# Mission Capability Packages

Winds of Change

The winds of change that envelop us are driven by four
forces:



- a constrained military budget
- an end to bi-polar global competition with Moscow
- an increase in the number of non-traditional operations the
military is being called upon to execute
- rapid advances in technology, particularly in
telecommunications and information processing.

Two prerequisites for success are in our control: 1)  the
development of new and innovative concepts and strategies, made
possible by technology, to meet mission challenges, 2) the ability
to transform these embryonic concepts and strategies into real
operational capability unconstrained by institutional considera-
tions.  What is needed is a process that can ensure and facilitate
the  necessary innovations, then subject them to  scrutiny and
validation, and to bring them to fruition in the form of packages
of capability designed to accomplish specific missions.









## Mission Capability Packages

The Mission Capability Package concept proposed here is an
extension of previous efforts initiated during the 1960s with the
introduction of the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting Execution
System (PPBS), continued by the Goldwater-Nichols legislation, and
most recently advanced by the expanded JROC process, to build
capabilities around a vision of how missions should be performed
rather than an outmoded process based upon institutional artifacts.

This concept is the culmination of a long process of evolution
in U.S. Force Planning.  In the 1960s, the DOD was in need of
"systems thinking" so that relationships among programs  would be
explicitly considered.  Goldwater-Nichols extended this concept
from programs to warfighting itself.  Now the expanded JROC process
is poised to complete this transformation -- building institutions
based upon mission  requirements rather than trying to satisfy
mission requirements within given institutional structures and
constraints.

During the past year,  ACT has been working with individuals
in OSD,  the Joint Staff, DISA, and ARPA to improve the technology
insertion process.   The approach described below is a result of
these efforts to exploit the opportunities that technology affords
to change the way we organize, equip, and fight.

Mission Capability Packages (MCP),  as the end products of
such a process,  would contain concepts of operations, command  and
force structures, the corresponding doctrine, training and
education, technology, and systems�with a support infrastructure
designed and tailored to accomplish specific missions.  An integral
part of the MCP concept is the approach proposed to synchronize the
insertion of advanced technology with our ability to change the way
we fight so that we are able to take advantage of the opportunities
afforded by  technology.

The creation of USACOM and the development of the adaptive
force packaging concept represent a major step toward our ability
to realize the objectives inherent in the MCP approach. Adaptive
force packages must, due to the constraints of time, be assembled
largely  from "off-the-shelf" components. Within these limitations,
USACOM's ability to  tailor "force solutions" has been very
successful. MCPs, with the freedom to design their own
components from scratch, can fully leverage the capabilities of
technology, thus creating an opportunity to radically transform
current methods and approaches. Time is the key. The MCP
process can produce a package in 6 months, 2 years, or 5 years. The
time frame affects  the nature and magnitude of the change that can
be achieved and hence the  degree of improvement in capabilities
and/or efficiencies that can be realized.

Given the broad mission spectrum we face in the coming years,
no one solution, in any dimension, is going to work.   While we
may find some degree of commonality in the nature of our
conceptual, doctrinal, and organizational solutions to these
mission challenges, it is only after we develop mission-specific
solutions and then compare them across the board for common threads
and components that the best solutions emerge.   Thus, our approach
to meeting our current and future challenges must be mission-
oriented.





## MCP Process

While much has been learned about putting technology to use,
the pace of technological advances has quickened to such a degree
that current DOD methods of incorporating technology are well
behind the power curve.  Although acqui-sition reforms are underway
to help reduce the time it  takes to go  from design  to
development, they alone will not be sufficient to bring about the changes needed
to meet today's mission challenges.

Acquisition reforms alone are insufficient because the
technology development cycle is out of synch with military strategy
development and the elements needed to implement military strategy. 
 Speeding up the technology acquisition cycle without addressing
the inertia in the process by which we develop military strategy,
concepts, and doctrine just makes these processes more out of
synch.  What is needed is an approach that synchronizes the
development of military strategy  with the advances in technology
and with the technology insertion process.

The speed at which technology can be deployed is only  one
aspect of the problem.  Consider a situation in which new
technology can be made instantly available to operational users. 
How much of the technology's potential will be realized?   In point
of fact, that answer is that, at best, only incremental
improvements will be made, thus only a fraction of the potential
utility of the technology will be realized.   This is not to say
that such improvement would not be useful, or even important.  But
inescapably, a great deal of the potential of the technology would
go unutilized.   This scenario would be repeated over and over as
the latest technology replaced older technology. Only a series of
incremental changes and improvements in operational capability
would be achieved.  The MCP process address this problem
squarely.  It provides an opportunity to make radical changes
as well, if indeed they are needed.

Figure 1 presents an overview of the process by which new MCP
concepts would be conceived, tested, retested, and finally
transformed into real operational capabilities.  To achieve its
goal, the MCP process focuses, synchronizes, and coordinates the
efforts of numerous DOD organizations.  
Components of this MCP process currently exist, but the
glue needed to hold these pieces together is weak and the overall
process itself is not as well focused as it could be.  We are
currently weakest in the front end or conceptual phase and in
accepting and implementing approaches that require changes in
culture.

In the Concept Development Phase, groups of individuals with
the requisite operational and technical expertise would be brought
together in a safe environment with the charter to "think outside
of the box."  NDU offers  an environment particularly well suited
to this task.  As concepts jell, they would be then subjected to a
series of analyses, experiments, and tests to determine if they
merit adoption by DOD. It is essential to keep users heavily
involved insuring that each aspect of the package [command concepts
and organization, doctrine and procedures, force packages,
technology and systems, training, and education] is mutually
supporting and operation-ally sound. The Concept Refinement Phase, 
having a distinctly "hands on" flavor, is essential to facilitating
effective communication between the communities.

DOD has invested in a full spectrum of models, simulations,
testbeds, and instrumented ranges to support the testing of
weapons,  systems, equipment,  doctrine, and concepts of operations
and for the training  and exercising of  our forces.  While these 
valuable resources help to support the assessment and refinement of
MCP concepts, several areas of weakness need to be addressed.

Most urgently there is a need for explicit and flexible
representation of command and control and associated information
effects including what has become known as "information war." 
While work needs to be done at all echelons of command, the most
pressing need is at the CINC and JTF levels -- with emphasis on
coalition operations. These models and simulations should be able
to accommodate changes in all aspects of the MCP�including
doctrine, organizations, command approaches, lines of authority,
and information flows.  Without this capability, these expensive
investments would be unable to shed light on the critical issues
being addressed by DOD.   Equally obvious is that these models and
tools no longer can be designed solely to support a particular
segment of the community (e.g., training), but need to be built
with the idea that they will be used in all phases of the
development of MCPs.

The last phase of the process requires the  implementation of
the institutional changes, technologies, and systems that are
required by a MCP.  At some point, a successful mission capability
package concept will have gained sufficient credibility  that the
need for certain institutional changes will  become widely
recognized.  This point is a critical junction because it is here
that the battle with the forces of inertia is joined.  Given the
knowledge of this battlefield in advance, it is important that the
senior civilian and military leadership fully embrace the MCP
process and stay abreast of the development of MCP concepts and
their progress.     The  Department  of  Defense  needs  to  do  a  
mission-by-mission review of how we can meet the challenges we
face.  Since organizations continually need to accommodate change
in the nature of their missions, organizations also need to be
structured to facilitate the development of new MCP concepts and
their translation into  operational capability.





## Recommendations

- Develop, as an integral part of the expanded JROC process,
Mission Capability Package concepts targeted at the out years of
the planning cycle.
- Use these MCP concepts to drive R&D priorities,  to focus the
technology insertion, and to guide organizational and force
planning and doctrine development.
- Integrate future visions of command and control, information
warfare and intelligence into a coherent set of concepts and
capabilities.
- Include explicit representation of command and control and
information warfare effects in models and simulations.