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U.S. Air Force Strategic Deterrence Capabilities in the 21st Century Security Environment A Workshop Summary (2013) / Chapter Skim
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5 Insights for the Future
Pages 26-34

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From page 26...
... Another view was that a rich set of challenges currently exist, such as how can the United States verify what weapons China possesses, given its extensive underground tunnels. On General Chambers' Presentation Gen Chambers asked, "What is it we give to the President to deter and assure?
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From page 27...
... But, that participant argued that strategy will not drive decisions made in an austere budget climate by politicians with higher priorities than nuclear deterrence. Noting that Gen Klotz believes the time is right for establishment of a new national consensus on the support and sustainment of nuclear deterrence, a participant observed that this will require two schools of thought to agree (those who say nuclear weapons are needed and those who advocate the elimination of all U.S.
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From page 28...
... A participant voiced the need for showing how the maintenance of deterrence force structure at appropriate numbers can in fact be useful to a particular interest of someone who would otherwise advocate the sharp reduction or elimination of such weapons.
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From page 29...
... ; - Historical case studies; - Historical statistical-empirical analysis; - Operations research; - Simulations and war games; - Game theory; - Simple deterrence analysis using synthetic cognitive models; - Actor-specific behavioral modeling and leadership profiling; - Agent-based computational modeling (both simple and complex cognitive decision models) ; - Social network analysis/influence diagrams/data mining; - Subject-matter-expert elicitation; - Crowd sourcing; - "Evil genius" and "crafty bastard" efforts; - Insights provided by neurobiology as related to behavior; - Heuristics; and - Systems engineering models.
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From page 30...
... Winter's approach requires manual labeling of concepts from a taxonomy that includes concepts such as power imagery. He provided quantitative support for his work and noted that since it requires manual labeling it is difficult to use it with social media sources, but it could be very useful with selected document sources.
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From page 31...
... A participant noted that the reason for this is that they do "requirements analysis," which assesses ability to do a well-specified job, rather than characterizing capability. The participants understood that the USSTRATCOM approach handles the kinetics pretty well, but it has not done very well on issues relating to individual decision makers, political context, and world environment.
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From page 32...
... He noted that models and integrated ensembles of models for generating insights are already available, such as Pythia, Construct, and the framework developed by the Concepts and Analysis of Nuclear Strategy study. A participant's view was that these models generally have uncertain validity and stop short of supporting decisions, except by providing possibly useful (but possibly misleading)
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From page 33...
... INSIGHTS FOR A FOLLOW-ON STUDY During both workshop sessions, but especially the second, workshop participants offered many insights regarding the content of a possible follow-on study. The dialog focused on an illustrative TOR that could form a framework for such a study.
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From page 34...
... 3. Evaluate and recommend tools, methods, including behavioral science-based methods, and approaches for improving the understanding of how nuclear deterrence works in the 21st century, how it might fail, and how failure might be averted by the proper choice of capabilities, postures, and concepts of operation of American nuclear forces.
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Key Terms

  • participant noted
  • gen klotz
  • participant believed
  • strategic deterrence
  • leadership profiling

  • participant observed
  • workshop sessions
  • force structure
  • analytical tools
  • maj sorice

  • workshop participant
  • participant thought
  • participant added
  • nuclear forces
  • individual workshop

  • lower force
  • participants believed
  • force levels
  • analytic tools
  • gen elder

  • klotz believes
  • social networking
  • global zero
  • profiling approaches
  • sound analysis

  • elder described
  • frugal heuristics
  • human brain
  • manual labeling
  • requires manual


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