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Researchers describe six case studies of nondeclared disasters in diverse community contexts, considering innovations that support recovery in underserved communities and metrics for assessing nonprofits' role in socioeconomic recovery.

In strategic competition against competitors that can outspend the United States (either individually or collectively), it is important to understand not only the efficacy but also the efficiency of campaigning measures. Unfortunately, neither the efficacy nor efficiency of overseas military campaigning measures beneath the threshold of armed conflict is well understood. In this report, the authors seek to address this gap and provide the foundations of a strategic evaluation and decision-support tool to inform U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) campaign planning--more specifically, to assist in choosing overseas operations, activities, and investments in a logically linked and sequenced plan in support of specific strategy-aligned objectives. The authors break down campaigns into three sets of factors: overseas campaigning instruments (or inputs), campaigning outcomes, and contextual factors that are likely to influence the effectiveness of campaigning instruments. To uncover broad patterns among interactions between the United States and its competitors and allies and partners, the authors conducted statistical analyses on whether U.S. strategic objectives have been more or less likely to be achieved when the United States employs a given overseas campaigning tool. The authors then provide rough-order-of-magnitude (ROM) cost estimates for each overseas campaigning tool.

The way in which a military organization plans for and conducts logistics can provide critical insights into how capably the military can achieve its operational objectives. Assumptions are often made about the capability of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to carry out and sustain high-end operations, but missing from that discussion is an assessment of how capably its logistics systems and processes perform, which affects how well the military might operate in actual conflict. A review of literature on China's evolving military capabilities indicates that little attention has been given to the topic of the PLA's logistics capabilities, particularly understanding and analyzing the PLA's approach to some key subfunctions of logistics, such as maintenance. The People's Liberation Army's growing ability to project and sustain power will rely on its logistics capabilities, systems, and processes. The PLA is rapidly modernizing its military systems, which requires sophisticated maintenance management practices to keep pace with and maintain much more complex systems. An assessment of PLA progress in these capabilities requires an understanding of the PLA's approach to maintenance, which includes an assessment of its maintenance apparatus and how it operates within their system. In this report, the authors look at the PLA's historical approach to maintenance, identify critical reforms that affect maintenance practices, and highlight key themes related to the PLA's current maintenance capabilities.

This report details public perceptions of veterans and the U.S. military and public willingness to encourage a young person to join the military as identified in American Life Panel surveys administered in February and June 2022.

"Over the coming decades, stressors from climate change will become more intense and more frequent in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR). This development will likely contribute to CENTCOM's broader shift from a warfighting-focused command to a command that will have to reprioritize and balance how it responds to and conducts both traditional and nontraditional security missions. This report addresses how CENTCOM planners can use operations, activities, and investments to prevent -- or mitigate the intensity of -- climate-related conflict. Climate change, along with other transnational threats, is often discussed as part of a broader concept known as nontraditional security. Many of the threats that are part of the nontraditional security concept, such as infectious disease and large-scale migration, are exacerbated by climate change. This report examines which traditional military tools can be applied to this nontraditional security threat and which new tools can be developed to address the implications of climate change for CENTCOM. The aim of this report is to help CENTCOM planners prepare for a future security environment that is affected by climate change. Even with preventive action, the command will face additional requirements from climate stress. To provide context for resource prioritization discussions, this report presents an analysis of the frequency and the conditions under which the United States has traditionally intervened militarily in the CENTCOM theater and rough order of magnitude costs of interventions by type. This report is the fifth and final in a series focused on climate change and the security environment."--

An analysis of how climate change could lead to conflict is presented in this report. Although climate-related conflict can occur anywhere in the world, the focus of this report is on how this process has occurred and continues to evolve in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR). Much of the CENTCOM AOR is already coping with environmental stress caused by climate change and environmental management practices. Many of the factors associated with conflict (such as weak institutions and hybrid regimes) are present in the AOR, leaving the region vulnerable to the phenomenon of climate-related conflict. The authors begin by presenting an examination of what the academic literature identifies as causal pathways that lead from climate hazards to different types of conflict: intrastate conflict (also known as civil conflict) and interstate conflict. After identifying the causal pathways, the authors analyze three cases of climate-related conflict in the CENTCOM AOR. The purpose of this research is to support CENTCOM leadership, planners, and intelligence officers to prepare for a future security environment that is affected by climate change. Understanding the causal pathways from climate change to conflict should enable CENTCOM to anticipate how changes in the physical environment may reverberate in the security environment and when an area may be on a path to conflict or full-blown war that could lead to CENTCOM intervention. The report is the second in a series focused on climate change and the security environment.

Commercial derivative aircraft (CDA) are aircraft based on a commercial design and modified to accommodate military requirements for a national security need. CDA have several features that can benefit the U.S. Air Force (USAF), such as reduced development time, management of cost overruns, and reduced risk throughout the aircraft life cycle process. Drawing on interviews with U.S. Air Force (USAF), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and industry experts, the authors assess the benefits and challenges of (and propose best practices for) CDA acquisition to inform future USAF strategy. The authors also review existing research related to CDA acquisition to improve understanding of the challenges associated with balancing the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing a CDA project and examine the KC-46A acquisition experience for lessons applicable to future CDA. This is a companion report to another 2023 report, Improving Acquisition and Sustainment Outcomes for Military Commercial Derived Aircraft: The KC-46A Pegasus Experience.

The 2019 Army People Strategy lists diversity among its strategic outcomes. This includes diversity in leadership, which is achieved by recruiting and retaining a diverse force. To help the Army accomplish these goals, RAND Arroyo Center examined retention of racial-ethnic minorities in the Regular Army's enlisted and officer ranks and how racial-ethnic composition changes as cohorts progress in rank over time, from accession through paygrades O-6 and E-5. Statistical models quantified the effects of observable factors on racial-ethnic differences in retention and career outcomes. Interviews with Army unit leaders provided insight into the reasons individuals stay in the Army or leave at given points, how unit leader decisionmaking affects such decisions, and what influences promotion decisions.

Russia's manipulation of Ukraine in the post-Soviet period, which culminated in a large-scale invasion in 2022, demonstrated that Russia was willing to resort to all means necessary to secure a regional sphere of influence that included Ukraine. But events could have turned out differently. Russia and Ukraine share historical, cultural, religious, and interpersonal ties. Russia in the early 1990s appeared to be on a path toward democratization and constructive relations with its neighbors and the rest of Europe. Many Ukrainians also saw their future as an independent country that was part of a greater Europe in some form. Given the alignment of national interests in the early days of the post-Cold War era, conflict appeared far from inevitable. How did things go so wrong? Using the concept of national identity as a starting point, RAND researchers developed a framework in an effort to illuminate the underlying causes of Russian manipulation, Ukrainian resistance, and the Russia-Ukraine war.

Ensuring military access to the territory of allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific in the event of a future conflict with China is a critical concern for U.S. policymakers. The physical and political geography of the region sharply limits U.S. options to such an extent that some allied and partner decisions to provide or refuse access could determine the outcome of a conflict. A clearer understanding of how and why U.S. allies and partners are likely to make conflict-phase access decisions, and what U.S. policymakers can do to affect the decisions ahead of time, is therefore essential. In this report, the authors examine how U.S. allies and partners make conflict-phase access decisions and how the United States and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) might be able to influence decisions in advance. The authors developed a framework for assessing such decisionmaking, then applied it to five specific allies and partners in the region (Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and India) to assess their strategic outlooks, internal politics, and economic incentives and to identify the peacetime policy levers that are most promising for affecting the states' decisionmaking.

Applicants for the national security workforce are required to provide detailed personal information as part of the background investigation process to adjudicate their eligibility for a security clearance. As a result, during the course of the personnel vetting process, an individual's race or ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and neurodivergence may be knowable or inferred by the personnel conducting the investigations and adjudications. Human judgment and biases that manifest themselves in other employment or social contexts have the potential to contribute to bias and sources of inequity in the human element of the process of determining security clearance eligibility. The authors explore the potential for related bias or sources of inequity within the federal personnel vetting process. Such potential biases and inequities could inhibit the U.S. government's goals and abilities to hire and maintain national security personnel with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

A competition for digital infrastructure (DI) is underway between the United States and China, which has implications for military forces and operations that rely on this infrastructure in competition and conflict. However, DI as a competition remains largely understudied in a comprehensive way. This report is a product of a multiyear research effort to define DI, characterize the competition underway, identify key factors shaping outcomes, and assess the potential implications for the Department of Defense. This report contributes to the broader understanding of DI by presenting an alternative futures analysis of how the global DI could evolve out to 2050 and the military implications of those futures for the United States and China.

The authors (1) identify tasks that the Chinese military would likely be assigned in peacetime competition with the United States and in a hypothetical low-intensity conflict and (2) analyze potential vulnerabilities in execution of those tasks.

This report presents vignettes to help U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) stakeholders understand Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) relevance to national security and how WPS principles and gender perspectives have been applied in DoD mission areas.

Researchers from RAND Corporation develop a new concept for strategic disruption by special operations forces, involving proactive campaigns to delay, degrade, or deny an adversary's ability to achieve core interests through its preferred strategies. This research provides a clear framework, grounded in concrete historical examples, for how strategic disruption campaigns can create the time, space, and opportunity for strategic gains across diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power. For the special operations community, this research provides a rubric for how future campaigns can disrupt nation-state competitors' efforts to win without fighting, particularly when potentially escalatory options rooted in conventional deterrence are ill-suited or infeasible to achieve similar disruptive effects.

This report summarizes the findings of research on U.S. and other armed forces' capabilities in the Arctic, the extent to which non-U.S. entities are operating where U.S. forces cannot, and how those operations might affect U.S. national interests.

Many in the Republic of Korea (ROK) are not feeling assured by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The authors propose options for strengthening that assurance, including enhancing strategic clarity and committing U.S. nuclear weapons to support the ROK.

RAND researchers assess the knowledge, tools, and capabilities needed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition workforce to infuse environmental considerations into DoD requirements, acquisition, and resource allocation decisionmaking.

The U.S. Army uses a variety of resources and tools to achieve its recruiting mission each year. In this report, the authors present results from an updated version of RAND Corporation's Recruiting Resource Model (RRM), a multipart statistical model that explores how trade-offs between key recruiting resources (bonuses, advertising, and recruiters) affect the Army's ability to achieve recruiting goals and the cost of doing so. They use the RRM to analyze the mix and level of resources required to meet the recruiting mission under alternative recruiting environments and recruit eligibility policies. The RRM was updated to include more recent data to analyze the relationship between resource inputs and recruiting outcomes while incorporating the use of digital advertising, which has become an increasingly important recruiting resource in recent years. Consistent with previous iterations of the model, the results indicate that television advertising and, to a lesser extent, recruiters have positive associations with contract production and that these inputs are relatively more cost-effective than bonuses. This research can help inform how the Army might move resources in a variety of recruiting environments. Making marginal changes along these lines in a purposeful manner over time--either broadly or at a more local level (as might be done in an experimental setting)--would be an appropriate first step in implementing the recommendations that arose from this research.

The authors developed an Army Enlistment Options Optimizer approach that creates bundles of bonus and non-bonus enlistment incentives, often paired with smaller, supplemental bonuses. If implemented, potential recruits would choose the bundle they most value from those available according to job type, term length, recruit characteristics, and recruiting environment. This gives recruits greater agency in choosing their enlistment options, potentially increasing satisfaction and enlistments. At the same time, the recruit cohorts would have the characteristics desired by the Army and the Army would benefit from cost savings resulting from reduced bonus expenditures. Through two surveys of young adults ages 18-27, the authors found that non-bonus incentives were as attractive as bonuses of $10,000-$15,000. Options that included non-bonus incentives and supplemental bonuses were chosen more often than larger stand-alone bonus options. Respondents choosing those options rated their likelihood of joining the Army in the next few years to be as high as or higher than respondents choosing stand-alone bonuses. The results also indicate that the student loan repayment option is very popular among today's young adults. It could be used to help penetrate the college market and could save recruiting resources when used in a controlled fashion as an element of the option menus. The results suggest that providing information in the recruiting marketing process on the many jobs that the Army offers and the pay and benefits of serving could increase consideration of joining the Army.

The authors present lessons learned from an effort to inform future U.S. Marine Corps Joint Cyber Weapon program acquisition information requirements and educate Department of Defense Software Acquisition Pathway program planning efforts.

A new approach allows comparison of infrastructure projects based on their ability to improve installation resilience to climate-related hazards, supporting the Department of the Air Force's climate resilience investment decisionmaking.

Gettysburg has been one of the U.S. Army's favorite staff ride locations for decades. It was the site of perhaps the pivotal battle of the U.S. Civil War, and General George Pickett's famous but disastrous charge marked the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. The authors of this report combine a staff ride with a consideration of alternative history: They examine what happened in the crucial 1863 Battle of Gettysburg and consider what could have happened if a few key technologies that were available for military use had been used in this battle.

RAND researchers evaluated two commercial space markets to understand opportunities, challenges, and risks that the Department of the Air Force could encounter when making decisions to invest in commercial space capabilities.

"Even before Russia's February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia had many ongoing and potential disputes with other countries, motivated by a variety of territorial, political, and economic issues. Furthermore, as Moscow has sought to expand its international role, it has increased Russian involvement in civil conflicts, using both overt and covert means. Russian activity in Syria and Libya has raised the prospect that the United States might find itself militarily entangled with Russia in various global hotspots. Therefore, the authors of this report sought to identify possible Russian flashpoints with countries in and near the U.S. Army Europe area of responsibility that could entangle the United States and present distinct military challenges to the U.S. Army. Using quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze historical data on Russian disputes and conflicts, the authors identified the key drivers of such flashpoints. They then leveraged these findings to derive planning implications for the United States and the U.S. Army in particular. The authors also examined two additional potential drivers of conflict not captured in historical data--Russia's use of private military contractors and its operations in the information environment--to see whether either might lead to a flashpoint in the future."--

"Prepared for the Department of the Air Force"

The work of aircrew flight equipment (AFE) personnel is vital to the safety of the aircrews in the U.S. Air Force. The authors surveyed AFE personnel to help the career field justify specific changes to training and personnel management policies.

This report provides findings on U.S. locations where unidentified aerial phenomena are being reported to increase awareness about the types of activities that might be mistaken for unexplained phenomena or that point to potential threats.

Weapon exports and the provision of security and military services abroad by China and Russia serve as a means for both countries to extend their influence around the globe. How do such activities affect India--an emerging great power--and what do they mean for India-U.S. security cooperation? A conference held on June 30 and July 1, 2022, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, was part of an ongoing project focusing on these questions. Participants explored Indian and U.S. views on important security issues across the Indo-Pacific and sought to identify areas of mutual interest and disagreement. Discussions were informed by six papers--three from the RAND Corporation and three from the Observer Research Foundation--that discussed common approaches to bilateral security cooperation, Russian arms sales to India, and the challenges posed by China to regional security. This report contains those papers, along with a summary of the issues discussed.

The authors of this report draw on Russian-language sources to examine trends in Russian military personnel policies and initiatives from the 1990s through December 2021, prior to Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.