A Model to Identify Short-Term Efficiency Improvements of Network-Organized Forces

Network-organized forces are hypothesized to give better efficiency and robustness through more efficient utilization of resources, less idle time and increased flexibility. In the long-term one may expect all military components to be part of one networked unity, but until then, in the short term, one may gain from improving on the fragmented networks of today. We have developed a model to help identify components that hold network qualities. By network qualities we understand a great improvement in a component's overall usefulness in a networked context. The model helps us to identify such components and the particular links that would contribute to the components "net-readiness". The model, a stochastic program, implemented as a multi-stage mixed-integer program, solves a high-level decisions problem at the operational level. It incorporates two aspects that are most important in the context of network-organized forces. The first is a concept of consumers and service providers. The second is the treatment of uncertainty in order to handle the aspects of flexibility and robustness in decisions, one of the major advantages of network-organized forces