Unconventional Conflict: A Modeling Perspective (Understanding Complex Systems)

This book describes issues in modeling unconventional conflict and suggests a new way to do the modeling.  It presents an ontology that describes the unconventional conflict domain, which allows for greater ease in modeling unconventional conflict. Supporting holistic modeling, which means that we can see the entire picture of what needs to be modeled, the ontology allows us to make informed decisions about what to model and what to omit. The unconventional conflict ontology also separates the things we understand best from the things we understand least. This separation means that we can perform verification, validation and accreditation (VV&A) more efficiently and can describe the competence of the model more accurately.However, before this message can be presented in its entirety the supporting body of knowledge has to be explored. For this reason, the book offers chapters that focus on the description of unconventional conflict and the analyses that have been performed, modeling, with a concentration on past efforts at modeling unconventional conflict, the precursors to the ontology, and VV&A. Unconventional conflict is a complex, messy thing. It normally involves multiple actors, with their own conflicting agendas and differing concepts of legitimate actions. This book will present a useful introduction for researchers and professionals within the field.