Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
...The first is that the nice little mental state of "We Understand War" has been blown up because "they" didn't understand these wars. So calling the current setting increasingly "complex" is a reaction to having nice conventional perceptual models destroyed. The second reason, IMHO, has to do with changes in budgets over the past couple of years (i.e. inter- and intra- organizational squabbling over the budgetary pie).
As I said back in September:

""It is, broadly, a waste of time and the taxpayer's dollar -- but it is the way we do business. (emphasis added / kw)

It is, as someone mentioned, as much a pre-budgetary guide as it is a pre-doctrinal guide. It isn't a schedule and certainly isn't a map, it is an Echelons Above Reality encapsulation of syllabus. Maybe not even that, maybe a prospectus.""

As you say so well:
...Nope, things will always be getting "harder", the risk area must always be getting more "complex", simply so that the organization can keep getting a share of the social resources.

...The document uses a rhetorical proof set aimed at non-professional decision makers rather than an intra-profession argument and really should be read, at least to my mind, with that in mind...