CAESAR III, Temper, Pythia, Data Fusion Ptech AI wargame C2 process modeling

[lordssyndicate]

The Above documents just posted by Anti Illuminati show that the Generals nor any other CO nor even the Commander In Chief are in control of the Military it has been handed over to this big computer they've named CEASAR!

You get it --they all get their orders from CAESAR!


This is worse than terminator.

Because  basically this is a super computer AI telling humans what to do...
This document shows every time a human was in command things f**ked up like bosnia and kosovo but every  time this thing CAESAR was in control they WON!!!!

They HAVE HANDED ALL OF NATO AND THEIR ENTIRE FORCES TO CAESAR!  CAESAR IS THE GiG -- for the  GiG is the Body of CAERSAR!

Anti Illuminati is about to also post a case study showing they used CAESAR to plan and execute both wars and they set this system about the task of doing so as far back as 1984!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU GET THEIR SICK JOKE?
ROCKEFELLER, ROHSCHILD all of their Leggets and their minions -- ALL TAKE THEIR ORDERS FROM THEIR ROMAN PAGAN EMPORER CAESAR!

Bumping this explanation  just in case people missed it the first time ....

[Shadow911Zeus]

I am wondering if this technology could used in a video game type format?
I believe that these are actual plans, war plans for taking the U.S. down.
I am also thinking about how they are recruiting young gamers to man this new technology, it could also be used with robotics, exactly which are seen in the terminator movies.

The only reason for them to develop this type of technology is that they want to exterminate us, but leave the buildings and infrastructure intact.

[Dig]

This is beyond war, ths is all public sector actions.  The military is controlled, but so are all healthcare professionals, all sanitary workers, all power station personnel.

The system is built so that ALL HAIL CAESAR!

[Joseon]

Bumping this explanation  just in case people missed it the first time ....

Easy man, as long as humans input the commands of the influence type calculation based systems, there will invariably be errors in it. Accuracy of the system depends on the intelligence, capabilities of humans. And humans are no where near super-humans yet.

I will continue to read further into this Caesar II. but today, I'm so tired. I will read it when I have energy.

[Dig]

Easy man, as long as humans input the commands of the influence type calculation based systems, there will invariably be errors in it. Accuracy of the system depends on the intelligence, capabilities of humans. And humans are no where near super-humans yet.

I will continue to read further into this Caesar II. but today, I'm so tired. I will read it when I have energy.

Completely agree, we have been conditioned that the self aware computers will take over, but this CAESAR system will allow a handful of humans to control billions of people via control over military, heathcare, industry, politics, infrastructure, energy.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Here's a refresher because I know it's hard to keep track of the full scope:

http://www.mitre.org/news/the_edge/july_01/jackson2.html


The Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization Act of 1986 aimed to integrate service capabilities and strengthen Department of Defense (DoD) joint elements. It also designated the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the principal military adviser to the president, National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense. The act established the position of vice chairman and streamlined the operational chain of command from the president to the Secretary of Defense to the unified commanders and made the unified commanders fully responsible for accomplishing the missions of their commands. As part of the implementation of Goldwater-Nichols, three significant roles were assigned to the then United States Atlantic Command (USACOM) in 1993: Joint Force Provider, Joint Force Trainer, and Joint Force Integrator. The goal of assigning these roles was to provide a foundation to formulate and conduct Joint Operations throughout all levels of conflict that would have the focused attention of a Commander in Chief (CINC). USACOM was redesignated as the United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) on 1 October 1999.



The evolution of Joint Vision 2010/2020 has focused the DoD on four strategic pillars: Dominant Maneuver, Precision Engagement, Focused Logistics, and Full Dimension Protection. These lead to Information Superiority in the battlespace. In an effort to formulate the concepts and support for future warfighting needs and capabilities, the role of DoD-wide Joint Experimentation was assigned by the President to USJFCOM in 1999.

MITRE’s Role
The MITRE Corporation has been a contributor in different roles at USJFCOM (previously USACOM) since 1980, when MITRE was asked to establish operating locations at most of the CINC locations throughout the world. Our engineers were involved with developing concepts, designing and engineering network infrastructure based on what is known today as "Internet Technology," and assisting the intelligence community in establishing automated intelligence production capabilities. Today, we operate offices at the Unified CINC locations, as well as other client locations throughout the world.

The Challenge of Joint Force Integration
The role of Joint Force Integration has been defined by USJFCOM as a "collection of activities whose purpose is the synergistic blending of doctrine, organization, training, material, leadership, personnel and facilities (DOTMLPF) from the different Military Services to improve interoperability and enhance joint capabilities." The supporting principles are: Future Oriented, Fully Interoperable, Functional Across the Entire Spectrum of Conflict, and Enhanced Competitive Advantage. One of the key factors in achieving the goal of a fully integrated joint force that supports various levels of conflict is the development of a successful Joint Experimentation Program.

MITRE was an original member of the Joint Experimentation Strategic Concepts Team formed in 1998. Since the needs of the USJFCOM team required skills that MITRE could offer, strategic partnerships were formed across the company to draw on Command, Control, Communications, Computer, and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) operational, functional, and technical skills. As the role of Joint Experimentation evolves, MITRE expertise and the ability to reach back into the corporation are key elements to our providing C4ISR-based systems engineering skills.

Joint Experimentation Program
The Joint Experimentation Program is a "concept-based" experimentation program. Promising new concepts are developed and examined through a rigorous experimentation campaign. At present, USJFCOM is actively working five concepts: Rapid Decisive Operations (RDO), Attack Operations Against Critical Mobile Targets, Adaptive Joint Command and Control, Joint Interactive Planning, and Common Relevant Operational Picture. RDO is our overarching "integrating concept," while the others are considered to be "functional concepts," as each enables RDO. While MITRE is supporting the concept development and experimentation programs for each of the concepts, MITRE is the co-lead on the latter three, referred to as the Information Superiority-Command & Control (IS-C2) concepts.

RDO Concept
The essence of RDO is to conduct rapid, simultaneous, and parallel operations aimed at destroying the coherence of the enemy’s military capability through an early, direct, and distributed attack against his critical assets. The objective is to rapidly coerce the enemy to do our will.

RDO pulls together the best features of the Services’ programs as well as competing private sector ideas to examine alternative operational concepts focused on bringing future conflicts to quick closure. The operational concepts under consideration offer potential improvements in the ability of the Joint Force Commander to generate rapid and decisive outcomes in small-scale contingencies.

IS-C2 Vision
To prepare for the demands of future warfighting, the U.S. military is undergoing an unprecedented transformation fueled, in large part, by the rapid advances in information technology.

Future lighter, smaller, more mobile forces will require proportionally smaller C2 headquarters in theater that employ information technology to provide reachback to supporting staffs and world class experts distributed worldwide. The need to operate inside an adversary’s decision cycle will require that planning and execution transition from the current serial hierarchical process to a more parallel, collaborative process. The need for unity of effort to ensure the rapid and decisive accomplishment of the desired effects when and where needed will require superior shared battlespace awareness and a common understanding of the commander’s intent and the current operational plan. Joint forces of the future will be seamlessly interoperable because they will operate from common, shared data that will provide the right information, at the right time, in the right format. Real-time information sharing will enable combat identification and the reduction of fratricide. Multimedia display technologies will be used to ensure that the information is readily recognized and understood by the warfighter.

Information technology will provide tools for course of action analysis that will shorten planning times and allow dynamic, continuous plan modification during execution. These same tools will support realistic mission rehearsal and training. Commanders will use collaboration tools to confer with other commanders, their distributed staffs, and subject matter experts for planning and battle management.

Information superiority requires not only the acquisition of information but that the information be kept secure from attack by our adversary. Thus, information assurance must be a key element of any IS-C2 concept. Conversely, we must be able to share critical information with coalition partners and selected non-governmental agencies. Multi-level security tools will be employed to ensure that appropriate information, and only appropriate information, is released when needed. All of these capabilities will be supported by a worldwide information infrastructure that will provide seamless, secure, transparent connectivity.
________________________________________________________________________

DoD SBIR FY00.1 - SOLICITATION SELECTIONS w/ ABSTRACTS
Navy - Air Force - DARPA - BMDO - DTRA - SOCOM - CBD - NIMA

---------- AF ----------

375 Phase I Selections from the 00.1 Solicitation

(In Topic Number Order)

PTECH, INC.
160 Federal Street
Boston, MA 02110
Phone:
PI:
Topic#: (800) 747-5608
Hussein Ibrahim
AF 00-116
Title: Advanced C2 Process Modeling and Requirements Analysis Technology
Abstract: This effort will demonstrate the ability to develop an innovative C2 investment decision support system. The objective system springs from a completely original conceptualization of the problem. It will support "product and process modeling of integrated operational and system architectures" and will produce results that can be used within the Air Force spiral development process, C2 management philosophy, and PPBS. This system will improve access to mathematically rigorous, token-based architecture by orders of magnitude. Ptech and George Mason University's System Architectures Laboratory will integrate object oriented C2 architecture modeling and a Discrete Event System model to construct a software system that can: - Synthesize Colored Petri Nets from a set of object oriented products. We will develop and employ a file-based interface between Ptech's FrameWork modeling environment and Design/CPN.- Verify the logical soundness and behaviors of architectures by executing the models and using token-based, state space and behavioral analysis techniques against an agreed set of measures. -Report results in a variety of agreed graphical and textual formats. This Phase I effort includes early proof-of-concept demonstrations to enable the Team to gain favorable position for development funding or approval for FAST TRACK funding.
________________________________________________________________________
Experimentation Strategy
The three IS-C2 concepts described above have the potential to transform significantly the way future U.S. forces will do command and control. In order to mature our IS-C2 concepts, MITRE has assisted the Joint Experimentation Program with the development of a rigorous experimentation campaign guided by a strategy that provides a roadmap from ideas to refined military capabilities and DOTMLPF recommendations. Through a series of spiral events, experimentation results are used to further develop and refine the concepts under study. As shown in Figure 1, systematic progression of experimentation activities begins with exploratory or discovery experiments that lead to better understanding of the concepts, issues, and scientific hypotheses. These are followed by confirmatory experiments that seek to test the hypotheses, and finish with demonstrations of enhanced military capabilities.

Figure 1. Nature of "spiral" experimentation.

The Experimentation Strategy incorporates events that span the spectrum of experimentation venues: seminars, workshops, wargames, controlled laboratory experiments, analytical studies, constructive simulations, virtual (man-in-the-loop) simulations, and live simulations. In addition, real operations like Kosovo frequently provide a great opportunity to examine specific concepts in operation.

Figure 2 illustrates considerations for venue selection. Venues at the base of the hierarchy are lower cost and will usually offer greater scientific control and reproducibility. However, they generally have little operational credibility. On the other hand, virtual simulations, live events, and real operations have much greater operational credibility and greater cost, but usually cannot be controlled sufficiently to be considered very rigorous or scientific.

The mix of venues compensates for the shortfalls of individual venues and supports the spiral approach for concept development. In the early stages, the venues will tend to be at the lower end of the hierarchy. The spiral concept suggests that experiment strategies should start with simple, relatively inexpensive, low-fidelity experiments when there is little knowledge, and increase complexity and fidelity with more resource-intensive virtual and live simulations as our knowledge matures and the concept is refined. The experiment strategy should take immature concepts, mature them through experiments, and turn them into demonstrated capabilities.

Major Experiments
Four of our major experiments to date are outlined below:

(1) RDO Wargame—Conducted May–June 2000, this was a modeling and simulation-supported wargame with an active opposing force. Participants examined a baseline and three alternatives for conducting RDO. The wargame highlighted the need to focus future experiments on reorganizing the RDO C2 organization to better support effects-based operations.

(2) Millennium Challenge 2000—From August through mid-September 2000, USJFCOM conducted the first in a series of live joint experiments in concert with the four military services to explore concepts that may shape how DoD conducts business in the future. MITRE was a contributor in the design and preparation of this joint experiment, the main focus of which was on exploring the IS-C2 concepts. An overarching joint context for the four service experiments allowed the Joint Experimentation Program to work with each of the services to examine the IS-C2 joint concepts. These experiments examined how a robust, joint information environment, coupled with the use of collaborative tools, increases shared battlespace awareness and concurrent, parallel crisis action planning to support more timely and effective decision making.

(3) Attack Operations Virtual Simulation—From August through October 2000, this virtual simulation experiment focused on the “battle management (decide)” portion of the attack operations chain (detect, decide, deliver). The Joint Semi-Automated Forces model was used to simulate participants in a proposed new Time Critical Targets Cell. The experiment used the MITRE-developed After Action Reporting System to collect data and provide quick-look reports. It also used various constructive simulations, including the MITRE-supported Pegasus Federation and a “quick and dirty” model developed by MITRE using EXTEND, a dynamic modeling software application.

(4) Unified Vision 2001—In May 2001, this virtual simulation explored the RDO concept, focusing upon the structure of the Joint Task Force organization, the conduct of an Operational Net Assessment, and the production of an Effects Tasking Order.

Conclusion
Joint Experimentation is one of the key ingredients for the Joint Integration role of USJFCOM. The joint concepts being developed and explored by the Joint Experimentation program offer the potential to significantly transform the way future U.S. forces accomplish their missions, and MITRE is playing a key role in this activity.
________________________________________________________________________
http://www.mitre.org/news/the_edge/july_01/miller.html



Circa 2000—An F-15 is flying at 25,000 feet over unfriendly territory. The aircraft’s multifunction color display portrays static lines and colors specified by the pilot before takeoff. Command and control information is developed over several hours at a large forward-based command center, where the intelligence and other information is manually aggregated and synthesized from multiple systems. It is sent to the pilot through the Airborne Warning and Control System over a voice channel that may or may not be jam resistant and secure. There is no change to the multifunction color display. The result is a minimum capability information environment with potential to turn a low-risk mission into a high-risk mission.

Circa 2010—An F-22 is flying at 25,000 feet over unfriendly territory. A multifunction color display portrays dynamically changing lines and colors based on assured command and control information developed at a small forward based- command center, relying on a robust integrated set of information. It enters the cockpit via a joint, automated secure data link. The result is a timely information environment that enables mission success and decreases risk.

Both warfighting environments are information intense. Warfighters need access to fused information about the battlespace to be able to know the enemy’s whereabouts and capabilities, and to determine what weapons and friendly assets are available. This includes targeting, intelligence, and battle information and support information on supplies, transportation, and medical capabilities. They need communications and computing tools to be able to receive and understand the vast array of information, and they need dissemination, management, and security tools to enable the communications and computing to operate in the most effective manner.

Today’s threats present a wide array of asymmetric challenges to warfighting capability across a variety of missions—joint, service, and in multinational environments. These missions are ongoing around the world in support of ad hoc military and civil organizations. The current information technology (IT) infrastructure no longer provides the best solution to meet the globally distributed information superiority needs of warfighters and sustainers within the increasingly important context of coalition operations. The Global Information Grid (GIG) will provide the joint and coalition warfighter with a single, end-to-end information system capability that includes a secure network environment, allowing users to access shared data and applications regardless of location, and is supported by a robust network/information-centric infrastructure. MITRE is supporting the development of the GIG Architecture.

[lordssyndicate]

The above document shows they were  setting up the final stages of giving this thing complete autonomous control leading up to the days prior to 9/11.

Essentially detailing the final  tests leading up to the point they handed over complete control over to this thing -- they have been building  testing and improving since the early 80's -- on 9/11/2001!

[Anti_Illuminati]

1.   Topic: C2 Decision Making & Cognitive Analysis
 
2. Title :     Effects Based Operations for Transnational Terrorist Organizations: 
                   Assessing Alternative Courses of Action to Mitigate Terrorist Threats

3.   Authors:  Larry K. Wentz and Lee W. Wagenhals
4.   Organization:  C3I Center, George Mason University

5. Address:   System Architectures Laboratory
                   C3I Center, MSN 4B5 
                   George Mason University
                   Fairfax, VA 22030-4444


Larry Wentz
703-993-1725 (v)
703-993-1706 (f)
lwentz@bellatlantic.net

Lee W. Wagenhals
703-993-1712 (v)
703-993-1706 (f)
lwagenha@gmu.edu


6. POC: Larry K. Wentz
 

Effects Based Operations for 
Transnational Terrorist Organizations:
Assessing Alternative Courses of Action to 
Mitigate Terrorist Threats

Larry K. Wentz, Lee W. Wagenhals

<lwentz><lwagenha>@gmu.edu
C3I Center, George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia 2203-4444

Abstract

A terrorist network can be described in terms of its operational and system architectures but the mapping between these architectures is less well known and understood since the operational architecture can be mapped into numerous system architectures that are flexible and reconfigurable and contain target sets that are both hard and soft targets such as political, religious, social and economic networks.  Traditional attrition-based warfare focuses on destroying the hard targets of the system architecture of the adversary but terrorists are very much unlike the military forces modeled in force-on-force type engagements and hence, to suppress, if not destroy, transnational terrorism it will be necessary to attack and destroy not their system architecture but their operational architecture–their ability to conduct operational activities in support of their goals.

The concept of effects based operations lends itself well to modeling and assessing approaches to destroying, degrading or disrupting terrorist acts.  The George Mason University effects-based course of action planning and assessment research tool, called CAESAR II/EB, has been used to construct influence nets and courses of action to mitigate terrorist attacks.1 Some findings from this exploratory research are presented in this paper. This is work in progress and much remains to be done.

Introduction

Transnational terrorism is a multidimensional problem for which motivation is a key enabler.  Terrorists are inspired by many different motives, some rational but most not, and they have goals.  Some terrorists are rational thinkers and they carefully assess whether they can induce enough anxiety to attain their goal without causing a backlash that will destroy the cause and the terrorist themselves.  Others may be motivated for psychological reasons that are derived from personal dissatisfaction with their life or accomplishments.  Culture is another key motivator and in this regard, there is a tendency for western societies to reject, as unbelievable, things such as vendettas, martyrdom and self-destructive group behavior. Terrorism thrives in a sea of perceived injustice and religion is probably the most volatile of culture identifiers.

__________
1 This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under grant No. N00014-03-1-0033
 
Security is another important consideration that influences terrorist organizational arrangements (cellular structures seem to dominate) and recruitment and training (tend to be extremely security-sensitive activities).  There is a strong incentive by the members of the networks to keep their structure and operations secret and unobservable.  As a result, intelligence operations against these organizations and their leaders, members and supporters are extremely complex and difficult. Terrorist communications are multidimensional and include means such as email, Internet web sites, commercial telecommunications, cellular, courier, radio/TV and other covert or non-traditional means.  They use the mass media to generate fear and panic in a free-minded public and also exploit the global media and information highways to carry news of their violence along with propaganda of the deeds. On the other hand, media coverage of terrorism by the free world can be used to educate the public, temper public anxiety, and influence actions to prevent and counter terrorist actions. 

Transnational terrorist networks are hard to define in terms of geographical boundaries or through their physical assets.  What characterizes these networks is not so much their system architecture but their operational architecture. Inactive nodes can come to life temporarily to carry out an operation at some location and then may go inactive again or self-destruct. Or, in some cases, a system node may augment itself with additional physical assets to carry out an operation and then discard these assets or disengage from them. At the operational level, the relationships that tie the network together, the interconnections, can be a set of beliefs, a financial infrastructure and a communications infrastructure. It is, therefore, dangerous to see them only as madmen bent on destruction.

The terrorist are very much unlike the military forces modeled in force-on-force type engagements where traditional attrition-based warfare focuses on destroying the system architecture of the adversary and the relationship (mapping) between the operational and system architecture is well known and well understood. The terrorists deliberately avoid engaging enemy military forces in combat and do not function in the open as armed units.  For the terrorist network, the operational architecture maps into numerous system architectures. Therefore, an important objective in suppressing, if not destroying, transnational terrorism is to attack and destroy not their system architecture but their operational architecture—the ability to conduct operational activities in support of their goals. 

For military opponents, a well defined mapping between the operational and system architecture leads directly to concepts such as physical Centers of Gravity, prioritized target lists and the like. But, when the adversary is characterized primarily by an operational architecture that maps into many system architectures or to flexible system architectures that can be easily reconfigured, there is a need to change the way they are analyzed and modeled. The concept of effects based operations is well suited to addressing this problem. Instead of focusing on the servicing of a well-defined a priority target list, the focus is on the effects to be achieved. The target list still exists and includes both hard and soft targets: from weapons systems, to C2 nodes, to leadership nodes, to infrastructure nodes, to political, social, and economic nodes, to the contents of communications, information, and databases. But, the target list is only an intermediate construct, a means to an end that can change rapidly as effects on the adversary are achieved or not. Indeed, the list of possible actions to be used against the adversary centers of gravity (political, military, economic, social, information, and infrastructure) includes all instruments of national (or coalition) power: diplomatic, information, military, and economic.

The availability of all instruments gives added flexibility in trying to achieve the desired effects and to avoid undesirable ones. But, it also makes the Course of Action (COA) problem and the subsequent planning problem much harder.  There are now many alternatives, many choices.  The choice of a set of actions, their sequencing, and their time phasing become problems in their own right.  Hence, effects based operations for transnational terrorism threat mitigation requires not only a deep understanding of the terrorist motivation, methods, organization and other factors but also needs an understanding of the friendly capabilities and infrastructure and likely vulnerabilities that might be of interest to terrorist.  Additional work needs to be done to develop a more informed understanding of the appropriate relationships of motivators, organization dynamics and capabilities of terrorists and courses of action.  There are a number of tools that address pieces of the problem but the current suite of tools available in the community do not fully address an integrated approach to counter terrorism course of action planning and assessment.

During the George Mason University (GMU) support to the Joint Forces Command-sponsored Millennium Challenge 2002 experiment,2 an attempt was made to use the GMU effects-based course of action planning and assessment research tool, called CAESAR II/EB, to construct an influence net for developing and assessing courses of action to deter a terrorist attack within the region of blue force operation for the experiment.  The results of this effort were used in support of follow-on GMU research into developing influence networks to examine courses of action that might be considered to deter an act of terrorism.3  Findings from literature searches and other research activities have been used as an integral part of the research effort presented herein.

Documents on the Terrorism Research Center Internet web site (www.terrorism.com) and RAND publications by Bruce Hoffman and Brian Jenkins were particularly helpful as were the numerous other documents listed in the References.  These information sources were used extensively to develop the terrorism insights needed to build the case study model presented herein.  Based on principles set forth in the US “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” alternative high-level courses of action that brought to bear elements of national power were developed and assessed using the case study model.  This paper explores some of the challenges of developing and assessing EBO courses of action to mitigate terrorist threats and provides an example of a counter terrorism influence net and some findings from an assessment of COAs aimed to prevent terrorist actions. This is work in progress and much remains to be done.

CAESAR II/EB, The Tool

The CAESAR II/EB tool was originally designed to support the analysis of an adversary’s actions and reactions to Blue’s activities so that COA options could be evaluated in a rigorous manner.  It was inspired by the need to support the development of Information Operations (IO) influence planning and its integration with traditional military operations.  The tool incorporates influence nets as a probabilistic modeling technique and a discrete event system modeling technique, Colored Petri Nets (CP net), to support the temporal aspects of COA evaluation.  These two techniques enable the modeler to create the structure of actions, effects, beliefs and decisions and the influencing relationships between them.  The strength of the influencing relationships is also captured.  The influence net provides a static equilibrium probabilistic model that indicates the probability of effects given sets of actions.  A mapping has been established and an algorithm has been encoded for automatically converting the influence net to a CP net. After an influence net is converted to a CP Net, temporal analysis can be conducted that provides the probability of effects over time given a timed sequence of actions.  This tool was designed to develop and assess COAs at the operational and strategic level.

__________
2 This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under grant No. F49620-02-1-0332
3 This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under grant No. N00014-03-1-0033

The influence net provides an environment for modeling of the causal and influencing  relationships between actions by our forces (Blue) and effects on the adversary (Red). It uses a graphical representation comprised of nodes that represent actions or effects and causal or influencing relationships between the nodes.  In addition to the network structure of the model, estimates of the “strength” of the causal and influencing relationships is added and enables an underlying probabilistic model base on Bayesian mathematics to be used for analysis.  The construct shown in Figure 1 is used. Starting from the set of desired and undesirable effects that reflect the goals of the mission, analysts work backwards to relate the effects to actions that are under our control.

Once the Influence net has been completed, it can be used to evaluate the impact of actions on the effects (decisions) of interest using its underlying Bayesian mathematics.  Once the analysis of the Influence net has been completed and the actionable events for the COA have been selected, planners assess the availability of resources to carry out the tasks that will result in the occurrence of the actionable events.  The resultant plan will indicate when each actionable event will occur.  Clearly, it is not only the selection of the set of actions that will lead to achieving the overall desired effects while not causing the undesired ones that is important. The timing of those actions is critical to achieving the desired outcomes.
 

Figure 1. Modeling Actions and Effects

__________
4 Wagenhals, L. W., Shin, I., and Levis, A. H. (1998). “Creating Executable Models of Influence Nets with Coloured Petri Nets,”Int. J. STTT,  Springer-Verlag, Vol. 1998, No. 2, pp. 168-181.
 
An algorithm has been implemented4 that converts an influence net into a discrete event dynamical system model. The particular mathematical model used is that of CP Nets and their software implementation in Design/CPN 5. The nodes in the Influence net become transitions in the CP Net and the places hold tokens that carry the marginal probabilities. Since the Influence net does not contain temporal information, it must be provided as an input to the CP Net.  Figure 2 shows the combination of models and results produced by the CAESAR II/EB tool.  An Influence net model for a given situation is shown in the upper left of Figure 2.  Each node represents an action, event, belief, or decision.

A declarative sentence in the form of a proposition is used to express the meaning of each node.  The directed arcs between two nodes mean that there is an influencing or causal relation between those nodes.  The truth or falsity of the parent node can affect the truth or falsity of the child node.  The Influence net has been arranged with potential Blue actions on the left and the key Red decisions on the right.  This is to indicate visually that the effects of the actions are expected to propagate to intermediate effects over time until their impact reaches the key decisions.  This captures the cascading and accumulation of effects.  There are six actionable events on the left side of the Influence net.   These are candidate actions (or results of actions) that can comprise a COA that can impact the three Red decisions of interest.

Figure 2.  CAESAR II/EB Products

Once the analysis of the Influence net has been completed and the actionable events for the COA have been selected, the Influence net is automatically converted to an executable model (CP net) so that a temporal analysis of the COA can be performed.  Using the executable model, the analyst is able to generate the probability profiles that show the marginal probability for any node in the net as a function of time.  These profiles can indicate how long it will take for the effects of the actionable events to affect various nodes in the Influence net.  The analyst will most likely concentrate on the probability profiles of the key decision nodes, the nodes with no children.  The probability profiles shown in Figure 2 were generated for the COA proposed by the planners.  The annotations have been added to indicate the three separate probability profiles.  Different timing of the actions can alter the probability profiles.  As a result, some will be more desirable than others while others may be unacceptable, so the planners will try to adjust the scheduling of actions.

__________
5 Jensen K. (1997).Coloured Petri Nets: Basic Concepts, Analysis Methods and Practical Use.Volumes 1, 2, and 3. Basic Concepts. Monographs in Theoretical Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany.
 
Terrorism Definitions

There are numerous definitions for terrorism.  The U.S. National Security Strategy defines terrorism as simply “premeditated, politically motivated violence against innocents.”  U.S. government organizations and the UN define terrorism slightly differently.6  For example:

U.S. Department of Defense: The calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

U.S. Department of State: Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation: The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

United Nations: A unique form of crime.  Terrorist acts often contain elements of warfare, politics and propaganda.  For security reasons and due to the lack of popular support, terrorist organizations are usually small, making detection and infiltration difficult.  Although the goals of terrorism are sometimes shared by wider constituencies, their methods are generally abhorred.
The challenge of grasping the nature and parameters of the war on terrorism is certainly not eased by the absence of a commonly accepted definition or by its depiction as a Manichaean struggle between good and evil, “us” versus “them.”7 Consensus on the definition of terrorism is not necessary to conduct counter terrorism operations against specific terrorist organizations but a lack of consensus can impede the study of the phenomenon itself.

__________
6 “The Terrorist Recognition Handbook” by Malcolm Nance (2003)
7 Record, Jeffrey (2003). “Bounding the Global War on Terrorism,” Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute.
 
Counter terrorism is not war in the traditional sense of military operations between states or between a state and an insurgent enemy for ultimate control of that state.  Terrorist organizations do not field military forces as such and are trans-state organizations that are pursuing non-territorial ends.  As such, and given their secretive, cellular, dispersed, and decentralized “order of battle,” they are not subject to conventional military destruction. Based on findings from the research of literature on terrorism, what terrorism is and is not can be summarized as follows:

•   Terrorism is:
•   Calculated use of covert criminal violence or threat of violence
•   Deliberately selected as a tactic to effect change
•   Targeting of innocent people, including military personnel
•   The use of symbolic acts to attract media and reach a large audience
•   Illegitimate combat, even in war
•   Never justified
•   Terrorism is not:
•   Common crimes 
•   Conducting acts legal under national and international law
•   Civil disturbances or spontaneous rioting
•   Freedom of speech or nonviolent civil disobedience
•   Protests and assembly to present opposing views and express dissent


The following terms are used by U.S. organizations such as the Defense Department, Intelligence Agencies and the Law Enforcement community to describe classes of measures taken to address terrorist acts.

Antiterrorism: Defensive and preventive measures taken to reduce vulnerability to terrorist attacks.

Counter-terrorism: Offensive measures taken in response to a terrorist attack, after it occurs.

Combating terrorism: The U.S. government program against terrorism that includes antiterrorism, counter-terrorism, and all other aspects of tracking, defense, and response to terrorism throughout the threat spectrum.

Force Protection: The U.S. DOD program for the defense of military and government assets from terrorist and unconventional warfare attack—detect, deter, and defend.

Terrorist Considerations

Numerous reports from theTerrorism Research Center Internet web site and books and articles published on the subject of terrorism were used to develop the insights presented herein.  Of particular value were the following:
 
•   Terrorism Research Center Internet web site

             oThe Basics: Combating Terrorism, an essay from the U.S. Army Field
             Manual 100-20, Stability and Support Operations

             oTerrorist Intelligence Operations, reprint from the Interagency OPSEC
             Support Staff, Intelligence Threat handbook

•   Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2003

             oTerrorism by Bruce Hoffman

•   RAND

             o“Countering al Qaeda” by Brian Jenkins
             o“Countering the New Terrorism” by Ian Lesser and et al
             o“Deterrence and Influence in Counter Terrorism” by Paul Davis and Brian Jenkins

•   Books

             o“Inside al Qaeda” by Rohan Gunaratna
             o“Inside Terrorism” by Bruce Hoffman
             o“Terrorism, War and the Press” by Nancy Palmer
             o“The Terrorist Recognition Handbook” by Malcolm Nance
             o“Framing Terrorism” by Norris Pippa and et al


Terrorists prefer simple strategies that appear sophisticated but are simple in planning and execution.  They seek dramatic and wide publication by media to transmit fear and publicize their cause.  Their apparent lack of logic enhances the terror in terrorism.  Terrorist acts are seemingly random and they feel their goal will be reached by conducting enough attacks.  They achieve their most dramatic impact through the use of speed, surprise and violence of attack.  The terrorist only needs to get lucky once but the antiterrorist forces need to be lucky all of the time.
The goals of the terrorist organizations focus on recognition, coercion, extortion, intimidation, provocation, and insurgency support for their cause. Their objectives are to create a climate of fear in a targeted group or nation through a sustained campaign of violence and to destroy the social and political order by attacking and destroying commerce, property and infrastructure.

They seek revenge for previous incidents or situations affecting terrorist organizations or its causes and try to negatively affect processes that the terrorist organization sees as against its interests.  Attempts are madeto eliminate specific individuals or groups and to demonstrate the weakness of legitimate governments. Terrorist organizations try to ensure governments overreact and oppress their own people. They continuously try to gain new recruits, money or weapons. Some terrorist organizations attack just to achieve the satisfaction of harming their enemy.  Attacks also serve to demonstrate that the terrorist group is still active.

Terrorist groups can be indigenous or transnational. They can be state-sponsored, state-directed or have no state relationship.  Those organizations that are state-sponsored tend to operate independently but receive support such as weapons, training, money, and safe-havens.  Those that are state-directed, act as agents of the state and receive intelligence, logistics and operational support.  The groups not sponsored act autonomously and receive no significant support. Motivation is a major consideration in terrorist organizations.  Some are rational and think through goals and objectives, conduct course of action planning and assessments and risk and cost benefit analysis.  They are careful when inducing anxiety to achieve their goals to attempt to ensure that it does not cause a backlash that may destroy them or their cause.

Others are psychologically motivated and are dissatisfied with life and accomplishments and crave violence to relieve anger.  They tend to need to belong to a group and require group acceptance, demand unanimity, are intolerant of dissent, and have a polarized “we versus them” outlook.  Culture is another key motivator.  Western cultures are reluctant to appreciate the intense effect of culture on behavior.  In their view irrational behavior as a means to achieve objectives is counter culture.  They believe rational behavior guides human actions and reject the notions of vendettas, martyrdom, self-destructive group behavior, and dissolution of a viable state for ethnic purity.  For the terrorists, fear of cultural extermination leads to violence — the perception that “outsiders” are against them. Religion can be the most volatile of cultural identifiers —the belief in moral certainty and divine sanctions.

Security is a primary concern of terrorist organizations.  Although cell operations are the least understood part of terrorism, it is believe terrorist organizations are best served by cellular structures that operate in secret as small team.  This way, members do not know and cannot identify more than a few the other members.  They can operate as a group on orders of a commander or independently.  Defections are rare and it’s difficult to penetrate cells.  Fundamental units such as Command and Control, Tactical Operations, Intelligence, and Logistics are employed.  A highly trusted and experienced leader generally runs the Intelligence cell and members of this cell rarely participate in attacks — there is a need to protect identity of members.

Terrorists tend to organize to function in the environment where they plan to carry out their attacks — this is situation specific.  Numerous means are used to communicate.  Direct means such as face-to-face, Internet, cell phones and telephones can be used.  Indirect means such as courier, trusted agent, Internet, cell phones, telephones, mail, dead drops, newspapers, books, and Radio/Television are used as well.  Charismatic leaders are needed to unite the effort otherwise behavior is a reflection of the group dynamics.  The support structure is a mix of state-sponsors and sympathizers.  The recruitment process is highly security-sensitive.  Training of the terrorist organizations can vary from military style at sophisticated facilities to inspirational talks before activation — motivating “throw away” operatives.

Terrorist potential targets generally fall into hard targets that are security conscious and difficult to attack successfully and soft targets that are people, structures, or locations that have less security and are open to public. Target selection is based on motive (ultimate goal/objective), opportunity (feasibility) and means (covert capabilities).  The targets they choose can be categorized as follows:8

__________
8 Nance, Malcolm (2003). “The Terrorist Recognition Handbook,” The Lyons Press, Gilford, Connecticut.
 
•   Strategic value: Long-term impact target sets that include executive leadership, strategic reserves, cities, and national command centers.

•   High payoff: Immediate impact target sets such as energy and economic centers.

•   High value: Contribute to degradation of societies ability to respond militarily or sustain itself economically.  Targets include military, law enforcement and emergency response centers, Federal Government centers and critical commerce personalities.

•   Low value: Contribute to localized fear and harassment of society and target sets include local transportation and non-critical infrastructure.

•   Tactical value: Degrade local law enforcement capabilities to respond and includes target sets such as individual or small numbers of military or police, low level civil, military and law enforcement leadership personnel and centers, and military bases and equipment.

•   Symbolic value: Heighten public fear and targets include innocent people, national treasures and landmarks, prominent public structures, and national representatives or diplomats.

•   Ecological value: Damage natural resources of a society such as large bodies of natural resources and wide areas of agricultural resources and industry.


The terrorist target selection will likely be driven by the ultimate goal of its leadership, the feasibility of achieving success based on reports from the intelligence cells, and the ability to covertly deploy necessary cells to carry out the act.  Terrorist attack profiles are driven by the time to develop and execute a plan and they can use hard entry where they go in loud immediately with assaults using a range of weapons or use a soft (stealth) entry where penetration is not known until the attack occurs.

They employ strategies that include misdirection (feints), deception (mask who or intent), and large numbers of identical incidents over a period of time.  Planning and execution times can range from a few hours (hasty) to weeks (normal) to months and even years (deliberate). The terrorist methods and tactics vary.  They have already demonstrated the use of hijackings, kidnappings, bombings, surface-to-air missiles, man portable air defense systems, arson, assassinations, armed assaults, and barricade-hostage incidents to attack critical infrastructure or capabilities, popular or high profile individuals, or important facilities or symbols.

Weapons of mass effects (e.g., human suicide/martyr bombers, truck/car bombs, aviation attacks, maritime attacks, psychological, agriculture, ecological, economic, cyber) have been used as well and there is concern that they may in the future use weapons of mass destruction (e.g., chemical, biological, nuclear).

Initiation, escalation, de-escalation and termination of terrorist actions are determined by the leadership intent, the group capabilities (resources and expertise) and opportunities presented for attack. Terrorists have attacked both strategic and tactical targets worldwide — the intent is to make their presence felt. Western governments security services have been reticent about sharing intelligence and judicial authorities rarely entertain request for extradition that adds to the difficulties of fighting the war on terrorism.

Another important factor is the global media who are largely unaccountable to society and provide an unsophisticated form of terrorist Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance, e.g., through transmission of live images of terrorism related events and by talking head analysis and special coverage assessments.  Terrorist use symbolic acts to attract media and reach a large audience.  They exploit the media to gain public attention, publicize their cause, and influence and spread fear.  The media often make the mistake of seeking deeper goals in a terrorist operation than the terrorist set for them.  This makes the terrorist appear powerful and untouchable.  Media actions can also contribute to amplifying fear—a terrorist objective.

U.S. National Strategies

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration developed and published seven national strategies that relate, in part or in whole, to combating terrorism and homeland security.  These were:

•   The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,
September 2002.
•   The National Strategy for Homeland Security, July 2002.
•   The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, February 2003.
•   The National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction,
December 2002.
•   The National Strategy for the Physical Protection of Critical
Infrastructure and Key Assets, February 2003.
•   The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, February 2003.
•   The 2002 National Money Laundering Strategy, July 2002.


The U.S. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism is mainly offensive oriented but does include defensive homeland security objectives as well as objectives for protecting U.S. citizens abroad.9 The principles of this strategy were used as a guide in the development of the case study counter terrorism influence net, scenarios and courses of action assessments discussed herein. The intent of the national strategy is to prevent, spoil actions, deter, and respond; neutralize or destroy terrorist groups; prevent attacks and minimize effects should one occur; weaken terrorist organizations and their political power; and make potential targets more difficult to attack.

__________
9 GAO-04-40ST. “Combating Terrorism: Evaluation of Selected Characteristics in National Strategies Related to Terrorism,” February 2004.

The goals and objectives of the 4D strategy (Defeat, Deny, Diminish and Defend) include:

Defeat terrorists and their organizations

•   Attack sanctuaries, leadership, C3, logistics, and finances
•   Disrupt ability to plan and operate
•   Disperse and isolate terrorist 
•   Coordinate and use regional partners to neutralize terrorists
 
Deny further sponsorship, support and sanctuaries to terrorists
•   End state sponsorship of terrorism
•   Ensure regional states accept responsibilities to take action
•   Interdict and disrupt material support for terrorist

Diminish the underlying conditions that terrorist seek to exploit
•   Enlist international community to focus on areas most at risk
•   Work with partners to keep combating terrorism
•   Win the war of ideas

Defend U.S. citizens and interest at home and abroad
•   Attain domain awareness
•   Protect the homeland and extend our defenses to insure we identify and neutralize
     the threat as early as possible

Success is dependent upon sustained, steadfast, and systematic application of all the elements of national power—diplomatic, economic, information, financial, law enforcement, intelligence, and military—simultaneously across all fronts.10

[Anti_Illuminati]

Terrorist Threat Considerations and Trends

The number of international terrorist attacks has declined but the level of violence and lethality has increased.11  Primary sources of terrorist organizations are organized groups that have political, ethnic, and religious agendas; state sponsored organizations; transnational groups with broader goals; and Islamic terrorist groups that have become a growing threat.  Al-Qaeda is gaining in global presence.  These groups are loosely organized; recruit membership from many different countries; and obtain support from informal international networks.
 
Terrorists have employed a wide variety of tactics to attack American targets worldwide that range from violent demonstrations to kidnapping to hostage taking to murder to armed attacks to bombings.  Bombings are the most common type of attack (67% of all attacks against Americans).12  Terrorist attack American businesses most frequently (more than 89% of the attacks) since businesses tend to be less protected and soft targets.  U.S. government, diplomatic and military facilities tend to be protected and harder targets and less likely to be attacked.  Terrorism varies by region of the world but most attacks occur in Latin America (87%).13

The reduced international barriers of the post-cold war landscape provide opportunities to exploit reduce political and economic barriers and facilitate movement of people, money, information and material across international borders. The global business networks facilitate international terrorism by providing safe havens for planning operations and allowing the terrorists to take advantage of global banking, communications, and transportation to carry out operations. Trafficking in narcotics, persons and weapons and organized crime are key sources of finance for operations.14

__________
10 “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism,” February 2003.
11 GAO-03-165, “Combating Terrorism: Interagency Framework and Agency Programs to Address the Overseas Threat,” May 2003.
12 Ibid
13 Ibid
 
Other aggravating factors included technology advances and weak international law enforcement institutions.  Information technology and communications facilitates global reach and terrorists are becoming more sophisticated in use of computer and telecommunications technology. Cell phones and Internet are used for planning, coordination, and execution.  There are serious vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure due to the reliance in information technology.  The terrorists are adept at using technology for counterintelligence.  Weak law enforcement institutions due to ineffective police and judicial systems in many foreign countries is a problem.  Many of these institutions lack resources. There are outdated laws in many countries and some foreign governments are plagued by corruption.  Law enforcement is constrained by national boundaries.  Terrorists take advantage of institutional limitations and weaknesses to find and establish sanctuaries.

Recent U.S. actions seem to have resulted in a decline in state-sponsorship of terrorism.  Threats of sanctions and retaliation have reduced willingness of nations to support terrorist organizations.  Terrorists have become less dependent on sponsorship by sovereign states and a new phenomenon is emerging—terrorist sponsoring a state (e.g., Taliban in Afghanistan).  Terrorist groups operating on their own in loosely affiliated groups is on the increase as dependency on state sponsorship decreases. The terrorist organizations recruit membership from many different countries and obtain support form an informal network of like-minded extremists. There is a shift from aircraft hijacking and hostage taking to indiscriminate terrorist attacks that yield maximum destruction, casualties, and impact.  This has generated a concern that there may be a shift to unconventional weapons of mass effects or even mass destruction. Alliances with transnational crime are providing the terrorist with access to various international crime organizations to help finance their operations.

Counter Terrorism Actions

The key to defeating terrorists lies in the realms of intelligence and police work, with military forces playing an important but nonetheless supporting role.  Military destruction of al-Qaeda training and planning bases in Afghanistan have been successes in the war on terrorism but good intelligence—and luck—has formed the basis of virtually every other U.S. success against al-Qaeda.15  Intelligence-based arrests and assassinations, not military divisions destroyed or ships sunk, are the cutting edge of successful counter terrorism actions.  The war on terrorism is analogous to the international war on drugs.  An effective strategy for counter terrorism needs to mobilize all elements of national power as well as the services of many other countries.  Hence, to suppress, if not destroy, transnational terrorism it will be necessary to attack and destroy not their system architecture but their operational architecture–their ability to conduct operational activities in support of their goals.

__________ 
14 Ibid
15 Record, Jeffrey (2003). “Bounding the Global War on Terrorism,” Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute.
 
There are numerous factors to consider as one builds a strategy for attacking the terrorist operational architecture.  It is of utmost important to know your enemy in terms of motivation, his strengths and weaknesses, social networks of influence, sources of financing, logistics and other support, recruiting process, means of communicating, and organization structure and behavior. It is important to identify and locate terrorists and terrorist organizations then destroy them and their organizations.  This requires an aggressive offensive strategy that aims to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy terrorist capabilities to carry out their operational activities by attacking their sanctuaries, leadership, C3I, material support, and finances.

The strategy needs to employ diplomatic, military and law enforcement means to eliminate sources of financing.  As noted earlier, actions need to be taken to choke off the lifeblood of terrorist groups by employing the full range national power to end the state sponsorship of terrorism, to establish and maintain international accountability, to strengthen and sustain international effort to fight terrorism, to interdict and disrupt material support for terrorists, to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries, and eliminate conditions that terrorist can exploit.

Major threats to U.S. and world order today come from weak, collapsed, or failed states.  Of concern is the fact that weak or absent government institutions in developing countries form the thread that links terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.  Before 9/11, the U.S. viewed with less concern the chaos in far away places such as Afghanistan, but with the intersection of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, these areas have become of major concern to the U.S. national security interests.  Our tolerance for failed states has been reduced by the global war on terrorism and necessitates that we not leave weak and failed nations crumbling and ungoverned.  Terrorists seek out such places to establish training camps, recruit new members, and tap into a black market where all kinds of weapons can be found for sale.16

Courses of action to counter terrorism need  strong consideration of ways to help rebuild and strengthen weak states and to identify and diminish conditions contributing to weak states by helping resolve poverty, deprivation, social disenfranchisement, and unresolved political and regional disputes.  Partnering with the international community will be key.  The strategy needs to win the war of ideas by employing actions that de-legitimize terrorism, kindle the hopes and aspirations of freedom, and support moderate and modern governments, especially in the Muslim world and in this regard assure Muslims that American values are not at odds with Islam.  It will be necessary to reverse the spread of extremist ideology and to seek non-support, non-tolerance, and active opposition to terrorism from the international community. Use of effective, timely public diplomacy and government-supported media to promote the free flow of information and ideas will be needed as well.

The best defense is a good offense.  This means investment of political will and resources to improve intelligence and warning and intelligence sharing among the military, law enforcement and our international partners. It will be necessary to integrate information sharing across the federal government and to effectively use intelligence, information and data across all agencies. Continuous law enforcement, intelligence and military pursuit of terrorists and their supporters will be necessary and needs to include a coordinated and focused effort of federal, state and local government, the private sector, and the American people.  We will need to mobilize and organize to secure the homeland.  In this regard, protection of vital systems and infrastructure is a shared responsibility of the public and private sectors.  Plans need to be developed for alerting, containing and if necessary, repelling attacks.  Measures to ensure the integrity, reliability, and availability of critical physical and information-based infrastructure at home and abroad need to be enhanced.

__________
16 The Atlantic Monthly article “Nation Building 101” by Francis Fukuyama
 
As noted earlier, intelligence is a key element of success in counter terrorism actions.  The safe house is one of the key nodes of a terrorist operation and if seized may compromise cells, plans and materials.  A safe house may be detected by informants, suspicious neighbors or through surveillance. Logistic cells have a higher probably of detection because they often deal with low-level criminals and open market purchasing.  Modern terrorist have become creative in the use of advanced information technology to conduct command and control of their operations making it difficult to detect activities.  Terrorist can use diverse methods to finance their operations that include sources such as charitable organizations, organized crime, state sponsors, and legitimate business investments. Terrorist activity detection opportunities include:

•   Leadership behavior
•   State sponsors and other supporters
•   Political and religious influence networks
•   Safe houses
•   Supply chains
•   Logistics cells
•   Storage of supplies
•   Transportation and mobility
•   Command, control, communications and intelligence
•   Media relations and uses
•   Financing
•   Recruiting 
•   Training camps

The challenge to the intelligence and law enforcement community becomes one of asset management and focus and the ability to effectively share information and leverage the resources of the military, law enforcement and international community.

A measure of success for a counter terrorism strategy will be diminished incidence and scope of terrorist attacks.  However, analytically, this is an unsatisfactory measure of success since there is no way to prove a cause effect relationship.  Additionally, a successful counter terrorism strategy can have self-defeating unintended consequences such as the terrorists changing their behavior and strategies that make them even harder to identify and neutralize.  The GMU tool, CAESAR II/EB, may be of help to understand possible cause effect relationships of proposed courses of action and to identify potential unintended and undesired consequences.  Successful results in this regard are highly depended upon the subject matter expert contributions and the creativity of the analyst constructing the influence net and the assessing the courses of action—it’s an art not a science.
 
Counter Terrorism Case Study

The purpose of the case study was to demonstrate the utility and examine the challenges of using CAESAR II/EB to develop and assess EBO-based Courses of Action (COA) to mitigate an attack by a terrorist field cell by employing a broad-based strategic level attack profile that used both lethal and non-lethal means to disrupt and destroy the operational and systems architectures of the terrorist organization.  The strategies tested employed the elements of National Power (Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic) to attack the terrorist organizations centers of gravity (Political, Religious, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure and Information).  The study examined reactive, proactive, preemptive, and preventative tactics and examined the role of intelligence, the media, and the use of non-lethal means, such as, IO, Political, Legal, and International Collaboration.  Homeland Security preparedness measures to defend high value targets was addressed as well.

Building the Model

Extensive research of the literature on historical experience with terrorism and strategies and frameworks for modeling counter terrorism actions was necessary in order to develop the understanding needed to create influence nets that could be used to assess counter terrorism courses of action and to examine the assessments for possible unintended consequences of actions taken against the terrorists and their organizations.  Two RAND publications were of extreme value in the development of the case study influence net: the Paul Davis book titled “Deterrence and Influence in Counter Terrorism” and the Brian Jenkins book titled “Countering al-Qaeda.”  ASignal Magazine article from the December 2001 issue by Dr Roger Smith, Titan Systems Corp., titled “Counter Terrorism Modeling and Simulation: A New Type of Decision Support Tool” was useful as well.

There are a number of interrelated challenges in constructing a counter terrorism influence net.  First, is being able to think in terms of how the individuals and organizations to be modeled and attacked perceive they can be influenced and attacked—view the situation from the terrorist perspective. Second, is identifying the actors and the types and sequence of actions that can be taken to create the desired influence and behavior change.  Additionally, thinking about whether terrorists and their organizations can be deterred, destroyed, or otherwise influenced requires a decomposition of the terrorist operations and supporting systems into classes of influence to be attacked.17 Estimating the relative degree of impact of actions and events to influence outcomes needed to be developed and this proved to be a challenge as well—open literature documentation discusses the subject in qualitative terms.

The model for the case study was done at the strategic level and addressed broad-front national level actions needed to achieve an outcome that deterred a terrorist field cell from attacking.  Past experiences using CAESAR II/EB to develop models in support of Naval War College Global war games18 and Joint Forces Command experiment MC0219 demonstrated that it was difficult to model at the operational level and much more difficult at the tactical level, and therefore, this effort focused on the strategic level.

__________
17 Davis, Paul and Jenkins, Brian (2002). “Deterrence and Influence in Counter Terrorism,” RAND.

The types of influence that needs to be considered can have both a positive and negative impact on the desired effect or event and determining the appropriate balance of these influences to achieve the desired effect is a challenge.  It’s largely a trial and error experimentation process.  For example, the higher the terrorist motivation and ability to attack, the less effective deterrence is likely to be.  On the other hand, if the terrorist target of interest is well protected, the greater the deterrence. The influence net created for the case study is depicted in Figure 3 and was used to assess courses of action that reduced the probability that a terrorist field cell would attack.

The terrorist centers of gravity to be influenced and attack strategies ranged from using soft means to attack the political, social, belief, and financial structures to hard kill military means that disrupted or destroyed training facilities, logistics operations, weapons caches, and C3I capabilities needed to conduct operations. Threats to things terrorist care about, such as, loved ones, the terrorist cause itself, and the terrorist personal power and possessions are important deterrence factors and were the target of the IO campaign to influence perceptions, legal actions to seize possessions, and military and law enforcement actions to enforce messages in the IO campaign—actions need to support words.

Other factors such as senior terrorist leadership support of terrorist cells and cause, continuation of state sponsorship of terrorists, continued approval by supporters of the terrorist and their cause, terrorist ability to conduct C3I of their operation, and the ability of the terrorist to finance operations are enablers and as such need to be attacked by an appropriate combination of all means available, especially the non-lethal means where and when possible.  Public fear and anxiety are terrorist enablers that require careful attention and actions to keep the public informed and in this regard, both the government actions and the media messages play an important role in informing and influencing public understanding.

Protection of high value targets is deterrence and this requires proactive government (federal, state and local) attention to protection policies, response plans and capabilities, and strategies and investments to protect critical infrastructure and key leadership personnel.  Industry also has a role to play in investing in protection of facilities, capabilities, and key personnel. Awareness campaigns to educate and inform the public and make the terrorist aware that antiterrorism investments are being or have been made is important as well.

__________
18 Wagenhals, L. W. and Levis, A. H. (2002). “Modeling support of Effects Based Operations in War Games,” 7th Command and Control Research and Development Symposium, Naval Post Graduate School, Monterey, CA, June 2002.
19 Wentz, L. K. and Wagenhals, L.W. (2003). “ Effects Based Information Operations,” 8th International Command and Control Research and Technology symposium, National Defense University, Washington, D.C., June 2003.

Figure 3. Counter Terrorism Influence Net

These considerations were built into the influence relationships and actions illustrated in the influence net shown in Figure 3.  The desired outcome of the courses of action implemented is to drive the probability that a “terrorist field cell” will attack as low and as quickly as possible without creating unintended consequences such as windows of opportunity and vulnerabilities for the terrorist to attack.  Key high level influence elements in the upper right hand quadrant of the influence net shown in Figure 3 include terrorist motivated to attack, finances available to conduct operations, recruiting and training capability providing new terrorist, the terrorist C3I capabilities able to support command and control of operations, logistics functioning and weapons available to support an attack, sanctuaries available to attack from, and continued approval of supporters such as political and religious leaders and other supporters of their cause exists.  The lower right hand quadrant addresses perceptions of uncertainty and risk in terms of public fear and anxiety in response to terrorist threat warnings and terrorist belief that government and industry made the antiterrorism investments needed to protect high value targets (infrastructure—power, water, transportation—and leadership). The upper left hand quadrant includes influence elements such as state sponsorship, terrorist leadership support and media reporting of terrorist threats and terrorist perception of threats to things they care about.
 
The left side of the influence net and lower right quadrant of the net show the different domains of actionable events.  There are hard kill actions aimed at destroying terrorist targets that are largely military actions but law enforcement plays a role as well.  The Intelligence action is the means to identify and monitor targets of opportunity, to develop social network understanding, to assess terrorist C2 tactics, procedures, and capabilities, and to develop situation awareness and actionable intelligence and warning.  International cooperation is an enforcement enabler to provide an integrated global reach to leverage the use of other nations to help attack terrorist elements in their geographic area, to collect and share intelligence on terrorists, and to influence state sponsors and other supporters of terrorism to stop.

Legal and law enforcement actions use international and national laws, law enforcement and judicial systems to disrupt terrorist organizations by arresting leadership and other members, disrupting terrorist recruiting activities, dismantling training camps, preventing cross border operations such as weapons trafficking and movement of terrorists, and dismantling of the terrorist financial networks.  The political actions aim to gain international support to impose sanctions and to influence state sponsors and nations providing sanctuaries and other support to terrorist organizations and operations.  The Information Operations actions focus on perception management of regional and local political and religious leaders, influencing the beliefs of the terrorist leaders, state sponsors, and members of the terrorist organizations and their supporters, and disruption of the recruiting of terrorists.

An action referred to as “Alternatives Offered” aims to provide hope and improvements in quality of life of those suffering from poverty, deprivation and suppression of human rights who in turn support the terrorist cause and are a source of terrorist recruits.  The provision of hope and improved the quality of life could serve to influence a large number of these people to quit supporting the terrorists and their cause.  The lower right quadrant addresses federal, state and local government and industry actions (policies, contingency response plans, command, control and intelligence capabilities, and investments in infrastructure and key personnel protection) needed to implement antiterrorism measures to secure and protect high value targets and to be able to more effectively respond to indications of possible terrorist attacks.

The upper left hand quadrant has an action titled “terrorist event” and this was used as an intelligence and warning (I&W) indicator that a major terrorist attack was about to happen.  Activation of this action served two purposes.  First, its activation was used to positively influence the terrorist leadership support and motivation of the members of terrorist organizations and to influence the media response to generate radio and television public awareness messages and “talking head” discussions of the possibility and implications of an attack.  The media response in turn had an additional positive influence on the motivation of the terrorists and in publicizing their cause. It also had a negative influence that contributed to the generation of public fear and anxiety.

A scenario-based approach was used to assess various courses of action so the second use of I&W actions was a trigger to initiate various courses of action strategies to be tested—reactive, proactive, preemptive, and preventative.  In this role, the I&W action was used in two modes, the action could be turned on for the entire assessment timeframe or it could be turned on and off several times over the assessment timeframe to simulate multiple occurrences of threat warnings coming and going.  The former mode was used to assess the impact of individual and various combinations of actions in response to the threat of a terrorist attack.  The latter mode was used to assess the relative effectiveness of implementing course of action strategies that reacted to multiple warnings of terrorist attacks.

Sample COA Assessments

A number of assessments of the relative impact of individual and multiple actionable events on reducing the probability of attack and the sequencing and timing of these events were conducted as part of the research.  Several different scenarios were also postulated based on theU.S. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism and used to formulate courses of action tested and assessed. Two examples of scenario-based courses of action assessments follow to illustrate the use of the tool and types of analysis conducted.

The first example examines a strategy that reacts to multiple terrorist threat warnings and the second is a preemptive strategy in response to an initial threat warning and aims to minimize the probability of an attack as quick as possible given there will be a subsequent indication that an attack might occur.  The two examples used different scenarios and sequencing and timing of the actionable events.  The objective was not to select the optimum strategy and course of action or to imply one strategy was better than the other but to simply illustrate the use of the tool to conduct a comparison of these two strategies based on the probability of a terrorist attack over time and to provide some analysis of the relative effects of various courses of action.

Figure 4. Reactive Strategy

The probability profiles in Figure 4 show the temporal analysis of terrorist leadership support, terrorist motivation and terrorist field cell likelihood to attack.  Three single timeslot terrorist warning events occurred at times 1, 8 and 12 and these terrorist warning events were used to trigger a scenario-driven predetermined reactive course of action.  The reaction strategy tested chose to use soft means first and then hard kill.  IO followed by Political actions were initiated in reaction to the first terrorist threat warning event but these actions alone were not significant enough to cause a major reduction in the likelihood of a terrorist attack. The actionable events did serve to set some initial conditions for deterring an attack by reducing terrorist leadership willingness to support terrorist activities and there was some negative impact to terrorist motivation—largely driven by the IO campaign.

Legal and financial actions against the state sponsors and supporters and terrorist support elements such as sanctuaries and the financial networks were initiated at time 6.  These actions combined with a short duration law enforcement action at time 6-7 against terrorist leadership and support elements appeared to have an important temporary impact on terrorist leadership, motivation and likelihood of attack. One might conclude that if the law enforcement action had continued (or its initial effects persisted) it would have helped reduce the relative influence of the second terrorist event that occurred at time 8.  With the law enforcement action ending at time 7, it is suggested that a window of opportunity (or vulnerability) opened between time 7 and the next terrorist threat warning at time 8.  As a result, the relative impact of the second threat warning was a more significant influence in raising the probability of attack.

Following the second terrorist event, the scenario proposed actions by government and industry to protect high value targets and this had a high payoff in reducing the probably of a terrorist attack.  These actions increased the risk to the terrorists if they attacked.  In this case, the scenario suggested that industry would respond quicker (loss of revenue driven) to the threats than government bureaucracies and that the federal government would be able to respond quicker than state and local governments and this drove the sequencing of antiterrorism protection actions.  Law enforcement actions were also reactivated at time 11 to aggressively pursue terrorist leadership and support elements.

Although the third terrorist event increased terrorist motivation, the actions in place kept the probably that the terrorist would attack low—leveraged terrorist belief that attacking protected targets would be a high risk.  Military action was initiated at time 14 to attack terrorist leadership and to reduce the ability of terrorists to conduct operations.  The likelihood of a terrorist attack was further reduced when international cooperation and the offering of alternatives to improve the quality of life of terrorist supporters took place.  These actions served to erode support for the terrorist cause and significantly reduced terrorist motivation.

Embedded within the temporal analysis shown in Figure 4 are multiple actions related to use of intelligence.  The scenario assumed that there were limited intelligence assets available to support the counter terrorism and antiterrorism actions and that the use of these assets would therefore be driven by increased awareness that there was a need to focus on terrorism related targets.  It was assumed that at time 0 that a minimum level of intelligence was being used (25%). Following the first terrorist event the use increased (50%) at time 5 but then went back down (25%) at time 7 when no attack occurred.  Following the second terrorist warning event, the use was escalated (75%) and after the third warning its usage went to the max (100%).

The analysis suggests that an effective antiterrorism protection campaign can have a significant impact in reducing the likelihood of a terrorist attack but this alone is not sufficient.  Other means need to be employed to dismantle the terrorist operational architecture—their ability to conduct operational activities in support of their goals.

The scenario for the second example employed a preemptive strategy in response to a terrorist threat warning. In this case, proactive use of the elements of national power were brought to bear early with an aggressive combined use IO, intelligence, political, military, legal, financial and law enforcement actions to achieve an early deterrence in the probability of attack by going after the leadership, state sponsors, reducing terrorist motivation and disrupting their ability to conduct operations.  The aggressive strategy was intended to buy time to allow the bureaucratic process to take the actions necessary to initiate protection of high value targets and to engage the cooperation of the international community that would in turn serve to reduce the likelihood of an attack by further reductions in state sponsorship, terrorist supporters and support activities and the elimination of sanctuaries.

Figure 5. Preemptive Strategy

The probability profiles in Figure 4 show the temporal analysis of terrorist leadership support, terrorist motivation and terrorist field cell likelihood to attack.  There are two terrorist warning events, one at time 1 and a second at time 8.  The first terrorist warning event triggered the response to aggressively attack.  The resulting effect was to drive the probability that the terrorist would attack below 50% and even with the second attack warning the probably of attack did not rise above 50%.  Initiation of international cooperation at time 10 served to further reduce terrorist leadership willingness to support terrorist attack actions and this influenced a reduction in terrorist motivation and willingness to attack.

As was the case in the first example, initiation of antiterrorism protection actions caused a reduction in the likelihood of a terrorist attack and the offering of alternatives to improve the quality of life of terrorist supporters served to further reduce terrorist motivation.  The results suggest that the aggressive attack strategy was successful in achieving an early dismantling of the terrorist ability to conduct operations and significantly reduced the leadership support and other support of terrorist actions. Although the probability that the terrorist would attack was driven below 50% before the second terrorist warning event, the results also suggest that an aggressive antiterrorism program is needed to compliment the aggressive counter terrorism program.  Both examples suggest that neither alone is sufficient. 

The CAESAR II/EB tool has an ability to do a sensitivity analysis of the relative impacts of individual and combinations of actions.  A sensitivity analysis of the case study model suggested that international cooperation and IO were key actions that if used in combination with other lethal and non-lethal actions could be a force multiplier and important contributor to reducing the probably the terrorist cell would attack. 

Figure 6. Comparison of use of Lethal and Non-lethal Means

Figure 6 compares the use of lethal and non-lethal means in response to the belief a terrorist event might occur.  The probability profiles show the temporal analysis of state sponsorship, terrorist motivation and terrorist field cell likelihood of attack.  In both cases, a terrorist warning event occurs at time 1 and at time 2 intelligence actions were initiated in response to this warning.  The comparison suggests that although the follow on military and law enforcement actions reduced the willingness of state sponsors to support terrorist activities, these actions alone were not sufficient to significantly impact the terrorist willingness to attack.  On the other hand, the use of non-lethal means such as IO, political/diplomatic, international cooperation and legal/financial actions appeared to be significantly more effective in terms of reducing state sponsorship willingness to support the terrorist activities but here too these alone were not sufficient to significantly reduce the probability the terrorist might attack.

The follow on offering of alternatives to improve the quality of life of terrorist supporters drove the terrorist motivation down and the probability of attack below 50%.  The antiterrorism protective actions served to further reduce the likelihood of attack—increased risk to terrorist but not a de-motivation of support of the cause. One might conclude from this assessment that non-lethal means can be a significant contributor to reducing the probability that the terrorist might attack.  Comparing these results with the preemptive strategy illustrated in Figure 5 also suggests that combining early military and law enforcement actions with non-lethal means such as IO, political, international cooperation and legal actions provided a synergistic effect (i.e., non-lethal means can be force multipliers) that achieved an early dismantling of the terrorist ability to conduct operations and reduced the willingness of the supporters to continue their support of terrorist actions and hence, satisfied the end objective to significantly reduce the probability that the terrorist would attack.

Observations

As noted earlier, creating influence nets and assessing courses of action is an art not a science.  As such, the experience of the model builder is key as well as availability of subject matter experts to help guide the development of the models, the selection of courses of action and subsequent assessments.  In many cases, the subject matter experts are not readily available and the modeler needs to do the research to prepare to develop the influence nets and conduct the course of action planning and assessments.  This was the situation for the Counter Terrorism case study presented herein—a large part of the effort was researching the subject area.  Model building is also a timely and complex task.  In the authors’ view, the current tools work best at the strategic level and to a limited extent at the operational level.  The pace of tactical operations coupled with the author’s experience using and observing the use of such tools in exercises and experiments suggests that these tools can be cumbersome to use operationally and hence, limit their value added in the high OPTEMPO environment of the tactical level of operation.20

The value added of CAESAR II/EB was successfully demonstrated at the strategic level when it was used to support the Naval War College Global Wargames and at the operational level when it was used to support the Joint Task Force Information Operations cell at the Millennium Challenge 2002 experiment at JFCOM.  It must be remembered, however, that tools, such as CAESAR II/EB, are research tools and not ready for prime time operational use.  Hence, the man-machine interfaces are not that user friendly and visualization of the results have limitations—CAESAR II/EB is cumbersome to use and generates probability profiles as its visualization output.  Results must also be used carefully since this is just one means for trying to gain insights into effects actions might have on achieving a desired outcome.  It’s a prediction with varying degrees of uncertainty. 

__________
20 Wentz, L. K. and Wagenhals, L.W. (2003). “ Effects Based Information Operations,” 8th International Command and Control Research and Technology symposium, National Defense University, Washington, D.C., June 2003.

Challenges related to constructing influence nets are numerous.  Understanding the situation is key to identifying the effects to be modeled and to develop the causal relationships and predict the truth or falsity of parent node effects on the child nodes.  Selections of actions and the timing of the sequencing of these actions require some creativity on the part of the modeler as well.  The process usually is to build a little and test a little with lots of trial and error experimentation to refine the model and to develop and select courses of action to be assessed.  Models have limitations as well.  For example, for CAESAR II/EB, persistence or the continuation of the effect after the action is removed is not modeled.

Actions can be turned on and off several times over time but the persistence factor is not modeled.  The model does not differentiate between the effects of the sequencing of two actions (e.g., action A before B versus B before A gives same final result although intermediate probabilities may be quite different) that in a real life situation may not be the case. On the other hand, the insights and interchanges among the decision makers, analysts and planners and synergy derived from the process of developing models and assessing the courses of action is probably one of the most important benefits to be realized from using a tool such as CAESAR II/EB.

The Counter Terrorism model developed using CAESAR II/EB and related courses of action planning and assessments appear to provide useful insights into the effects of lethal and non-lethal actions and their timing on desired deterrence outcomes as well as to help identify unintended and undesirable consequences of actions taken. The analysis presented herein suggests that counter terrorism and antiterrorism strategies need to address both the operational and technical architectures of the terrorist operations and organizations as well as one’s own architectures.

The experience has enabled the GMU researchers to expand their repertoire of modeling types and techniques to provide support to different classes of problems.  CAESAR II/EB has limitations and work is in progress at GMU to explore enhancements to the utility of the tool including incorporation of modeling persistence and improving the user friendliness and visualization of results in support of effects based COA planning and assessments.  Similar research and modeling efforts at the Air Force Rome Labs have already addressed some of these short falls.  Their Causal Analysis Tool has incorporated modeling persistence and improved user interfaces and visualization and additional research is addressing improvements to the operational utility of CAT to support effects based air operations planning and assessments.

Acknowledgment

The contribution of Mr. Sajjad Haider of the GMU System Architectures Laboratory in the development of CAESAR II/EB and its use is gratefully acknowledged.
 
Reference

Anonymous (2003). “Terrorist Hunter,” Harper Collins Publisher.
Cordesman, Anthony (2001). “A new US Strategy for Counter Terrorism and Asymetric Warfare,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.  Davis, Paul and Jenkins, Brian (2002). “Deterrence and Influence in Counter Terrorism,” RAND.
Ehrenfeld, Rachel (2003). “Funding Evil,” Bonus Books.
Gunaratna, Rohan (2002). “Inside al Qaeda,” Berkley Books.
Hess, Stephen and Kalb, Marvin (2003). “The Media and the War on Terrorism,” Brookings Press.
Hoffman, Bruce (1998). “Inside Terrorism,” Columbia University Press.  Hudson, Rex (1999).
“Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why,” The Lyons Press, Gilford, Connecticut.
Internet. “Terrorism Research center,” www.terrorism.com
Jenkins, Brian (2002). “Countering al Qaeda,” RAND.
Ledeen, Michael (2003). “The War Against the Terror Masters,” Truman Talley Books.  Record, Jeffrey (2003). “Bounding the Global War on Terrorism,” Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute.
Lesser, Ian and et al (1999). “Countering the New Terrorism,” RAND.
Nance, Malcolm (2003). “The Terrorist Recognition Handbook,” The Lyons Press, Gilford, Connecticut.
Norris, Pippa and et al (2003). “Framing Terrorism,” Routledge Press Palmer, Nancy (2003).
“Terrorism, War, and the Press,” Harvard University.  Wagenhals, L. W. and Levis, A. H. (2002).
“Modeling support of Effects Based Operations in War Games,” 7th Command and Control Research and Development Symposium, Naval Post Graduate School, Monterey, CA, June 2002.
Wentz, L. K. and Wagenhals, L.W. (2003). “ Effects Based Information Operations,” 8th International Command and Control Research and Technology symposium, National Defense University, Washington, D.C., June 2003.

[lordssyndicate]

The above White papers detail how they have already planned and detailed the perfect solution for  exterminating  all of us - their opposition.

We are the terrorists according to this and this shows they have already  had CAESAR produce the perfect solution .

They have already plotted all of our reactions ... anything we do now is merely adding to this via their massive  global reconnaissance grid we think is still the internet. :/


The solution to fighting this -- is to stand together and take action now before it is too late.

All this signs show our time is short and we nee to act now before we have WHO level 6 quarantine and the entire truth movement is taken off to FEMA camps ...

They have the capacity to hold 50 million people....

Think about that


Look at the fracking docs they keep calling us the blue team -- don't you think they have a list showing CAESAR who the blue team is ?

From the looks of things and from solid sources I have they will start taking all dissidents off to the camps or merely start  using smart weapons or satellite based weapons (hence the census workers only need your houses gps co-ordinates(think frog in a microwave ...) to take us all out ...

This is not a joke and I have very solid internal sources stating they are coming for EVERY ONE WHO EVER CRITICIZED THIS GOVERNMENT FOR ANYTHING. 

 Very soon.

Don't think you can escape -- there is no escape. We must rally together now  before it is too late. We must support one another and take action NOW.

Don't think there is a difference between Yellow and blue lists... There is no yellow list !


 Meaning unless you are former military or currently enlisted you are on the blue list.

 There is a red list but is only comprised of veterans and currently enlisted  personnel.

They are to be  given the choice work for us or die like all those on the blue list when they come for the red list during their execution  of Dark Winter this December.

Yes they really intend to wipe out 50 million people in one fell swoop in the coming months after their major terror drill this summer.  So turning against one another now is not an option. DON'T THINK IF YOU STOP FIGHTING THEM NOW THEY WILL LET YOU A OFF THE HOOK . tHERE IS NO WAY OFF THE BLUE LIST ONCE YOU ARE ON IT AND ALL IT REALLY TAKES TO GET ON IT  IS MERELY  SAYING ANYTHING THAT THEY CONSIDER CONTENTIOUS ,

[lordssyndicate]

Let me emphasize this. There is no yellow list this ifs dissinformation to turn us against one another....

DO NOT BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN ESCAPE  BECAUSE YOU SHUT UP AND CO-OPERATE...

THESE ARE NAZIS ... GO STUDY WHAT HAPPENED IN THE DEATH CAMPS. SURE THEY'D TELL PEOPLE THEY WERE SPECIAL AND COULD ESCAPE FOR FEEDING THE NAZIS INFO-- YET AS SOON AS THE PERSON FEEDING INFO HAD NOTHING USEFUL THE NAZI KILLED THEM!

ALMOST ALWAYS IN A MORE PAINFUL AND TORTUOUS WAY THAN ANY OTHER PERSON THEY KILLED.....

SO IF YOU WANT TO DIE AS SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY AS POSSIBLE  100% go ahead co-operate... IF YOU WANT TO LIVE THEN WE NEED TO FIGHT THEM NOW!

I don't mean  via violence  I mean via the methods Ghandi spoke.
WE MUST ALL RALLY TOGETHER IN PEACEFUL PROTEST.

IF 50 million people to the streets in peaceful protest and refused to stop  then we'd beat them.

THE PEOPLE DID IT IN GREECE. THEY DID IT IN ICELAND!

WTH why can't PEOPLE HERE WAKE UP AND  DO THIS!

STOP SITTING AROUND GET OFF YOUR ASS AND START ORGANIZING LOCAL MARCHES DAILY.

JOBS ARE UN-IMPORTANT -- they are now merely a distraction . WORTHLESS GREEN DEMON DOLLARS ARE UN-IMPORTANT -- THEY HAVE NO REAL VALUE!

THEY ARE A CURSE TO KEEP US CHASING $ INSTEAD OF  PROTESTING!

I UNDERSTAND PEOPLE HAVE FAMILIES -- I DO AS WELL. THAT IS WHY WE MUST ACT NOW , BECAUSE IF WE DON'T THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT ....

GET OFF YOUR ASS AND ACT NOW PLEASE... BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE ...

[Dig]

This is the first time that I am initiating a BUMP.

I have little to add, AI and LS laid it all out in black and white.

[Freeski]

Re the 50 million number, is that just America or are we talking global? It seems too small to be global so can one conclude that Caesar calculates 50 out of 300 million are a 'problem'?

[lordssyndicate]

Re the 50 million number, is that just America or are we talking global? It seems too small to be global so can one conclude that Caesar calculates 50 out of 300 million are a 'problem'?

The above docs are referring only to Americans from what we have gathered.

So, yes this is only we American people they are  referring too.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Tracks:  #4 C2 Decisionmaking & Cognitive Analysis

Modeling Support of Effects-Based Operations in War Games

Lee W. Wagenhals* and Alexander H. Levis

George Mason University
C3I Center, MSN 4B5
Fairfax, VA 22030
703 993 1712
703 993 1706  Fax
{lwagenha, alevis}@gmu.edu




• Corresponding author

 

Modeling Support of Effects-Based Operations in War Games1

Lee W. Wagenhals* and Alexander H. Levis

George Mason University
C3I Center, MSN 4B5
Fairfax, VA 22030
703 993 1712
703 993 1706  Fax
{lwagenha, alevis}@gmu.edu

Abstract

The Effects Based Operations (EBO) concept is based on relating actions in a battle plan to overall effects. A prototype system called CAESAR II/EB has been developed to assist in analyzing Courses of Action (COAs) for Effects-Based Operations and evaluating them in terms of the probability of achieving the desired effects.  The tool supports both static and dynamic evaluation of COAs by integrating influence nets with discrete event systems modeling techniques. Preliminary operational concepts for using this tool in command and control environments were tested during the Naval War College Global 2000 and the Global 2001 war games providing insights into the appropriateness of these techniques in support of EBO.  In Global 2001 the authors worked with different cells and components to produce four models of the complete battle plan to support the planning phase and six quick reaction models to support the execution phase of the game.  The interaction of the modeling team with the multiple command and control cells in the game and the potential as a COA decision support was tested and examined.  This paper describes the experiences with building and using the models and discusses requirements for enhancements to the modeling techniques generated from this experience.
 
1. Introduction

Effects Based Operations (EBO), the notion of selecting actions that comprise a COA based on their collective contribution to desired and undesired effects, is not a new concept.  It, and other concepts like network centric warfare, try to convey in different ways that technology, in general, and information technology, in particular, can enable us to consider in a serious and effective way the integrated application of all instruments of national or coalition power towards achieving national or coalition objectives. While these concepts have allowed us to go well beyond the construct of massive attrition-based warfare, they have tightened many of the traditional constraints: collateral damage must be minimized, our own casualties must be virtually nil, the long term impact on the well being of native populations should be limited (e.g., do not destroy beyond repair the infrastructure).

Military organizations including the Joint Forces Command and the Naval War College, have been exploring these concepts to determine how they can support command and control in advanced networked environments using virtual collaboration within and between multiple domains to formulate, execute, and assess operations.  One ingredient in these explorations has been an increased emphasis on modeling tools and techniques to support effects based planning and execution.
   
_______
1 This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under grant No. N00014-00-1-0267.

Recent war games and exercises have experimented with EBO as an essential organizing principle for command and control of military operations across multiple echelons. EBO thinking has been enhanced because commanders and decision makers have at their disposal new technology that allows precision attack with weapons of pinpoint accuracy, intelligence systems that provide accurate location of targets, and stealth technology that greatly reduces the requirement of defensive support systems to protect striking weapons, has enabled selective components of adversary systems to be struck with precision to achieve desired effects with minimum risk and destruction.  In addition, the complexity of coalition operations and the understanding that an important aspect of warfare is the actions that will take place after the combat operations have ceased, has led to the notion that we should consider alternatives to the concept of maximum destruction attrition warfare.
 
This has lead to two concepts.  The first is that by wording directives to subordinate component in terms of effects, the components will be able to collaboratively plan for the use of resources and actions that will best achieve the directed effects.  In collaborative sessions, different components will offer actions that contribute to the effects in the directives and the best set of actions will be selected based on the combined contribution to achieving the effects.  The second concept is the need to integrate lower level effects into higher level, overall effects.  By focusing on the overall effects needed to achieve objectives and considering a spectrum of lethal and non-lethal actions, COAs can be formulated that use precision intelligence and strike capabilities to inflict the minimum collateral damage while achieving objectives.  To do this one must understand and develop a set of effects that, if achieved, will result in the overall objectives and then determine the best set of actions to take,along with their timing, to achieve those effects.  In modern coalition operations, such actions include not only traditional military attrition based operations, but a spectrum of actions across the instruments of national power employed by coalition partners to influence and persuade an adversary to change his behavior and at the same time maintaining cohesion within the coalition.

There are a variety of modeling techniques that are used to relate actions to effects.  With respect to effects on physical systems, engineering or physics based models have been developed that can predict the impact of various actions on systems and assess their vulnerabilities.  When it comes to the belief and reasoning domain, engineering models are less appropriate.  The purpose of affecting the physical systems is to convince the leadership of an adversary to change its behavior, that is, to make decisions that it would not otherwise make.  Thus, the effects on the physical systems influence the beliefs and the decision making of the adversary.  Because of the subjective nature of belief and reasoning, probabilistic modeling techniques such as Bayesian Nets and their influence net cousin have been applied to these types of problems.  Models created using these techniques can relate actions to effects through probabilistic cause and effect relationships.  Such probabilistic modeling techniques can be used to analyze how the actions affect the beliefs and thus the decisions of the adversary. 

Thus the EBO concept results in a shift in focus.  Instead of focusing on the servicing of a well defined a priority target list, we focus on the effects that we wish to achieve. The target list still exists and includes both hard and soft targets: from weapons systems, to C2 nodes, to leadership nodes, to infrastructure nodes, to the contents of communications. But the target list is only an intermediate construct, a means to an end, which can change rapidly as the effects we wish on the adversary are being achieved or not.  Indeed, the list of possible actions we can take is now much larger as it includes all instruments of national (or coalition) power: political, military, or humanitarian; physical or ideological.  The availability of all instruments gives us much flexibility in trying to achieve the desired effects and to avoid undesirable ones. But it also makes the Course of Action (COA) problem and the subsequent planning problem much harder.  There are now many alternatives, many choices.  The choice of a set of actions, their sequencing, and their time phasing become a problem in their own right.
 
Considering these EBO concepts, a modeling tool called CAEASR II/EB has been built and tested to focus on the belief and reason aspects of the spectrum of operations.  The tool incorporates influence nets as the probabilistic modeling technique and a discrete event system modeling technique, Colored Petri Nets, to support the temporal aspects of COA evaluation.  This tool was designed to develop and assess courses of action (COAs) at the operational and strategic level. 

During the initial development of the CAESAR II/EB, realistic models were created to test the EBO concepts.  However, the use of the tool suite within a working command and control structure had only been postulated.  In 2000 and 2001, the Naval War College invited the Office of Naval Research to use CAESAR II/EB tool suite in their capstone, Title 10 War game, Global, to gain insight into its potential utility for supporting COA development and evaluation.  These experiences provided an important opportunity to tests these concepts and tools in a realistic environment.  At one level, this participation helped illustrate how this approach to Coarse of Action development and selection for effects based operations can be used to support war games.  Even more importantly, the participation in the war game provided insight into how these concepts could be incorporated in real-world operational environments.  Participation in the game provided information about the sources of the information needed to create the models, the type of expertise needed to build and analyze the models, and the types of collaboration and dialog that needs to occur between modelers, intelligence centers, operational planners, the commander, and command staff.  The ultimate question was to determine if these techniques could improve decision making by providing increased insight into the potential consequences of actions. 

The rest of the paper is organized as follows.  Section 2 describes the CAESAR II/EB tool and provides some insight into the model building and analysis process used with the tool.  Section 3 reports on the use of CAESAR II/EB in the Global war games.  Section 4 contains observations from the Global experience and provides summarizes the lessons learned and describes future directions for the research. 

2. CAESAR II/EB
 
We have shown that EBO is the notion of selecting actions that comprise a COA based on their collective contribution to desired and undesired effects.  To support EBO, at least two problems must be address.  The first is to relate effects to actionable events.  In this problem, we need to define the set of desired and undesirable effects on the adversary, and then, working backwards, from effects to causes, arrive at the actions that we have at our disposal for achieving these effects. In the second problem, called the COA problem, we must select from the set of all possible actions those subsets that will yield, with high probability, the effects we wish to achieve and will yield, with low probability, the undesirable effects.  Then, taking into consideration constraints associated with specific actions or combinations of actions, the selected actions must be sequenced and time phased.  The result is a set of alternative COAs.  These COAs are then evaluated against requirements to determine the COA that provides that best likelihood of causing the desired effects to occur and the undesired effects to not happen.

CAEASR II/EB has been built and tested to focus on the belief and reason aspects of an adversary so that potential actions can be related to effects.  The tool incorporates influence nets as the probabilistic modeling technique and colored Petri (CP) nets2 to support the temporal aspects of COA evaluation.  These two techniques enable the modeler to create the structure of actions, effects, beliefs, and decisions, and the influencing relationships between them.  The influence net provides a static equilibrium probabilistic model that indicates the probability of effects given sets of actions.  After an influence net is converted to a CP net, temporal analysis can be conducted that provides, for a given a timed sequence of actions, the probability of effects over time, in the form of a probability profile3.  Probability profiles can indicate how long it will take for a specific COA to achieve the desired effects, reveal time windows risk when unacceptable probability effects could occur, and provide time windows for indicators of success or failure.  Changing the timing of selected actions can significantly change the probability profiles.

A two stage operational concept that uses the two modeling techniques to perform COA analysis has evolved through tests in realistic scenarios4.  In the first stage, intelligence analysts and subject matter experts develop an influence net and use it to determine the set of actions that will comprise a COA.  Once the influence net has been created, it is converted to the CP net so that operational planners can perform temporal evaluation in stage two.  The goal of stage two is to determine and recommend the timing of the set actions that give the best set of acceptable probability profiles for all effects. 

Influence nets have been used since 19945 to depict the causal relationships between actions and events. They are a variant of Bayesian Nets.  Influence nets are acyclic digraphs. The nodes represent statements or beliefs with which a probability value can be associated.  The directed arcs represent a directed binary relationship between two nodes. Two parameters characterize the relationship, called influences, and are denoted by h and g.  The first parameter, h, represents the strength of the influence that a parent node has on a child node, if the parent node were to be true.

_______
2 Jensen K. (1997). Coloured Petri Nets: Basic Concepts, Analysis Methods and Practical Use.Volumes 1, 2, and 3.  Basic Concepts. Monographs in Theoretical Computer Science,  Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany.

3 Wagenhals, L. W., Shin, I., and Levis, A. H. (1998). “Creating Executable Models of Influence Nets with Coloured Petri Nets,”Int. J. STTT, Springer-Verlag, Vol. 1998, No. 2, pp. 168-181.

4 Levis, A. H. (2000). “ Course of Action Development for Information Operations,”Phalanx, Military Operations Research Society, Vol. 33, No. 4.

5 Rosen, J. A., and Smith, W.L. (1996). “Influence Net Modeling with Causal Strengths: an Evolutionary Approach,”Proc. Command and Control Research Symposium,Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA. pp. 699-708.
 
The second one reflects the strength of the influence if the parent node were not true. Both h and g can take values in the closed interval [-1.0, 1.0] which means that the binary relations can be either promoting (+) or inhibiting (-). In addition, each node with parents has a parameter called the baseline probability, which is an estimate of the likelihood of the proposition represented by the node without regard to any influences. After an analyst creates an influence net and assigns the value of the g, h, and baseline probability parameters throughout the net, the values are translated into conditional probabilities for each node with parents using the CAST (for Causal Strength) algorithm6.  The influence net can then be used to propagate probabilities from the nodes with no parents (action nodes) to the nodes with no children (effect nodes).  The underlying assumptions in the algorithm result in a substantial simplification in the knowledge elicitation process when SMEs are asked to provide values for the influences.
 
Figure 1 shows a high level view of the concept of an influence net.  In developing the Influence net, the modelers incorporate two types of knowledge about an adversary referred to as Red.  The first involves the actions, events, beliefs, and decisions and the relationships between them. This knowledge is captured in the structure of the influence.  First, objectives and commander’s intent are translated into overall desired and undesired effects, sometimes stated as decisions that may be made by the adversary.  For example, we may be trying to convince an adversary not to decide to launch an attack or not to use particular weapons or systems.  The influence net starts with these desired and undesirable effects.  Analysts then select the key factors or beliefs that the adversary could consider in making the key decisions that result in the desired and undesired effects.

Then each key factor is examined to see the factors that would influence it.  In this manner (working from right to left in Figure 1), analysts use knowledge of the relationships between the reason, belief and decision making processes of the adversary, and build the influence net until they arrive at the adversary beliefs on which the planner, Blue, can have an impact through its actions.  Analysts then create nodes that represent all the potential actions that are available to Blue at the extreme left and proceed forward from those (from left to right) until the influence net is completed. After the structure of the net is created, the analyst adds the second type of knowledge, the h and g values to all of the influencing relationships, and the baseline probability to each node that has at least one parent. 

Figure 1. Modeling Actions and Effects

_______
6 Chang, K.C., Lehner, P. E.,  Levis, A. H., Zaidi, A. K., and X. Zhao (1994)  On Causal Influence Logic, Technical Report, George Mason University, Center of Excellence for C3I.
 
Once the influence net is completed, the analyst and us it to determine the best chance of achieving the effects for a given set of actions.  Several tools are available to represent an Influence net. They have comparable graphical user interfaces (GUIs) like the one shown in Figure 2 for the Campaign Assessment Tool (CAT)7 tool developed by both AFRL and George Mason University.  A color scheme is used to denote ranges of probability values with red denoting very low probability and blue very high. In Figure 2, the left parent’s probability of occurring is near 1, while the right one’s has probability near zero. Given the influences (h’s and g’s) that have been converted to conditional probabilities via the CAST algorithm, the Influence net algorithm computes the probability that the statement encoded in the child node would be true with probability about 50%.

Changing the probabilities of the parents changes the probability of the child.  Once the Influence net has been completed, it can be used to evaluate the impact of actions on the effects (decisions) of interest.  This can be accomplished by executing the influence net or by sensitivity analysis.  To execute the influence net, the analyst sets the probabilities of a set of actionable events to either zero or one, depending on whether the action is planned or not, and evaluates the influence net.  Algorithmically, this means that the tool propagates these probabilities until all effects are accounted for at the nodes with no parents.   These nodes represent main effects.

The results of this evaluation are visually shown by the color of each node (shades of red, gray, and shades of blue) and by providing marginal probability values of each node in a small circle on the lower left corner of the node.  An analyst can experiment with the influence net by changing the probabilities of one or more of the actionable events and seeing what the effect is on the key decision nodes.  Ultimately, the analysts can determine the subset of the potential actions to recommend to decision makers and back up the recommendation with rationale derived from the cause and effect relationships and strengths.

Figure 2 Influence Net Graphical Interface

Once the analysis of the influence net has been completed and the actionable events for the COA have been selected, planners assess the availability of resources to carry out the tasks that will result in the occurrence of the actionable events.  The resultant plan will indicate when each actionable event will occur.  Clearly, it is not only the selection of the set of actions that will lead to achieving the overall desired effects while not causing the undesired one that is important. The timing of those actions is critical to achieving the desired outcomes.  Evaluation of the impact of the timing is carried out using the CP net implementation of the influence net.  Since the Influence net does not contain temporal information, the analyst must provide it as an input to the CP net.  In general, there are several types of temporal information associated with the CP net representation of the Influence net; one associated with the input scenario and others with the model itself.  We will deal with the input scenario and time delay information in this paper.

_______
7 The Campaign Assessment Tool is a government owned software package under development by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Information Directorate (AFRL/IF). 
 

Figure 3 Two Courses of Action (same actions, different time-phased sequences)

The input scenario can be described in terms of the actions chosen in the selection of the Course of Action (COA) and the time at which these actions occur.  The actions are modeled as events, which means that they occur instantaneously.  An example of two COA scenarios is shown in Figure 3.  The actions and their timing of COA1 are indicated above the time line while the same set of actions with different timing that comprise COA2 is shown below the time line.

Because influence nets assume the independence of causal influences, it is possible to associate time with either nodes or the arcs of the influence net.  These times represent the amount of time it takes for knowledge about a change in the status of any variable to be propagated by some real world phenomenon to the node that is affected by that change.  The update in the marginal probability of a node occurs immediately after the time delay.  It is these time delays along with the timing of the actions that causes the generation of probability profiles.

Figure 4 shows the COA analysis environment provided by CAESAR II/EB, the combination of models, and results produced by this modeling construct.  It is partitioned into two gray boxes that correspond to the two stages of analysis, static and dynamic. An Influence net model for a given situation, built using the Campaign Assessment Tool, is shown in the upper left gray box of Figure 4.  In this particular example, an adversary, Red, has invaded a neighboring country.  The Blue coalition is developing COAs that will compel Red to decide to terminate hostilities (effect 1) and negotiate with Blue (effect 2). Red possesses dangerous weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that Blue does not want Red to use (effect 3).

The Influence net has been arranged with potential Blue actions on the left and the key Red decisions on the right.  This is to indicate visually that the effects of the actions are expected to propagate to intermediate effects over time until their impact reaches the key decisions.  The visual construct is that there is a time scale associated with the propagation of effects between nodes of the Influence net that moves from left to right.  There are six actionable events on the left side of the Influence net.  These are candidate actions that can comprise a COA that can impact the three Red decisions of interest.  The model suggests that the best COA will be composed of all six actions.

[xereau]

This sure sounds like the movie:  Eagle Eye

[Anti_Illuminati]

Figure 4.  CAESAR II/EB COA Analysis Environment

Once the analysis of the influence net has been completed and the actionable events for the COA have been selected, the influence net is converted to an executable model (CP net) so that a temporal analysis of the COA can be performed.  To enable the conversion, the influence net tool (CAT) generates a text file that contains all of the parameters that specify the influence net.  This text file is transferred to a web server environment (shown in the lower boxed in area of Figure 4) where it is used by a script to build the CP net.  Using a web browser, an analyst is able to run the CP net under a variety of initial conditions by filling out a set of HTML forms that are generated by the server.
  
To begin such analysis, the analyst specifies the time delay information for the influence net by filling out a HTML form.  Once the time delays have been specified, the analyst fills out two forms in his browser that enables him to specify a COA and the nodes to be displayed. When these two forms are filled out, the server sets the initial conditions in the CP net, runs it to generate the probability profiles that show the marginal probability for those nodes in the net as a function of time, and displays them in the browser.  Server also automatically stores the values needed to plot the probability profiles in a file for later use in comparing COAs.

These profiles can indicate how long it will take for the effects of the actionable events to affect various nodes in the Influence net and time windows when probabilities may have unacceptable values.  By changing the timing of the actions in the COA, the analyst may be able to eliminate these unacceptable windows. The analyst will most likely concentrate on the probability profiles of the key decision nodes, the nodes with no children.  An example of three probability profiles for a single COA is shown in Figure 4.

The annotations have been added to for clarity.  Notice that for this COA, the likelihood that Red will decide to use WMD decreases and then increase before it finally reaches a very low value.  This indicates that there is some risk associated with this COA.  The analyst will attempt to discover an alternative timing scheme that will reduce this risk caused by the rise in the likelihood of WMD use.  To compare COAs the analyst can fill out a HTML form in the browser to generate plots that show the probability profiles of nodes for different COAs.  The ultimate output of the analysis is a recommendation, along with the supporting rationale, for a particular COA.
  
3. CAESAR II/EB in Global

In 2000 and 2001, the Naval War College invited the Office of Naval Research to use CAESAR II/EB tool suite in their capstone, Title 10 War game, Global, to gain insight into its potential utility for supporting COA development and evaluation.  These experiences provided an important opportunity to tests these concepts and tools in a realistic environment.  This section describes how the tool was used and the lessons learned from the experience.

The conduct of these Global war games involved a two-stage process.  The first stage, the planning stage, took place over several months before the actual play of the game.  During this stage teams composed of game players and the staff of the Naval War College developed assessments of the situation as determined by the game scenario, establish Commander’s Guidance and Intent, and evaluate and recommend COAs that will be executed during game play.  The first stage was followed by the actual play of the game where the selected COA was executed.  This two-stage process emulates the planning and execution processes that occur during real operations.  Participation within both stages by the CAESAR II/EB team allowed the examination of the use of the modeling and analysis concepts to support the EBO modeling, COA selection, and the execution assessment processes discussed in the introduction.  

The organization for Global was based on cells that emulated the strategic, operational, and the tactical levels of military command and control.  The cells included the national level command, CINCs (Strategic Level), a Joint Task Force Commander with full staff, and cells for several component command centers (operational level).  The decisions and directives generated by the components were provided to a game floor where umpires used various models and simulations to determine the outcomes at the tactical level.  The war game used both an adversary (Red) team and a Blue team that were in two-way communication with the game floor.  As the game floor received tasks and directives from the Blue players and the Red players, the game floor determined the outcomes of those tasks and returned information to the Blue and Red players that was commensurate with the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets each had deployed.
 
One of the key observations from the Global experience is that it is critical to place the EBO analysis capability in the command and control organization were it will have access to both a team of subject matter experts who understand the adversary and the operational planners.  For the execution phase of the Global war games, a special cell called Blue’s Red Assessment Team (BRAT) was created.  This team was located in a “reach-back” cell that was separate from the standard intelligence cells.  The BRAT had the function of providing quick reaction analysis during game play of the adversary’s potential actions and reactions to the Blue COA.

This cell reported directly to the JTF command center.  Because the cell was populated with numerous subject matter experts (SMEs) from intelligence, information operations, WMD effects, and nodal analysis, it was decided that this was the most appropriate location for CAESAR II/EB capability during the game play (execution).  During the planning phase of the game (the first stage), the BRAT was not operational.  Thus the CAESAR II/EB team operated as a self-contained analysis entity and provided the results of its work in a freelance manner to the planners who developed the basic COAs.
 
The Naval War College refined the EBO concept for Global 2001 by creating a structured approach to developing the battle plan.  Using commander’s intent, the CINC, CJTF, and Component Staffs would determine specific effects to be achieved through a coordinated set of Blue actions.  Each effect would be expressed as an Effect Directive.  Each Effect Directive would be decomposed into a set of Effect Missions to be carried out by coordinated efforts of the Components of the JTF. Each Effect Mission was further decomposed into specific Effect Tasks that would be carried out by specific forces controlled by the Components.

The CAESAR II/EB team built influence nets to support the analysis of each of Effects Directive.  A mapping was established between the elements of each Effects Directive and the nodes of each influence net that supported the analysis of the Effects Directive. Tasks mapped to actions, Directives mapped to Effects, and intermediate nodes represented Missions in the influence net.  Addition intermediate nodes were created to account for Red reasoning and beliefs that were not explicitly contained in the Directives, Missions, or Tasks, but where important consideration Red would make.  The full set of Effect Directives included six effects, each with multiple missions and each mission with multiple tasks.
  
Initially six Effects Directives were established to achieve the six effects:

Effect 1:   Red decides against further aggression

Effect 2:   Red’s neighboring states and the coalition forces are secure from attack

Effect 3:   Coalition forces and commercial interests enjoy safe, uninterrupted access to the waters of the region in accordance with international laws and norms

Effect 4:   Red forces depart Brown
 
Effect 5:   Red forces depart the disputed territory of X

Effect 6:   Red is not capable of dominating the region by force

Figure 5.  Influence Net for Effects Directive 1

Figure 5 shows the influence net that was created for Effect 1.  The right side of the model shows major three decisions by Red, based on Red beliefs.  The beliefs are influenced by a combination of Coalition actions.  The influence net has been overlaid with boxes and textual descriptions to show different domains of action.  These include a combination of diplomatic actions and Information Operations that threaten sanctions against Red while attempting to convince Red that it can achieve its objectives by passive means.  The actions also include United Nations resolutions, Information Operations to convince Red that the coalition has the will plus local and homeland support for military operations if necessary, and the flow and maneuver of forces into the region to create full dominance.
  
Static analysis was carried out using the influence net to assess the likelihood of achieving the desired effects as different combinations of actions are taken.  Usually, non-kinetic actions were analyzed first to see if they have sufficient influence to cause the desired effect without resorting to the use of force.  Figure 6 shows two screen shots of the influence net.  The first shows that the IO actions, by themselves, increase the likelihood that Red will decide against aggression from 25% to 48%.  Certainly, this means that Red may be influenced by the IO campaign, but Red will still be inclined to act aggressively.  If all actions are taken, the model says that Red will be much less likely to act aggressively.    

Figure 6.  Influence Net Analysis of Effect 1

Temporal analysis was performed to assess the impact of timing of actions on the effects of concern.  Figure 7 shows the temporal analysis for Effect 1 for an IO COA with actions taking place at days 3, 8, and 12.  The analysis shows how the cascading and cumulative effects of IO actions will begin to accumulate by day 12, but will not reach full effect until day 25.

As the battle plan was built, similar analysis was carried out for all 6 Effect Directives.  The analysis gave the planners a better understanding of how the actions in the plan would contribute to the overall effects they are designed to achieve and how long it will take for those actions to reach the maximum probability of achieving the goal.  These results were presented to the senior leadership of the game players and the head of the BRAT prior to the game.
 
During the war game, the CAESAR II/EB team resided in the BRAT cell.  Figure 8 illustrates the BRAT procedures for the use of the CAESAR II/EB tool.  At the start of each game day, the BRAT leader would brief the cell on the urgent problems and issues facing the CJTF and his staff.  The CAESAR II/EB team converted these problems into questions and effects with the help of the SMEs in the cell.  The information provided by the SMEs was used to either modify an existing influence net model or to create a new model that would indicate the impact that Blue actions could have on the effects of interest.  Once the model was created, the CEASAR II/EB team conducted sensitivity analyses and then converted the results into a presentation that was given to the BRAT Cell leader.  If the BRAT leader approved the presentation, it was posted to the web site and the knowledge wall for access by the various staff members of the JTF and the components who were making planning decisions.  

Figure 7.  Temporal Analysis for IO COA

It was the goal of the BRAT cell to provide assessments of the situation to the JTF Commander and his staff in time for them to make COA decisions that could be implemented to achieve the desired effects and inhibit or prevent the undesired ones.  The BRAT leader expressed this goal as “Being in front of Operations.”  

Figure 8. Operational Concept for CAESAR II/EB in the BRAT at Global 2001

The tempo in the BRAT cell was brisk. As the situation unfolded, specific questions arose that could not be addressed with the CAESAR II/EB products that had been created during the planning process.  To “stay ahead of operations,” new models had to be created and analyzed quickly.  In some cases it was possible to modify the planning models to address the immediate questions.  This tended to be faster than creating totally new models.  In other cases new models had to be built from scratch using the knowledge developed from the modeling effort during planning plus new information generated during the game play.  The need to be able to rapidly build influence net models, process them, and develop the presentation of the results provided insights into ways to improve the CAESAR II/EB tool suite.
  
In general, the CAESAR II/EB was able to respond to the issues and questions in a timely manner.  However it is not clear that the results of the analysis were always used by decision maker that could best benefit from the results.  This is because there was a very large quantity of information being generated by many sources as the game unfolded.  Getting the relevant information to the right decision maker at the right time is one of the main challenges of command and control.  Because the concepts of analysis of effects based operation are still being developed and learned, the assessments provided by a tool like CAESAR II/EB are not yet sought by most operators.  Instead, the direct recommendations by the BRAT Cell leader was effective in providing the insight to the decision makers.
  
4. Observations and conclusion  

Our experience in Global 2000 verified the value of the EBO modeling concept of CAESAR II/EB and gave the team experience building models to support a war game.  As the CAESAR II/EB team interacted with the game players during the game play, it became clear that the tool could not be very effective unless it is used from the very beginning of the war game design.  Indeed, based on the experience in the Global 2000 game, the CAEASR II/EB team recommended that the tool be used in the Global 2001 game and that this modeling and simulation approach be used in theplanning phasesof the war game (January to June) both to shape the scenario and to familiarize players with the capabilities so that they can ask for and be given support during the game.

Our experience with Global 2001 verified the value of CAESAR II/EB team participation from the beginning of the war gaming process.  We discovered that supporting both planning and game execution requires two distinct types of modeling efforts.  The first is in support of deliberate planning prior to the game, and the second involves a quick reaction modeling during the game play.  Each type of effort has different characteristics as indicated in Table 1.
  

Table 1.  Characteristics of Modeling Efforts

In the deliberate planning phase, multiple models were built.  Each emphasized a different aspect of the battle plan and focused on specific effects.  These models tended to be large, and it took three to five days to build and analyze each.  During the planning phase, the CAESAR II/EB tool helped focus the conceptualization of COAs on the desired and undesired effects of a campaign and how to achieve them.  It provided a way of seeing the impact of an integrated set of actions across the spectrum of military and non-military actions.  The temporal analysis revealed the amount of time that it may take to reach objectives and revealed time windows when the probability of desired effects decreases or probability of undesired effects increases to unacceptable levels due to improper timing of actions.
  
During the execution phase of the war game, there was a premium on timeliness.  Due to limited resources, the CAESAR II/EB team was unable to monitor the execution of the game and update the planning models with execution information to assess the progress that was being made toward achieving the desired effects.  Instead, the BRAT cell concentrated on providing answers to specific questions about the adversary’s reaction to actions that were being planned by the operators.  To quickly respond to those questions required rapid morphing of existing preplanned models or the development of new models that were tailored to answer the specific questions.  The speed with which the CAESAR II/EB team could build a model, do the analysis, and provide the response depended on many factors.  Model building requires a knowledgeable and compatible team of SMEs who are familiar with the influence net modeling techniques.

The tool must be easy to use, have an interface for rapidly adding influencing strength values and timing information, and be capable of quick model modification to include the ability to cut and paste portions of existing models into new models.  The use of pre-formatted templates could minimize the time to generate, interpret, and incorporate the results into the report that presents the results and recommendations.  These insights into requirements for EBO tools are being used to enhance both CAESAR II/EB and similar tools are in advanced development by the Air Force Research Laboratories.  Along with these tool improvements, the authors believes that there are opportunities to refine the model building process to improve the speed of modeling building and analysis.
  
The participation in the Naval War College Title X war games provided a laboratory environment in which experiments could be conducted to investigate how CAESAR II/EB and tools like it can be used to support EBO in a real operational environment.  From this type of experience operational concepts for the use of tools to support the analysis of effects based operations is evolving.  The experience gained in Global will enable EBO teams with tools like CAESAR II/EB to support the development of future war game effects based battle plans and to use them effectively to support COA assessment during war game execution.  Insights gained about the tools, the modeling techniques, the processes needed to support EBO including the information needs, organizational issues, and the physical support systems that will ensure that future campaigns are planned and conducted with the focus clearly on the effects to be achieved.
  
Acknowledgment

The contribution of the GMU System Architectures Laboratory staff: Dr. Insub Shin, Mr. Daesik Kim, Mr. Sajjad Haider in the development of CAESAR II/EB is gratefully acknowledged.

[Satyagraha]

Knowing what we do about the elite scum, about Bohemian Grove, etc., they could have more aptly named it Caligula.

[donnay]

Lordsyndicate, thanks for helping to explain to some of us not so tech savvy people.

One question how can we stop something like this?

[lordssyndicate]

The above documents are what Anti Illuminti and I have internally dubbed the BRAT docs.

The upgrades made to CAESAR described above  allows them to literally set up a brand new instance of a CAESAR console  input a brand new scenario at 8am in the morning and  by 13:30 that afternoon they have already found the most plausible solution to win the battle based on ALL possible outcome scenarios...

So assuming you have an event happen  on any day at 7 AM this system allows them to win their Battle BY 13:30 !


That includes the time it takes to build a com system and set up everything in the field....

[lordssyndicate]

The solution to this is  massive immediate PEACEFUL public dissidence.

We must refuse to support their system.
As I said before if the millions who are with us take to the streets and peacefully begin to dissent  as a massive unit then they loose. If we the masses stop buying, stop driving, stop supporting their system in any way,  AS A MASS OF MILLIONS -- THEN WE WIN!

The solution is we  get people to start coming out in mass, now before it is too late and they stage the next event ....

The solution is to peacefully take back our government and our country NOW  the way they did in Iceland and Greece.

[Satyagraha]

Who are the engineers who wrote the code? Is this from private corp or military software engineers? Do we know?

[Shadow911Zeus]

Trying to comprehend the capabilities of this system. Let me ask you this: Could this system employ robotics which simple gives orders to automated systems without any human interaction. Could it automatically comand robotic operations by itself, or do humans need execute orders. How does it communicate with the human command headquarters.
I wish I could see a picture of it's main componets, I'm picturing in my mind some huge operating system.

[Satyagraha]

I was thinking about how they'd write this - a few system architects that feed out components so that nobody understands what they're building until the system integration happens at the top levels. I could see military at the top; but the mil subcontractors handling the different components... they'd be too afraid to let more than a few see the big picture. (In true NWO style; all code is compartmentalized until you get to the top). But there will be bugs.. and the less human interaction the more problematic the bugs. Think about stinging all this code together then trying to find out why the hell we bombed areaA instead of areaB.

[lordssyndicate]

Trying to comprehend the capabilities of this system. Let me ask you this: Could this system employ robotics which simple gives orders to automated systems without any human interaction. Could it automatically comand robotic operations by itself, or do humans need execute orders. How does it communicate with the human command headquarters.
I wish I could see a picture of it's main componets, I'm picturing in my mind some huge operating system.

That is one of their ultimate goals. Sadly.

I was thinking about how they'd write this - a few system architects that feed out components so that nobody understands what they're building until the system integration happens at the top levels. I could see military at the top; but the mil subcontractors handling the different components... they'd be too afraid to let more than a few see the big picture. (In true NWO style; all code is compartmentalized until you get to the top). But there will be bugs.. and the less human interaction the more problematic the bugs. Think about stinging all this code together then trying to find out why the hell we bombed areaA instead of areaB.

Well they have a  a very few   who are literally evil geniuses working on all this. They themselves  admit  and it is posted in the PhD forum -- that ptech can self heal and self evaluate in order to improve itself and  build  new parts of itself to more adeptly fulfill it's tasks and defend itself.

[Satyagraha]

One thing that should give us a little comfort (if any comfort can be had from the bastards' plan) is that whatever they write for specs, or proposals - whatever they 'demo' to make sure the funding keeps rolling in -- it's bound to minimize any problems and exaggerate the capabilities. That said, I have no doubt they can and will do a lot of damage. Maybe the scariest part is that they will not be able to control this thing once it gets up to speed. In my experience, sw engineers never think they screwed up code - and the smarter they are, the more likely the screwup, and the more difficult to isolate and fix.

[TheHouseMan]

Ceaser, eh? They sure love the Roman symbolism.

[lordssyndicate]

Ceaser, eh? They sure love the Roman symbolism.

Indeed, that they do...  Realy , fracked when you think about it. They name the master control AI after one of the most powerful  roman emperors

One thing that should give us a little comfort (if any comfort can be had from the bastards' plan) is that whatever they write for specs, or proposals - whatever they 'demo' to make sure the funding keeps rolling in -- it's bound to minimize any problems and exaggerate the capabilities. That said, I have no doubt they can and will do a lot of damage. Maybe the scariest part is that they will not be able to control this thing once it gets up to speed. In my experience, sw engineers never think they screwed up code - and the smarter they are, the more likely the screwup, and the more difficult to isolate and fix.

of all time.....




Aye, thus is true and I'm sure that's what they did throughout the 70's 80s and 90's up until they finally gave this thing full  control on 9/11/2001. 
That was why they couldn't "Turn Off" the inputs no matter how many times they were asked too at Cheyenne Mt. that day by the FAA. The inputs never stopped until the drill technically ended....


Not, to say that they aren't constantly adding to it and upgrading it even now ... But, it is  now in  control of their systems and the primary source for all of their current orders and plans

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0625insurgents.shtml

Can Computer Models Help to Quell Insurgent-Drive Strife and Instability?


Alexander Levis and V.S. Subrahmanian

Two scientists who have been using computers to help assess the behavior of insurgent groups told a AAAS-organized seminar that, despite their limitations, quantitative methods could play an important role in helping military commanders and political leaders make more informed decisions.

While acknowledging that computer models are still in their infancy and can provide only hints of possible outcomes during the often chaotic conditions in combat zones, the specialists said the Pentagon has considerable interest in the use of cross-cultural research to help combat insurgencies.

V.S. Subrahmanian, co-director of the University of Maryland's Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics, described how computers can be programmed to automatically and quickly extract relevant data from thousands of news reports on a topic and offer a probability estimate that a particular action might happen. He spoke at a 14 June Capitol Hill seminar organized by AAAS's Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy.

Subrahmanian's team has looked, for example, at reports of suicide attacks by the militant Hezbollah group, based in Lebanon. Preliminary results by the researchers suggest that when the group is engaged in education and propaganda activities in a major way, there's a 46-47% probability it will carry out suicide attacks. When it is not engaged in such activities, the probability of an attack rises to about 80%.

Subrahmanian's team also did an automated analysis of 1555 recent stories in the Afghan media to assess the perceived strength or weakness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai on a scale of minus 1 to plus 1. The analysis, which searched for phrases containing both opinions and statements of fact that can influence opinions, showed Karzai's overall rating was mildly positive for most news sources.

The intensity of opinions can influence how a group might act during times of stress and conflict, Subrahmanian said. Behavioral scientists would like to find ways to accurately predict how a group might respond, he said, and do so in a matter of hours or days rather than weeks or months.

"You would like to find the pressure points where you can exert influence to change behavior," said Alexander Levis, an engineering professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and former chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force.

The Pentagon, primarily through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, has been funding research by Subrahmanian, Levis and others in an effort to better understand the potential cultural, religious and social impact of military actions in combat zones. The Pentagon is proposing to spend more than $120 million over six years on social science modeling projects. The goal is to provide a new suite of tools that analysts can use to help assess the emergence of insurgent groups, how they interact with the local population and how they might respond to military or economic interventions. Such models would go beyond the purely military objectives that are at the heart of computerized war games.

Levis said his current work has been funded by both the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Office of Naval Research. His open-source academic research builds on similar studies pursued during the past 10 to 15 years by the intelligence community, he said.

The key, according to Levis, is to find ways to fuse the insights from different quantitative models, drawing on the strengths of each. "We need to make sure that the tools play together when used properly," he said. But he stressed that none of the tools will allow analysts to make firm predictions.

"We're not predicting outcomes," Levis said. "We do comparisons of the effectiveness of alternatives."

In one project, Levis and his colleagues developed a computer model that offered U.S. forces in Iraq options for securing two old silk roads in the Diyala province that been attacked by insurgents using improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The roads, one controlled by the Kurds and the other controlled by Sunni and Shia groups, had long been routes for both legitimate trade and for smuggling of drugs and other covert goods.

When IEDs began to be used along the Sunni-Shia route, the movement of covert goods shifted to the north along the Kurdish-controlled route, Levis said. Suppressing the attacks on one of the routes led to increased attacks on the other, he said.

Rather than deploying additional U.S. forces to help control the IED incidents, the computer model suggested that U.S. commanders should turn over security along the roads to Iraqi forces and allow them to ignore the smuggling of goods along the routes.

"We wanted to maintain the economic activity on the two routes," Levis said.

The preferred option also included educational efforts among the local populace to reduce support for the insurgency, the re-establishment of services, and external financial support to help improve the local economy. The model projected that all of the actions, taken together, would take at least six months of concerted effort to significantly reduce the number of IEDs. It projected that support for the insurgency would decline below 50 percent after about 21 months.

"I have absolutely no clue whether it would take 21 months or not," Levis said. But the model does tell an analyst that the recommended actions would take "not one or two months [but] a whole bunch of months," he said.

Such information can be useful to an analyst who is offering options for policy makers. But Levis cautioned that the numbers must be used appropriately. "This is not a view graph to be shown to the commander," he said, as a guide for planning troop withdrawals after 21 months.

Some of the computer tools have been given to defense and intelligence agencies for testing and user feedback. And some data has been provided to field commanders. Subrahmanian said his team "shipped a bunch of information on several tribes in the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands" to the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division before it deployed to Afghanistan in 2006. "So we have valuable results as well as much work to be done," he said.

One long-term goal of Subrahmanian's research is to develop a three-dimensional "virtual experience environment," a cultural and behavioral analogue of a computer war game, where U.S. decision-makers could decide how best to play out the actions of multiple groups in a region. The virtual environment would resemble the real landscape of the region being modeled, with characters behaving according to rules of behavior drawn from relevant and timely data collected by the researchers.

The modelers are just starting to grapple with the complexities of such a virtual environment, Subrahmanian said. They can do visual reconstructions of the landscapes, but they have little real-world content and few real-time news and information feeds. Among the key challenges, he said, is extracting useful knowledge from perhaps a thousand times more data than the team has been using.

While some former military officials have been skeptical of the computer-modeling work, Subrahmanian noted that "we're not the only ones building these immersive experiences." Even Hezbollah has a war-fighting video game that it sells to potential recruits, he said.

Earl Lane

25 June 2007
_______________________________________________________________________________
http://thalia.gmu.edu/main/people/current/prof-alexander-h-levis/

Prof. Alexander H. Levis

Dr. Alexander H. Levis is University Professor of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering and heads the System Architectures Laboratory of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. From 2001 to 2004 he served as the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force, on leave from GMU. He was educated at MIT where he received the BS (1965), MS (1965), ME (1967), and Sc.D. (1968) degrees in Mechanical Engineering with control systems as his area of specialization. He also attended Ripon College where he received the AB degree (1963) in Mathematics and Physics. Dr. Levis is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and past president of the IEEE Control Systems Society; a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a Fellow of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE); an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA); and serves on the board of the Educational Foundation of AFCEA. He has received three times the Exceptional Civilian Service medal from the Air Force (1994, 2001, 2004) for contributions as a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and as Chief Scientist. He has also received the Air Force Chief's Medallion and the Third Millennium medal from IEEE.

He has taught at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1968-1973), headed the Systems Research Dept. at Systems Control, Inc. in Palo Alto, CA (1973-1979), was a senior research scientist at the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT (1979-1990), and moved to George Mason University in 1990 where he headed twice the Systems Engineering department. For the last fifteen years, his areas of research have been system architectures including organization architecture design and evaluation, adaptive architectures for command and control, methodologies for architecture design and evaluation. Current research focus is the application of discrete event system theory to a variety of architecture and command and control problems. He has over 250 publications documenting his research, including the three volume set that he co-edited on "The Science of Command and Control", published by AFCEA, and the "The Limitless Sky: Air Force Science and Technology contributions to the Nation," published by the Air Force.

[Anti_Illuminati]

And now what I had feared is confirmed.  The New World Order's very tools for how to implement every stage of even the non-global information grid related aspects of it, is pretty much admitted to in the following excerpt:

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/126071.htm

http://www.state.gov/video/?videoid=29636586001

"Building the architecture of global cooperation requires us to devise the right policies and use the right tools. I speak often of smart power because it is so central to our thinking and our decision-making. It means the intelligent use of all means at our disposal, including our ability to convene and connect. It means our economic and military strength; our capacity for entrepreneurship and innovation; and the ability and credibility of our new President and his team. It also means the application of old-fashioned common sense in policymaking. It’s a blend of principle and pragmatism.

Smart power translates into specific policy approaches in five areas. First, we intend to update and create vehicles for cooperation with our partners; second, we will pursue principled engagement with those who disagree with us; third, we will elevate development as a core pillar of American power; fourth, we will integrate civilian and military action in conflict areas; and fifth, we will leverage key sources of American power, including our economic strength and the power of our example.

Our first approach is to build these stronger mechanisms of cooperation with our historic allies, with emerging powers, and with multilateral institutions, and to pursue that cooperation in, as I said, a pragmatic and principled way. We don’t see those as in opposition, but as complementary.

We have started by reinvigorating our bedrock alliances, which did fray in recent years. In Europe, that means improved bilateral relationships, a more productive partnership with the European Union, and a revitalized NATO. I believe NATO is the greatest alliance in history. But it was built for the Cold War. The new NATO is a democratic community of nearly a billion people stretching from the Baltics in the East to Alaska in the West. We’re working to update its strategic concept so that it is as effective in this century as it was in the last. At the same time, we are working with our key treaty allies Japan and Korea, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines and other partners to strengthen our bilateral relationships as well as trans-Pacific institutions. We are both a trans-Atlantic and a trans-Pacific nation.

We will also put special emphasis on encouraging major and emerging global powers – China, India, Russia and Brazil, as well as Turkey, Indonesia, and South Africa – to be full partners in tackling the global agenda. I want to underscore the importance of this task, and my personal commitment to it. These states are vital to achieving solutions to the shared problems and advancing our priorities – nonproliferation, counterterrorism, economic growth, climate change, among others. With these states, we will stand firm on our principles even as we seek common ground."
_________________________________________________________
So artificial intelligence is engineering, or significantly helping to engineer world policy for the global elite.  Wonderful.  Do you realize what this means?  It means they will execute with deadly precision with the most devastating harm to humanity, the absolute worst tyranny that will have ever existed on Earth, the most hellish, oppressive existence that can possibly be created.

[luckee1]

This explains their arrogance and laissez-faire attitude to secrecy.  They don't care that we know now.  They can take us out anytime now.  What is stopping them?  What is with a the drama leading up to it?  Is it to antagonize us, or is it that all pieces are not quite in place?

I am glad you found that video.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Figure 6.  Influence Net Analysis of Effect 1

http://gcn.com/Articles/2007/06/22/The-advantage-of-virtual-drills.aspx

The advantage of virtual drills

Simulation technology can exceed some of the limits of traditional military training exercises
By Doug Beizer  Jun 22, 2007

Illustration by Air Force

Simulation technolgies are changing the way the military trains fighting forces by allowing greater versatility and far more expansive scenarios than would be possible using real-world equipment.

For example, an Air Force exercise using real planes might pit 16 pilots against one another, eight playing U.S. forces and the other eight challenging them as the enemy.

In contrast, an exercise that uses simulation technology might involve thousands of aircraft and other objects, or exercises that combine real planes, pilots in simulators and completely computer-generated entities.

Choosing sides

The Air Force is using the Stage Scenario toolkit from Montreal-based Engenuity Technologies to create blue forces ' the good guys ' and test them against red enemy forces created with a tool called the Next Generation Threat System.

'Now we take those blue air pieces and those red air pieces, and together we construct a more robust environment than these folks will ever be able to see in a live-fly event, or even in a strictly virtual event,' said Capt. D'Artagnan de Anda of the Distributed Mission Operation Center (DMOC) at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.

'The environment generators that we have make more robust events that provide [a] more challenging and realistic training environment for theater-level engagements,' he said.

Stage Scenario is the simulation engine that drives the virtual environment. It continuously calculates how all the entities in a virtual environment would interact. It determines where things should be positioned from one instant to the next.

'So the whole environment you find is essentially generated by Stage Scenario,' said Robert Kopersiewich, director of product management at Engenuity Technologies. Stage Scenario gets input from actual pieces of equipment in addition to computer-generated input.

In the simulation world, protocols have been established to enable communication via a geographically diverse network.

Those protocols allow DMOC to run exercises with participants in different parts of the United States and sometimes with allied nations worldwide.

'What Stage Scenario does is sit in one place and communicate through these protocols to the different nodes in this network,' Kopersiewich said. 'And for each one of those nodes, you will have different participants taking part in the exercise.'

Advances in hardware and software have enabled the simulations to become highly complex. Once it took a powerful, dedicated piece of hardware to run a complicated simulation. Now a product such as Stage Scenario can run on a high-end PC with a good graphics card.

Concurrently, the software has been optimized to run larger simulations. Using this technology, the Air Combat Command, the Air Force's largest command, oversees quarterly exercises called Virtual Flag. DMOC acts as the hub of the event and creates the environments. A typical exercise can simultaneously include 25 to 30 distributed locations.

Close to real

The complexity of the system is important because it more closely mirrors an actual conflict than an exercise of all-live participants ever could. About 30 operators at DMOC run the computer-generated entities, called constructive entities.

'So as this virtual guy is flying in his virtual simulator cockpit, [he] calls out a call sign to a constructive entity, but he won't know whether that entity is constructive or whether that entity is virtual,' de Anda said.

It is impossible for a participant to tell whether another entity is real, simulated or constructed in a computer.

One of the biggest challenges in building the exercises is determining how real some entities need to be. For example, some computer-generated planes just need to appear as dots on a radar screen to create the realistic features of battle. Others need to be more realistic to coincide with the training objectives of a particular exercise.

The subtleties are successfully being applied in today's events, de Anda said. 'We had a guy come in and say this particular environment is the most realistic environment that he had participated in since he flew in Desert Storm,' de Anda said.

Doug Beizer writes for Washington Technology, an 1105 Government Information Group publication.

[Unintelligable Name]

Indeed, run the simulation a thousand times a second for an entire month with a massive supercomputer and calculate the best strategy.

[citizenobservers]

Anti_Illuminati, is there a link available where one can download the entire document in the OP, say in PDF format?

[luckee1]

Citizenobserver, until such a thing is available, you might want to copy paste and keep in note pad or word doc, and tuck it away in a separate file and copy onto disks too.  It is refreshing to find someone else who is trying to keep files.  The more people who do this, the more I feel it will keep Anti_Illuminati safe.  Or right click the image and "save image as" again please keep a copy on an external disk to share with others   

Welcome to the Prison!!

[Satyagraha]

Time to bump this thread...

[squarepusher]

I want to comment on this - they mention Jane's Fleet Command on these pages:





Jane's Fleet Command is an off-the-shelf realtime strategy videogame from 1999.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Command

An extract from the Final Report to Congress describes one of the larger Persian Gulf War events
that fits the criterion for modeling with Jane's Fleet Command:
         "The next day [30 January], a large force of Iraqi combatants based at Az-Zubayr and
         Umm Qasr attempted to flee to Iran, but was detected and engaged by Coalition forces
         near Bubiyan Island in what was later called "the Battle of Bubiyan." This battle lasted 13
         hours and ended with the destruction of the Iraqi Navy. With P-3Cs providing target
         locations, helicopters, ASR aircraft on alert, and other aircraft diverted from strike and
         CAP missions conducted 21 engagements against Iraqi surface combatants. By the end of
         the Battle of Bubiyan, one FPB-57 missile boat and two TNC-45 missile boats were heavily
         damaged. An additional three Osa missile boats and possibly a third TNC-45 were
         damaged. Three Polnocny amphibious ships were damaged, two of them heavily, along
         with one T-43 minesweeper. Only two damaged ships, an Osa II missile boat and a
         Polnocny amphibious ship escaped to Iranian waters."
We used this and other descriptions of this engagement from the Final Report to Congress to build
a model with Jane's Fleet Command. When the model is executed, Jane's Fleet Command creates
for the analyst several displays that show movement in space of all parties to the simulated
                                                  11
engagement. Those displays evolve in movie-like fashion, continuing (if the analyst wishes) until
all adversary participants are eliminated. Figure 5 is a screen capture of a snapshot (in time)
typical of the attrition-based simulation used to model the Bubiyan Island engagement. The lower-
left panel shows the 2D overall view of the engagement, a portion of which is enlarged in the
upper panel to show better detail of those participants. The center lower panel provides a 3D
birds-eye view for any one of the selected combatants, and the lower right panel gives detailed
information of that participant currently under the cursor location. To gather data for this
integration illustration, we ran the simulation in the computer-only.2 At the end of the
engagement, its output is a spreadsheet (not shown) of the timeline events for each participant.
Several runs of an engagement (same set-up, but different performance due to the statistical nature
of these models) were made for a given set-up. This provides averaged data for use in the timing
of events in the higher-level CAESAR II/EB model.

So they were interfacing CAESAR II/Eb with this Jane combat game - CAESAR II/Eb did the logic/event generation work, and the Jane game provided the visual stimulus.

Here are some highly revealing quotes from the Wikipedia article:

The game licensed parts of Jane's Information Group's military information database, which was used as an in-game "Jane's Library", reference material that the player could refer to while in-game

The United States Naval Academy actually had the game installed in computer labs and used it to introduce prospective students to the concepts of fleet level decision making during its Summer Seminar program.

They're probably using some highly advanced game right now instead of a hopelessly antiquated 1999 videogame for today's systems - such as CAESAR III.

This pretty much confirms all my suspicions (at first they were just educated hunches) that they are treating war as a videogame - but they are indeed linking it up to these games. The current videogame industry (the FPSes and realtime strategy) - that stuff actually falls under 'Simulation' from Operations Research - it's part of the 'game theory/war' economy.

[trailhound]

 Threat Anticipation Project Overview
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dtra/threat_anticip_aug2005.pdf

[carlee]

http://www.theglobalreality.com/radio-show   talking about this right now live 

[carlee]

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5q-gV34zj2MJ:www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/af/ebo.ppt+effects-based+operations&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a