Anticipating the Future Operational Environment (AFOE) Phase I & II
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In February 2022, the Joint Staff J7 asked SMA to initiate an effort extending previous work by the Army Training and Doctrine Command’s (TRADOC) Global Cultural Knowledge Network (GCKN), “Exploitable Conditions Framework,” to 1) inform Combatant Commands’ and Services’ ability to compete successfully in the future strategic environment and 2) supplement ongoing investigations into strategic competition.

The Anticipating the Future Operational Environment (AFOE) effort assessed the relationships among global challenges in which major power competition is likely to occur (e.g., revolutionary technology advances, shifting distributions of state power, globalization, climate change, global disease evolution, etc.) in the future operational environment. AFOE produced a theoretical and empirical foundation for understanding the multiple facets of, as well as both the direct and indirect relationships among, conditions in the competitive space —a foundation that is the indispensable basis for successful planning and operations in the strategic environment.

AFOE began as a two-phase effort. Phase I involved building a global, system-of-systems model—the Global Exploitable Conditions Model (GECM)—that reflects the interdependencies among the broad and diverse set of social, political, economic, environmental, technological, and human factors that characterize the current and future operational environment. In Phase II of the AFOE project, the generic GECM served as the foundation for the AFRICOM Exploitable Conditions Model (AECM)—a model of the operational environment tailored specifically to USAFRICOM’s area of responsibility (AOR). The AECM is a system-of-systems model built to reflect general conditions across the 53 countries in USAFRICOM’s AOR.

You can learn more about SMA applied and refined in Phase III.

The following is the list of reports completed in support of this effort. Reports and events can be accessed via the links provided.

*Reports without a link can be requested by emailing mariah.c.yager.ctr@mail.mil from a .mil or .gov email address or visit the SMA NIPR Inteldocs site (CAC-enabled).

AECM Model Reports by NSI

Quick Look Reports by NSI

Quick Looks are short, highly-visual, unclassified research reports based on the AECM that reflect a portion of the Phase II research findings using smaller sub-systems of the model to examine key topics.

Invited Perspectives

*Reports without a link can be requested by emailing mariah.c.yager.ctr@mail.mil from a .mil or .gov email address or visit the SMA NIPR Inteldocs site (CAC-enabled).

SMA held a speaker series to support the AFOE effort. Approximately 3,000 audience members dialed into the 24 AFOE speaker events. Links to the recorded events, when available, are below: