Abby Doll

The authors explore defense contractor motivations and identify mechanisms that might more closely align those incentives with Department of Defense goals. They also analyze major defense acquisition programs to determine if it is possible to identify programs that might incur a future Nunn-McCurdy breach by reviewing a number of acquisition programs that have incurred breaches and analyzing them for common characteristics.

The authors investigate whether the tenure of program managers contributes to Nunn-McCurdy breaches. They also examine the existing decentralized systems used to track cost growth to determine whether additional guidance and control are needed to make acquisition category II programs performance more transparent. Finally, they investigate whether key assumptions, so-called framing assumptions, could be useful risk management tools.

Analysis of Russian military capabilities reveals stark limitations in Russia's ability to safely and effectively deploy and sustain ground forces around the world. Notional deployment scenarios highlight a lack of readily deployable forces and transportation assets and limited freedom of movement. Collectively, these challenges suggest a modern Russian force that is far less deployable than the Soviet military it replaced.

Russia's ability to deploy military forces around the world is significantly depleted from the Soviet era. This report describes the strengths and weaknesses of Russia's ground force deployment capacity. Russia's armed forces are much improved from the 1990s, but lack of adequate transportation, political limitations, shortfalls in sustainment, limits on conscript deployment, and other factors constrain its global ground force deployment.

This report provides empirical evidence on the deterrent effects of U.S. overseas military forces. It investigates how these effects might vary by the type, size, and location of these forces, as well as the effects of U.S. forces deployed in the midst of crises. The analyses provide the clearest evidence in support of the deterrent effect of heavy ground forces, particularly when deployed near but not directly bordering potential adversaries.

This appendix discusses historical implementation of multiyear procurement (MYP) and block buy (BB) contracts and how they compare. As context for an analysis of potential savings in an F-35 BB contract, it outlines the methodology and data sources for analyzing historical MYP and BB contracts and provides a high-level overview of trends observed across the case studies along with in-depth discussion of more-recent multiyear program case studies.

In 2015, the United States and partner governments in the F-35 program began considering the use of a three-year block buy (BB) contract for procurement of F-35 aircraft during fiscal years 2018-2020. This report assesses potential cost savings available through use of a three-year block buy contract for procurement of F-35 aircraft during fiscal years 2018-2020--approximately $2.1 billion, or 4.9 percent of the cost of annual contracting.

Hybrid irregular and conventional military operations are playing an increasingly prominent role in international conflict, exploited by countries such as Russia and Iran. To counter this trend, the United States should adopt a new form of operational art for special warfare. This report proposes a framework for the design and execution of special warfare campaigns.

The report contains two analyses. First, the authors examine the cause of a Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach of the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System Inc. 1A major defense acquisition program. Second, they document a methodology to assess the performance of an acquisition portfolio. The methodology included identifying objectives, selecting data and metrics, and analyzing visualizations of portfolio performance.

Examines conditions present in six U.S. Air Force Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAPs) experiencing extreme cost growth, using case study analysis. This report is a companion to Air Force Major Defense Acquisition Program Cost Growth Is Driven by Three Space a Program and the F-35: Fiscal Year 2013 President s Budget Selected Acquisition Reports (RR-477-AF, 2014), which analyzed cost growth trends in current U.S. Air Force MDAPs."

The swift adoption of unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and their increasing use in the field have exceeded the capacity of the training infrastructure to sustain training on these systems over the long term. This report develops a general concept for training military forces in employment of UASs and a framework for addressing the training requirements and discusses the limits of existing infrastructure in supporting UAS training.

RAND researchers conducted a lessons learned examination of operations analysis, modeling, and simulation in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Researchers identified ways in which analysts have attempted to support commanders decision-making and describe a selection of the models and tools they employed."

The Department of Defense has long played a major role in humanitarian assistance/disaster response (HA/DR) operations due to its unique capabilities, manpower, and forward-deployed resources. The Asia-Pacific region is of particular importance because it bears the brunt of the majority of the world's natural disasters and is home to key U.S. allies. In an effort to improve the effectiveness of such operations, this report analyzes recent HA/DR operations in Burma, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Japan, and identifies lessons that can be applied in the future.