Capabilities for Joint Analysis in the Department of Defense

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has long had broad capabilities for joint analysis, whether for planning future forces or supporting field commanders during current challenges. DoD is envied by other government agencies for its analytic capabilities and processes. Nonetheless, issues have arisen. This report stems from a congressional request for an independent report about DoD's capabilities for joint analysis and ways to improve them. Congressional concerns largely involved the activity called support for strategic analysis (SSA). In 2011, the director of the Office of the Secretary of Defense's (OSD's) Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) disbanded campaign-modeling and reduced CAPE's participation in the SSA activity, weakening SSA significantly. This report is largely about SSA and how and whether to revise it. The author drew on previous research and conducted new interviewees with present and past DoD officials and working analysts. The concerns expressed by interviewees fell into in two groups: those seeing great value in various aspects of the SSA, including the campaign-modeling and analysis for which capability is seen to have plummeted, and those giving low marks to the SSA processes and some products. The research concluded that, rather than making on-the-margin tweaks to SSA, DoD should make fundamental revisions to the overall planning construct to which SSA contributes. Doing so will lead naturally to changes in functions, organization, process, methods and tools, and staffing. The author recommends creating a new activity to assist in mid- and longer-term planning, called analytic support for strategic planning.