Area of Interest: OSW Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) Modeling and Simulation

Scope

The Department of War (DOW) Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) supports the Office of the Secretary of War (OSW).

The Director of CAPE is the principal staff assistant to the Secretary of War for Cost Assessment & Program Evaluation.

In fulfilling this role, the Director of CAPE provides independent, non-advocate, and data-driven analytical evaluations directly to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of War regarding defense program investments, major force structure posture, and strategic resourcing trade-offs.

The Director’s principal responsibilities include: Analyze and evaluate plans, programs, and budgets in relation to U.S. defense objectives, projected threats, allied contributions, estimated costs, and resource constraints.

Review, analyze, and evaluate programs, including classified programs, for executing approved policies.

Provide leadership in developing and promoting improved analytical tools and methods for analyzing national security planning and the allocation of resources.

Ensure that the costs of DoW programs, including classified programs, are presented accurately and completely.

Assess effects of DoW spending on the U.S. economy and evaluate alternative policies to ensure that DoW programs can be implemented efficiently.

Currently, CAPE’s campaign- and mission-level Modeling and Simulation (M&S) relies on heavy, time-intensive physics engines (e.g., AFSIM) that execute discrete, bespoke combat runs.

While highly detailed, these simulation approaches are too slow, computationally expensive, and inflexible to support executive-level sensitivity sweeps across multi-dimensional threat environments and Department warfighting capabilities.

CAPE’s current environment leverages HPC resources that provide 1.5 terabytes (TB) of usable memory and 2,000 Central...