Naval Postgraduate School

Opaque communities confound homeland security situational awareness and integration efforts, which generates pervasive threat perceptions that have often escalated into governmental interventions and violent confrontations. Governmental failures to effectively communicate with, and judiciously address past incidents involving opaque communities, have led to tactical response disasters; future inabilities to foster contact with such groups could present grave, unforeseen challenges to homeland security and surrounding community resiliency efforts. Utilizing a structured focused method, this book explores whether governmental entities adopt a common set of operational assumptions regarding threats emanating from opaque communities and, if so, whether alternative interactional frameworks for integrating such communities into homeland security efforts are available. This book presents case study analysis of interventions involving the opaque communities of the Branch Davidians at Waco, MOVE in Philadelphia, and FLDS YFZ Ranch in Eldorado and finds that ingrained default oppositional frameworks influenced governmental deliberations throughout each event. This inquiry concludes that targeted constructive communication strategies utilizing dedicated interlocutors knowledgeable about a given community will assist in preventing futureunnecessary and costly official interventions.

This action research case study was intended to qualitatively determine how system thinking and system dynamics modeling informed regional strategic planning and to derive a grounded theory based upon data collected during theSteinbeck Innovation Cluster strategic planning process. Three areas of previous research were investigated: systems, complexity, networks and system dynamics; strategic planning; and industrial clusters. The grounded theory thatemerged from my research is that: System thinking and the use of small, system dynamics models can enhance the awareness of decision and policy makers by clarifying dynamic complexity and structure/behavior relationships and may contribute to collaborative, cross-sectoral effort that diminishes the pitfalls of policy resistance in regional strategic planning. This study contributes to each of the three areas of research already mentioned by addressing perceived gaps at the intersection of systems theory, theories of sustainable cluster development, and theories of strategic planning. Furthermore, this study builds upon previous attempts to evaluate the impact of system dynamics modeling on mental models by qualitatively evaluating pre and post-intervention responses of actual regional strategic planners from three organizational cross-sectors that included the private sector, the non-profit sector, and the government or civic sector.

A bill that has passed the United States Senate, S. 744, proposes a "Lawful Prospective Immigrant" (LPI) status and a "path to Citizenship" for an estimated 11-12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. United StatesCitizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is the agency that would be responsible for processing applications for LPI status or other immigration benefits authorized by immigration reform legislation or administrative reliefprograms introduced by the White House. Current agency receipts of applications for immigration benefits range between 6 and 7 million per year. Depending on the eligibility criteria for new immigration benefits, agency receipts could triple. The operational impact of these legislative or executive actions on USCIS could bear significant national security risks. This book evaluates whether the implementation of automated tools would mitigate external operational impacts on USCIS. Two existing automated systems are studied. The Secure Flight system, operated by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the Automated Continuous Evaluation System (ACES) as utilizedin the Joint Reform Effort (JRE) were selected for their complexity, maturity, and similarity to immigration adjudications. This analysis demonstrates that automated tools can improve the quality of immigration adjudications by supporting a comprehensive assessment, including accuracy, timeliness, completeness and validity. Further, automation would improve the agency's operational responsiveness when external factors such as policy changes affect workloads. These factors thereby improve national security by supporting the agency's mission to uphold the integrity of the immigration system and to prevent and intercept illicit actors from entering or remaining in the United States.

An increasingly dynamic battlefield requires increasingly faster software development. Cyberthreats and Information Assurance certifications induce significant delays in software operationaldeployment designed to meet these emerging battlefield requirements. An alternative softwaredevelopment methodology for Department of Defense (DOD) acquisitions was proposed. Theproposed software development methodology uses tailoring of commercial pre-approved applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe currently available on most DOD networks. The application developed to test the validity of this approach is called the electronic attackplatform placement optimization (EAPPO) algorithm. Given digital terrain data, a user inputted strike route, and an enemy order-of-battle (EOB) with their respective jammer techniques as inputs, the application output includes terrain and radar impacted threat range rings, aircraft strike routes, and an optimized flight path for the jamming platform (EA-18G). Successful development of the application validates the potential of using pre-approved, non-compiled software to develop military specific applications, a process that could significantly decrease software development time and cost for the DOD.

The Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) can deliver large quantities of medications and medical supplies to anywhere in the United States and its territories within 12 hours of the federal decision to deploy. As an additional preparedness measure, many states and regions have elected to purchase and maintain similar medical countermeasurestockpiles locally. Theses stockpiles are a means of rapid access to critical medications necessary for use as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) before the arrival of SNS assets. To assist state and local communities in determining the most efficient and cost effectivePEP model for use in the event of an anthrax attack, this book analyzes four potential models. This analysis provides a framework by which state and local jurisdictions can evaluate the suitability of models for the provision of PEP in the eventof a large-scale anthrax attack. Readers may employ these findings in evaluating the efficacy of their own local programs, and in determining the most appropriate PEP model based upon local priorities given variations in perceived needs and resource availability among communities.