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The formal decisions, documents, and events that established the roles, missions, and functions (RMF) of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the military services in the early postwar years are over 70 years old. Although the foundational documents and agreements have been modified, the original division of labor among the services remains largely unchanged, and a fundamental reassessment of RMF may be in order. At least two services—the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and the U.S. Army—envision themselves as the principal integrator of All-Domain Operations. Additionally, the creation of the U.S. Space Force (USSF) raises RMF issues both within the Department of the Air Force (DAF) and across the services. In this report, the authors identify RMF disputes that have endured as problems for the USAF, some factors associated with major RMF events, and reasons why reform efforts have often failed. The authors have crafted a framework for analyzing the RMF implications of strategic-level guidance, such as the 2018 National Defense Strategy, emerging operational concepts, and the creation of the USSF. The key question for USAF leaders is whether the existing framework is fundamentally sound (requiring only modest adjustments), whether it should be replaced by another agreement that would recast RMF assignments, or whether narrowly defined responsibilities are a hindrance to agility and innovation and should be scrapped entirely. The authors present their findings and recommendations, considering how the vision that USAF leaders choose for the service's future will influence the relative attractiveness of possible courses of action.

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The U.S. Marine Corps has an opportunity not only to adopt wargaming best practices, tools, and approaches from other sources but also to adapt and develop them further to suit its own needs. This report is designed to help the Marine Corps understand the utility of different wargaming tools as the service invests in its wargaming capability and in building its next-generation wargaming concept. The authors have collected information on wargaming processes, facilities, and skill sets through research and interviews at various wargaming centers. They identify tasks by wargaming type in order to provide information on when in the wargaming process certain tools might be useful. The authors make recommendations for low-, medium-, and high-resourced courses of action (COAs), with the COAs meant to build on each other rather than representing choices between discrete options. The low-resourced COA involves actions that can be implemented with minimal resources and relatively quickly, focusing on improving processes and the wargaming skills of staff already engaged. The medium-resourced COA builds on the previous one, featuring recommendations that require more resources, time, and research and that involve a greater degree of uncertainty, focusing on acquiring additional skill sets, personnel, and equipment. The high-resourced COA builds on the two previous COAs and requires major reorganization or changes in policy or actions of inherent high complexity and financial commitment, focusing on the construction of new and specialized wargaming facilities.