An Enduring Framework for Assessing the Contributions of Force Structure to a Coercive: Strategy

DOD is still struggling to define itself in the post-cold-war age more than a decade after the new period began. With a strategy and force structure review occurring on average every two years, the military has still not been able to generate a consistent basis on which to justify its force structure or its strategy. Colonel Beene uses a decision analysis framework as a foundation for creating such a basis. Instead of depending on leadership for guidance, which changes with destabilizing regularity, he relies on the theories of coercion that began in the cold war era. Colonel Beene contends that these theories have particular value today, especially in light of the many innovations the nation has undertaken in the past decade. Modified and translated for modern conventional warfare, these theories form the basis for a framework of enduring requirements for any military force that undertakes a coercive strategy. Colonel Beene develops this framework to the operational level of analysis, and it is applied to two developmental air platforms, the Global Hawk Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and the Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle. He describes how this analysis tool compares to other tools of strategy and force structure assessment. Colonel Beene recommends the framework's continued use and development.

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