Militaries evolved from Threat to Capability based planning (CBP) after cold war era; now need Threat cum Capability planning to achieve national security objectives.

After the end of cold war, a new process for Defence planning was developed known as Capability-Based Planning (CBP). Capability-Based Planning was officially introduced into the U.S. military establishment in the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). “A capability-based strategy [is] one that focuses less on who might threaten us or where we might be threatened (Threat based approach), and more on how we might be threatened and what we need to do to deter and defend against such threats,” said Rumsfeld.

CBP has been widely adopted by many countries and many organizations apart from defence. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began its adaptation and application of CBP in 2004, in response to presidential directive HSPD-839 to develop a national domestic all-hazards preparedness goal (‘Goal’) with mechanisms for improved delivery of Federal preparedness assistance to State and local governments. Australia has used CBP to plan and develop military capability since the 1970s. As there is no dominating threat or overriding hazard to the country’s security, strategic military planning considers a broad range of contingencies and threats.

However recently CBP also has been criticized because it led to many messy acquisitions due to “Strategic ambiguity, requirements creep, and the push to “transform” and “revolutionize” the military without any particular adversary in the sights that spawned such messy acquisitions,” according to Hon. Sharon Burke, a senior advisor at New America.

During the cold war there was only single monolithic adversary hence major powers relied on threat based planning. Threat-based planning focuses on one or a small number of fundamental threats, and the response system is designed to best match those contingences associated with the threats. Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, the nature of war has changed considerably. Apart from conventional threats new threats have arisen included rogue states, and non-state actors such as insurgents, trans-national criminal organizations, terrorist groups, and violent religious extremists.

Australia’s first National Security Statement (NSS), recommended expanding national security from counter-terrorism to include all-hazards, such as industrial accidents and natural disasters, and stated that the NSS recognises that the list of non-traditional threats and new security challenges continues to grow and evolve. Threat-based planning is not practicable for the institutional agility required by Government under this evolving, dynamic, all hazards environment. The change to CBP was designed to move away from what, in the past, had often been a reactive force development process that not only proved to be unsatisfactory but had generally resulted in expensive solutions. Supporters suggest it provides “a more rational basis for making decisions on future acquisitions, and makes planning more responsive to uncertainty, economic constraints and risk.

However, increasingly CBP has also come under fire because it led to many highly complex and costly programs that had to be cancelled. And in the years since Rumsfeld’s first QDR, the Defense Department has wasted billions of dollars on what former Secretary of Defense Gates called “exquisite” programs: The Army’s canceled Future Combat System, the USMC’s canceled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, and the Navy’s curtailed and canceled next-generation destroyer and cruiser programs, writes Hon. Sharon Burke, a senior advisor at New America. These were all beautiful, breathtaking machines, but their technical complexity and high cost turned out to be a culminating point. Or in the case of the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship and the Air Force et al’s Joint Strike Fighter, they lumber on in the FY 2015 budget.

TBP is appropriate when a nation is faced with a known monolithic threat while CBP works best when threats are uncertain and do not lend themselves to single point scenario-based analysis. Therefore the need of the hour is threat cum capability based planning which can take care of most dangerous and likely current threats as well as develop adequate capability against all the present and future adversaries across the full spectrum of warfare.