CRITICAL THINKING


PREDICTING the ‘WHETHER’


Planning 30 years out requires a vision of the future. Tat’s where ARCIC comes in.


Predicting potential future adversaries and warfare is considerably less straightfor- ward than forecasting the weather, but it can involve as many variables. Climatologists have sophisticated computer models that can help them develop a picture of the next week or two in reasonably accurate detail and can even provide a general picture of what the climate will probably look like 30 years out. Military planners don’t have equivalent models, at least not yet. But, like climatologists, they have a sophisticated understanding of their sub- ject matter and can provide an assessment of what’s likely based on current trends and an array of variables.


One of those trends is significantly reduced budgets. But Charles Dickens may have been right that the worst of times can be the best of times. From two recent periods of relative austerity for U.S. military budgets, one in the 1970s and another two decades later, came the foundation of the Army’s land force and the beginning of the networked Army.


Te organization charged with forecasting the ifs, buts and whethers of the Army’s future, and which plays a leading role in planning for it all, is the Army Capabilities Integration Center (ARCIC). Formerly the Futures Center, ARCIC supports the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in the design, development and integration of force capability requirements for the Army. According to its website, “ARCIC develops Army con- cepts that provide strategic and operational direction through the Army concept framework.


… In many ways, ARCIC is the think tank for the Army. We look at the future, determine the threats the Army will face and the missions it will receive, and come up with the operational concepts required to organize its structures and the capabilities needed to drive its programs.”


Developing concepts for the future is as much art as science. Precisely because such predictions are so difficult, Army AL&T magazine sat down with ARCIC to get an idea of what their crystal ball looks like and how it works.


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PRACTICING FOR DISASTER National Guardsmen and civilian first responders clear rubble Nov. 7, 2013, at a simulated collapsed struc- ture on the former Brunswick Naval Air Station, ME. Disaster relief is one of the full spectrum of military operations that ARCIC examines through its war- gaming, in collaboration with the other services. Each service contributes emerging technologies and objectives, but all tackle the mission as a joint team. (Maine Army National Guard photo by SGT Angela Parady, 121st Public Affairs Detachment)


Army AL&T Magazine


April–June 2014


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