Senior Air Force leaders are likely to test a new decision model proposed in a very interesting paper co-authored by an Air Force major general and a lieutenant colonel. The real power of the paper lies in the technical model it presents to help the Air Force (and presumably other services) better balance risk, capabilities, cost, and schedule across the service so senior leaders can make better decisions.

“I think the model is worthy of expanding and testing against real-world situations to determine its relevance to future decisions. Under the best of circumstances, the model would be a tool for aiding decision making and not a replacement. In that regard, it could be helpful in the resource distribution process and is likely to be embraced,” writes an influential Air Force official familiar with the paper, which was written by Maj. Gen. Robert Kane and Lt. Col. Jason Bartolomei and published in the latest issue of the official Air & Space Power Journal. Kane is an acquisition guy, serving as director of the Air Force’s Global Reach Programs. He handles airlift, air refueling, training and special operations programs. (Note: the general is scheduled to retire June 1.)

Few outside observers would argue that the Air Force has done a great job of managing either its weapons choices or its acquisitions of them over the last decade (though the Army may win the award for worst performance in acquisition for an American service). And Kane and Bartolomei’s new model will not replace the existing decision-making process. Instead, Kane and the Air Force official make clear they believe it will help senior leaders make more rational decisions, ones bolstered by real-life data that can help make the Air Force case to Congress and to the Office of Secretary of Defense when tough decisions are faced.

“One must keep in mind that the resource distribution decision-making process is multi-dimensional and very complex. Any tool that can help quantify the process and make it less subjective will be valuable. I’m not sure what will be done next, but the tool has not been finished and needs to undergo a beta testing once it is. I am impressed with the initiative of our staff for tackling this challenge and would encourage them to continue to refine the tool,” the Air Force official says.

The authors present a compelling argument that Air Force planning, budgeting and acquisition decisions must improve, especially in the current budget situation.

“Our fear is that, for the amount of money we spend on our Air Force, we are not maximizing the benefit. If we continue on our current path, we run the risk of diminishing our capabilities at a time when we face increasingly compelling and diverse security issues that will undoubtedly require a full range of leading-edge air, space and cyber capabilities,” write Kane and Bartolomei.

What’s the basic problem the Air Force leadership faces as it tries to make budget decisions, the authors wonder: “For the Air Force, maximizing value is difficult because of the absence of a shared common value proposition and the fragmentation of elements for calculating value across these processes.” In plainer English that works out to saying that the budgeteers, acquisition experts and senior leaders each stare hard at their separate pieces of the pie instead of finding ways to balance the gap between capabilities, risk, costs and schedule.

Instead of staying stuck where senior leaders are, Kane and Bartolomei argue for a “value-focused approach,” one that would be pretty familiar to those who run America’s largest corporations.

During a presentation at the Air Force Association’s headquarters today, Gen. Kane made clear that one of the biggest challenges faced by the senior leadership is that of coming up with a good means of estimating the “benefits and costs of strategic decisions and to visualize this data over time and across scenarios.” One of the ways to do this is to feed large amounts of data into a system designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The authors worked with MIT (where Bartolomei obtained a doctorate) to analyze Transportation Command’s choices in how best to move MRAPs from Point A to Point B. They identified the folks with a stake in the process as TRANSCOM, Air Mobility Command, Military Sealift Command, the relevant contractors, the Defense Secretary and Central Command. After running their model, Kane and Bartolomei concluded that the best balance of risk and cost was to use a combination of air- and sealift.

A good place to start? They suggest the Air Force officials handling the Quadrennial Defense Review would adopt a “value-based approach” as it prepares for the congressional-mandated policy and budget slugfest.