Designing an OOTW decision support system for military planners

Abstract

The intelligence community must provide relevant, timely intelligence to support operations other than war (OOTW). Recently, OOTW have become an increasing challenge to military planners. The intelligence community does not know with certainty where or when future OOTW will occur, what the operations will involve, when they will occur, or how much advance warning will be provided. To prudently deal with these challenges, the US Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) has developed a plan to systematically identify knowledge needs to support future OOTW. We present our preliminary knowledge hierarchy for the collection of intelligence information to help national security planners prepare for future OOTW. We developed a prototype to accept user input on alternative deployment locations and value assessments for criteria from the knowledge hierarchy to determine the best location. For a specific location, criteria receiving a score below a threshold generate a needed capability for the deploying unit. By analyzing locations that could serve as military areas of operations, the prototype answers the questions as to where to deploy and what to bring. This system represents the first attempt to use intelligence information in a decision support system that specifically addresses the needs of OOTW planners at multiple levels of command.