Turns out that OSD Net Assessment is being closed down. Pete Hegseth shutters Pentagon office that helped military leaders plan for possible future wars and Hegseth ‘disestablishing’ Office of Net Assessment, Pentagon’s strategic analysis specialists – Breaking Defense. Hegseth has instructed DOD to come up with a replacement organization “within 30 days.”
This was a small office in OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) that developed legendary status over the years: Andrew Marshall (foreign policy strategist) – Wikipedia
The Dupuy Institute did a number of contracts for Andy Marshall, specifically (see: TDI Reports – The Dupuy Institute)
1. SR-1 Soviet/Russian Influence on Chinese Military Doctrine (Jul. 2003).
2. SA-1: Measuring the Value of Situational Awareness (May 2004)
3. OSD-1: The Applicability of Classical Counterinsurgency Theory to Counterinsurgency Operations (Jan. 2008).
The original Iraq Casualty Estimate (Chapter 1 of America’s Modern Wars) that we did in 2004 was primarily funded by Andy Marshall. He contributed $75K based upon a phone call from Vandiver (CAA) and then CAA chipped in $20K, although CAA ran the project. I did brief Andy Marshall.
The office was funded with about $20 million a year. This supported maybe a dozen people and a budget of $12 or $13 million that he used to pay for various contracts (I accidently saw one of his big omnibus contracts).
He retired in 2015 and an Air Force colonel that I did not know took over. They then issued out a giant omnibus contract which we bid on. They did not contract us.
OSD Net Assessment did an annual “net assessment” of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. Apparently, his last net assessment was done in 1991. After that he focused on a range of issues, including orienting towards China and the RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs). Note that he funded our Situational Awareness report in 2004, which really did not provide overwhelming support for the RMA. It is two chapters in my book War by Numbers and I will be doing a briefing on it on 8 April at the Virtual Connections Conference.
That he was doing lots of analysis but no net assessments became an issue and at some point in the last decade, there were rumors that some of the JCS staff took over the net assessment function. I gather after he retired (he was in his 90s), the new guy was supposed to direct the department back to net assessment. So, I am not sure, but I gather there is now no real department in OSD that is doing net assessment.
Wouldn’t that be a good job for DIA? In fact, I’d be surprised if DIA wasn’t doing this sort of thing already. Perhaps it’s just a bureaucratic war that has finally been resolved.
Does not appear to be the case. More on this later.