Stephanie Anne Pillion

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.

The authors examine how direct combat experience has shaped the way the U. S. military approaches training and how indirect experience outside combat has shaped the approach of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The authors then consider the extent to which training and operational model adaptations in both militaries have kept pace with an evolving global context and prepared the U. S. military and PLA for great power conflict.

The Department of Defense has become increasingly focused on competition with China and Russia and the possibility of great power war. RAND researchers generated four plausible near-term war scenarios and assessed how they could shape the postwar strategic environment. These scenarios show the complex relationship between wartime and postwar goals, highlighting the importance of considering postwar outcomes in prewar planning.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is considering additional steps to improve its resource-management processes and asked the RAND Corporation to examine NGA's resource programming process. RAND focused on what changes were made, why changes were made, and what the results were, and made recommendations for improving the next evolution of this process.