By Ann Roosevelt
This week a Unity of Effort Seminar–Interagency and Military Planning–is under way in McLean, Va., part of a year long series of events in the Army’s Title 10 Future Study Program Unified Quest 2009 (UQ09), co-sponsored by the Army, Training and Doctrine Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, and U.S. Joint Forces Command.
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The seminar is co-hosted by the Army War College Peace Keeping and Stability Operations Institute. The event is held at the Booz Allen Hamilton facility in McLean, Va.
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The May UQ09 is the culminating event of a series of seminars, workshops and conferences. Because there is a much greater non-military participation in the annual event, the Army has moved away from calling UQ a wargame.
For the Army, UQ09 is the chief of staff’s primary way to explore the challenges and conduct of operations in the future.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey’s intent for UQ09 is: “Given the range of alternatives and likelihoods in the Future Operational Environment, determine what capabilities and capacities are required to achieve decisive results through the integration of civil and military components of land power, which include our multinational partners and effective participation by the Air Force and Navy, to inform concepts development and doctrinal refinement.”
This year, Unified Quest 09 events examine the capabilities and capacities that will likely be required to meet strategic, joint force and tactical challenges that could be expected from 2018 to 2025.
This week’s seminar aims to find ways to establish a shared understanding of problems. It also is looking at how the collaborative planning frameworks among agencies responsible for executing foreign and security policy might be correlated and to work on how the military could best posture itself to support other governmental agencies in future, complex operations. It is also an opportunity to identify gaps in concepts and capability.
Participants, who include academics, civilians, government and military personnel, are being briefed by entities with a stake in such collaborative work, such as the State Department, USAID, the United Nations, and the Army.
During subsequent working groups, participants discuss issues as they focus on key tasks. The tasks include examining design and planning methods to identify where they converge or diverge and if they support collaborative planning or not. Participants will also identify ways to correlate institutional design and planning methods. Additionally, they will also add to the knowledge being gathered to prepare for the next revision of the military Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design, and identify the military capabilities required to enhance interagency partners in complex contingency design and planning efforts.
The outcome of the seminar is to provide information that will become part of the development of a white paper or article recommending ways to correlate the design and planning processes of those entities responsible for executing foreign and security policy.
At the same time, the outcomes will inform development of the capstone UQ09 event.
The seminar takes place about midway through the events that inform and lead up to the Army Future Game now slated for May. Since July events have been taking place to hone in on issues and context, a forum, workshop, planning conference and Emerging Technologies Seminar. Over the next five months, more working group and staff exercises will be held ahead of the capstone event.