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The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) Qualification System (FQS) is a credentialing process that focuses on standardizing personnel abilities through training and applied experience. FEMA's Integration Branch asked the authors of this report to identify existing gaps and areas for improvement and examine ways to measure and monitor the effectiveness of FQS in the future.

This report summarizes research on how top-down risk analysis models could help inform the staffing, systems, and strategies for the U.S. Air Force Security Forces. Although existing security planning supports bottom-up, asset-based security planning, such processes do not fully explore the risk trade-offs, nor do they identify opportunities for SF strategies to manage multiple risks simultaneously.

This report is part of a larger RAND Corporation study on the societal foundations of national competitiveness. The authors surveyed Chinese and Russian thinking about the qualities of nations that tend to produce competitive advantage and found that both China and Russia hold starkly different views from most U.S. and Western officials and analysts about the societal sources of competitive advantage.

The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program is a residential, quasi-military program for youth ages 16 to 18 who are experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. This report covers the 2022-2023 program year and is the eighth in a series of annual reports that RAND researchers have issued over three research projects. Each report documents the progress of ChalleNGe participants during a specific program year.

The U.S. Navy is evolving to distributed maritime operations (DMO) in response to increased capabilities of near-peer adversaries, in the Western Pacific. To support DMO, the Navy needs new approaches to logistics and the resupply and sustainment of distributed units. The authors identify supply chain challenges for munitions and spare parts and recommend strategies to address demand forecasting, budgetary concerns, and industrial base capacity.

The return of great-power competition has highlighted the risks of conflict with nuclear-armed great powers. Such a conflict would entail escalation risks that the United States has not seriously considered since the Cold War. Using three historical case studies, the authors examine decisionmakers' ability to identify adversary thresholds and to apply this information to control escalation during militarized crises between nuclear-armed states.

The authors assess school leaders' awareness and perception of Department of Defense youth programs, the ways such programs build connections with communities, and the extent to which these programs help bridge the civilian-military divide.

Most U.S. Air Force medical personnel spend their time at military treatment facilities (MTFs) caring for patients whose ailments are far less complex or urgent than the severe trauma-related injuries they would see in war. This mismatch between peacetime and wartime medical care necessitates a deliberate effort on the part of the Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) as a whole and the Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) to ensure that personnel in critical medical specialties receive the training and hands-on clinical experience they need to save lives in a high-casualty environment. The goal of this research project was to investigate approaches for increasing readiness and proficiency. To develop a portfolio of readiness building activities, the authors analyzed manpower and personnel data, reviewed Comprehensive Medical Readiness Program (CMRP) checklists and relevant literature, engaged in discussions with the stakeholder community, and developed models of the assignment system and of skill acquisition and decay. They present their findings and recommendations for the future and have developed a prototype framework to demonstrate a possible method for deciding which readiness building activities and assignment policies to employ.

U.S. policy choices made at the conclusions of past wars have had enduring consequences. Although there is no end in sight to the Russia-Ukraine war at the time of this writing in late 2023, U.S. policymakers should begin considering postwar Russia strategy now. The authors of this report address this issue through an alternative futures analysis. Planning for after the war is complicated by significant uncertainty: Neither the conflict's trajectory nor the international climate at the war's end can be predicted with confidence. Given this uncertainty, the implications of U.S. strategic choices must be explored in different contexts. The authors develop two ideal-type postwar worlds, as defined by the outcome of the war and the character of the broader international environment: a less favorable world and a more favorable world. They also propose two ideal-type options for postwar U.S. strategy toward Russia, a hardline approach and a less hardline approach. Then, they consider how each strategy would play out in each world over the course of the decade after the war ends, yielding four alternative futures. They draw on the history of U.S.-Russia relations and the literatures on rivalries, interstate conflict, and alliances to assess the implications of each future for U.S. interests.

The demographics of the veteran population are changing. Veterans who served after September 11, 2001, or post-9/11 veterans, are more likely to be raising children, many without support from a partner. This report provides a comprehensive look at the financial, physical, and mental health of veteran single parents and includes recommendations on policies and programs that can better support veteran single parents and their children.

Policy and U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) professionals have suggested that the IC is held in increasingly lower regard by some decisionmakers and that predictions have had variable success in influencing decisionmakers. Researchers explored whether and to what degree trust in intelligence predictions and national estimates has degraded over time and what factors might have driven any changes in the relationship between policymakers and the IC.

Researchers analyzed alternative price and credit policies for depot-level reparable parts and consumables to identify options that would provide units with greater predictability in budget execution, simplify turn-in transactions to reduce reliance on credits, help the supply chain operate more efficiently, and free up the time that commanders, leaders, and soldiers currently spend on managing credits and changing prices throughout the year.

The authors identified gaps, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and reported problems in the military racial grievance system through an examination of policies and structures and offer recommendations to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in the armed forces.

"Prepared for the Department of the Air Force."

"Sponsored by the California Department of Industrial Relations"

The U.S. Space Force (USSF) is seeking to enhance the resilience of its space operations. This report documents the authors' development of a methodology to define, assess, and evaluate resilience criteria over time--with a focus on the qualitative assessments of subject-matter experts (SMEs)--and the application of that methodology to measure the impact of partnerships on the operational resilience of the U.S. military satellite communications (MILSATCOM) mission. The authors used semistructured interviews to elicit logic models regarding how and why integrating partners into MILSATCOM missions could affect resilience. The authors then formulated explanatory paired logic statements about how partnerships affect resilience and used these paired logic statements in a survey designed to ascertain whether the paired items are independent factors that should be modeled as separate inputs in later quantitative resilience modeling. The authors find that SME consensus appears to be deeply affected by the confounding factor that U.S. military personnel believe that the United States lacks the tools, training, and procedures needed to rapidly reallocate MILSATCOM resources in response to an adversary attack. Until this is remedied, more-detailed analyses regarding how best to integrate coalition and commercial partner resources will be obscured by a lack of trust that those resources can and will be properly integrated. The report should be of interest to those seeking to understand how partnerships can be leveraged to improve the resilience of the MILSATCOM mission and those interested in methods to evaluate the validity of qualitative assessments about those partnerships.

This report describes issues related to the attribution of biological weapons use and identifies areas in which the U.S. Department of Defense could enhance its capabilities for U.S. efforts in such investigations and strengthen United Nations policy.

"Prepared for the Department of the Air Force."

Since 2016, Plan Blue wargames have explored scenarios that depict large-scale war fights against state adversaries in order to help U.S. Department of the Air Force (DAF) leaders better understand the demands of these potential war fights, evaluate the capabilities and limitations of programmed forces to meet those demands, and test new approaches to projecting power. The 2021 iteration of the game (Plan Blue 21) was set in the Arctic, in keeping with the Department of Defense's 2019 Arctic strategy, which calls for enhancing capabilities for operations in the region and strengthening the rules-based order there. The purpose of the game was to increase the DAF's understanding of the capabilities, posture, allied command, control, and communication relationships that may be called for to support future Arctic operations. Focusing on competition with Russia in the year 2030, game play took place in the context of steady-state competition and crisis operations rather than large-scale combat, and it explored the intersection of two key trends: (1) changing environmental conditions and (2) the completion of current Russian investments in new military capabilities and infrastructure in the Arctic. Plan Blue 21 was also specifically designed to test the extent to which capabilities for persistent and visible intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance can provide real-time situational awareness and potentially contribute to "deterrence by detection." U.S. players in Plan Blue 21 benefitted greatly from the participation of officers from key allied and partner countries that have important interests in and capabilities for operations in the Arctic region.

The authors describe the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) officer professional military education system, compare it with civilian institutions, analyze effects of possible changes, and identify opportunities to further align it to DoD's needs.

The authors analyze a new project finance dataset on China's development-funded artificial intelligence (AI) export projects-adding interview-based country case studies-to better understand China's AI exports and their impact on developing countries.

This report aims to inform the Army on how to effectively acquire and develop data analytics capabilities, leveraging both commercial solutions and in-house data science and development, security, and information technology operations capabilities.

In this report, RAND researchers present estimates of what costs Russia is incurring as a result of its invasion of Ukraine. As of September 2022, researchers estimated military costs reached $40 billion. Full-year 2022 gross domestic product losses amounted to between $81 billion and $104 billion and full-year financial capital destruction reached $322 billion. Direct military spending may amount to almost $132 billion through 2024. Over the long term, even with a stalemated war, Russia's economy and the standard of living of its people are likely to decline. The main factor sustaining Russia's economy is the export revenue it earns from oil and gas sales. Despite these significant economic losses, RAND researchers judged these costs to be sustainable for the next several years.

These proceedings present insights that experts of Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and U.S. security policies presented at RAND Corporation-hosted virtual conferences that explored relevant issues on the U.S.-Japan alliance regarding strategic competition.

This report presents an examination of how cyber-related risks compare with other risks to defense-industrial supply chains and the implications of the differences in risks for directions in risk assessment and mitigation and for research.

The authors examined friction between the U.S. Army's People First objectives (which focus on command climate, cohesive teams, career goals, and work-life balance) and mission readiness objectives and developed strategies to mitigate this friction.

There are concerns that the rate at which China and Russia can field new technologies exceeds the rate at which the U.S. Air Force (USAF) can replicate those technologies in operational test and training infrastructure (OTTI). The authors of this report estimate the rate at which China and Russia field new threats and examine the costs and benefits of keeping USAF OTTI at pace with new adversary capabilities. The authors find that China and Russia are fielding new threats at rates exceeding that at which the USAF has historically been able to field new OTTI and that significant investment is required to keep OTTI at pace with adversary technology developments. This analysis provides a target for funding and fielding timelines that, if achieved, could edge the USAF training community closer to keeping the training environment at pace with new adversary technology.

This report examines climate adaptation strategies for National Critical Functions at risk of disruption from climate change, focusing on strategies that owner-operators of critical functions might implement.

In response to the widespread youth mental health crisis, some kindergarten-through-12th-grade (K-12) schools have begun employing artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools to help identify students at risk for suicide and self-harm. The adoption of AI and other types of educational technology to partially address student mental health needs has been a natural forward step for many schools during the transition to remote education. However, there is limited understanding about how such programs work, how they are implemented by schools, and how they may benefit or harm students and their families. To assist policymakers, school districts, school leaders, and others in making decisions regarding the use of these tools, the authors address these knowledge gaps by providing a preliminary examination of how AI-based suicide risk monitoring programs are implemented in K-12 schools, how stakeholders perceive the effects that the programs are having on students, and the potential benefits and risks of such tools. Using this analysis, the authors also offer recommendations for school and district leaders; state, federal, and local policymakers; and technology developers to consider as they move forward in maximizing the intended benefits and mitigating the possible risks of AI-based suicide risk monitoring programs.