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Publications

March 1, 2006

Creating a NATO Special Operations Force

In the post-9/11 security environment, special operations forces (SOF) have proven indispensable. SOF units are light, lethal, mobile, and easily networked with other forces. While the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have extensive SOF capabilities, these forces are not formally organized to collaborate with one another. There would be much to gain if U.S. and allied SOF trained to work together: national SOF assets would be improved, obstacles to effective combined operations would be removed, and a coherent Alliance capability would be readily available for NATO. The Alliance can focus and grow its SOF capabilities by providing a selective and small combined “inner core” of NATO special operations forces for operations, while using an outer network to expand and improve SOF cooperation with interested allies.

March 1, 2006

DTP-028: Bringing Defense into the Information Economy

This is an exploratory essay aimed at injecting new perspective and questions into the study of the fundamentals of defense economics. It is meant to start a “productive conversation” about the affordability of defense and the alignment of technology, economics, and grand strategy.

March 1, 2006

DTP-029: Cooperative Crisis Management and Avian Influenza: A Risk Assessment Guide for International Contagious Disease Prevention and Risk Mitigation

This paper proposes a risk assessment and mitigation strategy designed to give both national authorities and international organizations the diagnostic took needed to evaluate preparedness, identify country-level weaknesses, and prioritize scarce resources to combat avian influenza.

Feb. 1, 2006

Custer in Cyberspace

The combination of abundant networked information and fluid, unfamiliar situations in the current era makes it at once possible and imperative to improve decisionmaking in combat. The key to improvement is to integrate faster reasoning and more reliable intuition into a cognitive whole to achieve battle-wisdom. Although the technologies that both demand and facilitate battle- wisdom are new, military history holds lessons on combining reasoning and intuition in conditions of urgency, danger, and uncertainty.

Feb. 1, 2006

DTP-024: Extending the User’s Reach: Responsive Networking for Integrated Military Operations

The aim of this study is to identify a path for the U.S. DoD to improve the responsiveness of military information networks for joint warfighters. This is not a technical treatise about bits and bandwidth; it proposes no architecture or standards. Rather, it looks at how military-operational information requirements relate to national strategy and at how those requirements are set and met.

Feb. 1, 2006

DTP-025: Issues in Air Force Science and Technology Funding

This paper looks at several issues surrounding future Air Force S&T and offers some suggestions for the future. It also looks at the framework of Air Force science and technology and a long-term history of Air Force S&T funding.

Feb. 1, 2006

DTP-026: Critical Technology Events in the Development of the Apache Helicopter: Project Hindsight Revisited

This study is the second in a series that examines some of the key factors that have led to meaningful technology generation and ultimate incorporation into the U.S. Army weapons systems we see in the field today. The purpose of this report is to examine the development of select Army systems, and in particular those signal technology events that propelled these systems to success, and to shed light on the factors that lead defense science and technology research to fruition.

Feb. 1, 2006

DTP-027: Implementing DOD’s International Science and Technology Strategy

As can be seen from the recently released “International Science and Technology Strategy for the United States Department of Defense,” the network for worldwide sharing of defense S&T information is vast, and the new strategy provides an excellent framework to maximize this potential. This paper provides some specific thoughts on implementation and how certain steps might benefit all involved.

Jan. 1, 2006

Report to the Congress: Information Technology Program

In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002, the Report of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, stated that the “Department of Defense can no longer depend on a dedicated defense industrial base, but will need to find ways to link advanced commercial technologies to improved military capabilities.” Congress asked CTNSP to implement a program “to find practical ways in which the defense information technology (IT) community can gain a mutual understanding of defense needs and industry capabilities and identify opportunities to integrate technology innovation in the U.S. military strategy.”

Jan. 1, 2006

DTP-023: The New Reality of International Telecommunications Strategy

This paper considers the relative decline of American Telecommunications leadership from geopolitical and technical perspectives. This decline is important to recognize and understand because it is masked by the achievements of the American economy and U.S. military successes since the end of the Cold War.