KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid has always been considered a phrase of wisdom, and anyone who's ever tried to do anything complicated in their lives knows this to inherently be true. The other rule of thumb would be Murphy's Law, which also seems to be quite valid, more so than not. Okay so let's talk about this when it comes to choosing the best modern weapons systems or our military.
There was an interesting paper I recently read by Doug Bodner of Enterprise Systems Engineering at the Tennenbaum Institute titled; "Addressing Risk in the Acquisition and Lifecycle with Enterprise Simulation" which was of particular interest. In one part of the text Bodner postulates the need for computational model simulation to help aid in the decision making process, while focusing on the main or primary objectives such as; "aging portfolios, fiscal constraints, complexity of new systems, and potential and emerging threats."
Now then, using an artificial intelligent decision making program - a decision tree with logic gates to come to the final outcome could help in the complexity of the decision making process, however, perhaps one might surmise that we've placed far too many false parameters already along the process pathways unnecessarily. Perhaps, we've put too much emphasis on nonsensical things, which have little to do with the primary objective to acquiring a weapons system in the first place; namely to do its job and help you win battles, thus, hopefully if you win enough battles, you will win the war.
Okay, let me give you a for instance of an irrelevant stipulation passed onto the acquisition and contracting process if I might. When it comes to government contracting, they have all sorts of rules and regulation which really do not belong in military contracting. I'm talking about such things as the percentage of all contracts that must be awarded to small businesses, and other such nonsensical regulations which are put up onto the process. This just clouds the issue and complicates the process. By having these stipulations, we are making it more difficult to come to the right decision on which weapons our military should buy.
Further, it probably doesn't matter if you put more stipulations on a computer, no matter how artificially intelligent it is, or how well you programmed it, if we are putting up false parameters to choosing the best contractor or weapons system - then all we have is garbage in, and garbage out. Until we fix the underlining problems in this process, and this is just one of many that I used as an example here today, it won't matter how great the decision-making software is, it will be filled with bogus and false parameters.
Therefore the answer it spits out is guaranteed to not be the best for all concerned, namely our men and women in uniform that will be using this equipment when their lives depends on it. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Future Military Technologies. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/
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