Contemporary issues.

Contemporary Issues in this edition presents three articles: "Capturing Risk in Solution Prioritization," "Defense Budgeting Challenges: Uncertainty and Unpredictability" and "Generating Opportunity from Uncertainty."

In "Capturing Risk in Solution Prioritization" Jennifer G. Walston, PhD, USAF, presents a simple method to quantify risk so that it can be included as an additional objective in a multi-objective solution prioritization problem. She makes the case that the ability to capture risk in the prioritization method may provide a more complete picture for decisionmakers and could be useful in future studies.

Lieutenant Colonel James D. Peccia III, USAF, in "Defense Budgeting Challenges: Uncertainty and Unpredictability" examines current and future budgeting challenges. He argues that the Defense Department needs to readdress its funding strategy based on the gross domestic product (GDP). Defense spending as a percentage of the GDP is a useful metric in comparative analysis; however, strategy and politics will determine future defense budgets, not a percentage of GDP. Allowing this funding strategy to dominate budget discussion permeates the belief that the Defense Department has no better strategy to defend its half trillion-dollar defense budget. He concludes it does not ...