Barbara Bicksler

The authors identify insights and best practices upon which the Air Force could draw to improve its nonrated technical training pipeline. The researchers examined three topics of interest identified by the Air Force: (1) how colleges and universities right-size their instructor corps, (2) best practices associated with supply chain management, and (3) approaches for developing a flexible instructor pool.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) conducts background investigations for federal personnel. It collects criminal history record information (CHRI) from federal and state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) law enforcement and criminal justice agencies that may be unaware of DCSA's role, responsibilities, and authorities. This report presents research and materials to promote more effective and efficient CHRI sharing.

Air Force Special Warfare operators conduct physically and mentally challenging missions. For this career field, specialized assessment and selection of future operators is required. The authors examine the programs for assessing and selecting personnel for AFSPECWAR, identify job-relevant attributes, consider how these attributes should be weighted for candidate selection, and improve the accuracy of raters' evaluations of candidates.

Security cooperation's importance, scale, and complexity have grown substantially in recent years, but efforts to develop and manage the Department of Defense security cooperation workforce have lagged. This study informs the development of career models for the security cooperation workforce, assesses potential requirements for competencies and experience, and identifies potential job families within the workforce to facilitate management.

In recent years the U.S. Air Force has faced persistent resource constraints while trying to deliver necessary training to its officer and enlisted forces. The Air Force therefore asked RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to identify opportunities for optimizing processes at all levels of the nonrated technical training pipeline. This report presents PAF's assessment and recommends process and policy changes that could improve efficiency.

In line with the Department of the Air Force's (DAF's) objective of enhancing technical capabilities across its civilian workforce, the authors of this report address challenges in determining DAF's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent needs for this workforce, such as tracking the supply of such talent and identifying potential gaps in technical competencies.

The authors examined retention of racial-ethnic minorities in the Regular Army's enlisted and officer ranks and how racial-ethnic composition changes as soldiers progress in their careers. The authors also explored reasons that individuals stay in the Army or leave at given points, how unit leader decisionmaking affects such decisions, and what influences promotion decisions.

The expanding commercial space industry offers new opportunities--such as technological advances, lower launch costs, and innovative satellite applications--that could help the U.S. military meet mission requirements more efficiently. RAND researchers evaluated two commercial space markets to understand opportunities and risks that the Department of the Air Force could encounter when making decisions to invest in commercial space capabilities.

Researchers identified approaches the U.S. Coast Guard could take to improve crew satisfaction with precommissioning assignments on offshore patrol cutters and overall fleet readiness. They evaluated the options using five criteria: crew satisfaction, crew preparation and knowledge retention, timeliness, feasibility, and cost.

This report characterizes legal, policy, practice, and cost implications of U.S. Department of Defense options to comply with new congressional requirements to allow service academy cadets and midshipmen who become parents to retain their parental rights. The authors also recommend changes to military policies and practices that could help these student-parents better care for their children, succeed in school, and become exemplary officers.

At the request of Congress, RAND researchers assessed the progress that the commercial spaceflight industry has made in adopting voluntary safety standards, the industry's progress in meeting key industry metrics set out by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2017, and whether the industry has reached a level of maturity such that certain areas identified in previous Federal Aviation Administration reports are ready for regulatory action.

To assist the U.S. Marine Corps in evaluating its sexual assault prevention programs, the authors of this report identify and develop measures of performance and measures of effectiveness with which to assess the programs. The research team created a logic model framework to guide evaluations and mapped program goals to measures that assess the degree to which each outcome has been achieved.

Eleven companies cofounded the 100,000 Jobs Mission in 2011 to promote veteran employment. The coalition has grown to more than 175 member companies, representing almost every U.S. industry. These companies have hired more than 190,000 veterans as of September 2014, already far exceeding the original goal. RAND interviewed member companies to capture lessons and experiences and to identify further improvements to veteran employment opportunities.

This report chronicles intelligence community efforts over more than half a decade to improve community-wide workforce planning and management. As decisionmakers look ahead to an era of constrained budgets, they must avoid repeating earlier workforce planning mistakes because the consequences of such mistakes can be long lasting. The tools described will help decisionmakers maintain workforce capabilities as budgets decline