Incorporating different service requirements in a single joint aircraft design can lead to greater program complexity, increased technical risk, and weight in excess of what an individual service needs, and these factors can increase program costs.
This brief describes an assessment of how geospatial and sociocultural characteristics may help predict the timing and targets of terrorist attacks.
Recent RAND research identified practices and contextual factors associated with greater or lesser degrees of success in security cooperation. A related diagnostic tool maximizes the utility of these analyses and can help defense planners identify potential mismatches between security cooperation funding, priorities, and propensity for success with a given country.
The organic defense acquisition workforce oversees defense acquisition programs from start to finish. RAND has been providing ongoing analysis of the workforce. This volume documents revisions to methods summarized in an earlier report, describes the workforce through fiscal year 2011, and provides a user's manual for a model for projecting workforce needs through 2021 under different assumptions about the future.
With the world's second largest economy, China has the capacity to engage in substantial programs of development assistance and government investment in any and all of the emerging-market countries. RAND researchers assessed the scale, trends, and composition of these programs in 93 countries in six regions: Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia.
High debt threatens future U.S. economic growth and constrains the ability of the government to act in pursuit of national interests. The authors examine the effects on the nation's ability to wield the economic instruments of U.S. power and to shape global conditions through other than military means.
This research brief summarizes the findings of a project that sought to identify common strategies used by practitioners in various professions, from professional sports to Navy SEALs, to respond to unexpected events.
This report relates what professionals believe creates surprise, how they respond to it, and how the effects of surprise can be mitigated. RAND researchers interviewed representatives from 13 diverse professions and identified some common coping strategies, such as relying on past experience and trying to reduce the level of chaos in the environment.
The U.S. Army's Command and General Staff School offers its Advanced Operations Course (AOC) for junior field-grade officers using both traditional resident instruction and a model referred to as blended distributed learning (BDL). This report assesses the effectiveness of AOC-BDL based on student and graduate surveys and identifies best practices for BDL from empirical research and case studies.
The Inspector General of the Air Force (SAF/IG) is leading an Air Force-wide effort to reduce the burden of Air Force inspection activities while also improving the quality of oversight the inspection system provides. In 2010, SAF/IG asked RAND Project AIR FORCE to join in this effort. This report presents primary data RAND collected on the Air Force inspection system and identifies effective inspection and information collection practices that the Air Force might emulate.
This report examines how changes to the current military-civilian faculty composition at the United States Air Force Academy might affect cadets' officership and academic development, cost, staffing challenges, and officer career development. Based on the study's findings, the report makes recommendations for a faculty composition that best balances these key factors and is sustainable into the future.
The Department of Defense (DoD) constructs, operates, and maintains a large number of facilities. DoD incorporates life-cycle cost-effective practices into many aspects of the military planning and construction processes. This report provides RAND's description and assessment of the process used to obtain life-cycle cost-effective facilities and how that affects DoD construction options and choices.
As part of an exploration of ways to predict what determines the targets of suicide attacks, RAND conducted a proof-of-principle analysis of whether adding sociocultural, political, economic, and demographic factors would enhance the predictive ability of a methodology that focused on geospatial features. This test case focused on terrorist bombing incidents in Israel, but the findings indicate that the methodology merits further exploration.
A high percentage of many raw and semi-finished materials critical to U.S. manufacturing are imported. China is the controlling producer of 11 of these materials and has instituted export restrictions that have led to two-tier pricing, creating pressure to move manufacturing to China. This report suggests the need for actions to mitigate the impact of such market distortions on the global manufacturing sector.
In an effort to determine the feasibility of requiring all Air Force officers to attain a specific level of proficiency in a second language, the authors conducted a survey of current Air Force officers. The results suggest that such a requirement is not currently feasible. However, it would instead be desirable to offer incentives for a variety of efforts made toward achieving proficiency, both before and after commissioning.
Aircraft modernization to comply with mandates affecting airspace ensures continued access to fuel-efficient cruising altitudes and use of the busiest airports, but these future benefits require an upfront investment in avionics upgrade programs. Building on RAND work examining the cost-effectiveness of modernizing the U.S. Air Force's KC-10 aerial refueling tanker, this study extended the analysis to the C-5, C-17, C-130, and KC-135 fleets.
This study analyzes the impact of planned defense budget cuts on the capabilities of seven key European members of NATO and suggests ways in which the Alliance can adapt to meet emerging security challenges.
In the coming decade, NATO faces growing fiscal austerity and declining defense budgets. This study analyzes the impact of planned defense budget cuts on the capabilities of seven European members of NATO: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland. The authors assess the implications of the cuts for NATO capabilities and strategy and for U.S. policy.
PortMan, RAND's new portfolio analysis and management methodology, provides a means for decisionmakers to find the optimal portfolio of projects, maximizing the probability of filling a desired set of requirements while restraining costs.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Civilian Acquisition Workforce Personnel Demonstration Project (AcqDemo) is an effort to reengineer the civilian personnel system to meet the needs of the acquisition workforce and to facilitate the fulfillment of the DoD acquisition mission. Congress required independent assessment of the program against 12 criteria by September 30, 2012. This report is that legislatively mandated assessment.
Making aviation security more cost-effective is hampered by considerable uncertainty about the terrorist threat, security system performance, and the costs of security measures. This volume focuses on exploring ways to inform decisionmaking despite such uncertainties, providing a set of analyses that help fill some of the current gaps in the assessment of the costs, benefits, and efficiency of aviation security measures and strategies.
Daunting challenges lie ahead for countries undergoing political transitions in the Arab world. Researchers identify the challenges these countries face and suggest policy approaches that may help foster enduring democracies.
Using and testing a conceptual model that draws on social science and particularly social movement theory, this volume examines public support for al-Qa'ida's transnational jihadist movement, the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey, and the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. The authors discuss which factors were most salient across cases, how their importance varied in each case, and how this understanding can inform strategy.
Daunting challenges lie ahead for countries undergoing political transitions in the Arab world. Researchers identify the challenges these countries face and suggest policy approaches that may help foster enduring democracies.
Daunting challenges lie ahead for Arab countries where revolutions have upended longstanding authoritarian regimes. This monograph aims to help policymakers understand the challenges ahead, form well-founded expectations, shape diplomatic approaches, and take practical steps to foster positive change.
