Airborne and space-borne reconnaissance force mixes: A decision analysis approach

Given the importance of joint reconnaissance to today's operational commanders and increasing reliance on reconnaissance for the future, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) recognized in 1995 that it had no means to make force mix decisions in terms of end-to-end platform capability and cost across all components: manned, unmanned, and overhead. To fulfil this need, the JROC created the Reconnaissance Study Group and tasked it to develop and implement a process for making timely and informed reconnaissance force mix decisions. This paper describes an innovative decision analysis methodology for determining the composition of promising reconnaissance architectures at various levels of investment for the 2010 time frame. The results of this study were not developed to feed into any JROC decision making process, but to illustrate a methodology; nonetheless, the results have been utilized by a number of Department of Defense organizations.