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XIII. Future Threat Forecasting
The prediction of future scientific-technical threats to U.S. national security has been considered an important OSI mission from the time that the Office was organized. Despite its importance work on the problem was not pushed steadily and in the late 1950s and early 1960s a number of factors necessitated the shelving at times of analytical effort on future threat identification. Gradually, however, US awareness of the need for systematic consideration of long-range threats (5-15 years) has increased along with the increased importance of research and development in U.S. Government resource allocation, greater use of guidelines for long-term U.S. force-mix planning and, with increases in the cost of intelligence collection apparatus, greater recognition of the need for long-term planning of intelligence operations. These needs led OSI, beginning in 1965, to undertake a re-examination of the future-threat problem and various methods for dealing with it.
A large part of the total OSI analytical effort from its beginning through the early 1960s was devoted to the study of topics that were supposed to provide bases for forecasting new developments. In connection with the preparation of national estimates and through
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