Building an Enduring Military Operations Analysis Capability

Australian Joint Operations Command / Defence Science and Technology Group

The Australian Defence Force engaged IGOR to help establish an enduring hub of expertise for the analysis of military operations and exercises. The objective was not simply to commission individual studies, but to develop the expertise, methods and analytical capability required to support the continuing examination of complex military activities into the future.

IGOR worked with Headquarters Joint Operations Command (HQ JOC) and Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) to establish this capability, bringing together expertise in human science, systems thinking, organisational analysis and analytical methods.

The work was concerned with a fundamental challenge: military operations and exercises are complex systems involving people, organisations, technologies, information, command structures and operational environments. Understanding their performance requires more than examining individual activities in isolation. It requires the ability to analyse how the different elements interact, how performance at one level contributes to objectives at another, and how evidence from an activity can be converted into learning for future operations.

IGOR’s role was therefore to contribute to the development of an enduring analytical capability rather than simply provide a single analytical product. This involved establishing approaches that could be applied repeatedly across military operations and exercises, while working closely with operational personnel and Defence science specialists to ensure that the resulting methods were grounded in the realities of military practice.

The first major assignment undertaken within this engagement was the evaluation of Exercise Talisman Sabre 13 (TS13), the major U.S.–Australia combined exercise involving Combined Task Force operations in a mid-intensity, high-end warfighting environment.

For TS13, IGOR designed and developed the planning tools, monitoring and evaluation frameworks, indicators of progress and Measures of Effectiveness required to evaluate the exercise and support its certification. The assignment provided an opportunity to apply and further develop the analytical capability being established with HQ JOC and DSTG.

The evaluation therefore served two purposes. It provided a structured assessment of whether Talisman Sabre had achieved its intended training objectives, while also contributing to the development of an enduring capability through which future exercises and military activities could be analysed.

This approach created a foundation for continuing analysis rather than treating each exercise as an isolated event. Methods, expertise and analytical frameworks could be applied to subsequent activities, enabling the organisation to build knowledge over time and use evidence from exercises to inform future capability development, planning and decision-making.

IGOR’s contribution combined the analysis of complex organisational systems with the design of practical methods for collecting, structuring and interpreting evidence. The work required an understanding of both the operational environment being examined and the analytical architecture needed to make meaningful judgements about performance.

What this demonstrates

IGOR can work alongside complex organisations to establish enduring analytical capability, translating strategic and operational objectives into structured methods for analysing performance, generating evidence and supporting organisational learning.

The work demonstrates IGOR’s ability to move between system-level questions and operational detail: understanding the wider architecture while developing practical analytical tools that can be used to examine individual activities and their contribution to higher-level objectives.

Related project

Talisman Sabre 13 — Multinational Exercise Evaluation →

The first major application of the analytical capability established through this engagement was the evaluation and certification of Exercise Talisman Sabre 13.