Combat Power Analysis is Combat Power Density

Historically, the U.S. Army has had difficulty articulating and justifying force requirements to civilian decision makers. Most recently, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq reinvigorated the debate over estimated force requirements. Because Army planners have failed numerous times to provide force estimates acceptable to the President, the question arises, why are the planning methods inadequate and why have they not been improved This research began with a thorough evaluation of current doctrinal methods for determining force requirements to determine the rationale for their creation. The evaluation revealed that current Army doctrine does not provide a coherent method for determining force density requirements in contemporary operating environments. Instead, doctrine developers have defined three distinct and separate methods for determining force requirements Correlation of Forces Model COFM, Relative Combat Power Analysis RCPA, and Troops-to-Task T2T. As distinct processes relegated to specific operational situations, they cannot provide a comprehensive picture of force requirements. As such, the processes are only useful in narrowly defined contexts. Doctrine also ignores older established models of combat power analysis such as Lanchester equations, Weapon Effectiveness Index WEI, Weighted Unit Value WUV, Armored Division Equivalents ADE, and Unit Frontages. This research demonstrated that COFM, RCPA, and T2T can be usefully applied in specific circumstances, which explains why Army doctrine writers have retained these methods despite their shortcomings. However, the Army has failed to update the models to account for new operating concepts. The Armys new operating concept, unified land operations, envisions army forces conducting full-spectrum operations, operations that blend combined arms maneuver and wide area security. The Army needs an integrated approach to determining force requirements that reflects its integrated operational concept.