Participants of the Amphibious Leaders Expeditionary Symposium (ALES) gather around to discuss interoperability at NATO Joint Warfare Center in Stavanger, Norway, June 20, 2018.

Participants of the Amphibious Leaders Expeditionary Symposium (ALES) gather around to discuss interoperability at NATO Joint Warfare Center in Stavanger, Norway, June 20, 2018. U.S. Marine Corps Photo/JWC Stavanger

How the Joint Staff Calculated a Defense Program’s Return on Investment

As our office computed the utility of its wargaming grants and library, we learned some things that others in DoD may want to copy.

When our office was handed the Defense Department’s Wargaming Repository and a $10-million annual Wargaming Incentive Fund last year, senior leaders made clear that good stewardship of this valuable resource would include calculating its return on investment. Of course, calculating ROI for a defense initiative is more difficult than doing it for a company, where one can compare investment with cash flows.

So we — that is, the Joint Staff’s Studies, Analysis, and Gaming Division — adapted an approach described in a Harvard Business Review article. Because the purpose of defense programs is to support a public good — national security — and not to generate profits, we removed the second step (“Forecast the cash flow”) and doubled our analytical efforts on the fourth (“Evaluate the investment”).

Essentially, we sought to answer two sets of questions:

  • Are DoD organizations using the Repository to disseminate the lessons they learn through wargames? Are other organizations reading their writeups?
  • Are WIF-funded games aligned with senior-leader priorities? Do the games inform senior decision-making?

To answer the first questions, we looked at readership statistics for the Repository, which at the time contained roughly 750 entries on completed and future wargames. These offer such detail as purpose; scenario; methodology; number of participants; points of contact; and whatever lessons, insights, and best practices may have emerged. Among other uses, they feed a monthly wargaming report sent to 500 officials from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, service branches, and combatant commands.

Related: Better Wargaming Is Helping the US Military Navigate a Turbulent Era

Related: North Korea: The Military Options

Related: What You Need to Know About Russia’s Big Wargame on NATO’s Doorstep

We found that these entries had been viewed more than 14,000 times by more than 800 people from 20 DoD organizations (including the OSD, the Joint Staff, and all of the service branches and combatant commands). Nearly three-quarters of the views were from organizations that had not participated in the wargame in question — that is, people reading about others’ wargames. This exceeded our expectations; we had judged that the minimum required return should be entries that are viewed at least half of time by unrelated organizations.

Turning to the second set of questions, we focused on 54 WIF-funded games run between May 2016 and April 2018. (That’s roughly one-fifth of the total entered into the Repository during that timeframe; these games were run by 14 DoD organizations, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, all service branches, and most of the combatant commands.)

To understand whether these WIF-funded games were aligned with senior leaders’ priorities, we checked them against the 2018 National Defense Strategy’s principal priorities (China and Russia) and secondary ones (North Korea, Iran, and counter-terrorism). We found that 68 percent of the war-gamed scenarios focused on the principal priorities; 24 percent looked at the secondary priorities; and 8 percent focused on topics outside of these priorities but relevant to national security.

Determining how much WIF-funded games inform senior decision-making is difficult. Senior leaders occasionally vouch publicly for their utility; in April, the leader of U.S. Transportation Command testified to Congress that his wargame revealed critical security vulnerabilities and “drove changes in how we plan for attrition, cyber, mobilization, authorities, access, and command and control.” But this is relatively rare; for one thing, the results of most games are classified. So we looked at other metrics. We found, for example, that 32 percent of such wargames had direct participation of at least one general officer or member of the Senior Executive Service. We also found that senior leaders received lessons-learned briefs after 96 percent of WIF-funded wargames. In an effort to improve our understanding, we have begun requiring awardees to complete a post-wargame questionnaire.

Our efforts to calculate ROI had some unexpected benefits. The experience of searching the Repository’s back-end usability data helped us to improve its interface and make it a better information-sharing platform. We also discovered that some organizations that accepted WIF grants had not fulfilled all of the related obligations — such as the requirement to brief senior leaders on lessons learned. So we barred WIF recipients from receiving additional grants until they met their outstanding obligations, and began sharing compliance updates at our biweekly meetings. Over the year starting in July 2017, the proportion of delinquent WIF awardees declined from 38 percent to less than 9 percent.

The current National Defense Strategy aims to “ensure effective stewardship of taxpayer resources,” and other DoD organizations may be asked to calculate the ROI of programs they manage. This may be a challenge due to a lack of requisite knowledge or experience and because ROI is a business concept that typically measures the profitability rather than public usefulness of programs. Nevertheless, based on our experience, we believe the DoD managers can carry out sensible ROI analysis that is useful to their own organizations and to leaders. Such analysis must ask a narrow number of questions, seek the relevant hard data, and stay focused on the original intent of the program and its current utility to senior defense leaders. That was the essence of the approach we took and it is one we believe others could adopt to their benefit.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.