COMPOEX, for conflict modeling, planning, and outcome experimentation, provides systems-of-systems analysis, modeling, and war-gaming capabilities to represent the dynamics among governments, civil populations, insurgent forces, regional powers, economic interests, and the relevant political, military, economic, social, infrastructure, and information systems — known as PMESII. COMPOEX is an effects-based planning toolkit that allows interagency planners and commanders to perform three key functions:
1. MODEL
Compose conceptual models of individual PMESII systems within a situation (for example, static concept maps, and network descriptions) and then translate these to computational models at multiple levels of resolution (causal granularity) that describe the underlying dynamics. Compose the individual model components into an integrated multiple-resolution model (MRM) that models the interactions in the PMESII system of systems for a target situation (for example, PMESII systems within an urban area, nation-state, or larger region of states).
2. PLAN
Compose courses of action and simulate the effects using the MRMs developed earlier, allowing coordinated teams of interagency planners to compose and evaluate plans along individual lines of effort — such as governance, security, and reconstruction — before integrating these lines of effort into a theater-level campaign plan.
3. VIEW
Compose custom views of the effects across all PMESII systems and the dynamics within and across the PMESII models. Allow analysts and planners to tailor custom views of critical subsystems, indicators, and metrics in temporal views (for instance, time impact of counternarcotics actions on production), spatial views (narcotics production by province), or functions views (the economic flow of narco-profits to warlords and traffickers).
These functions allow users to simulate and anticipate the range of effects of inaction (the “baseline,” or anticipated outcomes if no actions were taken) or planned course of action to explore the effects of candidate campaign plans. This capability also allows users to explore alternative theories of conflict or alternative explanations of what underlies a situation in conflict.
These functions also allow planners to assess the effects of alternative courses of actions against alternative theories of the conflict (or system) to develop robust plans that account for uncertainties in the way a target system operates. The use of a common dynamic model of a situation provides a common framework to achieve intelligence-operations collaboration, allowing intelligence and systems-of-systems analysts to share a common model and understanding of a PMESII environment with operations planners who seek to achieve effects and end-states in that environment.
