Brien Alkire

This report describes the 2021 U. S. Air Force-sponsored Plan Blue game, which examined competition against Russia in the Arctic with a focus on the role of sensing in competition and featured robust participation from regional partners and allies. The purpose of the game was to increase understanding of the capabilities, postures, and alliance command, control, and communication relationships that may be called for in future Arctic operations.

To address concerns that warfare could extend to space, the national security space community has taken steps to enhance space mission assurance (SMA), leading to an increasing demand for assessments of SMA. The authors describe decisionmaker needs for assessments of SMA, challenges for conducting assessments, the shortfalls that may result from the challenges, and options for addressing the shortfalls.

The geography of the Pacific can present challenges for command and control (C2) of air operations, especially in the face of attempts to disrupt C2. This report recommends methods for comparing and contrasting alternative organizational concepts for C2 of joint air operations in the Pacific and applies them to a selection of concepts for two different scenarios, humanitarian and disaster relief and a major war with a near-peer competitor.

In this book, RAND provides an evaluation of the Navy's ongoing and proposed unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) programs and describes the most promising applications of those UASs to the Navy1s operational tasks. The book identifies robust communications as a key enabler for UASs in many operational tasks and recommends steps the Navy can take to ensure these communications are available.

RAND investigated cost-effective workforce-management strategies, alternative workload allocations, and the relevant best practices of comparable organizations to assist the Navy in managing the public shipyards. The Navy uses many practices common in other organizations, but reducing planned levels of overtime and increasing the permanent journeyman staff at the public shipyards could cost-effectively hedge against future workload growth.

Alkire et al. provide a clear understanding of the operational, logistics, and cost trade-offs between three interdependent elements of the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program: the number of LCSs in the fleet, the number of mission packages that those LCSs would require in order to perform a range of missions, and the number and locations of LCS homeports and mission package installation sites.

Explores acceleration of the pace at which the U. S. Coast Guard can acquire surface and air assets that it will operate in the deepwater environment (50 or more nautical miles from shore) and whether the original Integrated Deepwater System program to modernize its aging cutters and aircraft will provide the Coast Guard with a force structure to meet the demands of its traditional missions and emerging responsibilities. 450-character abstract: Explores whether the pace at which the U. S. Coast Guard can acquire surface and air assets that it will operate in the deepwater environment (50 or more nautical miles from shore) can be accelerated and whether the original Integrated Deepwater System program to modernize its aging ships and aircraft will provide the Coast Guard with a force structure to meet the demands of its traditional missions and emerging responsibilities as part of the new Department of Homeland Security.