Complexity Thinking and Military Operational Analysis _Sys..

This paper will take the view that common to many of the new challenges facing analysts is the apparent compositional and behavioural complexity of the systems of interest. The principle characteristics of complex systems are therefore be considered at some length. By assuming the ubiquity of complexity, it is argued that the pure adoption of a viewpoint that presumes the existence of an absolute, empirically based, and objective reality is increasingly inappropriate. The consequent paradigm shift that has been inspired to some degree by the New Sciences has serious and far-reaching consequences for OA in general, yet is still commensurate with the traditional viewpoint. By not wanting to (and not needing to) undermine the extensive success of military OA over the past 60 years, the paper will also explore the symbiotic relationship between the traditional viewpoint and the emerging, postmodern, craft. The paper will rely on previous texts exploring postmodernism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, and social constructionism, and develop an epistemological view of the ‘science of partial complex systems’. Implications for military OA leading from these developments will be commented upon. In conclusion, the authors suggest that significant benefits might be realised through a reframing of the community’s dominant paradigmatic position. Activities such as paradigmatic exploration and boundary critique have a central position in our revised OA perspective, and, rather than replacing existing methodologies, subsume them in a meta-methodological view of OA (i.e. a method for developing problem-specific methods).