Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Australian Defence Force defines military capability as "the ability to achieve a desired effect in a specific operating environment." It is determined by three interdependent factors: combat readiness, sustainable capability, and force structure.
The military capability gap is the difference between expected and deliverable military capabilities. The term is also used to compare the projected capabilities of potential future belligerents against one another.
The European Union's Capability Directorate focuses on IAP (Information Acquisition and Processing), GEM (Guidance, Energy and Materials), and ESM (Environment, Systems and Modelling). These cover the knowledge, engagement, and manoeuvre dimensions of military operations.
Military capability is often tested in peacetime through scenario methodology to analyse performance, frequently in the form of war games. These exercises allow analysis of how forces would perform before any actual conflict begins.
Future military capability planning is considered difficult because of limited predictability about future threats, potential changes in defence policy, and the wide range of response options a government may want. Decisions are based on analysis of experimentation and testing of existing capability performance projected into uncertain future scenarios.
No. While the vast majority of international relations studies measure military power through defence budget size, military forces, and GDP, a growing body of research claims that certain non-material factors significantly affect a state's ability to translate resources into fighting power.