PREFERRED FORCE GENERATION (PFG)

PREFERRED FORCE GENERATION (PFG)

Increase the quality and speed of force planning.

Preferred Force Generation (PFG), enabled by Global Force Management (GFM) business rules, is an automated service a command uses to rapidly convert “type-based” force data into actual units.  This conversion permits continued planning and analysis with more complete force information.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Joint planners currently lack the ability to rapidly identify a collection of preferred forces to perform Force Planning activities within the Joint Operation Planning Process (JOPP).  The selection of preferred forces in support of concept and plan development allows for improved contingency plan war-gaming and provides more realistic force information on which to base operational, force, logistics, sustainment, and transportation risk and feasibility assessments supporting plan refinement and the Interim Program Review (IPR) process.  While some directed plans are formally supported through the business process of contingency sourcing, the periodicity of these drills is severely limited and cannot support all Combatant Commands’ (COCOM) plan assessment requirements.

 

The current Joint Combat Capability Assessment (JCCA) process is a key input to the Chairman's Risk Assessment in the Joint Strategic Planning System. The labor-intensive contingency sourcing process is a limiting factor that constrains the frequency of these formal plan assessments. An automated PFG service will reduce planning timelines while providing accurate depictions of force structure to increase plan fidelity and, ultimately, support Adaptive Planning and Execution objectives.

The desired solution is to empower joint planners with accurate force structure, capability, availability, and readiness information and the ability to auto-generate preferred forces against Time-Phased Force and Deployment Data (TPFDD). As a critical set of activities within the JOPP, the generation and selection of preferred forces is necessary to enable improved contingency plan war-gaming and provide more realistic force information on which to base operational, force, logistics, sustainment, and transportation risk and feasibility assessments supporting plan refinement and the IPR process. The PFG JCTD will be developed as a net-centric service that can interface with other capabilities that have the need for a preferred force service.

The primary focus of development will be on generating and delivering an operational version of PFG for use in the field.  The PFG JCTD will be based on net-centric technologies and will use a services-based architectural design pattern in accordance with DoD Information Enterprise Architecture standards and guidelines. PFG capabilities will undergo NetOps compliance assessment as well as DIACAP assessment prior to enterprise deployment.

With user-defined parameters and constraints, the PFG service will use a series of business rule-based algorithms to select and recommend candidate preferred forces. PFG will leverage best practices and methodologies from the GFM and the Joint and Service force provider communities.

The tools used to do transportation feasibility and war-gaming have extensive and strict quality controls on accepting TPFDD records for processing. These rules can be met quite easily for a TPFDD in execution; however, a contingency plan TPFDD is unlikely to be able to pass all the quality controls and completeness checks.  So, illustratively and quite simply, before submitting a Contingency Plan TPFDD for transportation analysis by Joint Flow and Analysis System (JFAST), the “Planned Forces” TPFDD will be imported by PFG which will permit the user to select real and preferred forces data to replace the Planned Forces data. This results in a “Preferred Forces” TPFDD which has sufficient and complete enough data to be able to pass JFAST’s rigorous quality control and completeness checks and provide valid, realistic transportation feasibility analysis much earlier than previously possible.

The COCOM and Service components execute the four steps in Figure 1 and then work with United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) to complete the transportation analysis and cyclic adjustments that eventually result in a transportationally feasible TPFDD.

 Work Flow

A key purpose of the PFG (JCTD) is to provide a net-enabled web service to generate Preferred Forces against a TPFDD, thus improving the Department’s Adaptive Planning ability to generate and analyze Courses of Action (COAs) with increased speed and accuracy.  The integration of process and automation improvements under the GFM Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) initiative continues to help optimize the Department of Defense force management capability growth through implementation of the GFM Initial Capabilities Document (ICD) and its complementary materiel solution, Joint Capabilities Requirements Manager

Combatant Command User/Sponsor:
United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM)

PFG Integrated Management Team (IMT):
Oversight Executive – Rapid Fielding Directorate, Complex Systems
Operational Manager - USJFCOM J38
Technical Manager - DISA CTO
Transition Manager - TBD