Navy analysts are struggling to keep pace with the growing flood of data collected by intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance sensors. This challenge is sure to intensify as the Navy continues to field new and additional sensors. The authors explore options for solving the Navy’s “big data” challenge, considering changes across four dimensions: people, tools and technology, data and data architectures, and demand and demand management.

As part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide have deployed mobile phone surveillance programs to augment public health interventions. However, these programs raise privacy concerns. The authors of this report examine whether two goals can be achieved concurrently: the use of mobile phones as public health surveillance tools to help manage COVID‑19 and future crises, and the protection of privacy and civil liberties.

Cybersecurity is a constant, and, by all accounts growing, challenge. This report, the second in a multiphase study on the future of cybersecurity, reveals perspectives and perceptions from chief information security officers; examines the development of network defense measures—and the countermeasures that attackers create to subvert those measures; and explores the role of software vulnerabilities and inherent weaknesses.

Defense planning faces significant uncertainties. This report applies robust decision making (RDM) to the air-delivered munitions mix challenge. RDM is quantitative, decision support methodology designed to inform decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty and complexity. This proof-of-concept demonstration suggests that RDM could help defense planners make plans more robust to a wide range of hard-to-predict futures.

In the past two decades, the U.S. Air Force has participated in three contingencies involving no-fly zones (NFZs) over Bosnia, Iraq, and Libya, and NFZ proposals have been proffered for some time as an option for intervention in the Syrian civil war that would avoid placing Western troops on the ground. This paper is intended as a preliminary look at NFZs as a strategic approach in such situations, with an emphasis on the forms they might take, their potential utility, and their probable limitations.

U.S. forward military posture can both deter and provoke armed conflict, and a similar logic pertains below the level of armed conflict. The authors of this report identify how forward posture could deter hostile measures in the competition space below the level of armed conflict through several mechanisms, particularly focusing on the presence of U.S. ground forces.

To support U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) efforts to create a unified, comprehensive strategic plan for suicide prevention research, a RAND study cataloged studies funded by DoD and other entities, examined whether current research maps to DoD’s strategic research needs, and provided recommendations to encourage better alignment and narrow the research-practice gap when it comes to disseminating findings to programs serving military personnel.

This study identifies the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other personal characteristics needed in individuals who will be responsible for implementing strategic diversity plans in the Department of Defense (DoD). The authors interviewed more than 60 diversity leaders in industry, the public sector (including DoD), and academia and reviewed relevant scientific literature, education programs, and advertised job requirements.

This paper looks at the history of kidnapping over the past 45 years to examine whether the U.S. policy of not paying ransom to terrorists holding Americans hostage is an effective deterrent. Earlier research found little empirical evidence to support the assertion. More-recent research also casts doubt on the deterrence value, although one study says that U.S. ransom payments would have prompted more kidnappings.

Pakistan is already one of the most urbanized nations in South Asia, and a majority of its population is projected to be living in cities within three decades. This demographic shift is likely to have a significant impact on Pakistan’s politics and stability. This report briefly examines urbanization as a potential driver of long-term insecurity and instability, with particular attention to the cities of Karachi, Lahore, and Quetta.