Alexander C Hou

Presents a risk-management process would help senior Air Force leaders to (1) focus planning on the most salient threats, (2) gain greater clarity on the risks associated with alternative courses of action across multiple futures, (3) maintain a sense of the persistent uncertainties associated with any policy choice, and (4) effectively communicate their judgments about risk to key audiences.

This report presents some of the challenges that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) may face in fielding an artificial intelligence technology called reinforcement learning (RL) in DoD applications. RL has been credited with expanding the decisionmaking ability of machines beyond that of humans in playing complex games of strategy. RL-enabled systems can beat world experts in these games; can such systems outperform humans in DoD applications?

This report provides a summary of the risks, proliferation, and costs of man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) attacks against commercial aviation targets, as well as mitigation options. The research is focused on the historical use of MANPADS against civilian aviation; the threat of MANPADS proliferation and nonstate groups' MANPADS use; the potential economic impacts of an overseas attack on civilian aircraft; and mitigation options.

The personnel who operate remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) are crucial in the Air Force, but many in the RPA career field are dissatisfied, and it is difficult to train and retain enough pilots to meet the demand. To assist in building a healthy, sustainable RPA career field, RAND has developed a long-term RPA career field planning model. This report explains the model's main features, content, and data inputs and describes key technical aspects.