had a better understanding of the complexities of conflicting directions of demand and the constraints of the resources with which to address them.

Many participants suggested that the game provides valuable learning opportunities and that a broader swath of the USCG should play it. They repeatedly said that exposure to this type of thinking should start much earlier in the career progression because the people who make trade-off decisions are often confronting this sort of strategic thinking for the first time.

Recommendations

Analysis of the game and comments from participants suggested several recommendations:

• Set a long-term strategic vision, support it with near-term strategic waypoints, and be prepared to balance the near-term risk to mission and the longer-term risk to strategy when new demands emerge.
• Be explicit about guidance and immediate priorities in strategic documents to ensure that everyone is on the same page when making tradespace decisions. At the same time, give explicit permission, supported throughout the levels of command, to stop doing tasks that will be deprioritized.
• Explore different concepts of the future USCG and determine what assets and capabilities will be required to support them. Link them to nearer-term decisions and investments to inform procurement.
• Invest in the USCG as an institution. Balance the focus on missions and investments with an emphasis on the service's people and culture.
• Continue to use Paratus Futurum to continue developing strategic thinking in the service and as a tool to engage with external stakeholders.
• Continue to use gaming to explore difficult policy questions and complex problem sets from the perspective of various stakeholders and communities of interest and in a safe-to-fail environment.

Notes

• [1] Linda Fagan, "Commandant's Intent," USCG, 2022; USCG, Strategy, October 2022.

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Topics

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