Yuliya Shokh

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform asked the RAND Corporation for an independent analysis of PPBE-like functions in selected countries and non-Department of Defense federal agencies. This executive summary distills key insights from nine case studies of budgeting processes across comparative organizations, as detailed in three companion volumes.

This report summarizes the findings of research on U.S. and other armed forces' capabilities in the Arctic, the extent to which non-U.S. entities are operating where U.S. forces cannot, and how those operations might affect U.S. national interests. The authors found that the United States is lacking in capacity and, to a lesser extent, capability and that this creates risk for U.S. security.

The authors examine areas of convergence and divergence in the Belarus-Russia relationship, particularly regarding foreign and domestic policies, military and security cooperation, and economic and defense industrial ties. They also consider the regional perspectives of Belarus's neighbors--Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine--and how the Belarus-Russia relationship poses an evolving threat to those countries' security.

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform asked RAND for an independent analysis of PPBE-like functions in selected countries and other U.S. federal agencies comparable to the U.S. Department of Defense. This executive summary distills key insights from seven case studies of budgeting processes, as detailed in two companion volumes, and compiles findings from all 16 case studies in the seven-volume series.

This report adds two case studies of planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) functions-in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and in the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration-to those of other U.S. federal government agencies presented in Volume 3, offering further insights for improving the U.S. Department of Defense's PPBE processes.

Policy and U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) professionals have suggested that the IC is held in increasingly lower regard by some decisionmakers and that predictions have had variable success in influencing decisionmakers. Researchers explored whether and to what degree trust in intelligence predictions and national estimates has degraded over time and what factors might have driven any changes in the relationship between policymakers and the IC.

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform asked the RAND Corporation for an independent analysis of PPBE-like functions in selected countries and other federal agencies. In this second volume of four reports on this subject, RAND researchers conducted case studies of the defense budgeting processes of Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

A priority of the United States Space Force (USSF) is to improve vertical and horizontal integration and synchronization of space capabilities. To assist with this priority, the authors of this research defined existing challenges and recommended ways that USSF can facilitate the integration and synchronization of space acquisition and fielding to support the timely delivery of end-to-end space capabilities to the joint force.

The authors of this report draw on Russian-language sources to examine trends in Russian personnel policies and initiatives from the 1990s through December 2021, prior to Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. They review the pervasive challenges within the Russian military to modernizing its personnel policies and evaluate reform efforts of the late 2000s through 2021, when major military reforms were implemented.

As the U.S. Space Force (USSF) pursues rapid acquisition of warfighting capabilities, a key question is whether the streamlining techniques being used to get new space systems to operators quickly create mission assurance vulnerabilities. The authors of this report examine the techniques being used to accelerate USSF acquisition, the risks associated with them, their potential impact on mission assurance, and the possible mitigations.

Military forecasting informs long-term military planning of the Russian Ministry of Defense. In this report, the authors draw on a framework developed by the Russian military science community to examine several key indicators related to military forecasting to gain insight into the likelihood and character of future war and the correlation of military potential between Russia and potential adversaries.

Given new and increasingly sophisticated threats from peer and near-peer adversaries, the authors provide an analysis of intelligence support to the U.S. Air Force acquisition community, identifying disincentives to seeking threat-informed analysis and proposing ways to enhance information sharing and workforce development to improve the integration of intelligence and acquisition.

Policymakers have increased emphasis on national security risks deriving from globalization of weapon system supply chains. This report addresses the challenges the U.S. Air Force faces in mitigating the effects of these risks and suggests ways to improve how it addresses such risks in source selection and other decisions.