OPERATIONAL RESEARCH TOOLS SUPPORTING THE FORCE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS FOR THECANADIAN FORCES

In June 2005, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) of the Canadian Forces (CF) mandated that Capability Based Planning (CBP) be institutionalized as a partof a centrally driven, top-down approach to Force Development (FD) within theDepartment of National Defence. For the last two years, Operational Research analystshave been instrumental in the development of tools and processes to supportall aspects of CBP. In this paper three CBP tools will be described: The CDS ActionTeam 3 Capability Assessment Methodology (CATCAM), the Capability DiscussionMatrix (CapDiM), and the Strategic Costing Model. CATCAM was developedto compare the value of disparate CF capabilities. Presently, the tool determinesa priority list of activities (the sub-components of capabilities) by employinga top-down risk assessment of activities against the desired mission effects of a specificFD scenario. CapDiM was developed to prioritize force options by evaluatingtheir contributions against a set of criteria. To display the resultant priority list offorce options, CapDiM creates a “Bang for Buck” graph that plots the value of eachforce option against its corresponding cost. The Strategic Costing Model was createdto cost all aspects of the CF force structure. The model costs the total capabilitydemand for the CF including, for example, the capability cost of: personnel; capital; research and development; operations and maintenance; and national procurement. The Strategic Costing Model permitted the first 30-year view of CF demandversus supply