Designing and implementing an Army capability model

Abstract

The United States Army is transforming itself from a heavy mechanized force designed for cold war missions to a more mobile objective force tailored to the demands of an asymmetric warfare involving many diverse missions, from peacekeeping to land warfare. The Army Objective Force will be based on rapid mobility, information dominance, and tactical superiority. We developed a decision support tool to assess current Army capabilities and prioritize potential Army programs based on their ability to support future Army capabilities. We used two key documents, The Army Plan (TAP) and the U.S. Army Objective Force White Paper, which identify future Army capabilities and transformation goals. Our decision support tool uses multiple objective decision analysis implemented in Microsoft Access to help our client (the Army staff office responsible for prioritizing Army programs) evaluate Army programs. Each program is evaluated by the future Army capabilities it will provide. The ability to prioritize programs is essential to the Army and, specifically, our client because it helps determine which programs provide the most value for the Army budget. Further, it will give our client the ability to assess the effects of potential changes to both program funding and the transformation goals.