James V Marrone

The U. S. Coast Guard is determining how many facilities handle certain dangerous cargoes and whether, according to a risk analysis, requiring those facilities to biometrically verify the Transportation Worker Identification Credential of every person accessing a secure area of such a facility would be cost-effective. This report answers those questions.

The Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) is designed to enhance security at U. S. ports. It demonstrates that the holder has passed a Transportation Security Administration security threat assessment and is required of anyone with unescorted access to a secure area at a regulated facility. This report provides the findings from an assessment of the TWIC program, along with the assessors' recommendations.

Equal Access International (EAI)'s countering violent extremism (CVE)-themed programming involves training local civil society members in Mindanao to design and implement locally based CVE campaigns. This report contains an evaluation of and recommendations from a set of EAI tech camps and fellowships in the Philippines. The authors of this report include research from a study of EAI CVE radio programming on Mindanao.

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.

The U. S. Army invests significant resources in new soldiers. When a soldier does not complete a full contract term, the Army views this as a net loss. This report assesses whether organizational factors matter for producing attrition and generates hypotheses regarding the mechanisms by which organizational factors generate attrition.

Given the size and scope of the Russian propaganda campaign that targeted the U. S. electorate in 2016, it is critical to understand the impact of that campaign and mechanisms that can reduce the impact of future campaigns. This report, the third in a series, describes a study that assessed how people react to and engage with this propaganda, and found that media literacy advisories and labeling the source of the propaganda had a counter effect.

This report presents the results of an evaluation designed to assess the effects of countering violent extremism-themed social media content used in a campaign to promote tolerance, freedom of speech, and rejection of violence in Indonesia. The campaign was partially successful in its appeal to the intended audience, its communication of its message, and its positive effects on certain attitudes. However, there were also negative effects.

The illicit antiquities market is fueled by a well-documented rise in looting at archaeological sites and a fear that the proceeds of such looting may be financing terrorism or rogue states. In this report, the authors compile evidence from numerous open sources to outline the major policy-relevant characteristics of that market and to propose the way forward for developing policies intended to disrupt illicit networks.

The author analyzes the predictors of costly first-term military attrition using administrative data for all accessions across four service branches in fiscal years 2002 through 2013. The analysis shows who accesses, who attrites and when, and what observable characteristics are associated with attrition in the first 36 months of service. The predictive power of recruitment and accession data in efforts to mitigate attrition is also documented.

To recognize the risks faced by service members in the line of duty, the U. S. Department of Defense offers special pays and benefits to eligible personnel. In this report, RAND researchers examine the methodology for awarding hostile fire pay and imminent danger pay and explore whether a different approach, such as one based on deployment or operations, might be more effective and efficient.