Generating hypotheses on fighting the global war on terrorism

Abstract : As the calendar turned to 1992, the conditions that had dominated military planning for almost half a century came to end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In anticipation of a world that required less military manpower, the United States cut its active duty forces by about a third in the decade that followed. This was often referred to as the "peace dividend." Unfortunately, while the nature of the threat changed, the world arguably became a more dangerous place. In fact, Beckett states that: "Between 1990 and 1996 there were at least 98 significant conflicts inflicting 5.5 million deaths, but only seven of these were waged between recognized states." The challenges facing our armed forces are fundamentally different than they were just over a decade ago. Consequently, our forces are undertaking an ambitious effort to fundamentally change. As Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld states: "What's taking place in the conflict [Afghanistan], in the global war on terrorism, and the distinctively new threats we're facing, [provides] the impetus to transformation. Similarly, we need to transform an analysis infrastructure built to analyze a well studied and stable situation. Specifically, we need agile tools and analysis methods that allow us to quickly gain and effectively communicate insights into dynamic, asymmetric situations. In particular, to better assist senior decision-makers in structuring, equipping, and employing military forces to face the new threat we need to understand more about the intangible human elements of combat (leadership, morale, unit cohesiveness, etc.) in medium and low intensity conflicts involving adaptive adversaries. Towards that end, the Marine Warfighting Laboratory's Project Albert seeks to exploit the advances in computing power and new technologies to "provide quantitative answers... to important questions facing military decision-makers."