FC / NETWORK
Registry 01 · Domain
Defense
Seventy-five years of patient work, and a door held open for you.
Force design, acquisition, and the operational frontier of joint warfighting.
Classification
Research domain
Cross-disciplinary index
Brief / 01
Context record
Defense research at RAND treats force design as a systems problem, capability, acquisition, logistics, and human capital coupled into a single object of analysis.
RAND's three federally funded research and development centers, Project AIR FORCE, the Arroyo Center (Army), and the National Defense Research Institute (OSD, Joint Staff, Navy, Marine Corps, intelligence community), give the institution a continuous, classified-access view of U.S. defense acquisition, force planning, and operational analysis that no other civilian institution holds.
RAND's Signature Themes in Defense
Future force design
What force structures, posture, and capability portfolios are robust across the next two decades of contested operations.
Wargaming
Operational and strategic wargames stress-testing concepts, doctrine, and acquisition trade-offs against adversary moves.
Autonomous and unmanned systems
Maritime, air, and ground autonomy, concepts of employment, command relationships, and the assurance regimes that make them deployable.
Acquisition reform
Why defense programs cost what they cost, and the institutional levers that actually move schedule, cost, and capability.
Representative Work
An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul
RAND · MG-1078
Inflection Point: How to Reverse the Erosion of U.S. and Allied Military Power
RAND · RR-A2555-1
U.S. Defense Implications of China's Expanding Global Access
RAND · RR-2226
Methodological Emphasis
Wargaming, cost analysis, and operations research applied to acquisition and force-design decisions.
Methodological Lineage →Affiliated Researchers