Vikram Kilambi

The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act required a federally funded research and development center to evaluate the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice and Firearms Safety, which administers the Civilian Marksmanship Program, in order to assess potential future transfers of excess firearms to the Corporation. This report summarizes the RAND Arroyo Center evaluation, with analyses of the discrete tasks in the legislative language.

In this report, the authors assess mathematical strategies for quantifying complexity in wartime environments. By specifying ways to accurately measure complexity and by defining strategies for identifying parts of a process that are most vulnerable to complexity imposition, the authors aim to provide a framework that will help make complexity a concrete consideration in operational settings.

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.

As Pacific Air Forces pursues evolving operational concepts of employment designed to improve operational resiliency, questions about the fragility of the combat support (CS) enterprise persist. This report presents a framework to assess necessary elements of the CS enterprise--including base, theater, and global resources--for operating in a hybrid push-pull system as a means to mitigate uncertainty and adversary actions.

Puerto Rico's seaborne logistics capacity is assessed in the context of the anticipated increase in imported materials used in recovery projects following Hurricane Maria. Key constraints at ports and on roads are identified. This analysis shows that the increased traffic from implementing the recovery plan can be supported with existing infrastructure using modest mitigation actions.

The authors of this report examine the methodological and practical evolution of the concept of correlation of forces and means--the military balance between two opponents at the global, regional, and local levels--in Russian military thinking, and they explore current definitions and applications in Russia's operational and military planning in response to changes in modern warfare.