"Analysis for Military Decisions." Quade
We trust a person's intuition in the area in which they can be considered an expert. But when solving complex problems concerning force structure or the development of military equipment, we are dealing with such a broad area that there are no true experts in it. Systems analysis requires, as a rule, taking into account a multitude of factors in the most diverse areas of technology, military operations, and logistics — not only on our side, but also on the adversary's — as well as economic, political, and strategic factors and the complex connections among them. No single person can be an expert in more than one or two parts of the field; no one can be an expert in the field as a whole and in its interrelationships. Therefore, one cannot rely on the unsupported intuition of a single individual.
Systems analysis should be viewed not as the antithesis of judgment, but as a framework that allows the judgments of experts in numerous parts of the field to be used in order to obtain results that go beyond any single judgment. This is the purpose of systems analysis and its potential.
Systems analysis is a way of looking at a problem. The mathematical formalism and use of computers may be necessary or even useful, but they may not be. Sometimes, careful reflection on the problem may suffice. But in any analysis related to decision preparation under conditions of uncertainty, regardless of its complexity, certain elements are present. These elements — a goal or goals, alternatives or means for achieving those goals, costs or everything that must be expended to achieve each alternative, a model or a description of the dependence between alternatives and what they accomplish and cost, and criteria according to which a preferred alternative is selected — are present in any analysis whose purpose is to influence the choice of a course of action. These elements are often difficult to select or clearly define.
Systems analysis is an attempt to identify the questions that are important in choosing a course of action and to provide answers to them. The most useful tool for answering these questions is often a mathematical model. Sometimes using two or three mathematical models is even more useful. However, creating such models and working with them by no means exhausts the entire analysis. In fact, posing useful questions, creating alternative systems for comparison, skillfully interpreting the results obtained from the comparison, and relating those results to the problems that prompted the study are to a greater extent the decisive phases of the process than working with a model. This is often apt to be forgotten, since working with a model requires most of the time and the methods of working are easily explained and transferable from one study to another.