Case Study 3

Prediction of Future Military Deployments to Smaller Scale Contingencies

Background: Since the end of the Cold War, the US Military has been called upon to respond to a great variety of so-called “Smaller Scale Contingencies” or SSCs. These operations ranged from fairly large scale Shows of Force, No-Fly Zone Enforcements, and Peace Keeping and Peace Enforcement missions, to Counter Drug Operations, Humanitarian Assistance missions, and Noncombatant Evacuation Operations, among others. Although the primary mission of the US Military is to fight and win the nation’s wars, these nonstandard missions have had a significant effect on the activities of US Forces. As such, improving the capability of the military services to perform these SSC operations, while not overly degrading warfighting capabilities has become an important issue in force planning. In order to accomplish this task, some prediction of the frequency and duration of operations, and how they overlap, needs to be made.

Given Information:

Historical data is provided that lists various operations that have taken place in recent years. In order that sufficient sample size is achieved, these operations have been categorized into different types. This categorization is largely arbitrary, and in fact it has been done in several different ways depending on the sponsor’s needs. You will accept this categorization as given. The information includes the start and end date of each operation. You should consider the smallest time period for planning to be a month.

Requirement:

Using the information given, develop a model that can be used to forecast future occurrences of SSCs.

Identify assumptions that would have to be made to use this data for forecasting purposes.

Develop a method of displaying the data that will convey to decision makers the timing and overlap of the given missions. (Everyone should do this, with the actual case study performers including forecasted results in their display.)

Prepare a briefing that explains the output of your study, and makes a recommendation regarding how this information could be used to assist in making force structure decisions.