Lance Menthe

Lance Menthe
Senior Physical Scientist; Professor of Policy Analysis, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Santa Monica Office

Education

Ph.D. in physics, University of California, Los Angeles; M.S. in physics, University of California, Los Angeles; B.A. in physics, economics, University of California, Berkeley

Overview

Lance Menthe (he/him) is a senior physical scientist at RAND and a member of the Pardee RAND Graduate School faculty. He works primarily on command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance issues for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army, including the use of artificial intelligence. Menthe is the lead developer of RAND's Systems and CONOPs Operational Effectiveness Model (SCOPEM), an agent-based model of air, ground, and space domains. Prior to joining RAND, Menthe received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a thesis on the physics of twisting conformations of DNA.

Recent Projects

  • Close Air Support for COIN/CT
  • Closing the PED Gap
  • Defining Characteristics for the Army's Next-Generation Aerial ISR Fleet
  • Optimizing Army Intelligence with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
  • Building a Bridge to the Future Joint All-Domain Command & Control Sensing Grid

Selected Publications

Menthe, Lance, Dahlia Anne Goldfeld, Abbie Tingstad, Sherrill Lingel, Edward Geist, Donald Brunk, Amanda Wicker, Sarah Lovell, Balys Gintautas, Anne Stickells, and Amado Cordova, Technology Innovation and the Future of Air Force Intelligence Analysis: Volume 1, Findings and Recommendations, RAND Corporation (RR-A341-1), 2021

Menthe, Lance, Myron Hura, and Carl Rhodes, The Effectiveness of Remotely Piloted Aircraft in a Permissive Hunter-Killer Scenario, RAND Corporation (RR-276-AF), 2014

Lance Menthe, Amado Cordova, Carl Rhodes, Rachel Costello, Jeffrey Sullivan, The Future of Air Force Motion Imagery Exploitation: Lessons from the Commercial World, RAND (TR-1133), 2012

Menthe, Lance, Jeffrey Sullivan, A RAND Analysis Tool for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance: The Collections Operations Model, RAND Corporation (TR-557-AF), 2008

Honors & Awards

  • Research Excellence Award 2011, RAND Project AIR FORCE
  • Bronze Medal Award 2023, RAND

Publications