Applying what is in effect a roles and missions approach to the management of the office of the chief planner in large scale public operations is at variance with modern public administration theories. However, a definitional approach is advanced here as a needed step in organizing and managing the policy-making process, which in most agencies is in constant flux. Five key functions are defined: Planning, Analysis, Research, Demonstration and Evaluation. A simplified scenario is used to show how these functions and their management interact over several years of policymaking. Activities identified with each function are spaced chronologically and are shown to be mutually reinforcing. The scenario also makes extensive use of the initial earmarking of portions of the Research and Evaluation budgets for coordinated use in response to requirements growing out of the overall policy determination process.
It is often assumed that an extreme sacrifice in efficiency is made when utility or multi-purpose weapons systems are substituted for systems specifically designed to meet a particular requirement. In this paper the authors attempt to quantify the expected differences in the costs of providing a capability with either specialized or utility type aircraft to meet aircraft requirements in a counterinsurgency environment, where requirements are either uncertain or are known to change from time to time. Because little is known about the actual costs of aircraft operation in a primitive logistics environment, particularly the question of the difference in logistics costs as a result of operating more than one type of aircraft rather than only one type of aircraft, the analysis deals solely with average costs. Unless significant savings are likely to be achieved by providing a mix of specialized aircraft for a given level of operational requirements, an a priori case is considered made for the procurement of the utility aircraft.
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