Research and Case Studies

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  Assessing Military Benefits of S&T Investments in Micro Autonomous Systems Utilizing a Gedanken Experiment

  Albert Sciarretta, Joseph N. Mait, Richard Chait, Elizabeth Redden, and Jordan Wilcox

  This paper address The Army Research Laboratory’s Micro-Autonomous Systems and Technology Collaborative Technology Alliance program which was chosen to demonstrate the utility of the methodology in the evaluation of an actual Army S&T effort. It was chosen because it offers significant future capabilities for our Army, provides a set of very robust present-day technical challenges, and offers a significant assessment challenge since it is focused on basic research.

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  U.S. Ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention

  Jonathan B. Tucker

  On October 1, 1990, two months after Iraq’s surprise invasion and annexation of Kuwait had put the United States and other members of the international community on a collision course with the Saddam Hussein regime, President George H.W. Bush spoke to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York. He described Iraq’s brutal aggression against its neighbor as “a throwback to another era, a dark relic from a dark time.” Noting that Saddam Hussein had waged a “genocidal poison gas war” against Iraq’s restive Kurdish minority during the 1980s, President Bush hinted that if it ultimately proved necessary to liberate Kuwait by force, the United States and its allies could face Iraqi attacks with chemical weapons—highly toxic chemicals designed to incapacitate or kill.

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  Task Force Stryker Network-Centric Operations in Afghanistan

  Harry Tunnell IV

  This case study examines the real-world application of the network-centric warfare concept during combat operations in Afghanistan.

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  Analysis of the Threat of Genetically Modified Organisms for Biological Warfare

  Jerry B. Warner, Alan J. Ramsbotham Jr., Ewelina Tunia, and James J. Valdes

  This study seeks to better understand the evaluation of the potential threats posed by advances in biotechnology, especially genetically modified organisms and synthetic biology. It narrows the scope of consideration into two parts: defining a catastrophic biological attack focused on bioterrorism and that this attack would be restricted to the United States.

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  The Origins of Nunn-Lugar and Cooperative Threat Reduction

  Paul I. Bernstein and Jason D. Wood

  In a 1999 interview, Ashton Carter, a key figure in helping to create and implement the threat reduction program initiated by Senators Sam Nunn (D–GA) and Richard Lugar (R–IN), recalled four visits between 1994 and 1996 to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) base in Pervomaysk, Ukraine. Planted in the soil of this base were the most powerful rockets mankind has ever made, armed with hundreds of hydrogen bombs and aimed at the United States. In turn, Pervomaysk was itself the target of similar American missiles and weapons. Under the Nunn-Lugar program, the missiles deployed at Pervomaysk by the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and the silos that housed them were destroyed.

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  A Primer on Alternative Transportation Fuels

  Timothy Coffey

  This paper reviews several approaches to producing alternative transportation fuels using feedstocks that are under the control of the United States. The purpose is to provide the non-specialist reader with a general understanding of the several approaches, how they compare regarding process energy efficiency, their individual abilities to provide for national transportation fuel needs, and their associated capital costs.

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  Hours of Boredom, Moments of Terror: Temporal Desynchrony in Military and Security Force Operations

  Peter A. Hancock and Gerald P. Krueger

  The authors examine resultant psychological and behavioral implications for combatant and security personnel performance as viewed through application of a traditional human psychological stress model. Inadequate recognition of the implications resulting from long lull periods, combat pulses, and the need to recover from stress can lead to dysfunctional soldiering as well as poor individual and small unit performance.

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  Assessing Chinese Military Transparency

  Michael Kiselycznyk and Phillip C. Saunders

  The United States and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region have expressed concerns about China’s expanding military capabilities and called on Beijing to increase transparency on military issues. Chinese officials and military officers argue that Chinese transparency has increased over time and that weaker countries should not be expected to meet U.S. standards of transparency. Lack of an objective method for assessing military transparency has made it difficult to assess these Chinese claims and has inhibited productive dialogues about transparency.

  This paper presents a methodology for assessing military transparency that aims to confront the question of China’s military transparency from a comparative perspective. Drawing upon research done by Korean defense expert Dr. Choi Kang as part of a Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific working group, it focuses on defense white papers as a readily available and comparable source of official defense information. The paper develops an objective methodology for comparing the relative transparency of defense white papers by employing standardized definitions and a four-tiered set of criteria to evaluate transparency across 19 categories. This approach can be used to evaluate changes in transparency over time and to compare China’s transparency with that of other Asia-Pacific countries.

  We use this methodology to evaluate changes in transparency in China’s six defense white papers (from 1998 through 2008) and to compare its 2008 white paper with 13 other recent Asia-Pacific defense white papers. We find that there has been a gradual but modest increase in the transparency of China’s defense white papers over time. China’s degree of transparency is roughly comparable to that of most Southeast Asian countries and to India, but significantly less than Asia-Pacific democracies such as Japan and South Korea. We argue that China’s growing economic and military power makes major countries such as Japan, South Korea, India, and Australia a more appropriate basis of comparison.

  Despite some limitations in the methodology (most notably omitting information published in other government documents when assessing transparency), we believe that it provides a reasonably objective and comparable way to evaluate relative military transparency. Although a full assessment would require considering a country’s unique context and using all available information, the methodology employed in this study provides a useful starting point to compare how different countries within the Asia-Pacific region approach military transparency. We argue that this methodology could be used as the basis for broader comparative studies of transparency and as a way to support regional dialogues about military transparency.

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  Civil-Military Relations in China: Assessing the PLA’s Role in Elite Politics

  Michael Kiselycznyk and Phillip C. Saunders

  This study reviews the last 20 years of academic literature on the role of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Chinese elite politics. It examines the PLA’s willingness to support the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and to obey directives from top party leaders, the PLA’s influence on the selection of China’s top civilian leaders, and the PLA’s ability to shape the domestic political environment. Over the last two decades the discussion of these three issues has largely been shaped by five trends identified in the literature: increasing PLA professionalism, bifurcation of civil and military elites, a reduced PLA role in political institutions, reduced emphasis on political work within the PLA, and increased military budgets. Together, these trends are largely responsible for the markedly reduced role of the PLA in Chinese elite politics.

  The theoretical models of Chinese civil-military relations that exist within the literature during the period divide into three distinctive categories. “Traditional models” including the Factional, Symbiosis, Professionalism, and Party Control models, dominate the literature from 1989 to 1995. Scholars worked to integrate information becoming available as the PRC opened to the world into these already existing models of Chinese civil-military relations. However, evolving political dynamics within the PRC following Tiananmen marginalized the utility of the models. From 1995 to 1997 many scholars argued that these traditional models should not be considered mutually exclusive but complementary. This concept of a “combination model” was short lived as it became increasingly apparent that even a combination of traditional models had little predictive or even explanatory power in light of rapidly changing political dynamics. Two new models, the Conditional Compliance and State Control models, emerged in the period of 1997–2003. Both incorporated elements of the traditional models while attempting to address the implications of new political and military dynamics in the PRC.

  Examining the predictions of these models against four case studies involving major developments in civil-military relations, we found that although each model had some descriptive and explanatory power, none possessed strong predictive ability. The traditional models help explain the PLA’s reaction to intensified Party control following Tiananmen, but none was able to predict how Chinese civil-military relations evolved subsequently. Civil-military models offered their most specific (and ultimately least accurate) predictions regarding the leadership succession from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin. Most models predicted a strong role for the PLA in the succession that did not materialize. This was the period when traditional civil-military models began to run up against the reality of changing political dynamics within the PRC. When the PLA was forced to withdraw from most commercial activities in the mid-1990s, the models predicted a far slower, more contentious, and less complete divestiture than ultimately occurred. Most analysts correctly predicted that the PLA would have only limited involvement in the leadership transition from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao following the 16th Party Congress in 2002, but subsequent explanations for why the transition went smoothly emphasize different factors. The models did agree in their emphasis on the importance of greater political institutionalization in reducing PLA influence and highlighted the implicit role and future potential importance of the PLA in elite politics, especially if divisions among the civilian leadership produce a political crisis in the future.

  Based on this assessment, we conclude that existing models serve a useful role in identifying key variables for analysis in the study of Chinese civil-military relations. However, most of the literature has been descriptive and interpretive rather than predictive. The widespread practice of using elements of multiple models to analyze civil-military relations makes it difficult to assess the validity of individual models or to generate falsifiable predictions, thus limiting the predictive ability of current models. Although China is a much more open society today, lack of reliable information continues to make the study of civil-military relations in China difficult, forcing analysts to rely on indirect evidence and dubious sources to speculate about the military’s influence on elite politics and about the relationships between top civilian and military leaders.

  Since 2003 the literature on Chinese civil-military relations has successfully exploited new sources of information to offer useful analysis of the PLA’s relationship with the Chinese economy and society at large.Yet there has been a notable lack of effort to develop, employ, or test new theoretical models that could help produce a new unified theory of Chinese civil-military relations. Future work may find fertile ground in exploring the nature of official and unofficial interactions between the PRC’s bifurcated civilian and military elite, comparing how broader trends in China’s civilian government are implemented in the PLA, or conducting a more genuinely comparative analysis with the experiences of other one-party states, transitioning democracies, or other Asian states.

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  Chief of Mission Authority as a Model for National Security Integration

  Christopher J. Lamb and Edward Marks

  The inability of the President of the United States to delegate executive authority for integrating the efforts of departments and agencies on priority missions is a major shortcoming in the way the national security system of the U.S. Government functions. Statutorily assigned missions combined with organizational cultures create “stovepipes” that militate against integrated operations. This obstacle to “unity of effort” has received great attention since 9/11 but continues to adversely affect government operations in an era of increasingly multidisciplinary challenges, from counterproliferation to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Presidents have tried various approaches to solving the problem: National Security Council committees, “lead agencies,” and “czars,” but none have proven effective.

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  Assessing the Health of Army Laboratories: Funding for Basic Research and Laboratory Capital Equipment

  John W. Lyons and Richard Chait

  In this paper, the authors respond to requests from the office of the Army S&T Executive to address the adequacy of the funding provided to equipment and basic research in an effective S&T laboratory.

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  Improving the Army’s Next Effort in Technology Forecasting

  John W. Lyons, Richard Chait, and Simone Erchov

  This paper makes the case for approaches to be pursued when the Army conducts its next comprehensive S&T forecasting effort.

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  Islamic Radicalization in the United States: New Trends and a Proposed Methodology for Disruption

  Samuel Musa and Samuel Bendett

  This paper addresses the growing and evolving threat of domestic terrorism that is advocated and perpetrated by radical Islamic ideologues. Specifically it will review terrorist attempts on American soil and against the American population in order to offer recommendations.

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  Risk-Informed Decisionmaking for Science and Technology

  Samuel Musa, William Berry, Richard Chait, John W. Lyons, and Vincent Russo

  This paper discusses risks and impact areas in relation to decisionmaking and the development of metrics or a figure of merit for decisionmaking. The metrics are then applied to three examples of interest to the Army, Air Force, and DHS.

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  U.S. Withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty

  Lynn F. Rusten

  As President George W. Bush made these remarks in a speech at the National Defense University (NDU) on May 1, 2001, National Security Council (NSC) Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense Robert Joseph listened attentively. Within just 4 months of taking office, President Bush was articulating one of his key national security priorities: setting the conditions for the United States to move full steam ahead on developing, testing, and eventually deploying a wide range of missile defense technologies and systems—a priority that in all likelihood would mean U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

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  Redefining Success: Applying Lessons in Nuclear Diplomacy from North Korea to Iran

  Ferial Ara Saeed

  The United States has no good options for resolving the North Korean and Iranian nuclear challenges. Incentives, pressures, and threats have not succeeded. A military strike would temporarily set back these programs, but at unacceptable human and diplomatic costs, and with a high risk of their reconstitution and acceleration. For some policymakers, therefore, the best option is to isolate these regimes until they collapse or pressures build to compel negotiations on U.S. terms. This option has the veneer of toughness sufficient to make it politically defensible in Washington. On closer scrutiny, however, it actually allows North Korea and Iran to continue their nuclear programs unrestrained. It also sacrifices more achievable short-term goals of improving transparency and securing vulnerable nuclear materials to the uncertain long-term goal of denuclearization. Yet these short-term goals are deemed critical to U.S. national security in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

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  Bio-Inspired Materials and Devices for Chemical and Biological Defense

  James J. Valdes and Erica R. Valdes

  This report addresses materials for synthetic matrices of chemical and biological defense using a conceptual platform known as the abiotic networked threat system (ANTS). This system is based on lessons learned from biology, incorporating abiotic homologues to biological recognition events and metabolic pathways to provide programmable capabilities to sense and respond to environmental threats.

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  NATO Command Structure: Considerations for the Future

  W. Bruce Weinrod and Charles L. Barry

  This paper explores potential future reforms of the NATO command structure. The intent is to stimulate thought on the current structure’s fit to oversee the forces and operations of a growing array of NATO missions.

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  Nuclear Politics in Iran

  Judith S. Yaphe

  This collection of analyses on the unintended consequences of Iran’s nuclear policy for its domestic and international relations is the first in a series of papers that will examine the impact of critical issues and developments on key countries in the Greater Middle East and on U.S. security interests. Succeeding papers will identify similar emerging issues in Turkey, Iraq, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf region. For the most part, the papers will represent the independent research and opinions of academic scholars and regional experts prepared for and presented at the National Defense University.

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  China’s Out of Area Naval Operations: Case Studies, Trajectories, Obstacles, and Potential Solutions

  Christopher D. Yung, Ross Rustici, Isaac Kardon, and Joshua Wiseman

  This study seeks to understand the future direction of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) with regard to out of area deployments and power projection. The assessment is based on the history of past PLAN out of area deployments and an analysis of out of area operations of other military forces. Both short- and long-term lenses are employed to understand the scope and direction of China’s defense planning and strategic decisions.

  The study’s assessment of the PLAN’s short-term (1- to 5-year) trajectory is based on:

  • operational patterns of behavior observed in China’s out of area deployments
  • analysis of information about the PLAN’s current and recent difficulties during these deployments
  • the solutions China has applied to address these difficulties
  • an assessment of the extent to which the PLAN, PLA leadership, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership as a whole are likely to pursue other potential solutions within a 1- to 5-year timeframe.

  We apply the same categories to our analysis of case studies of other nations’ historical out of area deployments to draw out possibilities for the PLAN’s long-term (10-year) trajectory. Examination of the history of China’s out of area operations indicates that the Chinese have been operating out of area since the mid-1970s, they tend to “overprepare” for each out of area deployment, and they conduct deployments not only for operational reasons, but also for carefully calculated political benefits.

  The study identifies five categories of challenges that confront all navies operating at long distances from home ports: distance, duration, capacity, complexity of coordination, and hostility of environment. The recent PLAN Gulf of Aden deployment illustrated some of these difficulties. In the absence of a nearby facility or military base, that task force had difficulty maintaining its ships; the ships had difficulty maintaining supplies of fresh vegetables, fruits, and potable water; and personnel did not have access to comprehensive medical care.

  From the case studies, we derived specific lessons about how other militaries met the five challenges in conducting out of area operations listed above and assessed whether the Chinese leadership is likely to follow their example. We identified five groups of options:

  • access to a facility or base for maintenance, repair, and other logistical support
  • self-protection (for example, carrier support, out of area antisubmarine warfare [ASW], or antisurface warfare)
  • use of mobile supply depots and floating bases
  • intra–task force lift assets (helicopters, lighterage, and landing craft)
  • satellite communications.

  The operational and strategic implications of our findings are as follows:

  • The PLAN still has some ways to go before it can operate effectively out of area. At present, it can effectively replenish at sea, conduct intra–task force resupply, perform long-distance navigation, conduct formation-keeping with competent seamanship, and operate in all weather conditions. The PLAN cannot currently conduct a full-scale joint forcible entry operation, maintain maritime superiority out of area, conduct multicarrier or carrier strike group operations, or provide comprehensive protection against threats to an out of area task force (antiaircraft warfare, ASW, and antisurface warfare).
  • The PLAN appears to be expanding its out of area operations incrementally. This will allow the United States, its allies, and other countries time to work out (with each other and with the Chinese) how to respond to opportunities for greater cooperation and potential challenges posed by a more capable PLAN.
  • China has an even longer way to go before it can be considered a global military power. In particular, it has no network of facilities and bases to maintain and repair its ships. The possession or absence of such a network may ultimately be the best indication of China’s future intentions. If China lacks such a support network, it will have great difficulty engaging in major combat operations (MCOs) far from its shores.
  • Experience gained through out of area operations will help make the PLAN somewhat more effective (in areas such as navigation and seamanship) in some of its other operations. However, most of the tasks performed and lessons gained from out of area operations are not directly transferrable to either a Taiwan contingency or a notional out of area MCO. This implies that time spent on conducting nontraditional out of area deployments for a PLAN unit is time away from combat training for a Taiwan contingency or preparing for MCOs out of area.
  • A more capable and active PLAN will present new challenges for U.S. policy. On the one hand, the United States wants China to “become a responsible stake holder” in support of international security objectives, which implies a need for greater naval capability to operate out of area. On the other hand, improved PLAN operational capabilities potentially pose a greater military threat to the United States and its allies, especially Asia. The United States has to reassure its allies that it will remain present in the region as a hedge even as Chinese military capabilities improve.

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  Army Science and Technology Investment In Interoperability

  Charles L. Barry

  This paper discusses the elements of assessing ‘bang for bucks’ with regard to S&T investment in interoperability. It intends to point to where interoperability investment offers the greatest return and to open our thinking to the possibility that universal interoperability of all systems is not a desirable or attainable goal, especially when allocating investments and accepting reasonable risk.

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  What Democracy for Afghanistan? An Analysis Utilizing Established Norms and Five Non-Western Case Studies

  Charles L. Barry and Samuel R. Greene

  This paper looks at democratic governance and what might be expected to take root in a society such as Afghanistan, shedding light on what is necessary, as a minimum, for democracy to become established. Suggesting replacements for goals that may be simply unattainable, such as an Afghan democracy held to an unrealistic Jeffersonian standard, it aims to impart a sense of what can be accomplished before international political will expires.

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  Understanding and Leading Porous Network Organizations: An Analysis Based on the 7-S Model

  Paul T. Bartone and Linton Wells II

  This paper evaluates STAR-TIDES , an organization seeking to develop and share knowledge and technologies to enhance the capacity of disparate groups to respond effectively to disasters and humanitarian crises. Analyzing STAR-TIDES as a porous network organization, it applies an organizational analysis tool known as the “7-S framework” to clarify some of the key issues that must be addressed for such organizations to be effective and adaptive.

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  Social Software and National Security: An Initial ‘Net Assessment’

  Mark D. Drapeau and Linton Wells II

  This research paper as an initial net assessment of how social software interacts with government and security in the broadest sense.1 The analysis looks at both sides of what once might have been called a “blue-red” balance to investigate how social software is being used (or could be used) by not only the United States and its allies, but also by adversaries and other counterparties.

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  An Extended Deterrence Regime to Counter Iranian Nuclear Weapons: Issues and Options

  Richard L. Kugler

  This paper examines the idea of creating an American-led extended deterrence regime in the Middle East to address potential Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons and missiles in a setting where the U.S. already possesses these weapons and is trying to employ them to geopolitical advantage.