Viking 08 Experiment Report - Exploring Sense Making Activities to Support Campaign Planning

This report presents the outcomes in terms of results and conclusions from a Swedish Stand Alone Event (SAE) of VIKING 08. The SAE was a Limited Objective Discovery Experiment (LODE) focusing on the Swedish Armed Forces Effects-based Philosophy and Methodology. The Experiment was conducted as two separated bu coordinated activities - Campaign planning and Knowledge Support (KS). In addition to that, profiling techniques were tested (as a part of Red & Green Teaming in the Swedish EBAO concept) to support the early stages in Campaign planning. The experiment focused on the initial parts of a Campaign Planning process where the Operational Military HQ used new mechanisms to reinforce the Swedish Armed Forces EBAO philosophy. One of the main objectives for the experiment was to explore ways to support campaign planning within complex operation environments; and also; evaluate how KS and R&G teaming can support operational level planning. We can conclude that the integration of the concepts worked on some level but it was not possible to fully explore how this should be executed. The different concepts had somewhat competing objectives which made the execution of the experiment difficult. Further more, several factors such as time constraints and also profile and the number of participants affected the experiment. However, important discoveries were made that will be u as a base for continued concept development of EBAO, KS and R&G. The technical platform that was used during the experiment showed the possibilities of utilising KS-methods to support operational planning in a new way. The results and conclusions are presented in detail in the results and conclusions chapters for each concept.