Defence Challenges and Opportunities for Operational Analysis – a Soldier’s Perspective

Key-Note Speech at NATO’s Operations Research & Analysis Conference 2024.

Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning, and may I say a big thank you to Allied Command Transformation and the NATO Science and Technology Organisation for inviting me to speak to you on this occasion. As you have gathered from the introduction, I’m in no way a professional operational analyst, basically I’m a soldier – albeit one with a slight scientific bend, stemming from my civil engineering degree in structural mechanics. But since my retirement from the Norwegian Armed Forces 15 years ago, I have been working with proper analysts on long-term defence planning problems at FFI. Hopefully, that’s why I will be able to say something sensible or possibly even interesting about the role and, in my view, critical importance of operations research and analysis for the purpose of rational defence planning.

What I’m planning to do is to spend a couple of minutes reminding us what sort of problem long-term defence planning really is, before describing what you might call the military approach to solving problems in general. With that as a backdrop, I’ll try to explain some of the challenges or pitfalls of applying that kind of approach to the specific problem of defence planning. Based on that, I’ll go on to suggest an institutional framework for the use of operations research and analysis in long-term planning to overcome these deficiencies, before I wrap it up with some concluding remarks.

Understanding the Problem of Long-Term Defence Planning

Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, exactly what kind of problem is the design of a modern defence force? Most of you will probably agree that it is a complex, multi-dimensional, non-linear optimization problem, where we try to ensure that the next billion is always spent on the capability with the greatest marginal utility, as the economists call it, i.e. the asset which will provide the greatest increase in defence capability per invested dollar or euro. Force design, in short, is a cost/benefit exercise, where the cost bit is probably the more manageable factor of the two, but where benefit is a rather more complex issue, covering as it does different levels of ambition across a spectrum of different types of conflict.

Unfortunately, it is also a very contentious one, when it comes to the allocation of resources. The different services and branches of the armed forces anywhere will argue that certain capabilities are operationally ‘indispensable’, ‘critical’, ‘decisive’, etc., etc. That, however, in a world of limited resources, is sadly irrelevant. The relevant question is ‘How critical etc are they compared to what I can get by spending the same amount of money on a different capability?’ This is of course completely self-evident to you as trained analysts – but it is not necessarily so to the military themselves.

The Military Approach to Solving Problems

With that in mind, let us now turn to what I have called the military approach to solving problems in general, and begin by establishing that the military and scientific approaches to problem-solving are different – arguably for very good reasons. The military approach is perfectly valid for the sort of ‘here and now’ operational problems that military officers spend most of their careers dealing with. That, of course, is different from a scientific approach, but this difference is not always appreciated by officers coming into long-term planning assignments. Quite often they will think of this as essentially similar to any other operational planning activity, only with a different timeline.

However, not only is the timeline different – it is an entirely different kind of problem, requiring a different methodology and a different way of thinking. So, my task here today is really to answer the following question: How can Operations Research and Analysis help to overcome the deficiencies in the military approach to problem-solving when applied to long-term defence planning problems? I emphasize that this is a highly personal account, based entirely on my own experience from the Norwegian armed forces – and as such not particularly scientific. But from discussing these issues with my fellow chiefs of defence in NATO, it is my distinct impression that what I’m going to say will sound quite familiar to many of you.

Pitfall no 1 – The Military Attitude towards New Technology

The first of my pitfalls or deficiencies concerns the military attitude towards new technology. Military organisations are renowned for embracing new technology enthusiastically, and many trail-breaking technologies have indeed been developed for military purposes and only become civilianized later on. However, there is a strong tendency in military culture to approach new technology by asking: ‘How can this make me better, if only incrementally, at what I am doing?’ – in other words better at doing the same things as before. This will happen even if the technology in question turns out to have a disruptive or transformative potential – of being able to change the way we operate fundamentally.

In short, what I’m saying is that military organisations are institutionally conservative. This is where I don’t want you to get me wrong, there are a number of good things to be said for upholding military traditions. My point is that defence is really unique among government responsibilities in that it is the only public undertaking where the entire problem is hypothetical – most of the time, anyway. Whereas universities, railways, hospitals, the judiciary and other institutions all interact continuously with the realities they are there for, we in the military are screened on a daily basis for the realities of contemporary warfare. That is of course the whole business case for maintaining armed forces in the first place; we have them so that we shall not have to use them. But this also deprives us of the day-to-day feedback from reality which will tell other sectors what things work, and what things do not. This, ultimately, breeds the military habit of spending much time looking in the rear mirror, when we really should be looking through the front windscreen. In essence, adapting to new technology is not primarily about improving existing ways of going about our business, but about asking how it can make us better at implementing the timeless principles of war – mobility, surprise, security, concentration of effort, and others.

Let me give you a fairly obvious example. Consider the situation in 1914, at the outbreak of World War I. Rapid-firing artillery, magazine rifles sighted to several hundred meters, machine guns and barbed wire had made movement above ground all but impossible. Protected mobility was only restored with the arrival of the first tanks, but they were initially used only as a kind of mobile blockhouse. The advancing infantry would shelter behind these great hunks of steel, and once they had made it across no-man’s land alive, they could jump into the enemy’s trenches and start clearing them in pretty much the same way as they were used to. In other words, this was adapting the new technology to the old concept.

It was the Germans, having lost the war and therefore being more receptive to new ideas, who first saw that it must be better to turn the principle on its head and give all the other arms the same protection and mobility as the tank, thereby adapting the old concept to the new technology. Pursuing this idea, they came up with Panzer Divisions and by extension the concept of Blitzkrieg, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Pitfall no 2 – the Military Love of the Platform

My second point or pitfall concerns the military love of the platform, which is another distinctive characteristic of military culture. Practically all military men, or for that matter women, have lifelong love affairs with the platforms of their domain – the airman for his plane, the sailor for his ship and the soldier for his tank, self-propelled howitzer or whatever vehicle he is riding into battle on. Up to a point this is all very well, as a token of pride in what you are doing and confidence in the tools of your trade. On one occasion in my previous life, I was shown around the inside of an American B-52 Stratofortress at the US Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota, home base of the 5^th Bomb Wing. The B-52 has of course been around for quite some time, and the wing commander giving me the guided tour had flown combat missions in a B-52 out of Guam in the Pacific against targets in North Vietnam. On one occasion, his plane had got him and his crew safely back to Guam despite four of its eight engines being out of commission, riddled with North Vietnamese flak. Under such circumstances, one can understand that the bonds between man and machine take on an almost physical strength.

So, if you ask for example a submariner whether we should retain submarines in our force structure, the answer will be a lecture on the indispensability of submarines in a modern navy – most of it probably true. However, that is neither here nor there, the point is that the submariner, pretty much like the pilot or the artilleryman, never stops to consider why we need these platforms, or whether there are other ways of creating the particular effect they deliver. Strictly speaking and for the purpose of defence planning, the object of our affection should be the effect at the other end of the trajectory of whatever weapon is mounted on the platform, rather than the platform itself.

What we need to realize is that rational force planning is reverse engineering, effect comes before platform. Let me elaborate on that for a moment. Consider a given part of our territory under a multi-domain threat from an adversary. Our scenario-based analysis has generated a requirement for a spectrum of different effects across this area, some kinetic, some virtual. This in its turn will pose the question of what platforms are best suited to deliver these effects, irrespective of the domain of both sensor, target and effector.

Cost/benefit analysis will then give me the number and distribution of platforms providing the best possible coverage throughout the threatened area for the available budget. These platforms, organized within the framework of the services of their respective domains, will subsequently give me my force structure. This, of course, as opposed to the other way around, starting with the beloved platforms and ending up with whatever effects they can deliver.

Pitfall no 3 – the Doctrinal Way of Looking at Problems

With my next point. I’m coming to the particular military fondness for doctrine – for adhering to a prescribed pattern of behaviour in dealing with operational problems. Again, we are talking about something which is both natural and necessary in ordinary military operations, ensuring that all missions are executed in a way conforming with the overarching concept for which the units have been designed, equipped and trained. But this, consciously or unconsciously, breeds the habit in the military mind of looking for recipes or formulas – what we may call ‘the field manual approach to the world’. In short, military officers are trained from the start to ask: ‘What do I need to do to win?’

Operational analysts, on the other hand, working on aggregated defence problems, will try to understand what we want to achieve. In the same set of circumstances, rather than asking what we need to do to win, they will ask ‘What exactly does ‘win’ mean in this specific context?’ Another way of putting this is that military officers are tacticians by instinct, because most of their careers are spent dealing with problems at the tactical level. Analysts, on the other hand, will automatically frame the question in strategic terms, not because of any superior awareness of the difference between strategy and tactics, but because it follows from the nature of what they do.

Let me offer you another case study to drive the point home. Consider the same threatened area as in my previous example, which is in fact Norway’s northernmost county Finnmark, right up at the top and the only county with a common border with Russia. Consequently, most of the scenarios on which Norwegian defence planning is based feature a Russian incursion into Finnmark, one way or another. The most serious one is a land grab where they occupy a significant part of the county in order to enlarge the buffer zone in front of their strategically important bases on the Kola peninsula – an undertaking for which they would have superior forces available, should they decide to do it. Not only in terms of numbers, but also in terms of operational mobility with both amphibious and airmobile units. Here we need to recognize that Finnmark is a big place, 20 percent bigger than all of Denmark, and that available forces on our side are one mechanized brigade which for political and historical reasons are located in Troms county, 900 kms from the border. In other words, this is a strategic problem characterized by an extremely difficult ratio of time and space to available forces.

For dealing with this scenario there are two contending concepts of operation representing two different strategic levels of ambition. The first is moving the brigade forward, holding a sufficiently large part of the county for at least 30-40 days, to allow allied reinforcements to land directly in Finnmark. This is the concept favoured by the Army. The alternative is a concept where there is no attempt to hold territory in Finnmark, opting instead for maintaining an undisputed state of war by inflicting losses on the attacker with A2/AD capabilities, supported by sensors on elevated platforms and small ISTAR units on the ground in Finnmark. This is the concept favoured by FFI.

Without involving you in the many finer points of the discussion, the essence here is that the strategic objective of this campaign is obviously not to fight a battle which is decisive in itself. The strategic purpose is to create a situation which will trigger Article 5 and with that allied reinforcements, which in and of itself does not dictate holding territory – particularly not when that level of ambition exceeds our resources by a wide margin. Nevertheless, this is exactly the key difference between the two concepts, one involves holding territory and one does not, despite the fact that holding territory is neither possible nor logically or empirically necessary to achieve the strategic purpose.

In short, whereas ‘defend’ in tactical terms implies holding ground, in strategic terms it does not. Consequently, we are reminded that an unconsciously tactical interpretation of the mission will set us on the wrong track from the beginning. Important defence problems must be considered in their proper strategic context, something for which the scientific approach gives a greater degree of certainty.

Pitfall no 4 – Inter-Service Rivalry and Bigotry

My fourth and last concern pertains to the fact that the different arms and branches of the armed forces are not simply different branches of an otherwise unified organisation. It is not like a bank where there is very little difference between those who work in corporate banking, those who are in investment and those who manage our personal bank accounts or loans. They all wear the same suits and go to the same canteen for lunch. Not so the different services of the armed forces, who are proud and self-conscious clans and tribal societies in their own right. Despite all the rhetoric about multi-domain operations and jointness, when it comes to the allocation of resources, jointness goes out of the window and it is every service for itself. What this means is that the services – army, air force, navy – see the long-term defence planning process primarily as a battleground and an opportunity to maximize their own slice of the pie, as opposed to optimizing the nutritional value of the pie as a whole, if I may use a food analogy.

Do I have any proof of this, I hear you say, and as a matter of fact I do. Some years ago FFI thought of asking a number of officers at staff college level – so capable of seeing the bigger picture – the following question: ‘Assume that the investment budget is increased by NOK 600 million, which part of the armed forces should be prioritized?’ The options were the Army, the Home Guard, the Navy, the Air Force, the Cyber Defence Force, the Special Operations Forces, the Logistics organisation or any other. Then someone came up with the bright idea of correlating the answers with the service background of the respondents. I can hear from your chuckling that you realize where I’m going with this, and you are absolutely right, of course. This is what it looked like, and as they say in American court room dramas on TV: ‘I rest my case’.

Since this is actually the focal point of my criticism of my own profession and their ability to behave rationally, let me give you another case study. This one will try to highlight the consequences of the considerable time lag that often exists between unwise investment decisions and their negative implications for the armed forces’ operations, readiness and general capability. The case is the acquisition of a new class of coastal corvettes for the Navy a little more than 20 years ago.

In the late 1990s there was a unison chorus of admirals claiming that the replacement of our aging missile torpedo boats with a new class of coastal corvettes was a life and death matter for the Navy. At the same time, a Joint Defence Review concluded that there was no way the Navy would have the funds necessary in the future to operate 11 surface combatants, five frigates and six corvettes. This was not a matter of opinion; it was a dead certainty and only a question of doing the math. However, the politicians unwisely fell in with the naval lobby, and the military-industrial-communal complex had it their way, among other things because the ships were to be built by a Norwegian shipyard, so the usual considerations of jobs for industry came into it. Nevertheless, the then prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, later to gain fame as secretary general of NATO, states in his memoirs that this was a wrong decision, and one that should not have been made.

Not surprisingly, from 2010 onwards the Navy started suffering all the usual consequences of over-investment, such as insufficient manning, too few days at sea, lack of spare parts, etc. At one time, only one or two of five frigates were operational, while spare parts to keep them sailing had to be cannibalized from those laid up because of manning problems. The point here is that on top of this lobbying being blatantly disloyal to the then chief of defence, General Sigurd Frisvold, as well as to the greater good of the armed forces as a whole, it was first of all dysfunctional for the Navy itself. In actual fact, it was downright stupid in terms of what the same group of admirals would define as being in the Navy’s own interest. But the time lag between the decision to acquire the corvettes and its consequences was sufficiently long to make it too difficult for many, even among the Navy’s own senior ranks, to see the connection between cause and effect. Hence my fourth and final point when it comes to the need for a more scientific approach to long-term defence planning than that which the services are capable of when left to themselves.

The bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, is that there are mechanisms at work here where the nature of the defence planning problem collides with certain cultural characteristics of the military profession. This creates an eco-system which is not entirely beneficial for rational long-term planning decisions, where operations research and analysis therefore has a very important part to play. I should perhaps mention at this stage that from what I have been saying so far, you might think that we should perhaps leave the military out of it altogether, since they only seem to be a bad influence. Let me therefore emphasize very strongly at this stage that the military contribution will always be an all-important, experience-based reality check on plans and concepts developed theoretically.

How to get there

I’m coming to the end of my presentation, ladies and gentlemen, so it’s time to live up to my promise of suggesting how the right balance between military and scientific insights can be orchestrated in the interest of better defence planning. First of all; I think we need to realize that this is not the sort of work into which the armed forces can post just any officer who might be available. For that as well as for other similar reasons, my first move would be to create a corps of general staff officers, selected for their intellectual and analytical ability, who should also be career-managed by the chief of defence through the joint staff, as opposed to being managed by the service staff of their indigenous service. This is important because it will deprive the service chiefs of any leverage in terms of influencing their work through controlling their postings and promotions, of which there are blatant and bare-faced examples in the past.

This group should receive extended staff and command training, possibly with a second year added on to the present one-year course at the staff college. Here the curriculum should include not just practical exercises such as tactical exercises without troops, computer-assisted wargaming, staff rides and battlefield tours, but also subjects related specifically to long-term planning completely lacking today. These would include defence economics, statistics, operational analysis and the like, supplementing the traditional subjects rooted in the humanities, such as military history, strategy, international relations, etc. They are all both relevant and absolutely necessary, but we do need to infuse up and coming officers with the ability to think and analyze in quantitative terms – time, space, force ratios, probabilities, resources – which is why we should probably need a second year with an exam at the end of it to qualify officers for admittance to the general staff corps.

Here I should probably add that I am of course aware that several of the member countries of the Alliance here represented have had this kind of system in operation for years, if not decades – in Germany’s case for something like 160 years since their invention of the general staff system in the mid-nineteenth century. What I’m saying, therefore, is that a system somewhere along those lines should probably be emulated by other countries as well. Historically, the thorough training of officers has proved to be one of the most profitable investments we can make in our armed forces.

Having created my corps of general staff officers, I would set up a small strategic planning element within the defence staff, tasked with executing defence reviews and other long-term defence planning studies on behalf of the CHOD. In this planning element would be integrated general staff qualified officers, ORA analysts and other relevant civilian experts as permanent members. The strategic plans element would be the single source of advice to CHOD and ministers on the long-term development of the armed forces, supported by external staffs and agencies for supplementary or additional work – such as the intelligence service, the logistics organisation or scientific institutions like FFI and others.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, over the past 40 minutes or so, I have tried to bring out why and how operations research and analysis is an indispensable tool for rational defence planning. To do that at NATO’s annual ORA conference probably comes under the heading of preaching to the converted or kicking in open doors, but I still hope you have found it worthwhile. It has certainly not been an attempt on my part just to suck up to the present audience; it happens to be a deeply held conviction after having worked extensively with long-term planning problems on both sides of the military-civilian divide over many years. It is, however, as stated a personal account, and therefore not universally applicable in every detail to all of the nations in the Alliance.

Let me therefore just leave you with this as my final statement: The single most important quality that ORA can bring to long-term defence planning is the disciplined, scientific approach: Framing the important questions in strategic terms – what are we trying to achieve? The answers to this question must be worked out dispassionately by a joint group of civilian and military experts which should be sufficiently small to be very good at what they are doing, have unquestioned authority, and – finally and most importantly – not themselves be affected by their own recommendations.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention and your patience.

Photo: From the conference // NATO