Foresight, uncertainty, and force development: Two case studies of the United States military

This dissertation is intended to provide an analysis of military force planning and force development using two case studies. The core question is the process by which a modern American military institution identifies a need for profound change, creates a program for fundamentally changing the institution, and attempts to implement that program. The cases selected for this dissertation are the Army AirLand Battle force development program of the 1980s and the emerging Air Force vision for the next century as described in Global Engagement and other literature. The author compares two different military institutions in two different timeframes by applying a set of transition indicators to each force transition program. The author defines and applies four transition indicators intended to capture a broad set of activities: communication, organization, planning/programming, and operations.;The author judged the Army's AirLand Battle program to have been successful in terms of inculcating a new philosophy for Army operations and concepts, specifically oriented towards the Soviet threat in NATO's Central Region. AirLand Battle proved to be more successful in the communication and organizational aspects, however, than in the planning/programming and operations aspects.;The Air Force transition program is extremely new and therefore cannot be judged fully for some years. The Air Force faces enormous challenges as it undertakes the transformation from an "air force to an air and space force to a space and air force." It is not clear, for political and strategic military reasons, that the Air Force will automatically inherit the majority of space missions and responsibilities. Transforming the Air Force from a Service focused on airplanes to one focused on space requires that consensus be reached among disparate (internal) communities. This is made more difficult by the fact that the Air Force has yet to translate general descriptions of desired future capabilities into a coherent, compelling, long-range vision of aerospace power.