Managing risk to defense-critical infrastructure is a key homeland defense mission. As the military prepares for great power competition, competitors increasingly seek to undermine, degrade, or attack U.S. critical infrastructure. What dependencies do military installations have on non-DoW-owned critical infrastructure, and what military assets will be required to recover from potential disruptions? To mitigate the likelihood and severity of these threats, the Joint Force needs new approaches and decision support tools to guide senior-leader decision making across time.
Given the Army’s and Joint Force's finite budgets for facilities, how should military leaders comprehensively assess risk to objectively balance investments in energy resilience against other critical infrastructure priorities, such as unaccompanied housing, child development centers, and mission-essential training facilities? This research should propose a framework or conceptual model that quantifies the operational readiness impact of infrastructure deficits in both areas. Ultimately, how can this framework allow senior leaders to make data-driven, defensible decisions on resource allocation that clarify trade-offs and balance immediate quality-of-life needs with the long-term strategic imperative of ensuring mission continuity during a catastrophic utility failure?
- Beers. Lt. Col. Shannon, "Congress, Commander in Chief and the Implications for the Department of Defense," AF Fellows Portfolio (Georgetown), 2025, 19 pgs.
- Beers highlights a flaw in how the Department of Defense is currently balancing its investments over time. He points out that the current force structure strategy focuses on accepting near-term risk to build the force required to defeat China in the future. However, he argues this long-term investment strategy fails to account for the reality that the executive branch will continue to unilaterally deploy the military for near-term "limited, imperfect engagements". To effectively balance these epochs, the USAF must not divest too heavily in near-term capabilities, but rather maintain a force design capable of executing rapid deployments to higher-threat environments.
- Stump, Maj. Paul, "From Total War to Precision Strikes: Evolving Patterns of Risk Perceptions in US Conflict," SAASS thesis, 2025
- Stump answers this by proposing a four-factor analytical framework to evaluate how US strategic risk perceptions have evolved from World War II to the modern era. By analyzing a leader's shaping experiences, the nature of political end-states, the influence of technological capabilities, and the impact of time horizons, his model provides a conceptual tool to understand how leaders evaluate and manage risk. Through case studies spanning different epochs, Stump demonstrates that the US has transitioned from accepting operational risks for strategic gains to prioritizing accidental risk mitigation, offering his framework as a guide for future leaders preparing for peer competition.
- Wendler, JohnRoss, "With Great Power Comes Great Risk Aversion? Examining the Role of Risk Propensity in Inter-State Conflict," SAASS thesis, 2024, 103 pgs.