RAND Project AIR FORCE Annual Report 2007 - RAND Corporation

Message from the DirectorFor 60 years, the U.S. Air Force and RAND ProjectAIR FORCE have partnered to confront the nation’smost pressing security challenges. From the earliestdays of the Cold War, when the two institutions werecreated, the Air Force and RAND have collaborated toconsider the strategy, forces, policy, and resources neededto protect the United States and expand U.S. influenceagainst a variety of threats and challenges. This collaborationgrew in time to encompass almost all aspects ofU.S. national security, and the partnership has yieldedsome of the earliest and best thinking on deterrence anddefense, the role of nuclear weapons in American security,establishing a secure posture for U.S. strategic forces,appropriate roles for military forces in defeating insurgents,and more. It has also produced new approaches to analysis and newways of thinking about problems. Systems analysis and game theoryare two prominent examples.What is remarkable, looking back over this time, is the ability of thetwo institutions to anticipate challenges, confront hard choices, andbring new thinking to enormously difficult, seemingly intractable problems.What is even more remarkable is the ability of these institutions togrow and learn from each other. None of the successes of these earliereras came easily, and few of them came without controversy.Much as in earlier eras, the United States now faces a new set ofsecurity challenges that are vast in scope and that we are only beginningto understand. And much as in earlier eras, the Air Force and RANDProject AIR FORCE now need to partner to confront the most pressingchallenges of our time:Radical Islam presents a potent threat not just in Iraq and Afghanistanbut across a broad swath of Asia, Europe, and Africa. As othershave noted, the challenge is not so much a clash of civilizations as aclash within a civilization, threatening not only Americans at homebut also America’s forces and interests and its friends and partnersacross the globe.Andrew R. HoehnAnnual Report 2007 1