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3.1.1. Strategic Decision-Making Based on Organizational Behavior -- Blacksmith

Translation of political objectives and policy decisions into military operations is a difficult and dangerous task, both in peace and in war. The second- and third-order effects of a policy decision are almost impossible to measure ahead of time. Policy decisions do not affect personnel, equipment, and facilities equally. Sometimes adverse effects come unexpectedly. Explaining anticipated effects to Congress is difficult without some hard supporting data.

Blacksmith (USAAIC, 1996) uses expert system and blackboard technologies to model policy decisions and report their impact to the Army's senior leadership. Blacksmith is a distributed system consisting of six separate models: personnel, logistics, installations, force structure (units), dollars, and the integrating blackboard model. These models run on separate computers within the Pentagon. Theoretically, personnel officers manage the expertise in the personnel model, etc. Examples of policy decisions to be tested might be the following:

  • What is the impact of various reorganizations? What happens to those soldiers who must be reclassified in their job specialty?
  • What is the impact of shifting units from overseas to the continental U.S.?
  • What is the cost of implementing a policy decision? Are there any real savings?

The blackboard architecture provides the link among the models. Results of one policy model will clearly affect the results of other models. The output to the CSA is through a single graphical interface that combines the results. This gives the CSA the needed ammunition to justify to, or combat, Congress on policy decisions.

3.1.2. Resource Allocation -- SABRE (Single Army Battlefield Requirements Evaluator)

Military planners have hundreds of plans available for various types of national emergencies. These plans are generic, based on a general class of emergency in some part of the world. When an actual emergency arises, the plan must be adjusted and actual units selected to resource it. SABRE (Branley, 1995) is a decision aid that allows planners to quickly choose specific Army units to employ during a national emergency. With SABRE, one planner can prepare an error-free contingency plan in only 3 hours. Deploying units get greater preparation time. Resolution to the crisis is speedier and usually more peaceful.

The general statement of the problem is very simple. Given the following,

  • A pool of military units, each uniquely identifiable
  • A proposed plan containing requirements for types and quantities of units
  • A set of weighted constraints, with minimum values indicated,

there is an attempt to satisfy all requirements with units that have the most desirable attribute values. The typical size of a SABRE problem involves over 8000 units and 1000 requirements in the proposed plan.

The SABRE database contains a description of all military units. Each unit is listed with a set of attributes describing its component, location, availability, status, and readiness. Component refers to active, reserve, or National Guard status. Availability describes whether or not the unit is currently deployed on a mission. Status describes if the unit is activating, deactivating, or reorganizing. All units submit monthly assessments of their equipment, personnel, training, and logistics readiness in accordance with regulations.

The planners provide the requirements and constraints. They list requirements strictly by type and quantity of unit based on planning guidance. Constraints will often come from the political leadership. Examples are, "Reserve forces will not be used unless absolutely necessary," or "Minimize the use of units stationed in the continental U.S." Sometimes the constraints will be highly restrictive, such as "Reserve forces will not be used." The planner must translate this guidance into constraints on the unit attributes.

SABRE, a Common LISP and X-Motif-based system, builds its database from the output of existing systems. The planner uses X-Motif dialog boxes to specify the requirements and constraints and then launches SABRE's analysis submodule.

The analysis submodule, called the Alternatives Analyzer, Comparer, Editor, and Sourcer (AACES) performs two steps. First, heuristics help AACES reduce the number of units to study. One example is eliminating all units that cannot meet any of the requirements. Another example is not considering a unit from Europe to a contingency in South Korea when like units in the Pacific are available.

Second, AACES sources units that best suit the requirement. AACES uses a suitability function, incorporating the constraints, readiness of the unit, etc. The output of this step is a report of the units sourced, requirements that could not be met, and requirements that might need additional actions to take place (such as activation of reserve units). AACES supplements the output with narrative explanations of its reasoning.

The planner is not isolated from the sourcing process. The Army AI Center recognized that planners must make subjective trade-offs when declaring the final sources. For example, some subunits might have extensive experience in crises similar to the on-going one. Also, sometimes deploying a unit might have adverse side-effects (as happened when the activation of reserve units for the Persian Gulf War caused serious shortfalls of policemen and doctors in some U.S. counties). SABRE behaves more as a partner in the process, and allows the planner to exercise these trade-offs as needed.

Another SABRE submodule formats the reports for use in other existing systems. This allows SABRE to be part of a total planning and deployment package.

SABRE was fielded to FORSCOM Headquarters at Fort McPherson, GA in 1993. As part of the fielding, the AI Center updated the knowledge base to include rapid deployment and crisis action planning considerations. Exercises showed that a planning process that previously took 9 days was reduced to 9 hours. Currently, a prototype client-server version of SABRE is underway. Also, SABRE is being installed into the Department of Defense's Global Command and Control System (GCCS). This installation will mean that SABRE will be available to most major Department of Defense headquarters for contingency planning.


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