RAND researchers developed an initial prototype tool to help determine capabilities and resources a locality will likely require during a disaster. The report also describes two social networking tools for local coordination of disaster preparedness.
The U.S. Department of Defense will receive more detailed, transparent, and credible assessments of its counterinsurgency campaigns by replacing its top-down approach with a bottom-up method driven by contextual, narrative reporting provided by commanders on the ground.
Although irregular warfare includes a range of activities in which naval forces have played an integral role, there has been little examination of the characteristics or potential of such operations in maritime environments. Current notions of irregular warfare would benefit from increased recognition of potential maritime contributions.
The U.S. Department of Defense Civilian Expeditionary Workforce (CEW) is deployed to support theater operations. This paper builds on prior RAND research to examine how private security contractors may interact with and affect CEW operations.
As challenging as coalition warfare is during conventional conflicts, the difficulties are compounded in number and character when the contingency is instead a stability operation. The absence of a threat that puts survival interests at risk translates into weaker commitment and more-restrictive caveats on how a participant's capabilities are employed.
If "strategic communication" as a term is too vague or becomes politically untenable, abandon it. Just do not allow the underlying effort to coordinate government impact on the information environment to be lost too.
An analysis of 30 insurgencies worldwide between 1978 and 2008 determined what factors were ultimately correlated with success or defeat. Comparing Afghanistan in early 2011 against this scorecard results in an uncertain outcome for the conflict there, but the findings may help provide additional guidance as operations continue.
Air Force range managers schedule the infrastructure and airspace needed for realistic testing and training activities, which requires adequate information about the proposed maneuvers, the acceptable context, and understanding of the goals.
The UK Ministry of Defence's Fixed Wing Sector Strategy Board commissioned RAND Europe to assist in the development of a strategy and sustainment plan for the military fixed wing sector.
RAND developed a prototype handbook to provide humanitarian assistance project staff with an introduction to monitoring and evaluation terms, approaches, and best practices and a step-by-step user's guide for project assessment.
The Afghan government and NATO can improve security in Afghanistan by leveraging traditional policing institutions in rural villages and mobilizing the population against insurgents. However, action needs to happen quickly to take advantage of a growing amount of local resistance against the Taliban across Afghanistan.
Approaches to counterinsurgency from 30 recent resolved campaigns show that good counterinsurgency practices tend to "run in packs" and that historically, the balance of selected good and ineffective practices perfectly predicts the outcome of a conflict.
Presents a discussion of likely scenarios for Iraq's al-Anbar Province over the course of the next three years.
Narratives on the 30 most recent resolved insurgencies, covering the period 1978 to 2008, and data on 76 factors hypothesized to be related to the success of counterinsurgency forces supplement analyses of historical and contemporary insurgencies.
While most U.S. government officials working in Iraq believe the use of armed private security contractors has been a useful strategy, many worry that the contractors have not always had a positive effect on U.S. foreign policy objectives.
This report describes the current policy context for domestic all-hazards risk-informed capabilities-based planning by local military and civilian authorities and provides a framework for a local planning support tool for their use.
Examines the question of how the Army can assist in making key civilian agencies more capable partners to the Army in the planning and execution of stability, security, transition, and reconstruction (SSTR) operations.
Effective civilian reconstruction work can help convince people to support their government against insurgency, Therefore, insurgents typically target such work, thereby threatening the civilian population. This too often results in a postponement of reconstruction efforts and/or excessive reliance on force to defeat insurgents.
The U.S. military is ill-equipped to fight extremists who hide in populations. The use of deadly force can harm and alienate the people whose cooperation U.S. forces need. To solve this problem, a new RAND study proposes a ''continuum of force.''
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has evolved to take on a greater role in the nation's political, economic and cultural arenas in addition to serving as a major military force.
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