Stochastic analysis for deployments and excursions

The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the end of the Cold War and marked the transition from a bipolar to a multi-polar world. This transition caused the United States (US) and its military establishment to change its focus from conflict with the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe to responding to regional events called major theater wars (MTW) and small scale contingencies (SSC). These new strategic and operational demands compel the US Army to carefully and frequently reassess its force structure, major weapons systems, and tactics so as to meet the expectations of the political leadership and the nation. This paper describes a methodology that incorporates stochastic processes to ‘come to grips’ with the uncertainty associated with SSC and provides a SSC forecast so that civilian and military planners can resource military operations in the future.