This report — part of a four-volume series — explores where and how the United States, China, and Russia are competing for influence in the Middle East; what kinds of interests they have in the region; where and why competition might turn into conflict; what form that conflict might take; and the implications for the United States, particularly the Department of the Air Force.
This report explores Chinese military thinking about next-generation psychological warfare, with a special focus on the applications of emerging technologies and implications for the United States. As the U.S. military increases its focus on China, it is important to understand how Chinese psychological warfare capabilities may evolve and what this would mean for Chinese strategic behavior in a crisis or conflict.
National Guard Youth ChalleNGe is a residential, quasi-military program for young people ages 16 to 18 who are experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. This report covers the program years 2021–2022 and is the seventh in a series of annual reports that RAND Corporation researchers have issued over the course of two research projects. Each report documents the progress of participants entering ChalleNGe during specific program years.
The authors of this Perspective outline a way for the U.S. Space Force to develop its officer workforce that is not tied to the traditional Air Force structure of stovepiped career fields and instead aims to build depth and breadth of expertise in both warfighting mission areas and occupational competencies through training and experience.
Teacher well-being declined over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic; restoring well-being could improve teacher retention. The authors of this report draw on a nationally representative survey of teachers from March and April 2022 to examine working conditions that are related to teacher well-being in the United States and in five focal states. The authors present findings about which conditions could restore well-being and in which contexts.
This document is the first research report in the context of the experiment with a closed cannabis supply chain in the Netherlands. During this experiment, ten municipalities will test the sale of legally grown cannabis in so-called coffeeshops. The report includes results on cannabis consumption, the sale of cannabis from tolerated dispensaries (coffeeshops) and the illegal sale of hash and weed prior to the introduction of the experiment.
The Global Strategic Partnership led by RAND Europe conducted a study exploring the implications of climate-change-related developments on the UK Ministry of Defence's ability to deliver its priority outcomes. We developed narrative vignettes to facilitate discussion of climate change dilemmas and implications under different climate pathways. We analysed vignettes in a participatory event and formulated recommendations for UK MOD and partners.
The B-CORE project, described in this report, applied the deliberative democracy method to engage affected community members in problem-solving focused on maternal health inequities in California. B-CORE aimed to mitigate adverse outcomes in births covered by California's Medicaid program (Medi-Cal). Stakeholders generated an agenda of research and policy priorities to decrease maternal deaths and morbidity in Medi-Cal beneficiaries.
Shooting incidents at kindergarten through grade 12 schools in the United States have sparked calls to increase school security or adopt new approaches to school safety. RAND researchers used the American Teacher Panel to learn what teachers think about school safety, including what they think about policies that would allow teachers to carry firearms in schools.
How smoothly a service member transitions to becoming a veteran can significantly affect their life trajectory. The RAND Epstein Family Veterans Policy Research Institute hosted subject-matter experts for the first of four scheduled roundtable discussions on issues and potential solutions for a variety of topics across the service member and veteran lifespan, focusing on how military experience shapes veterans' transitions to civilian life.
In this report, the authors examine how the Department of Defense (DoD) coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination program was developed and implemented, determine how previous DoD vaccination programs influenced those decisions, and identify opportunities to strengthen the department's vaccination program, particularly against emerging infectious diseases, such as COVID-19.
An urgent look at how America's national security machine went astray and how it fails to keep us safe — and what we can do to fix it.
In a concise, authoritative, and gripping telling, Brian Michael Jenkins provides an account of what kind of future the planet might be facing by looking at the world's long history of epidemics and discerning what was common about their aftermath.
The Los Angeles Diversion, Outreach, and Opportunities for Recovery (LA DOOR) program is designed by the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office (LACA) to provide a comprehensive, health-focused, preventative approach that proactively engages individuals at elevated risk of returning to LACA on a new misdemeanor offense. In this report, the authors document the findings of a process and outcome evaluation of Cohort 2 of the LA DOOR program.
Climate hazards adversely affect the physical environment in which the U.S. Department of Defense must operate, thereby adversely affecting the performance of the joint force. Acknowledging that climate effects will likely become more severe as global temperatures rise, the authors of this report discuss findings from a study they conducted to develop links between climate and force readiness.
As Pacific Air Forces pursues evolving operational concepts of employment designed to improve operational resiliency, questions about the fragility of the combat support (CS) enterprise persist. This report presents a framework to assess necessary elements of the CS enterprise — including base, theater, and global resources — for operating in a hybrid push-pull system as a means to mitigate uncertainty and adversary actions.
This Perspective builds on a related RAND Corporation report that describes the implementation of Findhelp at four North Carolina community colleges in 2021 and 2022. Findhelp is an online tool to connect students to resources in their communities to help meet their basic nonacademic needs. This Perspective summarizes the main research findings and presents strategies to improve the uptake and effectiveness of such initiatives nationally.
Radical groups find military members and veterans attractive potential recruits because of their skills and training. To help address concerns about the risk of radicalization among the U.S. veteran community, the authors conducted a nationally representative survey to examine the prevalence of support for specific extremist groups and ideologies, including support for political violence.
Since its inception, RAND Project AIR FORCE has conducted combat support analyses to support U.S. Air Force decisionmaking. This portfolio of work, which reflects a long-term institutional perspective, encompasses enterprise-wide combat support analyses, vulnerability and resiliency analyses, posture and basing analyses, and research that explores how combat support requirements can be considered during the design phase of future systems.
This Perspective provides an initial review of the metaverse concept and how it might be relevant to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The authors review current definitions and identify key practical characteristics, summarize primary missions and relevant objectives for DHS, demonstrate that metaverses are relevant to DHS, and identify specific threats and opportunities that DHS could manage proactively.
