CSIS, 18 Dec 07: Planning for Stability Operations: A Capabilities-Based Approach
The conduct of stability operations is a mission area with particular promise for the application of capabilities-based planning. Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, “Military Support for Security, Stabilization, Transition, and Reconstruction Operations”, requires components to give such operations priority comparable to that of combat operations. It also assigns the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the responsibility to “identify stability operations capabilities and assess their development.” Yet there is no agreed definition of capabilities-based planning, no framework for its use in force development, and no approach to developing outcome metrics to gauge progress. Those within the Defense Department charged with tracking progress on the directive’s implementation have underscored their inability to assess the state of stability operations capabilities development because the joint and interagency community does not yet have a framework for conducting such assessments.

Recognizing these analytic deficiencies and their real world ramifications, the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Transformation and Resources tasked the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) with developing a capabilities-based framework to generate generic capability packages for future stability operations. The study was conducted from March 2007 through August 2007 and included a scenario-based workshop to test the validity and utility of CBP-derived capability packages. This report delineates CSIS’s findings and recommendations on the project. Chapter 1 describes the study’s overall methodology and analytic framework. Chapter 2 summarizes five stability operations cases examined by the CSIS team and the key insights derived from them, with particular attention to operational and environmental considerations. Chapter 3 sets forth a proposed typology of stability operations and associated measures of success. It concludes with a proposed set of generic capability packages derived from the typology and metrics. Finally, chapter 4 discusses the findings from the scenario-based workshop, the project’s overall insights into the application of CBP to the stability operations mission set, and key policy and capability considerations for stability operations.....
Complete 57 page report at the link.