The intelligence community comprises the many agencies and organizations responsible for intelligence gathering, analysis, and other activities that affect foreign policy and national security. RAND conducts research, develops tools, and provides recommendations to U.S. and allied decisionmakers to support their efforts at gathering and interpreting high-quality information.
Commentary
Why aren't there more Times Square bombers? It is not a complaint, but a question that intrigues terrorism analysts. Why haven't more jihadist terrorist attacks been attempted in the United States since 9/11?, asks Brian Michael Jenkins.
Report
Intelligence collection by law enforcement and lack of community support have limited radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism in the United States to 46 cases since 9/11, although 2009 saw a sharp increase in the number of cases.
Commentary
President Obama's nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration said he would like U.S. airport screening to more closely resemble Israel's. Perhaps attention is turning to what really matters about the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253: what it can teach us about aviation security, write
Commentary
Americans should understand that preventing every attack is simply an unattainable goal, writes Gregory F. Treverton.
Report
An application of RAND's PortMan portfolio analysis and Delphi methods for the National Security Agency (NSA) that enables allocation of research and development (R&D) and operations and maintenance (O&M) resources according to value, risk, and cost.
Report
In order to improve the effectiveness of combined arms planning and assessment operations, ground commanders need information pertaining to cultural and other "soft" factors and practical ways to integrate such information into influence operations activities.
Report
Looking across a set of completed C4I upgrades to U.S. Navy ships, the authors uncovered mixed evidence of cost improvement, a high level of variability in costs, and a trend toward overestimating the installation-labor costs of certain upgrades.
Report
Describes an approach to develop systematic and effective career strategies for U.S. Air Force officers.
Report
The authors provide a fresh assessment of operations against the Viet Cong underground during the Vietnam War and suggest lessons for contemporary counterinsurgency.
Report
Because terrorism is not confined to national boundaries, it puts pressure on the U.S. both at home and abroad, forcing intelligence and law enforcement—the CIA and the FBI—to work together in new ways. This requires new means of sharing not just information but also analysis across the federal system.
Report
With terrorism still prominent on the U.S. agenda, whether the country’s prevention efforts match the threat the United States faces continues to be central in policy debate. One element of this debate is questioning whether the United States should create a dedicated domestic intelligence agency. Case studies of five other democracies provide lessons and common themes that may help policymakers decide.
Report
Provides an analytic framework and procedure for the intelligence analysis of irregular warfare (IW) environments that can serve as the basis for a subsequent IW intelligence analysis curriculum development effort.
Report
The Collection Operations Model is a stochastic, agent-based simulation that supports the analysis of command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C3ISR) processes.
News Release
One lesson of 9/11 is that the signs of the attack were not assembled into a warning that might have made it possible to prevent the disaster. In the wake of that failure, one question on the U.S. agenda is whether the country needs a dedicated domestic intelligence agency – separate from law enforcement – to address the U.S. terrorist threat.
Report
In the wake of 9/11, Congress directed the Department of Homeland Security to evaluate whether the U.S. needs a dedicated domestic intelligence agency, separate from law enforcement, to deter terrorism. DHS asked RAND not to offer specific recommendations, but to make clear what should be considered in the creation of such an agency.
Report
In testimony presented before the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism and Unconventional Threats and Capabilities, Seth Jones discusses how to defeat terrorist groups through a strategy based on careful police and intelligence work rather than military force.
Research Brief
This research brief discusses the pros and cons of creating a new domestic intelligence agency, separate from law enforcement, to address the threat of terrorism and describes a technique called break-even analysis that can help inform the debate.
News Release
Current U.S. strategy against the terrorist group al Qaida has not been successful in significantly undermining the group's capabilities.
Report
Examines the nature of the contemporary insurgent threat and provides insights on using operational analysis techniques to support intelligence operations in counterinsurgencies.
Report
The U.S. Air Force has greatly increased the number of operational surveillance sensors and its ability to process data from these sensors. However, along with the increased number of sensors comes an increase in the complexity of the tasking of these assets.
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