Vulnerable Assumptions?

Assumption-Based Planning (ABP) is a multi-step planning tool developed by the RAND Corporation after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The purpose of ABP is to improve an organisation´s capability of making robust plans in times characterized by great uncertainties about the future. In military studies almost everything is, more or less, uncertain. In order to test ABP on the Swedish Armed forces, we have applied its first two steps on Perspektivstudie 2007 (Long Term Planning 2007). The essence of the first two steps is 1) identifying how assumptions can be invalidated by different events and 2) identifying the possible consequences of such invalid assumptions. The assumptions considered should both have potentially severe consequences and be vulnerable to failure within the planning horizon. In this report examples are given of circumstances that may invalidate planning assumptions and of the possible consequences. The given examples stem from a number of interviews with representatives of the Swedish Armed Forces, FMV, FOI and Pliktverket ( The National Service Administration). Two examples of categories of potentially invalid planning assumptions are risk and cost levels. An increased number of casualties are out of necessity lowered ambitions and perhaps a perceived sense of meaninglessness may, in turn, considerably influence the recruitment of soldiers for international operations. Another possible consequence is that the public opinion may force the politiccians to reconsider the Swedish participation in international operations, should be the development turn out to be negative. The work presented in the following is part of the FoRMA Project and specifically its support of the Swedish Armed Forces´Perspektivsatudie 2007, where it has been reported in the course of the study.