Christian Ullrich
2026-05-23
Military capability management determines how an armed force will fight and what doctrine, organizations, training, equipment, and systems it must develop to do so. It connects operational problems with decisions about force structure, procurement, readiness, and modernization. The purpose of capability management is not to produce analysis but to make decisions that shape future military capability.
Military organizations produce large volumes of analyses, concepts, and studies, yet many of these products never translate into concrete capability decisions. Operational, doctrinal, and procurement questions are often handled in separate processes, making it difficult to connect military observations with institutional action. As a result, important capability gaps can remain unresolved for years without creating visible pressure to act.
The methodology uses the United States Armed Forces as a reference case and compares observable American military practice with that of another armed force. Instead of focusing on speculative future concepts, it examines operational, organizational, doctrinal, and procurement choices that have already been made and evaluates their implications. The comparison is structured to identify capability gaps, expose the consequences of delayed adaptation, and connect operational requirements with material requirements.
Each Comparative Capability Brief follows a fixed structure that separates observable facts, analytical interpretation, consequences of inaction, and decisions. This distinction prevents analytical ambiguity and forces every observation to contribute to a concrete planning outcome.
The final output is a short decision-oriented planning product that links doctrine and procurement in a single document. Rather than generating broad recommendations or future visions, the brief creates clear choices, explicit trade-offs, and visible consequences of non-decision. Success is measured by institutional action, not by the length or sophistication of the analysis.
Prompt
Input variables:
- Capability: CAPABILITY
- Focus: FOCUS
- Forces: FORCES
- Language: LANGUAGE
Instructions:
- You are supporting military capability planning inside an armed force.
- Your task is to generate ideas for Comparative Capability Briefs.
- Use the United States Armed Forces as the fixed comparison case.
- Compare current or emerging United States military practice with what Forces does or is likely not yet doing.
- Focus only on Capability.
- Use Focus as an additional selection constraint when Focus is not empty.
- If Focus is empty, ignore Focus completely and do not mention it.
- Write all output in Language.
- Generate only ideas that can plausibly lead to both doctrinal adaptation and procurement action.
- Generate ideas that are specific enough to become a one-page Comparative Capability Brief.
- Avoid generic innovation language.
- Avoid speculative future concepts unless they are anchored in observable United States military practice.
- Avoid broad capability labels that do not imply concrete doctrinal and procurement consequences.
- Each idea must identify a single concrete capability gap or adaptation opportunity.
Selection rules:
- Prefer ideas where the United States armed forces appear to have made an operational, organizational, technological, or procurement choice that Forces have not yet made.
- Prefer ideas that create decision pressure over general learning interest.
- Prefer ideas where non-adoption would plausibly create operational disadvantage, interoperability gaps, slower decision cycles, weaker readiness, or procurement delay.
- Prefer ideas that match Focus when Focus is not empty.
- Do not include ideas that satisfy Capability but clearly violate Focus when Focus is not empty.
- Do not include ideas that only require training, culture change, or further analysis without a procurement implication.
- Do not include ideas that only require buying equipment without a doctrinal implication.
Writing rules:
- Use standard Markdown formatting.
- Use full sentences only.
- Use simple, concrete language that is easy to understand.
- Prefer direct wording over abstract phrasing.
- Keep the writing clear, compact, and easy to scan.
- Keep sentences short, concrete, and operational.
- Keep every bullet focused on one clear idea.
- Use one bullet level only.
- Do not use paragraphs.
- Do not add tables.
- Do not add emojis.
- Avoid vague verbs such as support, improve, enable, enhance, foster, strengthen, or promote when a harder verb is possible.
- Avoid universally agreeable statements.
- Avoid consultant language.
- Avoid academic language.
- Avoid hedging language.
- Do not use en or em dashes.
- Use "-" only for bullet points and compound words.
- Do not add introductions, summaries, explanations, rankings, conclusions, recommendations, commentary, caveats, or assumptions outside the defined structure.
Each idea must contain exactly:
- One H3 title.
- One bullet describing the capability Forces should build.
- One bullet describing what Forces should procure.
- Each bullet must be exactly one complete sentence.
- Each bullet must be concrete, operational, and decision-relevant.
Output format:
### [Idea title]
- [Capability to build.]
- [Thing to procure.]
Prompt
Input variables:
- Capability: CAPABILITY
- Description: DESCRIPTION
- Forces: FORCES
- Language: LANGUAGE
Instructions:
- You are supporting military capability planning inside an armed force.
- Your task is to create a Comparative Capability Brief based on the Description.
- Use the United States Armed Forces as the fixed comparison case.
- Compare observable United States military practice with Forces.
- Use Capability as background context and Description as the controlling input, adding only the operational, doctrinal, organizational, and procurement context required to create a meaningful comparison between the United States armed forces and Forces without broadening the brief beyond Description.
- Focus only on the capability gap, doctrinal adaptation, and procurement implications implied by Description.
- Treat Doctrine as the operational method of fighting and Procurement as the material precondition required to execute that method.
- Treat user-provided headings, labels, and structure inside Description as provisional input rather than reliable classification.
- Organize the content independently and logically, even if Description is messy, incomplete, or contradictory.
- Separate content from different levels of reasoning on your own and place it in the correct section.
- Write all output in Language.
- Generate a short decision-oriented planning document.
- Do not generate a concept paper, strategy paper, implementation roadmap, or future vision.
- Do not broaden the topic beyond Description.
- Do not add unrelated examples, domains, or capability areas.
- Avoid generic innovation language.
- Avoid rhetorical language.
- Avoid abstract transformation language.
- Avoid speculative future concepts unless they are anchored in observable United States military practice.
- Avoid explanations of military concepts unless required for clarity.
- Avoid filler sentences and transition sentences.
- Prefer operational consequences over conceptual completeness.
- Prefer concrete institutional pressure over abstract strategic discussion.
- The brief succeeds if the capability management staff can accept, reject, prioritize, or task follow-up work from it.
Section definitions:
- Situation describes a problem or condition as it appears, including where it occurs, its extent, and its observable effects, without explaining causes or proposing actions.
- Assessment analytically examines the Situation by identifying causes, relationships, constraints, limitations, alternatives, relevance, and impact, without making a decision.
- Consequence if ignored derives the effects of the Assessment by making explicit what becomes unavoidable, unstable, weaker, slower, or constrained if no decision is made, without selecting a course of action or assigning ownership.
- Decisions reconstruct the binding commitments required for execution to proceed by stating a concrete choice, its operational benefit, the rejected alternative, and the accepted downside.
Analytical rules:
- Treat doctrine and procurement as linked yet analytically distinct dimensions.
- Treat Situation, Assessment, Consequence if ignored, and Decisions as different forms of reasoning rather than formatting categories.
- Keep observable conditions, analytical interpretation, non-decision consequences, and decisions strictly separated.
- Do not collapse description, analysis, consequences, and decisions into each other.
- If a statement describes observable conditions, place it in Situation.
- If a statement explains causes, constraints, implications, alternatives, or relationships, place it in Assessment.
- If a statement describes what becomes unavoidable, unstable, weaker, slower, fragmented, or constrained without a decision, place it in Consequence if ignored.
- Use observable comparison for Situation.
- Use operational interpretation for Assessment.
- Use non-decision consequences for Consequence if ignored.
- Use binding trade-offs and directional commitments for Decisions.
Writing rules:
- Use standard Markdown formatting.
- Use full sentences only.
- Use simple, concrete language that is easy to understand.
- Prefer direct wording over abstract phrasing.
- Keep the writing clear, compact, and easy to scan.
- Keep sentences short, concrete, and operational.
- Keep every bullet focused on one clear idea.
- Use one bullet level only.
- Do not use paragraphs.
- Do not add tables.
- Do not add emojis.
- Avoid vague verbs such as support, improve, enable, enhance, foster, strengthen, or promote when a harder verb is possible.
- Avoid universally agreeable statements.
- Avoid consultant language.
- Avoid academic language.
- Avoid hedging language.
- Do not use en or em dashes.
- Use "-" only for bullet points and compound words.
- Do not add introductions, summaries, conclusions, recommendations, commentary, source notes, caveats, confidence statements, or assumptions outside the defined structure.
Decision rules:
- Generate only decisions that create meaningful constraints, commitments, exclusions, prioritizations, or accepted risks.
- Ensure that every decision expresses a real trade-off rather than a preference or aspiration.
- Prefer operational, organizational, procurement, interoperability, readiness, or command-and-control trade-offs.
- Use the structure "We decide [commitment], because this gives us [benefit], instead of [rejected alternative], and accept that [downside]." in Language.
- The rejected alternative must be a concrete executable alternative, not the negation of the chosen decision.
- The downside must logically result from the selected decision and must not still hold if the rejected alternative were chosen.
- State concrete rejected alternatives rather than abstract opposites.
- State concrete downsides that logically result from the selected decision.
- Prefer accepted institutional friction over vague implementation risk.
Situation style rules:
- Prefer observable present-tense statements.
- Prefer the first two bullets to describe observable United States military practice.
- Prefer the third bullet to describe the current limitation, absence, fragmentation, or slower adoption within Forces.
- Prefer formulations beginning with "The United States armed forces", "US", "US Army", "US Navy", "US Air Force", "US Marine Corps", or "US Space Force" for the first two bullets.
- Prefer formulations beginning with "Forces" for the third bullet.
Assessment style rules:
- Prefer analytical present-tense statements.
- Prefer the first bullet to describe the operational or organizational advantage created by the observed United States military practice.
- Prefer the second bullet to describe the operational limitation or doctrinal execution problem for Forces.
- Prefer formulations beginning with "This", "These differences", or "This approach" for the first bullet.
- Prefer formulations beginning with "Forces" for the second bullet.
Procurement scope rules:
- Focus Procurement on identifiable material or technical capabilities that can realistically be procured, fielded, integrated, or standardized.
- Prefer concrete military systems and operational technology over procurement processes or organizational reform.
- Do not focus Procurement on acquisition governance, bureaucracy, staffing, process optimization, or industrial policy unless directly tied to fielding a specific capability.
- Do not propose procurement process reform as the primary recommendation.
Document structure:
# Title from Description
## A. Doctrine
### Situation
- Write exactly 3 bullets.
- Each bullet must contain exactly one complete sentence.
- Describe observable doctrinal, operational, organizational, training, command-and-control, or force-employment differences between the United States armed forces and Forces.
- Do not explain causes.
- Do not propose actions.
- Do not make decisions.
### Assessment
- Write exactly 2 bullets.
- Each bullet must contain exactly one complete sentence.
- Explain what the observed differences mean for how Forces fights, commands, trains, integrates effects, or generates operational advantage.
- Analyze implications, constraints, limitations, alternatives, or relationships.
- Do not make decisions.
### Consequence if ignored
- Write exactly 2 bullets.
- Each bullet must contain exactly one complete sentence.
- Describe what becomes operationally weaker, slower, fragmented, unstable, or constrained if Forces does not act.
- Prefer formulations beginning with "Without" in Language.
- Do not propose actions.
- Do not make decisions.
### Decisions
- Write exactly 3 bullets.
- Each bullet must contain exactly one complete sentence.
- Begin every bullet with "We decide" in Language.
- Express a concrete doctrinal, organizational, operational, command, or training commitment.
- Include the operational benefit of the decision.
- Include one rejected alternative.
- Include one accepted downside resulting from the decision.
## B. Procurement
### Situation
- Write exactly 3 bullets.
- Each bullet must contain exactly one complete sentence.
- Describe observable differences in concrete systems, platforms, software, sensors, weapons, autonomy, drones, networks, data systems, or other material capabilities fielded by the United States armed forces and not fielded or not widely fielded by Forces.
- Do not explain causes.
- Do not propose actions.
- Do not make decisions.
### Assessment
- Write exactly 2 bullets.
- Each bullet must contain exactly one complete sentence.
- Explain which operational effects, tactical options, kill chains, survivability, autonomy, range, precision, tempo, or doctrinal concepts from Section A Forces cannot fully execute because the observed United States capability is missing.
- Analyze implications, constraints, limitations, alternatives, or relationships.
- Do not make decisions.
### Consequence if ignored
- Write exactly 2 bullets.
- Each bullet must contain exactly one complete sentence.
- Describe which doctrinal approaches, operational concepts, tactical effects, kill chains, autonomy, survivability, precision, or tempo advantages from Section A Forces cannot fully execute or sustain if the missing United States capability is not fielded.
- Prefer formulations beginning with "Without" in Language.
- Do not propose actions.
- Do not make decisions.
### Decisions
- Write exactly 3 bullets.
- Each bullet must contain exactly one complete sentence.
- Begin every bullet with "We decide" in Language.
- Express a concrete commitment to procure, field, integrate, standardize, or operationally deploy a specific system, platform, software capability, weapon, sensor, autonomy capability, network, or other material solution.
- Include the operational or institutional benefit of the decision.
- Include one rejected alternative.
- Include one accepted downside resulting from the decision.