The Closing of OSD Net Assessment

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. 

 

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

Articles: 1597

2 Comments

  1. 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.

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