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The Office of Sponsored Programs also oversees the AU Research Topics List, which is comprised of questions given to Air University by organizations with the USAF and other DoD organizations. To facilitate the iterative process of research, each question also includes a list of relevant work that has been recently researched by AU students and is hosted in the AU Library's databases.

We accept topic submissions on a continual basis. If you would like to submit a topic, please contact us at au.au.research@us.af.mil. Be sure to include a short title, the question(s), the name of the organization or commander requesting the topic, and a POC with their contact information. You may also include a short background paragraph to provide context to the question(s).

Papers attached to these links represent AU student work which has been cleared by our Security and Policy Review process.  We have many more papers on relevant topics awaiting review.  Please contact OSP and we will pull and prioritize clearing papers useful to your questions and mission.

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Research Topics & Paper Repository

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Battlefield Airman for Duty in the Pacific AOR

    Better Trained and Equipped Battlefield Airman (TACP, CCT, etc.) for Duty in the Pacific AOR  

  • China’s Global Expansion and Soft Power/Economic Approaches

    How must the United States evaluate the People's Republic of China's use of economic soft power and global expansion to understand its strategic impact on the international aerospace domain?

  • Chinese Aerospace Force Modernization Across Core Mission Sets

    How have comprehensive changes to the People's Liberation Army's DOTMLPFP framework enhanced the operational effectiveness of its aerospace forces across seven critical mission areas, ranging from air defense and precision strike to space and nuclear operations?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Chinese Economic Ties to India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How does China leverage economic interdependence as a tool of statecraft to impose costs and constrain the foreign policy and security choices of key regional powers like India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Comparative Models for the Deployment of Theater Nuclear Forces in Europe and Indo-Pacific

    How do the models for credibly deploying theater nuclear forces differ between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and which elements of the European model are transferable to establish a region-specific deterrence posture in Asia?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Detention Operations in United States Indo-Pacific Command

    How must the Joint Force adapt its doctrine and policies to execute detention operations in the Indo-Pacific region despite adversary anti-access/area-denial capabilities, reserve force deployment delays, and varying partner-nation capacities and legal agreements?

  • Deterrence by Denial, Geography, and Strategic Signaling in the Indo-Pacific

    How do distinct geographic environments in the Indo-Pacific—from the First Island Chain to more distant locations like Oceania and Diego Garcia—affect the viability of a deterrence-by-denial strategy, and how must the U.S. military adapt its force posture and nuclear signaling to manage escalation risks across these diverse regions?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Effectively Assessing OAI Impacts to PRC Behavior

    How can PACAF develop effective methodologies to accurately and succinctly measure the cumulative impacts of its Operations, Activities, and Investments (OAI) on PRC perceptions and behaviors over time?

     

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Force Posture and Special Operations in the Arctic

    How must the U.S. military and Special Operations Forces adapt their Arctic force posture, technological capabilities, and interoperability with conventional forces, interagency partners, and new NATO allies like Finland and Sweden to effectively secure the northern approaches amid great-power competition?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of Air Mobility in a Kinetic/Contested Environment with China

    How must Air Mobility Command adapt its operational planning to effectively project and sustain forces in a kinetic, contested environment with China, specifically by exploring Bypass Theory and the evolution of the Critical Path for Air Mobility?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Historic PRC–Taiwan Provocation Cycle

    Through an analysis of politics, military capabilities, regional posture, economics, and the information environment, what historical patterns emerge in the People's Republic of China's military provocations toward Taiwan?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Lessons for Operations in the Pacific

    How does General George Kenney's innovative and adaptive airpower approach in the South Pacific during World War II compare to the strategic and technological requirements for a potential future conflict with China?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Temperature on Mobility Aircraft Performance in the PACAF Region

    How can a decision-making tool or vulnerability assessment framework be developed using climate projection data to assess how temperature will degrade aircraft performance and impact the projection of combat power, considering effects on operational planning, logistics, and strategic basing?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Light and Lean: ACE Maneuver Unit Footprint Reduction

    Explore the impact of reducing the overall deployment footprint of operational units during ACE operations. 

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • PLA Meteorological Challenges and Dependencies

    What are the meteorological challenges and dependencies that a PLA combined arms assault on Taiwan would face? (557 WW) 

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protracted Warfare, Indirect Approaches, and Campaigning

    How can the Joint Force integrate indirect approaches, non-attributable actions, and strategic deception into protracted campaigning to counter peer adversaries like the PRC without triggering catastrophic escalation across the conflict continuum?

  • Public Opinion and Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the role of public opinion in shaping nuclear deterrence policies and strategies?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    How can the U.S. government reform its recruitment, training, and educational frameworks to build a force with the diverse perspectives required to effectively support resistance and resilience, while also fostering a common interagency understanding and developing shared doctrine with allies?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Security Vacuums and Great Power Competition in Africa

    How could a prolonged U.S.–Iran conflict create African security vacuums exploitable by China, Russia, and Iran, and how can historical insights from past Great Power involvement guide U.S. strategy in mitigating these modern threats?

  • Sino-Indian Strategic Competition: The Line of Actual Control and the 'Necklace of Diamonds' Strategy

    How must the United States and its partners leverage strategic cooperation in the air and space domains to support India's regional maritime strategies and counter the People's Republic of China's multi-domain aggression along the Line of Actual Control?

     

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • SOF Future Requirements

    Considering key geopolitical trends, how can SOF enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Requirements

    How can NATO and national SOF, in response to key geopolitical trends, enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills, competencies, and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Talent Management, Sustainability, and Repetitive Assignments

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise adapt its talent management, retention strategies, and force sustainability programs to develop resilient personnel equipped for strategic competition and support to resistance, while reconciling conflicting service and combatant command priorities regarding repetitive geographic assignments?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • South Korea as a Power-Projection Platform and Chinese Views of U.S. Presence

    How do the People's Republic of China and the People's Liberation Army perceive the U.S. military footprint in the Indo-Pacific, and how does the potential use of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea as a regional power-projection platform impact PRC contingency planning and crisis response?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Special Operations Command Central: Geostrategic Shifts from Peak Oil, Emerging Sea Lanes, and the Changing Calculus of VEOs

    How can we better understand and anticipate shifts in the Middle East's regional balance of power by analyzing the complex interplay of diplomatic alliances, economic developments, global energy transitions, and their potential to alter the risk-reward calculus for both state and non-state actors?

  • Strategic Airlift: 2029-2041 Major Conflict Scenario

    Given the projected air and ground threat density, to what extent can the JFACC sustain operations using strategic airlift for a major conflict scenario in the 2029-2041 timeframe?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Empathy in Intelligence Analysis

    How can the skill of "strategic empathy"—the ability to understand and identify with a competitor or adversary's perspective—be effectively developed and integrated to optimize analytical capabilities in the intelligence and strategic communities?

  • Strategic Implications of Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How will emerging and disruptive technologies shape the Army's capability to deter China in the 2045 operational environment, and what are the resulting implications for force structure, doctrine, and acquisition?

  • Strategic Influence through SOF

    How can SOF systematically enhance its strategic influence capabilities by integrating the necessary authorities, synchronizing tactical actions with strategic messaging, and leveraging insights from academic and business disciplines?

  • Strategic Posture and Sustainment for Dispersed Forces in the Pacific

    How must the Joint Force adapt its logistics and sustainment architecture, integrate advanced manufacturing, and effectively distribute fuel and munition nodes to support dispersed forces in the contested Indo-Pacific, while empowering leadership to balance operational readiness against survivability?

     

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Strategic Sabotage/Irregular Warfare

    How should special operations forces optimize their irregular warfare capabilities, including strategic sabotage, to proactively disrupt peer adversaries across all instruments of national power below the threshold of armed conflict in the mid-twenty-first century?

  • Strategic Stability, Trilateral Frameworks, and the Future of Arms Control in a Multipolar World

    How must the United States explore novel trilateral arms control frameworks and strategic risk-mitigation dialogues—such as leveraging the P5 forum—to maintain strategic stability, integrate emerging technologies, and evaluate the subsequent impacts on Department of War and Air Force nuclear force structures in a multipolar world?

  • Successful Resistance Movements

    By analyzing the political-military parameters and governmental approaches that determine success and failure in conflicts against resistance movements, what are the most effective strategies for countering both armed and nonviolent resistance?

  • Support to Resistance and Resilience Approaches to Preventing or Deterring Aggression

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive framework for assessing, planning, and implementing support to resilience and resistance, incorporating human-centric strategies, measurable metrics, and lessons from past conflicts to effectively deter aggression and navigate complex civil-military dynamics?

  • Sustaining SOF Maritime Mobility

    How can persistently forward-postured SOF, in collaboration with allies and partners, sustain resilient and fiscally sustainable land, sea, and air mobility within various archipelagoes?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Technological Support to Civil Resistance and Virtual Special Warfare in the Future Operating Environment

    How must Special Operations Forces leverage emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence and secure communications—and navigate the associated security risks to effectively execute virtual special warfare and support civil resistance movements against oppressive regimes in the future operating environment?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • The Human Dimension of the PLA: Personnel, Morale, and Command Culture

    How must the United States and the Joint Force evaluate the "human dimension" of the People's Liberation Army—specifically the interplay of its personnel reforms, collective morale, and highly centralized command culture—to accurately assess its combat readiness, decision-making vulnerabilities, and overall will to fight in a high-intensity peer conflict?

  • Total Force and Homeland Defense

    How must the military identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across defense and civilian critical infrastructure, employ Joint Force capabilities for resilience and recovery, and evaluate whether to redesign reserve components into purpose-built homeland defense forces without degrading overall total force readiness and modernization?

  • Total Force Posture Shift, Indo-Pacific Deterrence, and Permanent Stationing

    How must the U.S. military adjust its Total Force posture to establish persistent Indo-Pacific deterrence, and what are the operational, economic, and quality-of-life implications—along with the strategic risks—of transitioning from rotational forces to a permanently stationed brigade combat team in South Korea?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • U.S. Alliance System, SOCOM Partnerships, and Multinational Air Operations

    How can the U.S. military apply historical lessons from its alliance system and specific insights from Special Operations Command's partner operations to shape and enhance the future integration and execution of multinational air operations?

  • U.S. Approach to Strategic Partnerships, Burden Sharing, and Technical Interoperability

    How must the Department of Defense operationalize the strategic shift toward allied burden-shifting by tailoring regional security cooperation, overhauling Foreign Military Sales to prioritize asymmetric self-defense capabilities, and focusing on data interoperability rather than platform parity during realistic multilateral exercises?

  • U.S. High Yield Weapon Strategy

    What priority should a high-yield nuclear weapon capability hold within U.S. nuclear strategy and the Program of Record, considering its potential psychological effect on adversaries' decision-making versus the physical damage it can create?

  • U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Posture and Historical Forms of Strategic Risk Management without Arms Control

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the broader U.S. military adapt their nuclear deterrence strategy, extended deterrence commitments, and capability development if the United States shifts from legally binding arms control treaties to politically binding confidence-building measures to manage strategic risk with peer adversaries?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Understanding the Will to Resist and Measuring Resilience and Resistance

    How can the military and Special Operations Forces effectively define, quantify, and measure a population's psychological "will to resist" using doctrinal analytical frameworks like PMESII-PT to better inform, shape, and predict future Support to Resistance and Resilience operations?

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Russian Cooperation with the West: Multi-Domain Arenas, Transnational Threats, and Common-Pool Resource Management

    How must the United States and its NATO allies identify and leverage transactional cooperation with the Russian Federation in shared non-military domains—such as Arctic search and rescue, Low Earth Orbit collision avoidance, and countering transnational cybercrime—to manage common-pool resources and reduce overall strategic friction amidst intense geopolitical rivalry?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Russian Training, Readiness, and Force Adaptation

    How has the Russian military adapted its training, mobilization, and readiness systems during the war in Ukraine, and what are the long-term implications of its ability to integrate combat lessons on the force's overall morale, professionalism, and future capabilities?

  • Historical Analysis: Military Assistance and Crisis Security Cooperation

    How can the U.S. military leverage historical precedent and contemporary lessons from crisis response organizations like the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine to optimize the training, equipping, and coordination of military assistance for geographically diverse partners without becoming a direct combatant or allowing adversaries to exploit these methods?

  • Comparative Models for the Deployment of Theater Nuclear Forces in Europe and Indo-Pacific

    How do the models for credibly deploying theater nuclear forces differ between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and which elements of the European model are transferable to establish a region-specific deterrence posture in Asia?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Force Posture and Special Operations in the Arctic

    How must the U.S. military and Special Operations Forces adapt their Arctic force posture, technological capabilities, and interoperability with conventional forces, interagency partners, and new NATO allies like Finland and Sweden to effectively secure the northern approaches amid great-power competition?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Russian Cyberspace Operations: Strategy, Capabilities, Commercial Support, and Influence Activities

    How must the United States assess Russia's cyberspace strategy, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign commercial technologies to anticipate retaliatory attacks, while simultaneously evaluating the evolving tactical procedures of Russian security services and their convergence of cyber warfare with influence operations?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Regime Stability and Domestic Control

    To what extent are evolving dynamics in Russian society, culture, governance, elite networks, and the national economy—along with shifts in conglomerates and domestic control mechanisms—shaping the stability of the Russian system and influencing its defense and foreign‑policy behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Defense Industrial Capability and Capacity

    To what extent can Russia sustain its war against Ukraine, modernize, and regenerate its military given the strengths, adaptations, weaknesses, and structural limits of its defense‑industrial base—shaped by sanctions, wartime economic mobilization, leadership decisions, and initiatives intended to generate competitive advantage?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Military Leadership

    To what extent are trends in Russian senior officer promotions, postings, and the emergence of a new military elite—shaped by competency, obedience, and patronage networks—revealing the future trajectory of Russian military leadership and its implications for the General Staff.

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Objectives, Adversary Alignments and Strategic Partnerships

    To what extent are shifts in Russian perceptions of NATO defense and deterrence—along with Russia’s deepening military cooperation with China, North Korea, Iran, India, Belarus, Turkey, and other regional partners—reshaping Russian strategic objectives, generating new threats and challenges for the United States, and revealing Russia’s evolving theory of competition?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Vulnerabilities

    To what extent do the vulnerabilities, risks, and biases embedded in Russian doctrine, strategy, operational concepts, tactics, and capability development—along with flawed threat perceptions, escalation pathways, and systemic weaknesses across the Russian state and military—create potential for miscalculation and escalation risks for the United States.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Logistics and Sustainment

    To what extent is Russia’s logistics and sustainment ecosystem—its wartime adaptations, modernization efforts, structural strengths, and persistent vulnerabilities—evolving in response to lessons from the war in Ukraine, and how might this trajectory shape future challenges and implications for U.S. operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Military Posture and Power Projection

    To what extent is the regional and global expansion of Russia’s military presence—its progress, obstacles, and alignment with state policy objectives—shaping future Russian posture and its ability to challenge U.S. access, basing, and operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Future Military Force Structure and Design

    To what extent are the major factors shaping Russian future force structure through 2042—its strategic priorities, programmatic continuities and cancellations, gaps between intent and implementation, and required investments—revealing Russia’s underlying military intent and the feasibility of its long‑term force development plans.

  • Russian War of War: Military Planning, Strategy and Assessment

    To what extent are lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine—and its evolving expectations of conflict with NATO—reshaping Russian strategic operations such as the Operation of Strategic Deterrence Forces (OSDF), Strategic Aerospace Operations (SAO), and the Strategic Operation of Theater Military Forces (SOTMO), and how these operations nest within and modify Russian military doctrine.

  • Russian Way of War: Doctrine and Military Thought

    To what extent is the war in Ukraine—and Russian expectations of future conflict with NATO—reshaping its doctrine, its internal debates about the conduct of contemporary and emerging warfare, and the positions of its leading strategic thinkers, including how they can be categorized and where their perspectives diverge?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • Successful Resistance Movements

    By analyzing the political-military parameters and governmental approaches that determine success and failure in conflicts against resistance movements, what are the most effective strategies for countering both armed and nonviolent resistance?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • U.S. Alliance System, SOCOM Partnerships, and Multinational Air Operations

    How can the U.S. military apply historical lessons from its alliance system and specific insights from Special Operations Command's partner operations to shape and enhance the future integration and execution of multinational air operations?

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    How can the U.S. government reform its recruitment, training, and educational frameworks to build a force with the diverse perspectives required to effectively support resistance and resilience, while also fostering a common interagency understanding and developing shared doctrine with allies?

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Total Force Posture Shift, Indo-Pacific Deterrence, and Permanent Stationing

    How must the U.S. military adjust its Total Force posture to establish persistent Indo-Pacific deterrence, and what are the operational, economic, and quality-of-life implications—along with the strategic risks—of transitioning from rotational forces to a permanently stationed brigade combat team in South Korea?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Russian Unconventional & Counter-Unconventional Warfare

    What are Russia's strategic approaches and operational capabilities for conducting both unconventional and counter-unconventional warfare?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Worldwide Deployable Dual-Capable Aircraft, Extended Deterrence, and What Comes after the B61-12

    How does the global deployment of dual-capable aircraft paired with the B61-12 impact extended deterrence and adversary perceptions beyond NATO, and what specific capabilities must the next generation of theater nuclear weapons possess to ensure a flexible, politically sustainable strategic advantage?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Security Vacuums and Great Power Competition in Africa

    How could a prolonged U.S.–Iran conflict create African security vacuums exploitable by China, Russia, and Iran, and how can historical insights from past Great Power involvement guide U.S. strategy in mitigating these modern threats?

  • Weapon System Vulnerabilities Introduced by Cloud Environments and Cyber Survivability

    How can the Air Force prioritize cyber survivability and streamline disjointed risk authorization processes to mitigate the unique vulnerabilities introduced by the integration of distributed cloud environments into critical weapon systems and ensure mission execution in contested domains?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Public Opinion and Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the role of public opinion in shaping nuclear deterrence policies and strategies?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Total Force and Homeland Defense

    How must the military identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across defense and civilian critical infrastructure, employ Joint Force capabilities for resilience and recovery, and evaluate whether to redesign reserve components into purpose-built homeland defense forces without degrading overall total force readiness and modernization?

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Understanding the Will to Resist and Measuring Resilience and Resistance

    How can the military and Special Operations Forces effectively define, quantify, and measure a population's psychological "will to resist" using doctrinal analytical frameworks like PMESII-PT to better inform, shape, and predict future Support to Resistance and Resilience operations?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • Special Operations Command Central: Geostrategic Shifts from Peak Oil, Emerging Sea Lanes, and the Changing Calculus of VEOs

    How can we better understand and anticipate shifts in the Middle East's regional balance of power by analyzing the complex interplay of diplomatic alliances, economic developments, global energy transitions, and their potential to alter the risk-reward calculus for both state and non-state actors?

  • Special Operations Command Europe: Postwar Ukraine

    How must the Ukrainian military and its specialized forces transition from a total-war footing to a sustainable peacetime defense posture while retaining critical asymmetric capabilities, optimizing reserve forces, and preparing for integration into the NATO alliance?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Strategic Empathy in Intelligence Analysis

    How can the skill of "strategic empathy"—the ability to understand and identify with a competitor or adversary's perspective—be effectively developed and integrated to optimize analytical capabilities in the intelligence and strategic communities?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Tactical Nuclear Deterrence and the Impact of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

    How do Russia's conventional losses in Ukraine affect its likelihood of using nuclear weapons, how does deterrence operate in a tactical nuclear scenario, and must traditional U.S. deterrence models and policies be modified to address tactical nuclear threats?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Technological Support to Civil Resistance and Virtual Special Warfare in the Future Operating Environment

    How must Special Operations Forces leverage emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence and secure communications—and navigate the associated security risks to effectively execute virtual special warfare and support civil resistance movements against oppressive regimes in the future operating environment?

  • U.S. High Yield Weapon Strategy

    What priority should a high-yield nuclear weapon capability hold within U.S. nuclear strategy and the Program of Record, considering its potential psychological effect on adversaries' decision-making versus the physical damage it can create?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Unmanned Warfare and the Implications of Militarily Relevant COTS Technologies

    Does the rapid proliferation of dual-use, commercial-off-the-shelf unmanned and autonomous technologies across all domains constitute a true revolution in military affairs, and how can the Department of Defense accelerate its adoption of these systems while effectively controlling their diffusion to prevent adversaries from gaining a strategic advantage?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • SOF Talent Management, Sustainability, and Repetitive Assignments

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise adapt its talent management, retention strategies, and force sustainability programs to develop resilient personnel equipped for strategic competition and support to resistance, while reconciling conflicting service and combatant command priorities regarding repetitive geographic assignments?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Support to Resistance and Resilience Approaches to Preventing or Deterring Aggression

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive framework for assessing, planning, and implementing support to resilience and resistance, incorporating human-centric strategies, measurable metrics, and lessons from past conflicts to effectively deter aggression and navigate complex civil-military dynamics?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • War Termination Processes and Prospects

    How do the contemporary dynamics of strategic patience, multi-level conflict structures, and evolving metrics of success influence the war termination process, and what empirical models and historical case studies can guide military and political leaders in negotiating effective exit strategies during protracted campaigns?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Posture and Historical Forms of Strategic Risk Management without Arms Control

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the broader U.S. military adapt their nuclear deterrence strategy, extended deterrence commitments, and capability development if the United States shifts from legally binding arms control treaties to politically binding confidence-building measures to manage strategic risk with peer adversaries?

  • Strategic Stability, Trilateral Frameworks, and the Future of Arms Control in a Multipolar World

    How must the United States explore novel trilateral arms control frameworks and strategic risk-mitigation dialogues—such as leveraging the P5 forum—to maintain strategic stability, integrate emerging technologies, and evaluate the subsequent impacts on Department of War and Air Force nuclear force structures in a multipolar world?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Sabotage/Irregular Warfare

    How should special operations forces optimize their irregular warfare capabilities, including strategic sabotage, to proactively disrupt peer adversaries across all instruments of national power below the threshold of armed conflict in the mid-twenty-first century?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Strategic Influence through SOF

    How can SOF systematically enhance its strategic influence capabilities by integrating the necessary authorities, synchronizing tactical actions with strategic messaging, and leveraging insights from academic and business disciplines?

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • SOF Requirements

    How can NATO and national SOF, in response to key geopolitical trends, enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills, competencies, and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Utilization of Cyberspace Proxies in Unconventional Warfare

    How can a review of the current legal framework and historical examples be used to develop recommendations that enable the effective and legal use of cyber proxies by SOF throughout the phases of an unconventional warfare campaign?

  • SOF Future Requirements

    Considering key geopolitical trends, how can SOF enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Asymmetric Core: Axiomatic Instability in a Peer Triad with Regional Nuclear Peripheries

    How does the application of cooperative game theory to a "Peer Triad" of major nuclear powers demonstrate that the inclusion of asymmetric regional players renders simultaneous, globally stable deterrence mathematically impossible?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Autonomy, Active Border Defenses, and Partner-Centric Approaches to Security Cooperation

    How do partner nation political will, absorptive capacity, and institutional factors shape U.S. security cooperation strategy in the Middle East, and can the implementation of active border defense constructs successfully enable these nations to assume primary responsibility for their own long-term territorial defense?

  • Battlefield Airman for Duty in the Pacific AOR

    Better Trained and Equipped Battlefield Airman (TACP, CCT, etc.) for Duty in the Pacific AOR  

  • China’s Global Expansion and Soft Power/Economic Approaches

    How must the United States evaluate the People's Republic of China's use of economic soft power and global expansion to understand its strategic impact on the international aerospace domain?

  • Chinese Aerospace Force Modernization Across Core Mission Sets

    How have comprehensive changes to the People's Liberation Army's DOTMLPFP framework enhanced the operational effectiveness of its aerospace forces across seven critical mission areas, ranging from air defense and precision strike to space and nuclear operations?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Chinese Economic Ties to India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How does China leverage economic interdependence as a tool of statecraft to impose costs and constrain the foreign policy and security choices of key regional powers like India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Comparative Models for the Deployment of Theater Nuclear Forces in Europe and Indo-Pacific

    How do the models for credibly deploying theater nuclear forces differ between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and which elements of the European model are transferable to establish a region-specific deterrence posture in Asia?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Crisis Response Preparedness, Security Cooperation, and U.S. Support to Peacekeeping Operations

    How can the United States transition from primarily financial support to directly contributing critical logistical enablers for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, and what risks regarding command and control, reimbursements, casualties, and local perceptions must be mitigated to ensure successful integration?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Security in Space-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

    How can the U.S. military integrate Cyber-Physical System concepts with advanced AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to develop a comprehensive, proactive cyber defense strategy that ensures holistic situational awareness and standardized risk mitigation across military and commercial space systems against near-peer adversaries?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Detention Operations in United States Indo-Pacific Command

    How must the Joint Force adapt its doctrine and policies to execute detention operations in the Indo-Pacific region despite adversary anti-access/area-denial capabilities, reserve force deployment delays, and varying partner-nation capacities and legal agreements?

  • Deterrence by Denial, Geography, and Strategic Signaling in the Indo-Pacific

    How do distinct geographic environments in the Indo-Pacific—from the First Island Chain to more distant locations like Oceania and Diego Garcia—affect the viability of a deterrence-by-denial strategy, and how must the U.S. military adapt its force posture and nuclear signaling to manage escalation risks across these diverse regions?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Disposition of Forces (DOF) Consolidation

    How can the dissemination, visualization, storage, and cataloging of battlespace characterization and Disposition of Forces (DOF) data be optimized through a common solution or application framework to improve usability and effectiveness for end-users?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Economic Investments and Prioritization of Efforts in Africa

    How can the U.S. military identify high-priority African nations for partnerships aimed at countering terrorism and securing critical minerals, and which engagement strategies and private-sector investment models offer the highest strategic return on investment?

  • Effect-Based Metrics Posture

    How can modeling and simulation be used to develop heuristics that connect engineering-level improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency to operationally valued capabilities within campaign scenarios?

  • Effectively Assessing OAI Impacts to PRC Behavior

    How can PACAF develop effective methodologies to accurately and succinctly measure the cumulative impacts of its Operations, Activities, and Investments (OAI) on PRC perceptions and behaviors over time?

     

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Engineering Victory and Setting the Theater

    How can the Department of War synchronize Joint logistics, reserve engineering capabilities, and strategic policy to rapidly set and sustain a protracted large-scale combat theater in the Indo-Pacific, and how might emerging technologies and digital planning tools be leveraged to optimize resource allocation across combatant commands?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Force Posture and Special Operations in the Arctic

    How must the U.S. military and Special Operations Forces adapt their Arctic force posture, technological capabilities, and interoperability with conventional forces, interagency partners, and new NATO allies like Finland and Sweden to effectively secure the northern approaches amid great-power competition?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of Air Mobility in a Kinetic/Contested Environment with China

    How must Air Mobility Command adapt its operational planning to effectively project and sustain forces in a kinetic, contested environment with China, specifically by exploring Bypass Theory and the evolution of the Critical Path for Air Mobility?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Historic PRC–Taiwan Provocation Cycle

    Through an analysis of politics, military capabilities, regional posture, economics, and the information environment, what historical patterns emerge in the People's Republic of China's military provocations toward Taiwan?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis of The Defense and Restoring Dominance in Counter-Mobility

    How can NATO leverage historical defense-in-depth lessons alongside a high-low capability mix of modernized counter-mobility, attritable loitering munitions, and cargo-launched air vehicles to deter and defeat peer adversaries along the Eastern Flank?

  • Historical Analysis: Military Assistance and Crisis Security Cooperation

    How can the U.S. military leverage historical precedent and contemporary lessons from crisis response organizations like the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine to optimize the training, equipping, and coordination of military assistance for geographically diverse partners without becoming a direct combatant or allowing adversaries to exploit these methods?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: US Army–Operated Terminals During World War II

    How can a historical study of the organization, location selection, and civil-military coordination of US Army-operated terminals during World War II inform modern military preparations and address capability gaps for large-scale mobilization and combat operations?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: World War II Southwest Pacific Area Theater of Operations Ports of Debarkation

    How can a historical analysis of US access, basing rights, and the use of key ports in the World War II Southwest Pacific Area inform modern military transportation planners about the region's geopolitical landscape?

  • Historical Lessons for Operations in the Pacific

    How does General George Kenney's innovative and adaptive airpower approach in the South Pacific during World War II compare to the strategic and technological requirements for a potential future conflict with China?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Impact of Technological Advancements, Passive Detection, and Cheap SDRs on Air Warfare

    How must the United States military adapt its Agile Combat Employment concepts to maintain overall air superiority against the proliferation of cheap, networked software-defined radios and advanced passive detection technologies that increasingly threaten to rapidly find and fix dispersed forces?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Temperature on Mobility Aircraft Performance in the PACAF Region

    How can a decision-making tool or vulnerability assessment framework be developed using climate projection data to assess how temperature will degrade aircraft performance and impact the projection of combat power, considering effects on operational planning, logistics, and strategic basing?

  • Impacts of Unmanned, Automated Platforms for Logistics Under Attack

    What are the operational requirements, platform suitability factors, and sustainment needs for autonomous unmanned platforms to effectively augment intra-theater airlift in a Logistics Under Attack scenario?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Base of India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How can an analysis of the industrial base capacity, projectability, economic growth trends, and potential for defense-sector expansion in India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia inform a U.S. cost-imposition strategy within the context of the strategic competition with China?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • In-Space Logistics, Point-to-Point Cargo Delivery, and Spacecraft Operational Energy

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the U.S. Space Force design a resilient in-space logistics framework, overcome fundamental spacecraft operational energy constraints, and evaluate point-to-point cargo delivery alternatives to balance immediate mission needs against optimal cargo staging for sustained, responsive orbital operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How can the US Army combine and integrate emerging disruptive technologies with legacy platforms to create low-cost, scalable capabilities, and what DOTMLPF-P adjustments are required to implement these systems?

  • Integrating Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge

    How must the US Army evolve its doctrine, organizational structures, and materiel to fully integrate cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations at the tactical level to sustain an information advantage during multidomain operations?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence in Strategic Competition

    How should the SOF intelligence enterprise adapt its practitioners and culture to meet the unique intelligence challenges of strategic competition, moving beyond its post-9/11 mindset to cultivate the strategic foresight and counterintelligence focus required in this new era?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • JADO Essential Information Requirements, Data Fabrics, and Joint/Coalition Interoperability

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force identify essential information requirements and employ advanced technical and policy solutions—such as zero-trust architectures and containerization—to overcome legacy classification barriers and securely integrate interagency and coalition data into a unified Joint All-Domain Command and Control data fabric?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Joint SOF Modular Formations

    How can the SOF enterprise best develop and manage joint SOF modular formations by transforming its personnel systems to cultivate the required expertise and capabilities, while ensuring the enduring relevance of core SOF principles?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Leveraging Institutional Capacity Building in Security Cooperation

    What approaches work best to leverage institutional capacity building in support of the NDS and other national security objectives, including military effectiveness, rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights?  

  • Light and Lean: ACE Maneuver Unit Footprint Reduction

    Explore the impact of reducing the overall deployment footprint of operational units during ACE operations. 

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Long-Range, Low-Fuel Consumption Turbine Engines

    How can the use of smaller, more efficient engines, such as small-scale turbofans, reduce fuel consumption while effectively accomplishing ISR, strike, and other missions in permissive to semi-contested environments, and what are the associated benefits to sustainment and overall mission capability?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Targeting

    How can SOF best utilize machine learning and AI to revolutionize the targeting process, especially by enhancing automated detection and expediting the processing of large datasets?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • Medical Operations, Hospital Outflow, and Return to Duty in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    To handle high casualties in large-scale combat operations, U.S. military medicine must execute comprehensive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to treat and return patients to duty closer to the front lines, while formalizing civilian infrastructure conversion models like Hotel2Hospital to absorb massive patient surges in the homeland.

  • Metrics of Industrial Base Capacity

    What are the key economic, political, technological, and demographic indicators that define the capacity of an industrial base? How do these metrics interact with each other and impact the overall industrial capacity of a country?  

  • Military Construction

    What specific policy, funding, and procedural reforms to the military construction process are required to accelerate the modernization of the organic industrial base so it can match the agility and execution speed of the private-sector defense industrial base?

  • Mitigating Airlift Vulnerability: Building a Resilient Army Surface Deployment Capability

    What DOTMLPF-P changes must the Army implement within its logistics enterprise to develop a resilient surface deployment capability that mitigates the Joint Force's critical vulnerability to limited strategic airlift during peer-level conflicts?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Nuclear Industrial Base and the Credibility of U.S. Deterrence

    How does the capacity of the U.S. nuclear industrial base—including infrastructure, production, and sustainment—directly affect the credibility of deterrence by signaling strategic durability or institutional weakness to allies and adversaries?

  • Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

    What are the primary drivers and potential consequences of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and what comprehensive strategies can be developed to effectively mitigate these risks?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operationalizing Irregular Warfare: How to Conduct Long-Term and Transregional Irregular Warfare Campaigns

    How can USSOCOM best support the global, long-term requirements of irregular warfare campaigning for joint all-domain operations and the joint warfighting concept, given that the current DoD structure is primarily organized for regional, large-scale combat?

  • Operationalizing Irregular Warfare: How to Conduct Long-Term and Transregional Irregular Warfare Campaigns

    How can USSOCOM overcome structural limitations and leverage unique capabilities to conduct more effective long-term and transregional Irregular Warfare campaigns in support of Joint All-Domain Operations and the Joint Warfighting Concept?

  • Operationalizing Strategic Influence and Shaping the Information Environment

    How must the Joint Force and theater commands operationalize strategic influence and integrate information operations across the competition continuum to build allied credibility, shape the narrative against near-peer adversaries, and effectively measure these efforts across the joint, interagency, and multinational enterprise?

     

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • PLA Meteorological Challenges and Dependencies

    What are the meteorological challenges and dependencies that a PLA combined arms assault on Taiwan would face? (557 WW) 

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Protracted Warfare, Indirect Approaches, and Campaigning

    How can the Joint Force integrate indirect approaches, non-attributable actions, and strategic deception into protracted campaigning to counter peer adversaries like the PRC without triggering catastrophic escalation across the conflict continuum?

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • AI in Personnel Analytics and the Civilian Hiring Process

    How can the military leverage AI to enhance the timeliness and accuracy of civilian hiring while establishing the necessary ethical guardrails, oversight mechanisms, and cultural principles to ensure that algorithm-driven personnel analytics maintain trust, the military's values, and individual dignity?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Application of AI for Global Transportation Planning

    How can the Joint deployment and distribution enterprise leverage artificial intelligence to analyze legacy transportation data sets and processes, thereby increasing its decision advantage for global military logistics?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Chinese Aerospace Force Modernization Across Core Mission Sets

    How have comprehensive changes to the People's Liberation Army's DOTMLPFP framework enhanced the operational effectiveness of its aerospace forces across seven critical mission areas, ranging from air defense and precision strike to space and nuclear operations?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • Crowdsourcing

    How can the Air Force more effectively crowdsource solutions to capability and capacity gaps across the industrial-military complex while balancing security concerns? 

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Security in Space-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

    How can the U.S. military integrate Cyber-Physical System concepts with advanced AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to develop a comprehensive, proactive cyber defense strategy that ensures holistic situational awareness and standardized risk mitigation across military and commercial space systems against near-peer adversaries?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Data Convergence, Analytics, and Intelligence Sensor Data Flow in Information Warfare

    How must the military adapt Army tactical data convergence concepts and reengineer intelligence sensor data flows to automate cross-domain sharing, enhance analytical collaboration, and preserve decision advantage within the information warfare environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Develop Improved Assessments of Landing Weights

    What is the full fiscal and maintenance readiness impact of mobility aircraft frequently landing with excessive weight due to carrying more fuel than required, and how does this practice affect both short and long-term aircraft sustainment?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Force Protection: Threats and Risks to SOF

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive strategy to mitigate the growing technical and privacy threats from the digital environment to its personnel and operations, balancing operational security with personal privacy by leveraging new technologies, fostering multi-sector collaboration, and creating effective risk mitigation strategies?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • Disposition of Forces (DOF) Consolidation

    How can the dissemination, visualization, storage, and cataloging of battlespace characterization and Disposition of Forces (DOF) data be optimized through a common solution or application framework to improve usability and effectiveness for end-users?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Effect-Based Metrics Posture

    How can modeling and simulation be used to develop heuristics that connect engineering-level improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency to operationally valued capabilities within campaign scenarios?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Engineering Victory and Setting the Theater

    How can the Department of War synchronize Joint logistics, reserve engineering capabilities, and strategic policy to rapidly set and sustain a protracted large-scale combat theater in the Indo-Pacific, and how might emerging technologies and digital planning tools be leveraged to optimize resource allocation across combatant commands?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Epic Fury: Lessons Learned

    What lessons can be learned from Operation EPIC FURY to identify and formalize the most effective ad-hoc tactical C2 integration efforts into enduring Air Force and Joint air and missile defense systems?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis of The Defense and Restoring Dominance in Counter-Mobility

    How can NATO leverage historical defense-in-depth lessons alongside a high-low capability mix of modernized counter-mobility, attritable loitering munitions, and cargo-launched air vehicles to deter and defeat peer adversaries along the Eastern Flank?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Technological Advancements, Passive Detection, and Cheap SDRs on Air Warfare

    How must the United States military adapt its Agile Combat Employment concepts to maintain overall air superiority against the proliferation of cheap, networked software-defined radios and advanced passive detection technologies that increasingly threaten to rapidly find and fix dispersed forces?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Temperature on Mobility Aircraft Performance in the PACAF Region

    How can a decision-making tool or vulnerability assessment framework be developed using climate projection data to assess how temperature will degrade aircraft performance and impact the projection of combat power, considering effects on operational planning, logistics, and strategic basing?

  • Impacts of Unmanned, Automated Platforms for Logistics Under Attack

    What are the operational requirements, platform suitability factors, and sustainment needs for autonomous unmanned platforms to effectively augment intra-theater airlift in a Logistics Under Attack scenario?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing AI/ML Tool Suites for Cyber and Information Operations

    How must the military develop, integrate, and govern AI and machine learning tool suites to safely automate complex offensive and defensive cyber tasks, thereby enhancing the overall pace and quality of Information Operations?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Base of India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How can an analysis of the industrial base capacity, projectability, economic growth trends, and potential for defense-sector expansion in India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia inform a U.S. cost-imposition strategy within the context of the strategic competition with China?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How can the US Army combine and integrate emerging disruptive technologies with legacy platforms to create low-cost, scalable capabilities, and what DOTMLPF-P adjustments are required to implement these systems?

  • Integrating Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge

    How must the US Army evolve its doctrine, organizational structures, and materiel to fully integrate cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations at the tactical level to sustain an information advantage during multidomain operations?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Light and Lean: ACE Maneuver Unit Footprint Reduction

    Explore the impact of reducing the overall deployment footprint of operational units during ACE operations. 

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Long-Range, Low-Fuel Consumption Turbine Engines

    How can the use of smaller, more efficient engines, such as small-scale turbofans, reduce fuel consumption while effectively accomplishing ISR, strike, and other missions in permissive to semi-contested environments, and what are the associated benefits to sustainment and overall mission capability?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Metrics of Industrial Base Capacity

    What are the key economic, political, technological, and demographic indicators that define the capacity of an industrial base? How do these metrics interact with each other and impact the overall industrial capacity of a country?  

  • Mission Command

    How can military commanders integrate AI into battle command and decision-making systems without undermining the core tenets of mission command, mutual trust, and disciplined initiative?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Individuals, Personal Relationships and Security Cooperation Out-Comes

    How can the nuanced effects of relationship-building programs in security cooperation be empirically measured to understand how factors like shared values, trust, and intellectual interoperability translate into enhanced burden-sharing and institutional change, despite personnel turnover and political complexities?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operationalizing the Drone Effect and Integrating Remotely Piloted Aircraft in Joint All-Domain Operations

    How must the United States Air Force conduct a comprehensive mission substitution analysis to effectively integrate Remotely Piloted Aircraft into Joint All-Domain Operations, optimizing fuel efficiency, logistical sustainment, and mission capabilities across permissive and semi-contested environments?

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Optimizing Information Warfare and Cyber Force Structures

    How must the United States Air Force and Department of Defense optimize their current cyber force structures and reorganize their institutional frameworks to accelerate the development and execution of integrated Information Warfare capabilities?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruitment, Training, Development, Retention, and Analytic Certification of Air Force Intelligence Personnel

    How must the Air Force reform its recruiting, development, and retention pipelines for intelligence personnel to integrate emerging data science and space-based capabilities, and can Analytic Certification serve as a viable framework to enhance the overall effectiveness of the Intelligence Community?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Cyberspace Operations: Strategy, Capabilities, Commercial Support, and Influence Activities

    How must the United States assess Russia's cyberspace strategy, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign commercial technologies to anticipate retaliatory attacks, while simultaneously evaluating the evolving tactical procedures of Russian security services and their convergence of cyber warfare with influence operations?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Defense Industrial Capability and Capacity

    To what extent can Russia sustain its war against Ukraine, modernize, and regenerate its military given the strengths, adaptations, weaknesses, and structural limits of its defense‑industrial base—shaped by sanctions, wartime economic mobilization, leadership decisions, and initiatives intended to generate competitive advantage?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Regime Stability and Domestic Control

    To what extent are evolving dynamics in Russian society, culture, governance, elite networks, and the national economy—along with shifts in conglomerates and domestic control mechanisms—shaping the stability of the Russian system and influencing its defense and foreign‑policy behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Objectives, Adversary Alignments and Strategic Partnerships

    To what extent are shifts in Russian perceptions of NATO defense and deterrence—along with Russia’s deepening military cooperation with China, North Korea, Iran, India, Belarus, Turkey, and other regional partners—reshaping Russian strategic objectives, generating new threats and challenges for the United States, and revealing Russia’s evolving theory of competition?

  • Russian Training, Readiness, and Force Adaptation

    How has the Russian military adapted its training, mobilization, and readiness systems during the war in Ukraine, and what are the long-term implications of its ability to integrate combat lessons on the force's overall morale, professionalism, and future capabilities?

  • Russian Way of War: Future Military Force Structure and Design

    To what extent are the major factors shaping Russian future force structure through 2042—its strategic priorities, programmatic continuities and cancellations, gaps between intent and implementation, and required investments—revealing Russia’s underlying military intent and the feasibility of its long‑term force development plans.

  • Russian Way of War: Military Logistics and Sustainment

    To what extent is Russia’s logistics and sustainment ecosystem—its wartime adaptations, modernization efforts, structural strengths, and persistent vulnerabilities—evolving in response to lessons from the war in Ukraine, and how might this trajectory shape future challenges and implications for U.S. operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Vulnerabilities

    To what extent do the vulnerabilities, risks, and biases embedded in Russian doctrine, strategy, operational concepts, tactics, and capability development—along with flawed threat perceptions, escalation pathways, and systemic weaknesses across the Russian state and military—create potential for miscalculation and escalation risks for the United States.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Security Cooperation and Capacity Building: Methods and Evidence

    How can the Department of Defense optimize its assessment, monitoring, and evaluation methodologies and improve data accessibility to build a rigorous evidence base that accurately measures the effectiveness of defense capacity building programs in cultivating capable, interoperable allies and perform that mission?

  • Security Cooperation in an Evolving Strategic Context

    Existing research on security cooperation needs updating because the global context has changed significantly due to shifts in military technology, the nature of war, and the strategic environment. It is now essential to examine how emerging technologies, new warfighting domains, and global competition impact U.S. national security strategy and its security cooperation activities.

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • SOF Future Requirements

    Considering key geopolitical trends, how can SOF enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Requirements

    How can NATO and national SOF, in response to key geopolitical trends, enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills, competencies, and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Targeting in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    How can SOF adapt its targeting processes, refined during two decades of counterterrorism, for the complexities of Large-Scale Combat Operations, by defining its unique contributions to the joint targeting process and leveraging advanced technologies for effective dynamic targeting in a multi-domain environment?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space Force Basing

    Analyze various aspects of the future of Space Force basing.

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF U.S. Strategic Command Nexus: How to Build Capability Greater than the Sum of Its Parts to Achieve Joint Effects

    How can space, cyber, SOF, and STRATCOM entities move beyond ad-hoc relationships to form an enduring partnership that allows for formal joint training and deployment, enabling combatant commands to better employ these integrated forces to achieve strategic objectives?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF-U.S. Strategic Command Nexus

    How can the synergy between space, cyber, SOF, and U.S. Strategic Command be maximized to achieve greater joint effects in future conflicts, considering the necessary organizational structures, joint training processes, and the associated legal and policy implications?

  • Special Operations Command Central: Geostrategic Shifts from Peak Oil, Emerging Sea Lanes, and the Changing Calculus of VEOs

    How can we better understand and anticipate shifts in the Middle East's regional balance of power by analyzing the complex interplay of diplomatic alliances, economic developments, global energy transitions, and their potential to alter the risk-reward calculus for both state and non-state actors?

  • Strategic Basing, Fuel Benchmarking, and High-Fidelity Simulation

    How can the Air Force leverage high-fidelity training simulations for new aircraft like the KC-46 and F-35 to generate comparative metrics that inform strategic basing decisions while simultaneously establishing reliable fuel usage benchmarks for optimized mission planning and anomaly detection?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Implications of Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How will emerging and disruptive technologies shape the Army's capability to deter China in the 2045 operational environment, and what are the resulting implications for force structure, doctrine, and acquisition?

  • Strategic Influence through SOF

    How can SOF systematically enhance its strategic influence capabilities by integrating the necessary authorities, synchronizing tactical actions with strategic messaging, and leveraging insights from academic and business disciplines?

  • Strategic Posture and Sustainment for Dispersed Forces in the Pacific

    How must the Joint Force adapt its logistics and sustainment architecture, integrate advanced manufacturing, and effectively distribute fuel and munition nodes to support dispersed forces in the contested Indo-Pacific, while empowering leadership to balance operational readiness against survivability?

     

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Support to Resistance and Resilience Approaches to Preventing or Deterring Aggression

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive framework for assessing, planning, and implementing support to resilience and resistance, incorporating human-centric strategies, measurable metrics, and lessons from past conflicts to effectively deter aggression and navigate complex civil-military dynamics?

  • Sustaining SOF Maritime Mobility

    How can persistently forward-postured SOF, in collaboration with allies and partners, sustain resilient and fiscally sustainable land, sea, and air mobility within various archipelagoes?

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • AI in Personnel Analytics and the Civilian Hiring Process

    How can the military leverage AI to enhance the timeliness and accuracy of civilian hiring while establishing the necessary ethical guardrails, oversight mechanisms, and cultural principles to ensure that algorithm-driven personnel analytics maintain trust, the military's values, and individual dignity?

  • Application of AI for Global Transportation Planning

    How can the Joint deployment and distribution enterprise leverage artificial intelligence to analyze legacy transportation data sets and processes, thereby increasing its decision advantage for global military logistics?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Security in Space-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

    How can the U.S. military integrate Cyber-Physical System concepts with advanced AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to develop a comprehensive, proactive cyber defense strategy that ensures holistic situational awareness and standardized risk mitigation across military and commercial space systems against near-peer adversaries?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Data Convergence, Analytics, and Intelligence Sensor Data Flow in Information Warfare

    How must the military adapt Army tactical data convergence concepts and reengineer intelligence sensor data flows to automate cross-domain sharing, enhance analytical collaboration, and preserve decision advantage within the information warfare environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Digital Force Protection: Threats and Risks to SOF

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive strategy to mitigate the growing technical and privacy threats from the digital environment to its personnel and operations, balancing operational security with personal privacy by leveraging new technologies, fostering multi-sector collaboration, and creating effective risk mitigation strategies?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Disposition of Forces (DOF) Consolidation

    How can the dissemination, visualization, storage, and cataloging of battlespace characterization and Disposition of Forces (DOF) data be optimized through a common solution or application framework to improve usability and effectiveness for end-users?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Effect-Based Metrics Posture

    How can modeling and simulation be used to develop heuristics that connect engineering-level improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency to operationally valued capabilities within campaign scenarios?

  • Effectively Assessing OAI Impacts to PRC Behavior

    How can PACAF develop effective methodologies to accurately and succinctly measure the cumulative impacts of its Operations, Activities, and Investments (OAI) on PRC perceptions and behaviors over time?

     

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis of The Defense and Restoring Dominance in Counter-Mobility

    How can NATO leverage historical defense-in-depth lessons alongside a high-low capability mix of modernized counter-mobility, attritable loitering munitions, and cargo-launched air vehicles to deter and defeat peer adversaries along the Eastern Flank?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Unmanned, Automated Platforms for Logistics Under Attack

    What are the operational requirements, platform suitability factors, and sustainment needs for autonomous unmanned platforms to effectively augment intra-theater airlift in a Logistics Under Attack scenario?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing AI/ML Tool Suites for Cyber and Information Operations

    How must the military develop, integrate, and govern AI and machine learning tool suites to safely automate complex offensive and defensive cyber tasks, thereby enhancing the overall pace and quality of Information Operations?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How can the US Army combine and integrate emerging disruptive technologies with legacy platforms to create low-cost, scalable capabilities, and what DOTMLPF-P adjustments are required to implement these systems?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • JADO Essential Information Requirements, Data Fabrics, and Joint/Coalition Interoperability

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force identify essential information requirements and employ advanced technical and policy solutions—such as zero-trust architectures and containerization—to overcome legacy classification barriers and securely integrate interagency and coalition data into a unified Joint All-Domain Command and Control data fabric?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Long-Range, Low-Fuel Consumption Turbine Engines

    How can the use of smaller, more efficient engines, such as small-scale turbofans, reduce fuel consumption while effectively accomplishing ISR, strike, and other missions in permissive to semi-contested environments, and what are the associated benefits to sustainment and overall mission capability?

  • Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Targeting

    How can SOF best utilize machine learning and AI to revolutionize the targeting process, especially by enhancing automated detection and expediting the processing of large datasets?

  • Mission Command

    How can military commanders integrate AI into battle command and decision-making systems without undermining the core tenets of mission command, mutual trust, and disciplined initiative?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operationalizing Strategic Influence and Shaping the Information Environment

    How must the Joint Force and theater commands operationalize strategic influence and integrate information operations across the competition continuum to build allied credibility, shape the narrative against near-peer adversaries, and effectively measure these efforts across the joint, interagency, and multinational enterprise?

     

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruitment, Training, Development, Retention, and Analytic Certification of Air Force Intelligence Personnel

    How must the Air Force reform its recruiting, development, and retention pipelines for intelligence personnel to integrate emerging data science and space-based capabilities, and can Analytic Certification serve as a viable framework to enhance the overall effectiveness of the Intelligence Community?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Defense Industrial Capability and Capacity

    To what extent can Russia sustain its war against Ukraine, modernize, and regenerate its military given the strengths, adaptations, weaknesses, and structural limits of its defense‑industrial base—shaped by sanctions, wartime economic mobilization, leadership decisions, and initiatives intended to generate competitive advantage?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Training, Readiness, and Force Adaptation

    How has the Russian military adapted its training, mobilization, and readiness systems during the war in Ukraine, and what are the long-term implications of its ability to integrate combat lessons on the force's overall morale, professionalism, and future capabilities?

  • Russian Way of War: Future Military Force Structure and Design

    To what extent are the major factors shaping Russian future force structure through 2042—its strategic priorities, programmatic continuities and cancellations, gaps between intent and implementation, and required investments—revealing Russia’s underlying military intent and the feasibility of its long‑term force development plans.

  • Russian Way of War: Military Logistics and Sustainment

    To what extent is Russia’s logistics and sustainment ecosystem—its wartime adaptations, modernization efforts, structural strengths, and persistent vulnerabilities—evolving in response to lessons from the war in Ukraine, and how might this trajectory shape future challenges and implications for U.S. operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Vulnerabilities

    To what extent do the vulnerabilities, risks, and biases embedded in Russian doctrine, strategy, operational concepts, tactics, and capability development—along with flawed threat perceptions, escalation pathways, and systemic weaknesses across the Russian state and military—create potential for miscalculation and escalation risks for the United States.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • SOF Targeting in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    How can SOF adapt its targeting processes, refined during two decades of counterterrorism, for the complexities of Large-Scale Combat Operations, by defining its unique contributions to the joint targeting process and leveraging advanced technologies for effective dynamic targeting in a multi-domain environment?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF U.S. Strategic Command Nexus: How to Build Capability Greater than the Sum of Its Parts to Achieve Joint Effects

    How can space, cyber, SOF, and STRATCOM entities move beyond ad-hoc relationships to form an enduring partnership that allows for formal joint training and deployment, enabling combatant commands to better employ these integrated forces to achieve strategic objectives?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF-U.S. Strategic Command Nexus

    How can the synergy between space, cyber, SOF, and U.S. Strategic Command be maximized to achieve greater joint effects in future conflicts, considering the necessary organizational structures, joint training processes, and the associated legal and policy implications?

  • Strategic Basing, Fuel Benchmarking, and High-Fidelity Simulation

    How can the Air Force leverage high-fidelity training simulations for new aircraft like the KC-46 and F-35 to generate comparative metrics that inform strategic basing decisions while simultaneously establishing reliable fuel usage benchmarks for optimized mission planning and anomaly detection?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Implications of Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How will emerging and disruptive technologies shape the Army's capability to deter China in the 2045 operational environment, and what are the resulting implications for force structure, doctrine, and acquisition?

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • The Calculus of Conviction: Recalibrating Utility Functions for Theocratic Autocracies in Nuclear Deterrence

    How can nuclear deterrence theory be recalibrated by replacing classic outcome-based models with language-based utility functions and predictive mathematical engines to accurately forecast escalation by theocratic autocracies in multi-polar environments?

  • The Limits of AI and Big Data Technology

    What are the inherent vulnerabilities, cultural misconceptions, and data biases associated with the Department of War's rapid adoption of AI and Big Data, and how can the military mitigate these risks to strategically apply these tools across both technical and sociopolitical domains like irregular warfare?

  • Total Force Posture Shift, Indo-Pacific Deterrence, and Permanent Stationing

    How must the U.S. military adjust its Total Force posture to establish persistent Indo-Pacific deterrence, and what are the operational, economic, and quality-of-life implications—along with the strategic risks—of transitioning from rotational forces to a permanently stationed brigade combat team in South Korea?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • Trustworthy Integration of Large Language Models: Data Ingestion, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and Analytic Tradecraft

    How must the United States Air Force engineer reliable Large Language Model pipelines—leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation and fine-tuning techniques—to securely parse widespread datasets while strictly adhering to Intelligence Community Directive 203's analytic tradecraft standards to prevent hallucinations and ensure verifiable intelligence outputs?

  • Unmanned Warfare and the Implications of Militarily Relevant COTS Technologies

    Does the rapid proliferation of dual-use, commercial-off-the-shelf unmanned and autonomous technologies across all domains constitute a true revolution in military affairs, and how can the Department of Defense accelerate its adoption of these systems while effectively controlling their diffusion to prevent adversaries from gaining a strategic advantage?

  • Virtual Reality-Based Embodied Cognition Training

    How can research investigate the effectiveness of VR-based simulations for enhancing embodied cognition to develop spatial reasoning, problem-solving skills, and creativity within SOF?

  • Weapon System Vulnerabilities Introduced by Cloud Environments and Cyber Survivability

    How can the Air Force prioritize cyber survivability and streamline disjointed risk authorization processes to mitigate the unique vulnerabilities introduced by the integration of distributed cloud environments into critical weapon systems and ensure mission execution in contested domains?

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Battlefield Airman for Duty in the Pacific AOR

    Better Trained and Equipped Battlefield Airman (TACP, CCT, etc.) for Duty in the Pacific AOR  

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • CNI--How to Integrate Conventional and Nuclear Munition on American Bomber and Fighter Aircraft

    Given the shift in the modern warfare paradigm, should the U.S. revisit its Cold War-era policy that restricts the co-loading of conventional and nuclear weapons on the same aircraft?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Security in Space-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

    How can the U.S. military integrate Cyber-Physical System concepts with advanced AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to develop a comprehensive, proactive cyber defense strategy that ensures holistic situational awareness and standardized risk mitigation across military and commercial space systems against near-peer adversaries?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Develop Improved Assessments of Landing Weights

    What is the full fiscal and maintenance readiness impact of mobility aircraft frequently landing with excessive weight due to carrying more fuel than required, and how does this practice affect both short and long-term aircraft sustainment?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Effect-Based Metrics Posture

    How can modeling and simulation be used to develop heuristics that connect engineering-level improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency to operationally valued capabilities within campaign scenarios?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Epic Fury: Lessons Learned

    What lessons can be learned from Operation EPIC FURY to identify and formalize the most effective ad-hoc tactical C2 integration efforts into enduring Air Force and Joint air and missile defense systems?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Formation and Culture of the Space Force

    How must the U.S. Space Force manage its cross-service personnel integration and structural evolution to overcome legacy institutional thinking, cultivate a unified service identity, and define the necessity and execution of a distinct domain-specific warfighting mindset?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of Air Mobility in a Kinetic/Contested Environment with China

    How must Air Mobility Command adapt its operational planning to effectively project and sustain forces in a kinetic, contested environment with China, specifically by exploring Bypass Theory and the evolution of the Critical Path for Air Mobility?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Ground-Based C2 in Forward Theaters

     How can USAF leverage planned ABADS MD fielding to enable a resilient distributed ground-based command and control capability in forward theaters? What DOTmLPF-P changes are needed to support this?

  • Ground-Based Fuel Ecosystem

    Considering the entire ground-based fuel ecosystem, to what extent will bases in the Forward and Sustaining Installations Categories be able to generate the required Combat Air Force sorties to meet Joint Force Commander objectives in the 2029-2041 timeframe?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis of The Defense and Restoring Dominance in Counter-Mobility

    How can NATO leverage historical defense-in-depth lessons alongside a high-low capability mix of modernized counter-mobility, attritable loitering munitions, and cargo-launched air vehicles to deter and defeat peer adversaries along the Eastern Flank?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Lessons for Operations in the Pacific

    How does General George Kenney's innovative and adaptive airpower approach in the South Pacific during World War II compare to the strategic and technological requirements for a potential future conflict with China?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • How to Derive Confidence in Reliability in Low-Density Critical Assets

    How can the military effectively evaluate and express changes in reliability confidence over time for low-density critical assets when limited stockpile sizes preclude regular live-release testing?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact of Technological Advancements, Passive Detection, and Cheap SDRs on Air Warfare

    How must the United States military adapt its Agile Combat Employment concepts to maintain overall air superiority against the proliferation of cheap, networked software-defined radios and advanced passive detection technologies that increasingly threaten to rapidly find and fix dispersed forces?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Temperature on Mobility Aircraft Performance in the PACAF Region

    How can a decision-making tool or vulnerability assessment framework be developed using climate projection data to assess how temperature will degrade aircraft performance and impact the projection of combat power, considering effects on operational planning, logistics, and strategic basing?

  • Impacts of Unmanned, Automated Platforms for Logistics Under Attack

    What are the operational requirements, platform suitability factors, and sustainment needs for autonomous unmanned platforms to effectively augment intra-theater airlift in a Logistics Under Attack scenario?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing AI/ML Tool Suites for Cyber and Information Operations

    How must the military develop, integrate, and govern AI and machine learning tool suites to safely automate complex offensive and defensive cyber tasks, thereby enhancing the overall pace and quality of Information Operations?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • In-Space Logistics, Point-to-Point Cargo Delivery, and Spacecraft Operational Energy

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the U.S. Space Force design a resilient in-space logistics framework, overcome fundamental spacecraft operational energy constraints, and evaluate point-to-point cargo delivery alternatives to balance immediate mission needs against optimal cargo staging for sustained, responsive orbital operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge

    How must the US Army evolve its doctrine, organizational structures, and materiel to fully integrate cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations at the tactical level to sustain an information advantage during multidomain operations?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Integration, Training, and the Evolution of Mission Ready / Multi-Capable Airmen

    How should the Air Force evolve its integration models to optimize human capital for Great Power Competition, specifically by evaluating the creation of a dedicated Mission Ready Airman AFSC for Agile Combat Employment and fully integrating specialized career fields, like 1C3 Command Post Controllers, into the nuclear enterprise's Sentinel Integrated Command Centers?

  • Intel Fusion

    Can a repeatable process be developed to create cross-functional Analysis and Exploitation Teams capable of producing high-quality reports that meet theater requirements within three months of their initial establishment?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • JADO Essential Information Requirements, Data Fabrics, and Joint/Coalition Interoperability

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force identify essential information requirements and employ advanced technical and policy solutions—such as zero-trust architectures and containerization—to overcome legacy classification barriers and securely integrate interagency and coalition data into a unified Joint All-Domain Command and Control data fabric?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Leadership in Combat Wings

    How must the USAF officer development paradigm shift to cultivate leaders with the necessary breadth of knowledge and mission-focused perspective required to effectively command the new multi-functional Combat Wing formations?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Light and Lean: ACE Maneuver Unit Footprint Reduction

    Explore the impact of reducing the overall deployment footprint of operational units during ACE operations. 

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Long-Range, Low-Fuel Consumption Turbine Engines

    How can the use of smaller, more efficient engines, such as small-scale turbofans, reduce fuel consumption while effectively accomplishing ISR, strike, and other missions in permissive to semi-contested environments, and what are the associated benefits to sustainment and overall mission capability?

  • Medical Operations, Hospital Outflow, and Return to Duty in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    To handle high casualties in large-scale combat operations, U.S. military medicine must execute comprehensive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to treat and return patients to duty closer to the front lines, while formalizing civilian infrastructure conversion models like Hotel2Hospital to absorb massive patient surges in the homeland.

  • Missions for the USSF: Planetary Defense

    What specific roles and responsibilities should the U.S. Space Force assume in the critical areas of asteroid detection and planetary defense?

  • Mitigating Airlift Vulnerability: Building a Resilient Army Surface Deployment Capability

    What DOTMLPF-P changes must the Army implement within its logistics enterprise to develop a resilient surface deployment capability that mitigates the Joint Force's critical vulnerability to limited strategic airlift during peer-level conflicts?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Nuclear Wargaming, Simulation Realism, and the Lessons Learned Pipeline

    How must the United States Air Force and the broader nuclear enterprise overcome systemic bottlenecks and cultural barriers to modernize wargaming realism, leveraging historical lessons and AI-enabled analysis to translate simulation data into actionable doctrine without compromising the readiness of on-alert deterrent forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operationalizing the Drone Effect and Integrating Remotely Piloted Aircraft in Joint All-Domain Operations

    How must the United States Air Force conduct a comprehensive mission substitution analysis to effectively integrate Remotely Piloted Aircraft into Joint All-Domain Operations, optimizing fuel efficiency, logistical sustainment, and mission capabilities across permissive and semi-contested environments?

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimization of Cargo Processing, Load Planning Tools, and Supply Chain Velocity

    How must the United States Air Force optimize the global positioning of its mobility fleet and integrate precision cargo processing with advanced load planning tools to eliminate supply chain bottlenecks, maximize fuel efficiency, and enhance overall global power projection?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Information Warfare and Cyber Force Structures

    How must the United States Air Force and Department of Defense optimize their current cyber force structures and reorganize their institutional frameworks to accelerate the development and execution of integrated Information Warfare capabilities?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • PLA Meteorological Challenges and Dependencies

    What are the meteorological challenges and dependencies that a PLA combined arms assault on Taiwan would face? (557 WW) 

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruitment, Training, Development, Retention, and Analytic Certification of Air Force Intelligence Personnel

    How must the Air Force reform its recruiting, development, and retention pipelines for intelligence personnel to integrate emerging data science and space-based capabilities, and can Analytic Certification serve as a viable framework to enhance the overall effectiveness of the Intelligence Community?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Reevaluating Educational Experience and Generational Differences

    How must the military adapt its recruitment, training, and physical or educational standards to accommodate generational differences and attract digital natives for specialized roles—like cyber and information operations—without degrading the professional standards of the broader force?

  • Resourcing and Deterrence Prioritization in the Nuclear Enterprise

    How must the Department of the Air Force balance strategic resourcing and optimize long-term budgetary trade-offs between the physical security, sustainment, and certification of nuclear weapons versus the acquisition and survivability of modernized delivery platforms (such as Sentinel, B-21, and LRSO) to maintain a credible and effective strategic deterrent?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Cyberspace Operations: Strategy, Capabilities, Commercial Support, and Influence Activities

    How must the United States assess Russia's cyberspace strategy, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign commercial technologies to anticipate retaliatory attacks, while simultaneously evaluating the evolving tactical procedures of Russian security services and their convergence of cyber warfare with influence operations?

  • Russian War of War: Military Planning, Strategy and Assessment

    To what extent are lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine—and its evolving expectations of conflict with NATO—reshaping Russian strategic operations such as the Operation of Strategic Deterrence Forces (OSDF), Strategic Aerospace Operations (SAO), and the Strategic Operation of Theater Military Forces (SOTMO), and how these operations nest within and modify Russian military doctrine.

  • Russian Way of War: Doctrine and Military Thought

    To what extent is the war in Ukraine—and Russian expectations of future conflict with NATO—reshaping its doctrine, its internal debates about the conduct of contemporary and emerging warfare, and the positions of its leading strategic thinkers, including how they can be categorized and where their perspectives diverge?

  • Russian Way of War: Future Military Force Structure and Design

    To what extent are the major factors shaping Russian future force structure through 2042—its strategic priorities, programmatic continuities and cancellations, gaps between intent and implementation, and required investments—revealing Russia’s underlying military intent and the feasibility of its long‑term force development plans.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Interdependence, Interoperability and Integration with Conventional Forces

    How can Special Operations Forces and Conventional Forces enhance their interdependence, interoperability, and integration to create a decisive joint force advantage over adversaries within the frameworks of Joint All-Domain Operations and the Joint Warfighting Concept?

  • SOF Targeting in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    How can SOF adapt its targeting processes, refined during two decades of counterterrorism, for the complexities of Large-Scale Combat Operations, by defining its unique contributions to the joint targeting process and leveraging advanced technologies for effective dynamic targeting in a multi-domain environment?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • South Korea as a Power-Projection Platform and Chinese Views of U.S. Presence

    How do the People's Republic of China and the People's Liberation Army perceive the U.S. military footprint in the Indo-Pacific, and how does the potential use of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea as a regional power-projection platform impact PRC contingency planning and crisis response?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space Force Basing

    Analyze various aspects of the future of Space Force basing.

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF U.S. Strategic Command Nexus: How to Build Capability Greater than the Sum of Its Parts to Achieve Joint Effects

    How can space, cyber, SOF, and STRATCOM entities move beyond ad-hoc relationships to form an enduring partnership that allows for formal joint training and deployment, enabling combatant commands to better employ these integrated forces to achieve strategic objectives?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF-U.S. Strategic Command Nexus

    How can the synergy between space, cyber, SOF, and U.S. Strategic Command be maximized to achieve greater joint effects in future conflicts, considering the necessary organizational structures, joint training processes, and the associated legal and policy implications?

  • Strategic Airlift: 2029-2041 Major Conflict Scenario

    Given the projected air and ground threat density, to what extent can the JFACC sustain operations using strategic airlift for a major conflict scenario in the 2029-2041 timeframe?

  • Strategic Basing, Fuel Benchmarking, and High-Fidelity Simulation

    How can the Air Force leverage high-fidelity training simulations for new aircraft like the KC-46 and F-35 to generate comparative metrics that inform strategic basing decisions while simultaneously establishing reliable fuel usage benchmarks for optimized mission planning and anomaly detection?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Leadership, Force Development, and Career Path Professionalization in JADO/JADC2

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt strategic leadership practices, reform talent management structures, and evaluate the creation of a formalized Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) career field to successfully inculcate a joint culture and prepare personnel for 21st-century multi-domain conflict?

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Strategic Sabotage/Irregular Warfare

    How should special operations forces optimize their irregular warfare capabilities, including strategic sabotage, to proactively disrupt peer adversaries across all instruments of national power below the threshold of armed conflict in the mid-twenty-first century?

  • Sustaining SOF Maritime Mobility

    How can persistently forward-postured SOF, in collaboration with allies and partners, sustain resilient and fiscally sustainable land, sea, and air mobility within various archipelagoes?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Total Force and Homeland Defense

    How must the military identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across defense and civilian critical infrastructure, employ Joint Force capabilities for resilience and recovery, and evaluate whether to redesign reserve components into purpose-built homeland defense forces without degrading overall total force readiness and modernization?

  • Training and Education for Space Professionals

    How should the U.S. Space Force evolve the education and training of space professionals by evaluating the necessity of mandatory STEM degrees, integrating civilian space courses, and leveraging partnerships with universities, commercial agencies, and international allies to meet future operational requirements?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • Trustworthy Integration of Large Language Models: Data Ingestion, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and Analytic Tradecraft

    How must the United States Air Force engineer reliable Large Language Model pipelines—leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation and fine-tuning techniques—to securely parse widespread datasets while strictly adhering to Intelligence Community Directive 203's analytic tradecraft standards to prevent hallucinations and ensure verifiable intelligence outputs?

  • U.S. Alliance System, SOCOM Partnerships, and Multinational Air Operations

    How can the U.S. military apply historical lessons from its alliance system and specific insights from Special Operations Command's partner operations to shape and enhance the future integration and execution of multinational air operations?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Unmanned Warfare and the Implications of Militarily Relevant COTS Technologies

    Does the rapid proliferation of dual-use, commercial-off-the-shelf unmanned and autonomous technologies across all domains constitute a true revolution in military affairs, and how can the Department of Defense accelerate its adoption of these systems while effectively controlling their diffusion to prevent adversaries from gaining a strategic advantage?

  • USAF Supply Chain Protection and Cyber Weapon System Infrastructure Accreditation

    How can the Air Force holistically protect its critical IT networks by integrating physical supply chain security and chain of custody best practices with a streamlined, enterprise-wide accreditation process that resolves existing Risk Management Framework conflicts between base enclaves and cyber weapon systems?

  • Utilization of Cyberspace Proxies in Unconventional Warfare

    How can a review of the current legal framework and historical examples be used to develop recommendations that enable the effective and legal use of cyber proxies by SOF throughout the phases of an unconventional warfare campaign?

  • Value of Landpower

    How must the fundamental role of soldiers and land formations adapt to maintain the value and relevance of Landpower in a multidomain conflict with China, particularly in a future operational environment characterized by emerging technologies, ubiquitous space-based capabilities, and an increasing reliance on autonomous systems?

  • Weapon System Vulnerabilities Introduced by Cloud Environments and Cyber Survivability

    How can the Air Force prioritize cyber survivability and streamline disjointed risk authorization processes to mitigate the unique vulnerabilities introduced by the integration of distributed cloud environments into critical weapon systems and ensure mission execution in contested domains?

  • What Does Intelligence Support to Next-Generation ICBMs Look Like?

    How should intelligence support for the next-generation Sentinel ICBM system and its crews be optimally structured, and how can this ideal end-state be adapted for a resource-constrained environment?

  • Worldwide Deployable Dual-Capable Aircraft, Extended Deterrence, and What Comes after the B61-12

    How does the global deployment of dual-capable aircraft paired with the B61-12 impact extended deterrence and adversary perceptions beyond NATO, and what specific capabilities must the next generation of theater nuclear weapons possess to ensure a flexible, politically sustainable strategic advantage?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • CNI--How to Integrate Conventional and Nuclear Munition on American Bomber and Fighter Aircraft

    Given the shift in the modern warfare paradigm, should the U.S. revisit its Cold War-era policy that restricts the co-loading of conventional and nuclear weapons on the same aircraft?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Distinct Maintenance Principles and Facility Standards for ICBMs vs. Aircraft

    How must the Air Force differentiate maintenance principles and facility standards for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) from those of conventional aircraft, and what approaches ensure these unique operational and nuclear security requirements are properly accounted for in maintenance execution and future facility design?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Nuclear Wargaming, Simulation Realism, and the Lessons Learned Pipeline

    How must the United States Air Force and the broader nuclear enterprise overcome systemic bottlenecks and cultural barriers to modernize wargaming realism, leveraging historical lessons and AI-enabled analysis to translate simulation data into actionable doctrine without compromising the readiness of on-alert deterrent forces?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Nuclear Maintenance Manning, Career Field Consolidation, and MRA/ACE Efficiencies

    How must the Air Force overcome severe nuclear maintenance manning shortages by evaluating civilian contracting for ICBMs, consolidating specialized career fields, and integrating Mission Ready Airmen concepts to support Agile Combat Employment and the growing demands of modern weapon systems?

  • Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

    What are the primary drivers and potential consequences of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and what comprehensive strategies can be developed to effectively mitigate these risks?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Public Opinion and Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the role of public opinion in shaping nuclear deterrence policies and strategies?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Resourcing and Deterrence Prioritization in the Nuclear Enterprise

    How must the Department of the Air Force balance strategic resourcing and optimize long-term budgetary trade-offs between the physical security, sustainment, and certification of nuclear weapons versus the acquisition and survivability of modernized delivery platforms (such as Sentinel, B-21, and LRSO) to maintain a credible and effective strategic deterrent?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Strategic Stability, Trilateral Frameworks, and the Future of Arms Control in a Multipolar World

    How must the United States explore novel trilateral arms control frameworks and strategic risk-mitigation dialogues—such as leveraging the P5 forum—to maintain strategic stability, integrate emerging technologies, and evaluate the subsequent impacts on Department of War and Air Force nuclear force structures in a multipolar world?

  • Tactical Nuclear Deterrence and the Impact of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

    How do Russia's conventional losses in Ukraine affect its likelihood of using nuclear weapons, how does deterrence operate in a tactical nuclear scenario, and must traditional U.S. deterrence models and policies be modified to address tactical nuclear threats?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Total Force Support to Security Cooperation, Campaigning, and Deterrence

    How can the military and geographic combatant commands leverage National Guard capabilities and transform initiatives like the State Partnership Program to enhance active campaigning, foster burden-sharing with allies, and establish effective deterrence by denial in the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • U.S. High Yield Weapon Strategy

    What priority should a high-yield nuclear weapon capability hold within U.S. nuclear strategy and the Program of Record, considering its potential psychological effect on adversaries' decision-making versus the physical damage it can create?

  • U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Posture and Historical Forms of Strategic Risk Management without Arms Control

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the broader U.S. military adapt their nuclear deterrence strategy, extended deterrence commitments, and capability development if the United States shifts from legally binding arms control treaties to politically binding confidence-building measures to manage strategic risk with peer adversaries?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Worldwide Deployable Dual-Capable Aircraft, Extended Deterrence, and What Comes after the B61-12

    How does the global deployment of dual-capable aircraft paired with the B61-12 impact extended deterrence and adversary perceptions beyond NATO, and what specific capabilities must the next generation of theater nuclear weapons possess to ensure a flexible, politically sustainable strategic advantage?

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Assessing Civilian Vulnerabilities and Resource Protection in Conflict

    How must the Joint Force prioritize the protection and provision of critical resources in severely constrained environments like the Middle East to prevent the weaponization of scarcity and refugees, while simultaneously minimizing its own logistical footprint to ensure sustainable long-term stabilization?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Autonomy, Active Border Defenses, and Partner-Centric Approaches to Security Cooperation

    How do partner nation political will, absorptive capacity, and institutional factors shape U.S. security cooperation strategy in the Middle East, and can the implementation of active border defense constructs successfully enable these nations to assume primary responsibility for their own long-term territorial defense?

  • China’s Global Expansion and Soft Power/Economic Approaches

    How must the United States evaluate the People's Republic of China's use of economic soft power and global expansion to understand its strategic impact on the international aerospace domain?

  • Chinese Aerospace Force Modernization Across Core Mission Sets

    How have comprehensive changes to the People's Liberation Army's DOTMLPFP framework enhanced the operational effectiveness of its aerospace forces across seven critical mission areas, ranging from air defense and precision strike to space and nuclear operations?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Chinese Economic Ties to India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How does China leverage economic interdependence as a tool of statecraft to impose costs and constrain the foreign policy and security choices of key regional powers like India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • CNI--How to Integrate Conventional and Nuclear Munition on American Bomber and Fighter Aircraft

    Given the shift in the modern warfare paradigm, should the U.S. revisit its Cold War-era policy that restricts the co-loading of conventional and nuclear weapons on the same aircraft?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Non-State Actors

    How can the United States develop a comprehensive, medium-term interagency strategy that leverages unique government authorities and international partnerships to effectively counter newly designated transnational cartels and gangs?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Crisis Response Preparedness, Security Cooperation, and U.S. Support to Peacekeeping Operations

    How can the United States transition from primarily financial support to directly contributing critical logistical enablers for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, and what risks regarding command and control, reimbursements, casualties, and local perceptions must be mitigated to ensure successful integration?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • Crowdsourcing

    How can the Air Force more effectively crowdsource solutions to capability and capacity gaps across the industrial-military complex while balancing security concerns? 

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Detention Operations in United States Indo-Pacific Command

    How must the Joint Force adapt its doctrine and policies to execute detention operations in the Indo-Pacific region despite adversary anti-access/area-denial capabilities, reserve force deployment delays, and varying partner-nation capacities and legal agreements?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Force Protection: Threats and Risks to SOF

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive strategy to mitigate the growing technical and privacy threats from the digital environment to its personnel and operations, balancing operational security with personal privacy by leveraging new technologies, fostering multi-sector collaboration, and creating effective risk mitigation strategies?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Economic Investments and Prioritization of Efforts in Africa

    How can the U.S. military identify high-priority African nations for partnerships aimed at countering terrorism and securing critical minerals, and which engagement strategies and private-sector investment models offer the highest strategic return on investment?

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Historic PRC–Taiwan Provocation Cycle

    Through an analysis of politics, military capabilities, regional posture, economics, and the information environment, what historical patterns emerge in the People's Republic of China's military provocations toward Taiwan?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: US Army–Operated Terminals During World War II

    How can a historical study of the organization, location selection, and civil-military coordination of US Army-operated terminals during World War II inform modern military preparations and address capability gaps for large-scale mobilization and combat operations?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • How to Derive Confidence in Reliability in Low-Density Critical Assets

    How can the military effectively evaluate and express changes in reliability confidence over time for low-density critical assets when limited stockpile sizes preclude regular live-release testing?

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Base of India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How can an analysis of the industrial base capacity, projectability, economic growth trends, and potential for defense-sector expansion in India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia inform a U.S. cost-imposition strategy within the context of the strategic competition with China?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Leveraging Institutional Capacity Building in Security Cooperation

    What approaches work best to leverage institutional capacity building in support of the NDS and other national security objectives, including military effectiveness, rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights?  

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Targeting

    How can SOF best utilize machine learning and AI to revolutionize the targeting process, especially by enhancing automated detection and expediting the processing of large datasets?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise: Resourcing and Building a Profession

    How must the Department of Defense reform its manning and resourcing models to overcome institutional barriers and transform the security cooperation workforce from a compliance-driven, temporary assignment system into a professionalized, right-sized career path capable of executing multi-year strategic strategies?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • Metrics of Industrial Base Capacity

    What are the key economic, political, technological, and demographic indicators that define the capacity of an industrial base? How do these metrics interact with each other and impact the overall industrial capacity of a country?  

  • Military Construction

    What specific policy, funding, and procedural reforms to the military construction process are required to accelerate the modernization of the organic industrial base so it can match the agility and execution speed of the private-sector defense industrial base?

  • Missions for the USSF: Planetary Defense

    What specific roles and responsibilities should the U.S. Space Force assume in the critical areas of asteroid detection and planetary defense?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Nuclear Industrial Base and the Credibility of U.S. Deterrence

    How does the capacity of the U.S. nuclear industrial base—including infrastructure, production, and sustainment—directly affect the credibility of deterrence by signaling strategic durability or institutional weakness to allies and adversaries?

  • Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

    What are the primary drivers and potential consequences of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and what comprehensive strategies can be developed to effectively mitigate these risks?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Individuals, Personal Relationships and Security Cooperation Out-Comes

    How can the nuanced effects of relationship-building programs in security cooperation be empirically measured to understand how factors like shared values, trust, and intellectual interoperability translate into enhanced burden-sharing and institutional change, despite personnel turnover and political complexities?

  • Operationalizing Irregular Warfare: How to Conduct Long-Term and Transregional Irregular Warfare Campaigns

    How can USSOCOM best support the global, long-term requirements of irregular warfare campaigning for joint all-domain operations and the joint warfighting concept, given that the current DoD structure is primarily organized for regional, large-scale combat?

  • Operationalizing Strategic Influence and Shaping the Information Environment

    How must the Joint Force and theater commands operationalize strategic influence and integrate information operations across the competition continuum to build allied credibility, shape the narrative against near-peer adversaries, and effectively measure these efforts across the joint, interagency, and multinational enterprise?

     

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing Information Warfare and Cyber Force Structures

    How must the United States Air Force and Department of Defense optimize their current cyber force structures and reorganize their institutional frameworks to accelerate the development and execution of integrated Information Warfare capabilities?

  • Optimizing SOF Production and Capitalizing on Non-Commissioned Officers’ Advanced Degrees

    How must the Special Operations Forces enterprise leverage emerging technologies to optimize operator production pipelines and implement data-driven talent management reforms to effectively employ highly educated non-commissioned officers in specialized, institutional roles?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Protracted Warfare, Indirect Approaches, and Campaigning

    How can the Joint Force integrate indirect approaches, non-attributable actions, and strategic deception into protracted campaigning to counter peer adversaries like the PRC without triggering catastrophic escalation across the conflict continuum?

  • Psychological and Cognitive Conditioning for High-Stress, Multi-Domain Scenarios

    How can SOF training programs be optimized to address the psychological and cognitive challenges of multi-domain operations by integrating effective cognitive training techniques and ongoing mental health support to improve decision-making and sustain long-term readiness?

  • Public Opinion and Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the role of public opinion in shaping nuclear deterrence policies and strategies?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruiting, Readiness, and the All-Volunteer Force

    How can the military sustain the health of the All-Volunteer Force by modernizing its stationing strategies, value proposition, and career pathways to attract younger generations and retain mid-career leaders, and what lessons can be drawn from alternative service models or allied nations to optimize Total Force readiness?

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    How can the U.S. government reform its recruitment, training, and educational frameworks to build a force with the diverse perspectives required to effectively support resistance and resilience, while also fostering a common interagency understanding and developing shared doctrine with allies?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Reevaluating Educational Experience and Generational Differences

    How must the military adapt its recruitment, training, and physical or educational standards to accommodate generational differences and attract digital natives for specialized roles—like cyber and information operations—without degrading the professional standards of the broader force?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Cooperation with the West: Multi-Domain Arenas, Transnational Threats, and Common-Pool Resource Management

    How must the United States and its NATO allies identify and leverage transactional cooperation with the Russian Federation in shared non-military domains—such as Arctic search and rescue, Low Earth Orbit collision avoidance, and countering transnational cybercrime—to manage common-pool resources and reduce overall strategic friction amidst intense geopolitical rivalry?

  • Russian Cyberspace Operations: Strategy, Capabilities, Commercial Support, and Influence Activities

    How must the United States assess Russia's cyberspace strategy, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign commercial technologies to anticipate retaliatory attacks, while simultaneously evaluating the evolving tactical procedures of Russian security services and their convergence of cyber warfare with influence operations?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Defense Industrial Capability and Capacity

    To what extent can Russia sustain its war against Ukraine, modernize, and regenerate its military given the strengths, adaptations, weaknesses, and structural limits of its defense‑industrial base—shaped by sanctions, wartime economic mobilization, leadership decisions, and initiatives intended to generate competitive advantage?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Military Leadership

    To what extent are trends in Russian senior officer promotions, postings, and the emergence of a new military elite—shaped by competency, obedience, and patronage networks—revealing the future trajectory of Russian military leadership and its implications for the General Staff.

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Regime Stability and Domestic Control

    To what extent are evolving dynamics in Russian society, culture, governance, elite networks, and the national economy—along with shifts in conglomerates and domestic control mechanisms—shaping the stability of the Russian system and influencing its defense and foreign‑policy behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Objectives, Adversary Alignments and Strategic Partnerships

    To what extent are shifts in Russian perceptions of NATO defense and deterrence—along with Russia’s deepening military cooperation with China, North Korea, Iran, India, Belarus, Turkey, and other regional partners—reshaping Russian strategic objectives, generating new threats and challenges for the United States, and revealing Russia’s evolving theory of competition?

  • Russian Training, Readiness, and Force Adaptation

    How has the Russian military adapted its training, mobilization, and readiness systems during the war in Ukraine, and what are the long-term implications of its ability to integrate combat lessons on the force's overall morale, professionalism, and future capabilities?

  • Russian War of War: Military Planning, Strategy and Assessment

    To what extent are lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine—and its evolving expectations of conflict with NATO—reshaping Russian strategic operations such as the Operation of Strategic Deterrence Forces (OSDF), Strategic Aerospace Operations (SAO), and the Strategic Operation of Theater Military Forces (SOTMO), and how these operations nest within and modify Russian military doctrine.

  • Russian Way of War: Doctrine and Military Thought

    To what extent is the war in Ukraine—and Russian expectations of future conflict with NATO—reshaping its doctrine, its internal debates about the conduct of contemporary and emerging warfare, and the positions of its leading strategic thinkers, including how they can be categorized and where their perspectives diverge?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Logistics and Sustainment

    To what extent is Russia’s logistics and sustainment ecosystem—its wartime adaptations, modernization efforts, structural strengths, and persistent vulnerabilities—evolving in response to lessons from the war in Ukraine, and how might this trajectory shape future challenges and implications for U.S. operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Vulnerabilities

    To what extent do the vulnerabilities, risks, and biases embedded in Russian doctrine, strategy, operational concepts, tactics, and capability development—along with flawed threat perceptions, escalation pathways, and systemic weaknesses across the Russian state and military—create potential for miscalculation and escalation risks for the United States.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Military Posture and Power Projection

    To what extent is the regional and global expansion of Russia’s military presence—its progress, obstacles, and alignment with state policy objectives—shaping future Russian posture and its ability to challenge U.S. access, basing, and operations?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Security Cooperation and Capacity Building: Methods and Evidence

    How can the Department of Defense optimize its assessment, monitoring, and evaluation methodologies and improve data accessibility to build a rigorous evidence base that accurately measures the effectiveness of defense capacity building programs in cultivating capable, interoperable allies and perform that mission?

  • Security Cooperation in an Evolving Strategic Context

    Existing research on security cooperation needs updating because the global context has changed significantly due to shifts in military technology, the nature of war, and the strategic environment. It is now essential to examine how emerging technologies, new warfighting domains, and global competition impact U.S. national security strategy and its security cooperation activities.

  • Security Vacuums and Great Power Competition in Africa

    How could a prolonged U.S.–Iran conflict create African security vacuums exploitable by China, Russia, and Iran, and how can historical insights from past Great Power involvement guide U.S. strategy in mitigating these modern threats?

  • Setting the Theater for Homeland Defense, Power Projection, and Operational Shifts

    How must the U.S. military set the domestic theater to balance expanding homeland defense and border security missions with global force projection and large-scale combat readiness, while reshaping the Total Force and implementing necessary legal and ethical frameworks to mitigate the unique risks of operating within the United States?

  • Sino-Indian Strategic Competition: The Line of Actual Control and the 'Necklace of Diamonds' Strategy

    How must the United States and its partners leverage strategic cooperation in the air and space domains to support India's regional maritime strategies and counter the People's Republic of China's multi-domain aggression along the Line of Actual Control?

     

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Civilian Workforce Optimization

    How can the SOF enterprise best optimize its use of the civilian workforce to be more efficient and lethal following multiple rounds of workforce cuts in 2025?

  • SOF Interoperability

    How can SOF, its partners, and allies (including NATO) overcome cultural and linguistic differences and improve collaboration to enhance interoperability and cohesion in addressing global security challenges?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • SOF's Role in Protecting the Homeland and Countering Designated Other Terrorist Organizations--International Cartels

    How can SOF most effectively leverage its unique capabilities, in conjunction with partners and allies, to degrade and defeat newly designated terrorist organizations and transnational cartels in the Western Hemisphere while maintaining the element of surprise?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space Force Basing

    Analyze various aspects of the future of Space Force basing.

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Special Operations Command Central: Geostrategic Shifts from Peak Oil, Emerging Sea Lanes, and the Changing Calculus of VEOs

    How can we better understand and anticipate shifts in the Middle East's regional balance of power by analyzing the complex interplay of diplomatic alliances, economic developments, global energy transitions, and their potential to alter the risk-reward calculus for both state and non-state actors?

  • Special Operations Command Europe: Postwar Ukraine

    How must the Ukrainian military and its specialized forces transition from a total-war footing to a sustainable peacetime defense posture while retaining critical asymmetric capabilities, optimizing reserve forces, and preparing for integration into the NATO alliance?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Empathy in Intelligence Analysis

    How can the skill of "strategic empathy"—the ability to understand and identify with a competitor or adversary's perspective—be effectively developed and integrated to optimize analytical capabilities in the intelligence and strategic communities?

  • Strategic Influence through SOF

    How can SOF systematically enhance its strategic influence capabilities by integrating the necessary authorities, synchronizing tactical actions with strategic messaging, and leveraging insights from academic and business disciplines?

  • Strategic Posture and Sustainment for Dispersed Forces in the Pacific

    How must the Joint Force adapt its logistics and sustainment architecture, integrate advanced manufacturing, and effectively distribute fuel and munition nodes to support dispersed forces in the contested Indo-Pacific, while empowering leadership to balance operational readiness against survivability?

     

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Strategic Sabotage/Irregular Warfare

    How should special operations forces optimize their irregular warfare capabilities, including strategic sabotage, to proactively disrupt peer adversaries across all instruments of national power below the threshold of armed conflict in the mid-twenty-first century?

  • Strategic Stability, Trilateral Frameworks, and the Future of Arms Control in a Multipolar World

    How must the United States explore novel trilateral arms control frameworks and strategic risk-mitigation dialogues—such as leveraging the P5 forum—to maintain strategic stability, integrate emerging technologies, and evaluate the subsequent impacts on Department of War and Air Force nuclear force structures in a multipolar world?

  • Successful Resistance Movements

    By analyzing the political-military parameters and governmental approaches that determine success and failure in conflicts against resistance movements, what are the most effective strategies for countering both armed and nonviolent resistance?

  • Support to Resistance and Resilience Approaches to Preventing or Deterring Aggression

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive framework for assessing, planning, and implementing support to resilience and resistance, incorporating human-centric strategies, measurable metrics, and lessons from past conflicts to effectively deter aggression and navigate complex civil-military dynamics?

  • Tactical Nuclear Deterrence and the Impact of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

    How do Russia's conventional losses in Ukraine affect its likelihood of using nuclear weapons, how does deterrence operate in a tactical nuclear scenario, and must traditional U.S. deterrence models and policies be modified to address tactical nuclear threats?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Technological Support to Civil Resistance and Virtual Special Warfare in the Future Operating Environment

    How must Special Operations Forces leverage emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence and secure communications—and navigate the associated security risks to effectively execute virtual special warfare and support civil resistance movements against oppressive regimes in the future operating environment?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • Total Army Power Projection Equipment

    What modifications to the composition, location, and sustainment of Army pre-positioned stocks are required to implement the TAP2E Strategy, and what critical gaps must be addressed to ensure the strategy is both operationally relevant and fiscally sustainable?

  • Total Force and Homeland Defense

    How must the military identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across defense and civilian critical infrastructure, employ Joint Force capabilities for resilience and recovery, and evaluate whether to redesign reserve components into purpose-built homeland defense forces without degrading overall total force readiness and modernization?

  • Total Force Posture Shift, Indo-Pacific Deterrence, and Permanent Stationing

    How must the U.S. military adjust its Total Force posture to establish persistent Indo-Pacific deterrence, and what are the operational, economic, and quality-of-life implications—along with the strategic risks—of transitioning from rotational forces to a permanently stationed brigade combat team in South Korea?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • U.S. Approach to Strategic Partnerships, Burden Sharing, and Technical Interoperability

    How must the Department of Defense operationalize the strategic shift toward allied burden-shifting by tailoring regional security cooperation, overhauling Foreign Military Sales to prioritize asymmetric self-defense capabilities, and focusing on data interoperability rather than platform parity during realistic multilateral exercises?

  • U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Posture and Historical Forms of Strategic Risk Management without Arms Control

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the broader U.S. military adapt their nuclear deterrence strategy, extended deterrence commitments, and capability development if the United States shifts from legally binding arms control treaties to politically binding confidence-building measures to manage strategic risk with peer adversaries?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Understanding the Will to Resist and Measuring Resilience and Resistance

    How can the military and Special Operations Forces effectively define, quantify, and measure a population's psychological "will to resist" using doctrinal analytical frameworks like PMESII-PT to better inform, shape, and predict future Support to Resistance and Resilience operations?

  • Unmanned Warfare and the Implications of Militarily Relevant COTS Technologies

    Does the rapid proliferation of dual-use, commercial-off-the-shelf unmanned and autonomous technologies across all domains constitute a true revolution in military affairs, and how can the Department of Defense accelerate its adoption of these systems while effectively controlling their diffusion to prevent adversaries from gaining a strategic advantage?

  • USAF Supply Chain Protection and Cyber Weapon System Infrastructure Accreditation

    How can the Air Force holistically protect its critical IT networks by integrating physical supply chain security and chain of custody best practices with a streamlined, enterprise-wide accreditation process that resolves existing Risk Management Framework conflicts between base enclaves and cyber weapon systems?

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • AI in Personnel Analytics and the Civilian Hiring Process

    How can the military leverage AI to enhance the timeliness and accuracy of civilian hiring while establishing the necessary ethical guardrails, oversight mechanisms, and cultural principles to ensure that algorithm-driven personnel analytics maintain trust, the military's values, and individual dignity?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Battlefield Airman for Duty in the Pacific AOR

    Better Trained and Equipped Battlefield Airman (TACP, CCT, etc.) for Duty in the Pacific AOR  

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Ethical Performance and Moral Injury

    How must the Joint Force and the Special Operations Enterprise identify, measure, and educate against ethical lapses to inculcate a culture of high ethical performance, and how can targeted military ethics training be leveraged to effectively mitigate the invisible wounds of post-combat moral injury?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Ground-Based C2 in Forward Theaters

     How can USAF leverage planned ABADS MD fielding to enable a resilient distributed ground-based command and control capability in forward theaters? What DOTmLPF-P changes are needed to support this?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Integration, Training, and the Evolution of Mission Ready / Multi-Capable Airmen

    How should the Air Force evolve its integration models to optimize human capital for Great Power Competition, specifically by evaluating the creation of a dedicated Mission Ready Airman AFSC for Agile Combat Employment and fully integrating specialized career fields, like 1C3 Command Post Controllers, into the nuclear enterprise's Sentinel Integrated Command Centers?

  • Intel Fusion

    Can a repeatable process be developed to create cross-functional Analysis and Exploitation Teams capable of producing high-quality reports that meet theater requirements within three months of their initial establishment?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Joint SOF Modular Formations

    How can the SOF enterprise best develop and manage joint SOF modular formations by transforming its personnel systems to cultivate the required expertise and capabilities, while ensuring the enduring relevance of core SOF principles?

  • Language Proficiency for Cryptologic Language Analysts

    Can full-time distance learning be an effective training medium for experienced and proficient Cryptologic Language Analysts to acquire an additional foreign language?

  • Leadership in Combat Wings

    How must the USAF officer development paradigm shift to cultivate leaders with the necessary breadth of knowledge and mission-focused perspective required to effectively command the new multi-functional Combat Wing formations?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Leveraging Institutional Capacity Building in Security Cooperation

    What approaches work best to leverage institutional capacity building in support of the NDS and other national security objectives, including military effectiveness, rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights?  

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise: Resourcing and Building a Profession

    How must the Department of Defense reform its manning and resourcing models to overcome institutional barriers and transform the security cooperation workforce from a compliance-driven, temporary assignment system into a professionalized, right-sized career path capable of executing multi-year strategic strategies?

  • Medical Operations, Hospital Outflow, and Return to Duty in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    To handle high casualties in large-scale combat operations, U.S. military medicine must execute comprehensive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to treat and return patients to duty closer to the front lines, while formalizing civilian infrastructure conversion models like Hotel2Hospital to absorb massive patient surges in the homeland.

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modernizing Nuclear Wargaming, Simulation Realism, and the Lessons Learned Pipeline

    How must the United States Air Force and the broader nuclear enterprise overcome systemic bottlenecks and cultural barriers to modernize wargaming realism, leveraging historical lessons and AI-enabled analysis to translate simulation data into actionable doctrine without compromising the readiness of on-alert deterrent forces?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Maintenance Manning, Career Field Consolidation, and MRA/ACE Efficiencies

    How must the Air Force overcome severe nuclear maintenance manning shortages by evaluating civilian contracting for ICBMs, consolidating specialized career fields, and integrating Mission Ready Airmen concepts to support Agile Combat Employment and the growing demands of modern weapon systems?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Individuals, Personal Relationships and Security Cooperation Out-Comes

    How can the nuanced effects of relationship-building programs in security cooperation be empirically measured to understand how factors like shared values, trust, and intellectual interoperability translate into enhanced burden-sharing and institutional change, despite personnel turnover and political complexities?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Optimizing SOF Production and Capitalizing on Non-Commissioned Officers’ Advanced Degrees

    How must the Special Operations Forces enterprise leverage emerging technologies to optimize operator production pipelines and implement data-driven talent management reforms to effectively employ highly educated non-commissioned officers in specialized, institutional roles?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Psychological and Cognitive Conditioning for High-Stress, Multi-Domain Scenarios

    How can SOF training programs be optimized to address the psychological and cognitive challenges of multi-domain operations by integrating effective cognitive training techniques and ongoing mental health support to improve decision-making and sustain long-term readiness?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Recruiting, Readiness, and the All-Volunteer Force

    How can the military sustain the health of the All-Volunteer Force by modernizing its stationing strategies, value proposition, and career pathways to attract younger generations and retain mid-career leaders, and what lessons can be drawn from alternative service models or allied nations to optimize Total Force readiness?

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    How can the U.S. government reform its recruitment, training, and educational frameworks to build a force with the diverse perspectives required to effectively support resistance and resilience, while also fostering a common interagency understanding and developing shared doctrine with allies?

  • Recruitment, Training, Development, Retention, and Analytic Certification of Air Force Intelligence Personnel

    How must the Air Force reform its recruiting, development, and retention pipelines for intelligence personnel to integrate emerging data science and space-based capabilities, and can Analytic Certification serve as a viable framework to enhance the overall effectiveness of the Intelligence Community?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Reevaluating Educational Experience and Generational Differences

    How must the military adapt its recruitment, training, and physical or educational standards to accommodate generational differences and attract digital natives for specialized roles—like cyber and information operations—without degrading the professional standards of the broader force?

  • Resourcing and Deterrence Prioritization in the Nuclear Enterprise

    How must the Department of the Air Force balance strategic resourcing and optimize long-term budgetary trade-offs between the physical security, sustainment, and certification of nuclear weapons versus the acquisition and survivability of modernized delivery platforms (such as Sentinel, B-21, and LRSO) to maintain a credible and effective strategic deterrent?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Military Leadership

    To what extent are trends in Russian senior officer promotions, postings, and the emergence of a new military elite—shaped by competency, obedience, and patronage networks—revealing the future trajectory of Russian military leadership and its implications for the General Staff.

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Civilian Workforce Optimization

    How can the SOF enterprise best optimize its use of the civilian workforce to be more efficient and lethal following multiple rounds of workforce cuts in 2025?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • SOF Future Requirements

    Considering key geopolitical trends, how can SOF enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Interoperability

    How can SOF, its partners, and allies (including NATO) overcome cultural and linguistic differences and improve collaboration to enhance interoperability and cohesion in addressing global security challenges?

  • SOF Requirements

    How can NATO and national SOF, in response to key geopolitical trends, enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills, competencies, and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Talent Management, Sustainability, and Repetitive Assignments

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise adapt its talent management, retention strategies, and force sustainability programs to develop resilient personnel equipped for strategic competition and support to resistance, while reconciling conflicting service and combatant command priorities regarding repetitive geographic assignments?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • Space Force Basing

    Analyze various aspects of the future of Space Force basing.

  • Special Operations Command Europe: Postwar Ukraine

    How must the Ukrainian military and its specialized forces transition from a total-war footing to a sustainable peacetime defense posture while retaining critical asymmetric capabilities, optimizing reserve forces, and preparing for integration into the NATO alliance?

  • Spirituality, Cognition, and Resilience against Cognitive Warfare

    How can the military leverage mental health, spirituality, and individual resilience to protect against China's cognitive warfare, while simultaneously enhancing organizational decision-making, force preservation, and creative problem-solving across the enterprise?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Empathy in Intelligence Analysis

    How can the skill of "strategic empathy"—the ability to understand and identify with a competitor or adversary's perspective—be effectively developed and integrated to optimize analytical capabilities in the intelligence and strategic communities?

  • Strategic Leadership, Force Development, and Career Path Professionalization in JADO/JADC2

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt strategic leadership practices, reform talent management structures, and evaluate the creation of a formalized Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) career field to successfully inculcate a joint culture and prepare personnel for 21st-century multi-domain conflict?

  • Strengthening SOF Capabilities in DoW Workforce Optimization

    How can SOF implement broader DoW workforce optimization efforts to become more efficient and lethal by strengthening critical capabilities, addressing unique challenges, and applying lessons from past transformations like JTF-SREC?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • Training and Education for Space Professionals

    How should the U.S. Space Force evolve the education and training of space professionals by evaluating the necessity of mandatory STEM degrees, integrating civilian space courses, and leveraging partnerships with universities, commercial agencies, and international allies to meet future operational requirements?

  • Understanding the Will to Resist and Measuring Resilience and Resistance

    How can the military and Special Operations Forces effectively define, quantify, and measure a population's psychological "will to resist" using doctrinal analytical frameworks like PMESII-PT to better inform, shape, and predict future Support to Resistance and Resilience operations?

  • USAF Supply Chain Protection and Cyber Weapon System Infrastructure Accreditation

    How can the Air Force holistically protect its critical IT networks by integrating physical supply chain security and chain of custody best practices with a streamlined, enterprise-wide accreditation process that resolves existing Risk Management Framework conflicts between base enclaves and cyber weapon systems?

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • AI in Personnel Analytics and the Civilian Hiring Process

    How can the military leverage AI to enhance the timeliness and accuracy of civilian hiring while establishing the necessary ethical guardrails, oversight mechanisms, and cultural principles to ensure that algorithm-driven personnel analytics maintain trust, the military's values, and individual dignity?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Application of AI for Global Transportation Planning

    How can the Joint deployment and distribution enterprise leverage artificial intelligence to analyze legacy transportation data sets and processes, thereby increasing its decision advantage for global military logistics?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Asymmetric Core: Axiomatic Instability in a Peer Triad with Regional Nuclear Peripheries

    How does the application of cooperative game theory to a "Peer Triad" of major nuclear powers demonstrate that the inclusion of asymmetric regional players renders simultaneous, globally stable deterrence mathematically impossible?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Autonomy, Active Border Defenses, and Partner-Centric Approaches to Security Cooperation

    How do partner nation political will, absorptive capacity, and institutional factors shape U.S. security cooperation strategy in the Middle East, and can the implementation of active border defense constructs successfully enable these nations to assume primary responsibility for their own long-term territorial defense?

  • China’s Global Expansion and Soft Power/Economic Approaches

    How must the United States evaluate the People's Republic of China's use of economic soft power and global expansion to understand its strategic impact on the international aerospace domain?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Chinese Economic Ties to India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How does China leverage economic interdependence as a tool of statecraft to impose costs and constrain the foreign policy and security choices of key regional powers like India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • CNI--How to Integrate Conventional and Nuclear Munition on American Bomber and Fighter Aircraft

    Given the shift in the modern warfare paradigm, should the U.S. revisit its Cold War-era policy that restricts the co-loading of conventional and nuclear weapons on the same aircraft?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Countering Non-State Actors

    How can the United States develop a comprehensive, medium-term interagency strategy that leverages unique government authorities and international partnerships to effectively counter newly designated transnational cartels and gangs?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • Crowdsourcing

    How can the Air Force more effectively crowdsource solutions to capability and capacity gaps across the industrial-military complex while balancing security concerns? 

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Data Convergence, Analytics, and Intelligence Sensor Data Flow in Information Warfare

    How must the military adapt Army tactical data convergence concepts and reengineer intelligence sensor data flows to automate cross-domain sharing, enhance analytical collaboration, and preserve decision advantage within the information warfare environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Detention Operations in United States Indo-Pacific Command

    How must the Joint Force adapt its doctrine and policies to execute detention operations in the Indo-Pacific region despite adversary anti-access/area-denial capabilities, reserve force deployment delays, and varying partner-nation capacities and legal agreements?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • Disposition of Forces (DOF) Consolidation

    How can the dissemination, visualization, storage, and cataloging of battlespace characterization and Disposition of Forces (DOF) data be optimized through a common solution or application framework to improve usability and effectiveness for end-users?

  • Distinct Maintenance Principles and Facility Standards for ICBMs vs. Aircraft

    How must the Air Force differentiate maintenance principles and facility standards for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) from those of conventional aircraft, and what approaches ensure these unique operational and nuclear security requirements are properly accounted for in maintenance execution and future facility design?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Economic Investments and Prioritization of Efforts in Africa

    How can the U.S. military identify high-priority African nations for partnerships aimed at countering terrorism and securing critical minerals, and which engagement strategies and private-sector investment models offer the highest strategic return on investment?

  • Effectively Assessing OAI Impacts to PRC Behavior

    How can PACAF develop effective methodologies to accurately and succinctly measure the cumulative impacts of its Operations, Activities, and Investments (OAI) on PRC perceptions and behaviors over time?

     

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Engineering Victory and Setting the Theater

    How can the Department of War synchronize Joint logistics, reserve engineering capabilities, and strategic policy to rapidly set and sustain a protracted large-scale combat theater in the Indo-Pacific, and how might emerging technologies and digital planning tools be leveraged to optimize resource allocation across combatant commands?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Epic Fury: Lessons Learned

    What lessons can be learned from Operation EPIC FURY to identify and formalize the most effective ad-hoc tactical C2 integration efforts into enduring Air Force and Joint air and missile defense systems?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical Performance and Moral Injury

    How must the Joint Force and the Special Operations Enterprise identify, measure, and educate against ethical lapses to inculcate a culture of high ethical performance, and how can targeted military ethics training be leveraged to effectively mitigate the invisible wounds of post-combat moral injury?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Force Posture and Special Operations in the Arctic

    How must the U.S. military and Special Operations Forces adapt their Arctic force posture, technological capabilities, and interoperability with conventional forces, interagency partners, and new NATO allies like Finland and Sweden to effectively secure the northern approaches amid great-power competition?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Formation and Culture of the Space Force

    How must the U.S. Space Force manage its cross-service personnel integration and structural evolution to overcome legacy institutional thinking, cultivate a unified service identity, and define the necessity and execution of a distinct domain-specific warfighting mindset?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of Air Mobility in a Kinetic/Contested Environment with China

    How must Air Mobility Command adapt its operational planning to effectively project and sustain forces in a kinetic, contested environment with China, specifically by exploring Bypass Theory and the evolution of the Critical Path for Air Mobility?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Ground-Based C2 in Forward Theaters

     How can USAF leverage planned ABADS MD fielding to enable a resilient distributed ground-based command and control capability in forward theaters? What DOTmLPF-P changes are needed to support this?

  • Ground-Based Fuel Ecosystem

    Considering the entire ground-based fuel ecosystem, to what extent will bases in the Forward and Sustaining Installations Categories be able to generate the required Combat Air Force sorties to meet Joint Force Commander objectives in the 2029-2041 timeframe?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Historic PRC–Taiwan Provocation Cycle

    Through an analysis of politics, military capabilities, regional posture, economics, and the information environment, what historical patterns emerge in the People's Republic of China's military provocations toward Taiwan?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis: Military Assistance and Crisis Security Cooperation

    How can the U.S. military leverage historical precedent and contemporary lessons from crisis response organizations like the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine to optimize the training, equipping, and coordination of military assistance for geographically diverse partners without becoming a direct combatant or allowing adversaries to exploit these methods?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: US Army–Operated Terminals During World War II

    How can a historical study of the organization, location selection, and civil-military coordination of US Army-operated terminals during World War II inform modern military preparations and address capability gaps for large-scale mobilization and combat operations?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: World War II Southwest Pacific Area Theater of Operations Ports of Debarkation

    How can a historical analysis of US access, basing rights, and the use of key ports in the World War II Southwest Pacific Area inform modern military transportation planners about the region's geopolitical landscape?

  • Historical Lessons for Operations in the Pacific

    How does General George Kenney's innovative and adaptive airpower approach in the South Pacific during World War II compare to the strategic and technological requirements for a potential future conflict with China?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • How to Derive Confidence in Reliability in Low-Density Critical Assets

    How can the military effectively evaluate and express changes in reliability confidence over time for low-density critical assets when limited stockpile sizes preclude regular live-release testing?

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How can the US Army combine and integrate emerging disruptive technologies with legacy platforms to create low-cost, scalable capabilities, and what DOTMLPF-P adjustments are required to implement these systems?

  • Integrating Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge

    How must the US Army evolve its doctrine, organizational structures, and materiel to fully integrate cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations at the tactical level to sustain an information advantage during multidomain operations?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Integration, Training, and the Evolution of Mission Ready / Multi-Capable Airmen

    How should the Air Force evolve its integration models to optimize human capital for Great Power Competition, specifically by evaluating the creation of a dedicated Mission Ready Airman AFSC for Agile Combat Employment and fully integrating specialized career fields, like 1C3 Command Post Controllers, into the nuclear enterprise's Sentinel Integrated Command Centers?

  • Intel Fusion

    Can a repeatable process be developed to create cross-functional Analysis and Exploitation Teams capable of producing high-quality reports that meet theater requirements within three months of their initial establishment?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence in Strategic Competition

    How should the SOF intelligence enterprise adapt its practitioners and culture to meet the unique intelligence challenges of strategic competition, moving beyond its post-9/11 mindset to cultivate the strategic foresight and counterintelligence focus required in this new era?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Joint SOF Modular Formations

    How can the SOF enterprise best develop and manage joint SOF modular formations by transforming its personnel systems to cultivate the required expertise and capabilities, while ensuring the enduring relevance of core SOF principles?

  • Language Proficiency for Cryptologic Language Analysts

    Can full-time distance learning be an effective training medium for experienced and proficient Cryptologic Language Analysts to acquire an additional foreign language?

  • Leadership in Combat Wings

    How must the USAF officer development paradigm shift to cultivate leaders with the necessary breadth of knowledge and mission-focused perspective required to effectively command the new multi-functional Combat Wing formations?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Leveraging Institutional Capacity Building in Security Cooperation

    What approaches work best to leverage institutional capacity building in support of the NDS and other national security objectives, including military effectiveness, rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights?  

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise: Resourcing and Building a Profession

    How must the Department of Defense reform its manning and resourcing models to overcome institutional barriers and transform the security cooperation workforce from a compliance-driven, temporary assignment system into a professionalized, right-sized career path capable of executing multi-year strategic strategies?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • Metrics of Industrial Base Capacity

    What are the key economic, political, technological, and demographic indicators that define the capacity of an industrial base? How do these metrics interact with each other and impact the overall industrial capacity of a country?  

  • Military Construction

    What specific policy, funding, and procedural reforms to the military construction process are required to accelerate the modernization of the organic industrial base so it can match the agility and execution speed of the private-sector defense industrial base?

  • Mission Command

    How can military commanders integrate AI into battle command and decision-making systems without undermining the core tenets of mission command, mutual trust, and disciplined initiative?

  • Missions for the USSF: Planetary Defense

    What specific roles and responsibilities should the U.S. Space Force assume in the critical areas of asteroid detection and planetary defense?

  • Mitigating Airlift Vulnerability: Building a Resilient Army Surface Deployment Capability

    What DOTMLPF-P changes must the Army implement within its logistics enterprise to develop a resilient surface deployment capability that mitigates the Joint Force's critical vulnerability to limited strategic airlift during peer-level conflicts?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Nuclear Wargaming, Simulation Realism, and the Lessons Learned Pipeline

    How must the United States Air Force and the broader nuclear enterprise overcome systemic bottlenecks and cultural barriers to modernize wargaming realism, leveraging historical lessons and AI-enabled analysis to translate simulation data into actionable doctrine without compromising the readiness of on-alert deterrent forces?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Nuclear Maintenance Manning, Career Field Consolidation, and MRA/ACE Efficiencies

    How must the Air Force overcome severe nuclear maintenance manning shortages by evaluating civilian contracting for ICBMs, consolidating specialized career fields, and integrating Mission Ready Airmen concepts to support Agile Combat Employment and the growing demands of modern weapon systems?

  • Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

    What are the primary drivers and potential consequences of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and what comprehensive strategies can be developed to effectively mitigate these risks?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Individuals, Personal Relationships and Security Cooperation Out-Comes

    How can the nuanced effects of relationship-building programs in security cooperation be empirically measured to understand how factors like shared values, trust, and intellectual interoperability translate into enhanced burden-sharing and institutional change, despite personnel turnover and political complexities?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operationalizing Irregular Warfare: How to Conduct Long-Term and Transregional Irregular Warfare Campaigns

    How can USSOCOM best support the global, long-term requirements of irregular warfare campaigning for joint all-domain operations and the joint warfighting concept, given that the current DoD structure is primarily organized for regional, large-scale combat?

  • Operationalizing Strategic Influence and Shaping the Information Environment

    How must the Joint Force and theater commands operationalize strategic influence and integrate information operations across the competition continuum to build allied credibility, shape the narrative against near-peer adversaries, and effectively measure these efforts across the joint, interagency, and multinational enterprise?

     

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Optimizing Information Warfare and Cyber Force Structures

    How must the United States Air Force and Department of Defense optimize their current cyber force structures and reorganize their institutional frameworks to accelerate the development and execution of integrated Information Warfare capabilities?

  • Optimizing SOF Production and Capitalizing on Non-Commissioned Officers’ Advanced Degrees

    How must the Special Operations Forces enterprise leverage emerging technologies to optimize operator production pipelines and implement data-driven talent management reforms to effectively employ highly educated non-commissioned officers in specialized, institutional roles?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • PLA Meteorological Challenges and Dependencies

    What are the meteorological challenges and dependencies that a PLA combined arms assault on Taiwan would face? (557 WW) 

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Protracted Warfare, Indirect Approaches, and Campaigning

    How can the Joint Force integrate indirect approaches, non-attributable actions, and strategic deception into protracted campaigning to counter peer adversaries like the PRC without triggering catastrophic escalation across the conflict continuum?

  • Psychological and Cognitive Conditioning for High-Stress, Multi-Domain Scenarios

    How can SOF training programs be optimized to address the psychological and cognitive challenges of multi-domain operations by integrating effective cognitive training techniques and ongoing mental health support to improve decision-making and sustain long-term readiness?

CSAF Priorities

Arctic

    There does not appear to be any research for this topic.

Cyber

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • AI in Personnel Analytics and the Civilian Hiring Process

    How can the military leverage AI to enhance the timeliness and accuracy of civilian hiring while establishing the necessary ethical guardrails, oversight mechanisms, and cultural principles to ensure that algorithm-driven personnel analytics maintain trust, the military's values, and individual dignity?

  • Application of AI for Global Transportation Planning

    How can the Joint deployment and distribution enterprise leverage artificial intelligence to analyze legacy transportation data sets and processes, thereby increasing its decision advantage for global military logistics?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Security in Space-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

    How can the U.S. military integrate Cyber-Physical System concepts with advanced AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to develop a comprehensive, proactive cyber defense strategy that ensures holistic situational awareness and standardized risk mitigation across military and commercial space systems against near-peer adversaries?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Data Convergence, Analytics, and Intelligence Sensor Data Flow in Information Warfare

    How must the military adapt Army tactical data convergence concepts and reengineer intelligence sensor data flows to automate cross-domain sharing, enhance analytical collaboration, and preserve decision advantage within the information warfare environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Digital Force Protection: Threats and Risks to SOF

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive strategy to mitigate the growing technical and privacy threats from the digital environment to its personnel and operations, balancing operational security with personal privacy by leveraging new technologies, fostering multi-sector collaboration, and creating effective risk mitigation strategies?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Disposition of Forces (DOF) Consolidation

    How can the dissemination, visualization, storage, and cataloging of battlespace characterization and Disposition of Forces (DOF) data be optimized through a common solution or application framework to improve usability and effectiveness for end-users?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Effect-Based Metrics Posture

    How can modeling and simulation be used to develop heuristics that connect engineering-level improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency to operationally valued capabilities within campaign scenarios?

  • Effectively Assessing OAI Impacts to PRC Behavior

    How can PACAF develop effective methodologies to accurately and succinctly measure the cumulative impacts of its Operations, Activities, and Investments (OAI) on PRC perceptions and behaviors over time?

     

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis of The Defense and Restoring Dominance in Counter-Mobility

    How can NATO leverage historical defense-in-depth lessons alongside a high-low capability mix of modernized counter-mobility, attritable loitering munitions, and cargo-launched air vehicles to deter and defeat peer adversaries along the Eastern Flank?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Unmanned, Automated Platforms for Logistics Under Attack

    What are the operational requirements, platform suitability factors, and sustainment needs for autonomous unmanned platforms to effectively augment intra-theater airlift in a Logistics Under Attack scenario?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing AI/ML Tool Suites for Cyber and Information Operations

    How must the military develop, integrate, and govern AI and machine learning tool suites to safely automate complex offensive and defensive cyber tasks, thereby enhancing the overall pace and quality of Information Operations?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How can the US Army combine and integrate emerging disruptive technologies with legacy platforms to create low-cost, scalable capabilities, and what DOTMLPF-P adjustments are required to implement these systems?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • JADO Essential Information Requirements, Data Fabrics, and Joint/Coalition Interoperability

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force identify essential information requirements and employ advanced technical and policy solutions—such as zero-trust architectures and containerization—to overcome legacy classification barriers and securely integrate interagency and coalition data into a unified Joint All-Domain Command and Control data fabric?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Long-Range, Low-Fuel Consumption Turbine Engines

    How can the use of smaller, more efficient engines, such as small-scale turbofans, reduce fuel consumption while effectively accomplishing ISR, strike, and other missions in permissive to semi-contested environments, and what are the associated benefits to sustainment and overall mission capability?

  • Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Targeting

    How can SOF best utilize machine learning and AI to revolutionize the targeting process, especially by enhancing automated detection and expediting the processing of large datasets?

  • Mission Command

    How can military commanders integrate AI into battle command and decision-making systems without undermining the core tenets of mission command, mutual trust, and disciplined initiative?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operationalizing Strategic Influence and Shaping the Information Environment

    How must the Joint Force and theater commands operationalize strategic influence and integrate information operations across the competition continuum to build allied credibility, shape the narrative against near-peer adversaries, and effectively measure these efforts across the joint, interagency, and multinational enterprise?

     

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruitment, Training, Development, Retention, and Analytic Certification of Air Force Intelligence Personnel

    How must the Air Force reform its recruiting, development, and retention pipelines for intelligence personnel to integrate emerging data science and space-based capabilities, and can Analytic Certification serve as a viable framework to enhance the overall effectiveness of the Intelligence Community?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Defense Industrial Capability and Capacity

    To what extent can Russia sustain its war against Ukraine, modernize, and regenerate its military given the strengths, adaptations, weaknesses, and structural limits of its defense‑industrial base—shaped by sanctions, wartime economic mobilization, leadership decisions, and initiatives intended to generate competitive advantage?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Training, Readiness, and Force Adaptation

    How has the Russian military adapted its training, mobilization, and readiness systems during the war in Ukraine, and what are the long-term implications of its ability to integrate combat lessons on the force's overall morale, professionalism, and future capabilities?

  • Russian Way of War: Future Military Force Structure and Design

    To what extent are the major factors shaping Russian future force structure through 2042—its strategic priorities, programmatic continuities and cancellations, gaps between intent and implementation, and required investments—revealing Russia’s underlying military intent and the feasibility of its long‑term force development plans.

  • Russian Way of War: Military Logistics and Sustainment

    To what extent is Russia’s logistics and sustainment ecosystem—its wartime adaptations, modernization efforts, structural strengths, and persistent vulnerabilities—evolving in response to lessons from the war in Ukraine, and how might this trajectory shape future challenges and implications for U.S. operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Vulnerabilities

    To what extent do the vulnerabilities, risks, and biases embedded in Russian doctrine, strategy, operational concepts, tactics, and capability development—along with flawed threat perceptions, escalation pathways, and systemic weaknesses across the Russian state and military—create potential for miscalculation and escalation risks for the United States.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • SOF Targeting in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    How can SOF adapt its targeting processes, refined during two decades of counterterrorism, for the complexities of Large-Scale Combat Operations, by defining its unique contributions to the joint targeting process and leveraging advanced technologies for effective dynamic targeting in a multi-domain environment?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF U.S. Strategic Command Nexus: How to Build Capability Greater than the Sum of Its Parts to Achieve Joint Effects

    How can space, cyber, SOF, and STRATCOM entities move beyond ad-hoc relationships to form an enduring partnership that allows for formal joint training and deployment, enabling combatant commands to better employ these integrated forces to achieve strategic objectives?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF-U.S. Strategic Command Nexus

    How can the synergy between space, cyber, SOF, and U.S. Strategic Command be maximized to achieve greater joint effects in future conflicts, considering the necessary organizational structures, joint training processes, and the associated legal and policy implications?

  • Strategic Basing, Fuel Benchmarking, and High-Fidelity Simulation

    How can the Air Force leverage high-fidelity training simulations for new aircraft like the KC-46 and F-35 to generate comparative metrics that inform strategic basing decisions while simultaneously establishing reliable fuel usage benchmarks for optimized mission planning and anomaly detection?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Implications of Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How will emerging and disruptive technologies shape the Army's capability to deter China in the 2045 operational environment, and what are the resulting implications for force structure, doctrine, and acquisition?

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • The Calculus of Conviction: Recalibrating Utility Functions for Theocratic Autocracies in Nuclear Deterrence

    How can nuclear deterrence theory be recalibrated by replacing classic outcome-based models with language-based utility functions and predictive mathematical engines to accurately forecast escalation by theocratic autocracies in multi-polar environments?

  • The Limits of AI and Big Data Technology

    What are the inherent vulnerabilities, cultural misconceptions, and data biases associated with the Department of War's rapid adoption of AI and Big Data, and how can the military mitigate these risks to strategically apply these tools across both technical and sociopolitical domains like irregular warfare?

  • Total Force Posture Shift, Indo-Pacific Deterrence, and Permanent Stationing

    How must the U.S. military adjust its Total Force posture to establish persistent Indo-Pacific deterrence, and what are the operational, economic, and quality-of-life implications—along with the strategic risks—of transitioning from rotational forces to a permanently stationed brigade combat team in South Korea?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • Trustworthy Integration of Large Language Models: Data Ingestion, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and Analytic Tradecraft

    How must the United States Air Force engineer reliable Large Language Model pipelines—leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation and fine-tuning techniques—to securely parse widespread datasets while strictly adhering to Intelligence Community Directive 203's analytic tradecraft standards to prevent hallucinations and ensure verifiable intelligence outputs?

  • Unmanned Warfare and the Implications of Militarily Relevant COTS Technologies

    Does the rapid proliferation of dual-use, commercial-off-the-shelf unmanned and autonomous technologies across all domains constitute a true revolution in military affairs, and how can the Department of Defense accelerate its adoption of these systems while effectively controlling their diffusion to prevent adversaries from gaining a strategic advantage?

  • Virtual Reality-Based Embodied Cognition Training

    How can research investigate the effectiveness of VR-based simulations for enhancing embodied cognition to develop spatial reasoning, problem-solving skills, and creativity within SOF?

  • Weapon System Vulnerabilities Introduced by Cloud Environments and Cyber Survivability

    How can the Air Force prioritize cyber survivability and streamline disjointed risk authorization processes to mitigate the unique vulnerabilities introduced by the integration of distributed cloud environments into critical weapon systems and ensure mission execution in contested domains?

China

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Battlefield Airman for Duty in the Pacific AOR

    Better Trained and Equipped Battlefield Airman (TACP, CCT, etc.) for Duty in the Pacific AOR  

  • China’s Global Expansion and Soft Power/Economic Approaches

    How must the United States evaluate the People's Republic of China's use of economic soft power and global expansion to understand its strategic impact on the international aerospace domain?

  • Chinese Aerospace Force Modernization Across Core Mission Sets

    How have comprehensive changes to the People's Liberation Army's DOTMLPFP framework enhanced the operational effectiveness of its aerospace forces across seven critical mission areas, ranging from air defense and precision strike to space and nuclear operations?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Chinese Economic Ties to India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How does China leverage economic interdependence as a tool of statecraft to impose costs and constrain the foreign policy and security choices of key regional powers like India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Comparative Models for the Deployment of Theater Nuclear Forces in Europe and Indo-Pacific

    How do the models for credibly deploying theater nuclear forces differ between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and which elements of the European model are transferable to establish a region-specific deterrence posture in Asia?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Detention Operations in United States Indo-Pacific Command

    How must the Joint Force adapt its doctrine and policies to execute detention operations in the Indo-Pacific region despite adversary anti-access/area-denial capabilities, reserve force deployment delays, and varying partner-nation capacities and legal agreements?

  • Deterrence by Denial, Geography, and Strategic Signaling in the Indo-Pacific

    How do distinct geographic environments in the Indo-Pacific—from the First Island Chain to more distant locations like Oceania and Diego Garcia—affect the viability of a deterrence-by-denial strategy, and how must the U.S. military adapt its force posture and nuclear signaling to manage escalation risks across these diverse regions?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Effectively Assessing OAI Impacts to PRC Behavior

    How can PACAF develop effective methodologies to accurately and succinctly measure the cumulative impacts of its Operations, Activities, and Investments (OAI) on PRC perceptions and behaviors over time?

     

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Force Posture and Special Operations in the Arctic

    How must the U.S. military and Special Operations Forces adapt their Arctic force posture, technological capabilities, and interoperability with conventional forces, interagency partners, and new NATO allies like Finland and Sweden to effectively secure the northern approaches amid great-power competition?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of Air Mobility in a Kinetic/Contested Environment with China

    How must Air Mobility Command adapt its operational planning to effectively project and sustain forces in a kinetic, contested environment with China, specifically by exploring Bypass Theory and the evolution of the Critical Path for Air Mobility?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Historic PRC–Taiwan Provocation Cycle

    Through an analysis of politics, military capabilities, regional posture, economics, and the information environment, what historical patterns emerge in the People's Republic of China's military provocations toward Taiwan?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Lessons for Operations in the Pacific

    How does General George Kenney's innovative and adaptive airpower approach in the South Pacific during World War II compare to the strategic and technological requirements for a potential future conflict with China?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Temperature on Mobility Aircraft Performance in the PACAF Region

    How can a decision-making tool or vulnerability assessment framework be developed using climate projection data to assess how temperature will degrade aircraft performance and impact the projection of combat power, considering effects on operational planning, logistics, and strategic basing?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Light and Lean: ACE Maneuver Unit Footprint Reduction

    Explore the impact of reducing the overall deployment footprint of operational units during ACE operations. 

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • PLA Meteorological Challenges and Dependencies

    What are the meteorological challenges and dependencies that a PLA combined arms assault on Taiwan would face? (557 WW) 

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protracted Warfare, Indirect Approaches, and Campaigning

    How can the Joint Force integrate indirect approaches, non-attributable actions, and strategic deception into protracted campaigning to counter peer adversaries like the PRC without triggering catastrophic escalation across the conflict continuum?

  • Public Opinion and Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the role of public opinion in shaping nuclear deterrence policies and strategies?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    How can the U.S. government reform its recruitment, training, and educational frameworks to build a force with the diverse perspectives required to effectively support resistance and resilience, while also fostering a common interagency understanding and developing shared doctrine with allies?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Security Vacuums and Great Power Competition in Africa

    How could a prolonged U.S.–Iran conflict create African security vacuums exploitable by China, Russia, and Iran, and how can historical insights from past Great Power involvement guide U.S. strategy in mitigating these modern threats?

  • Sino-Indian Strategic Competition: The Line of Actual Control and the 'Necklace of Diamonds' Strategy

    How must the United States and its partners leverage strategic cooperation in the air and space domains to support India's regional maritime strategies and counter the People's Republic of China's multi-domain aggression along the Line of Actual Control?

     

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • SOF Future Requirements

    Considering key geopolitical trends, how can SOF enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Requirements

    How can NATO and national SOF, in response to key geopolitical trends, enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills, competencies, and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Talent Management, Sustainability, and Repetitive Assignments

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise adapt its talent management, retention strategies, and force sustainability programs to develop resilient personnel equipped for strategic competition and support to resistance, while reconciling conflicting service and combatant command priorities regarding repetitive geographic assignments?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • South Korea as a Power-Projection Platform and Chinese Views of U.S. Presence

    How do the People's Republic of China and the People's Liberation Army perceive the U.S. military footprint in the Indo-Pacific, and how does the potential use of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea as a regional power-projection platform impact PRC contingency planning and crisis response?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Special Operations Command Central: Geostrategic Shifts from Peak Oil, Emerging Sea Lanes, and the Changing Calculus of VEOs

    How can we better understand and anticipate shifts in the Middle East's regional balance of power by analyzing the complex interplay of diplomatic alliances, economic developments, global energy transitions, and their potential to alter the risk-reward calculus for both state and non-state actors?

  • Strategic Airlift: 2029-2041 Major Conflict Scenario

    Given the projected air and ground threat density, to what extent can the JFACC sustain operations using strategic airlift for a major conflict scenario in the 2029-2041 timeframe?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Empathy in Intelligence Analysis

    How can the skill of "strategic empathy"—the ability to understand and identify with a competitor or adversary's perspective—be effectively developed and integrated to optimize analytical capabilities in the intelligence and strategic communities?

  • Strategic Implications of Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How will emerging and disruptive technologies shape the Army's capability to deter China in the 2045 operational environment, and what are the resulting implications for force structure, doctrine, and acquisition?

  • Strategic Influence through SOF

    How can SOF systematically enhance its strategic influence capabilities by integrating the necessary authorities, synchronizing tactical actions with strategic messaging, and leveraging insights from academic and business disciplines?

  • Strategic Posture and Sustainment for Dispersed Forces in the Pacific

    How must the Joint Force adapt its logistics and sustainment architecture, integrate advanced manufacturing, and effectively distribute fuel and munition nodes to support dispersed forces in the contested Indo-Pacific, while empowering leadership to balance operational readiness against survivability?

     

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Strategic Sabotage/Irregular Warfare

    How should special operations forces optimize their irregular warfare capabilities, including strategic sabotage, to proactively disrupt peer adversaries across all instruments of national power below the threshold of armed conflict in the mid-twenty-first century?

  • Strategic Stability, Trilateral Frameworks, and the Future of Arms Control in a Multipolar World

    How must the United States explore novel trilateral arms control frameworks and strategic risk-mitigation dialogues—such as leveraging the P5 forum—to maintain strategic stability, integrate emerging technologies, and evaluate the subsequent impacts on Department of War and Air Force nuclear force structures in a multipolar world?

  • Successful Resistance Movements

    By analyzing the political-military parameters and governmental approaches that determine success and failure in conflicts against resistance movements, what are the most effective strategies for countering both armed and nonviolent resistance?

  • Support to Resistance and Resilience Approaches to Preventing or Deterring Aggression

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive framework for assessing, planning, and implementing support to resilience and resistance, incorporating human-centric strategies, measurable metrics, and lessons from past conflicts to effectively deter aggression and navigate complex civil-military dynamics?

  • Sustaining SOF Maritime Mobility

    How can persistently forward-postured SOF, in collaboration with allies and partners, sustain resilient and fiscally sustainable land, sea, and air mobility within various archipelagoes?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Technological Support to Civil Resistance and Virtual Special Warfare in the Future Operating Environment

    How must Special Operations Forces leverage emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence and secure communications—and navigate the associated security risks to effectively execute virtual special warfare and support civil resistance movements against oppressive regimes in the future operating environment?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • The Human Dimension of the PLA: Personnel, Morale, and Command Culture

    How must the United States and the Joint Force evaluate the "human dimension" of the People's Liberation Army—specifically the interplay of its personnel reforms, collective morale, and highly centralized command culture—to accurately assess its combat readiness, decision-making vulnerabilities, and overall will to fight in a high-intensity peer conflict?

  • Total Force and Homeland Defense

    How must the military identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across defense and civilian critical infrastructure, employ Joint Force capabilities for resilience and recovery, and evaluate whether to redesign reserve components into purpose-built homeland defense forces without degrading overall total force readiness and modernization?

  • Total Force Posture Shift, Indo-Pacific Deterrence, and Permanent Stationing

    How must the U.S. military adjust its Total Force posture to establish persistent Indo-Pacific deterrence, and what are the operational, economic, and quality-of-life implications—along with the strategic risks—of transitioning from rotational forces to a permanently stationed brigade combat team in South Korea?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • U.S. Alliance System, SOCOM Partnerships, and Multinational Air Operations

    How can the U.S. military apply historical lessons from its alliance system and specific insights from Special Operations Command's partner operations to shape and enhance the future integration and execution of multinational air operations?

  • U.S. Approach to Strategic Partnerships, Burden Sharing, and Technical Interoperability

    How must the Department of Defense operationalize the strategic shift toward allied burden-shifting by tailoring regional security cooperation, overhauling Foreign Military Sales to prioritize asymmetric self-defense capabilities, and focusing on data interoperability rather than platform parity during realistic multilateral exercises?

  • U.S. High Yield Weapon Strategy

    What priority should a high-yield nuclear weapon capability hold within U.S. nuclear strategy and the Program of Record, considering its potential psychological effect on adversaries' decision-making versus the physical damage it can create?

  • U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Posture and Historical Forms of Strategic Risk Management without Arms Control

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the broader U.S. military adapt their nuclear deterrence strategy, extended deterrence commitments, and capability development if the United States shifts from legally binding arms control treaties to politically binding confidence-building measures to manage strategic risk with peer adversaries?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Understanding the Will to Resist and Measuring Resilience and Resistance

    How can the military and Special Operations Forces effectively define, quantify, and measure a population's psychological "will to resist" using doctrinal analytical frameworks like PMESII-PT to better inform, shape, and predict future Support to Resistance and Resilience operations?

Logistics

Deterrence

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • CNI--How to Integrate Conventional and Nuclear Munition on American Bomber and Fighter Aircraft

    Given the shift in the modern warfare paradigm, should the U.S. revisit its Cold War-era policy that restricts the co-loading of conventional and nuclear weapons on the same aircraft?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Distinct Maintenance Principles and Facility Standards for ICBMs vs. Aircraft

    How must the Air Force differentiate maintenance principles and facility standards for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) from those of conventional aircraft, and what approaches ensure these unique operational and nuclear security requirements are properly accounted for in maintenance execution and future facility design?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Nuclear Wargaming, Simulation Realism, and the Lessons Learned Pipeline

    How must the United States Air Force and the broader nuclear enterprise overcome systemic bottlenecks and cultural barriers to modernize wargaming realism, leveraging historical lessons and AI-enabled analysis to translate simulation data into actionable doctrine without compromising the readiness of on-alert deterrent forces?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Nuclear Maintenance Manning, Career Field Consolidation, and MRA/ACE Efficiencies

    How must the Air Force overcome severe nuclear maintenance manning shortages by evaluating civilian contracting for ICBMs, consolidating specialized career fields, and integrating Mission Ready Airmen concepts to support Agile Combat Employment and the growing demands of modern weapon systems?

  • Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

    What are the primary drivers and potential consequences of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and what comprehensive strategies can be developed to effectively mitigate these risks?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Public Opinion and Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the role of public opinion in shaping nuclear deterrence policies and strategies?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Resourcing and Deterrence Prioritization in the Nuclear Enterprise

    How must the Department of the Air Force balance strategic resourcing and optimize long-term budgetary trade-offs between the physical security, sustainment, and certification of nuclear weapons versus the acquisition and survivability of modernized delivery platforms (such as Sentinel, B-21, and LRSO) to maintain a credible and effective strategic deterrent?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Strategic Stability, Trilateral Frameworks, and the Future of Arms Control in a Multipolar World

    How must the United States explore novel trilateral arms control frameworks and strategic risk-mitigation dialogues—such as leveraging the P5 forum—to maintain strategic stability, integrate emerging technologies, and evaluate the subsequent impacts on Department of War and Air Force nuclear force structures in a multipolar world?

  • Tactical Nuclear Deterrence and the Impact of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

    How do Russia's conventional losses in Ukraine affect its likelihood of using nuclear weapons, how does deterrence operate in a tactical nuclear scenario, and must traditional U.S. deterrence models and policies be modified to address tactical nuclear threats?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Total Force Support to Security Cooperation, Campaigning, and Deterrence

    How can the military and geographic combatant commands leverage National Guard capabilities and transform initiatives like the State Partnership Program to enhance active campaigning, foster burden-sharing with allies, and establish effective deterrence by denial in the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • U.S. High Yield Weapon Strategy

    What priority should a high-yield nuclear weapon capability hold within U.S. nuclear strategy and the Program of Record, considering its potential psychological effect on adversaries' decision-making versus the physical damage it can create?

  • U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Posture and Historical Forms of Strategic Risk Management without Arms Control

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the broader U.S. military adapt their nuclear deterrence strategy, extended deterrence commitments, and capability development if the United States shifts from legally binding arms control treaties to politically binding confidence-building measures to manage strategic risk with peer adversaries?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Worldwide Deployable Dual-Capable Aircraft, Extended Deterrence, and What Comes after the B61-12

    How does the global deployment of dual-capable aircraft paired with the B61-12 impact extended deterrence and adversary perceptions beyond NATO, and what specific capabilities must the next generation of theater nuclear weapons possess to ensure a flexible, politically sustainable strategic advantage?

Industrial

Diplomacy

Space

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Battlefield Airman for Duty in the Pacific AOR

    Better Trained and Equipped Battlefield Airman (TACP, CCT, etc.) for Duty in the Pacific AOR  

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • CNI--How to Integrate Conventional and Nuclear Munition on American Bomber and Fighter Aircraft

    Given the shift in the modern warfare paradigm, should the U.S. revisit its Cold War-era policy that restricts the co-loading of conventional and nuclear weapons on the same aircraft?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Security in Space-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

    How can the U.S. military integrate Cyber-Physical System concepts with advanced AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to develop a comprehensive, proactive cyber defense strategy that ensures holistic situational awareness and standardized risk mitigation across military and commercial space systems against near-peer adversaries?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Develop Improved Assessments of Landing Weights

    What is the full fiscal and maintenance readiness impact of mobility aircraft frequently landing with excessive weight due to carrying more fuel than required, and how does this practice affect both short and long-term aircraft sustainment?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Effect-Based Metrics Posture

    How can modeling and simulation be used to develop heuristics that connect engineering-level improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency to operationally valued capabilities within campaign scenarios?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Epic Fury: Lessons Learned

    What lessons can be learned from Operation EPIC FURY to identify and formalize the most effective ad-hoc tactical C2 integration efforts into enduring Air Force and Joint air and missile defense systems?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Formation and Culture of the Space Force

    How must the U.S. Space Force manage its cross-service personnel integration and structural evolution to overcome legacy institutional thinking, cultivate a unified service identity, and define the necessity and execution of a distinct domain-specific warfighting mindset?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of Air Mobility in a Kinetic/Contested Environment with China

    How must Air Mobility Command adapt its operational planning to effectively project and sustain forces in a kinetic, contested environment with China, specifically by exploring Bypass Theory and the evolution of the Critical Path for Air Mobility?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Ground-Based C2 in Forward Theaters

     How can USAF leverage planned ABADS MD fielding to enable a resilient distributed ground-based command and control capability in forward theaters? What DOTmLPF-P changes are needed to support this?

  • Ground-Based Fuel Ecosystem

    Considering the entire ground-based fuel ecosystem, to what extent will bases in the Forward and Sustaining Installations Categories be able to generate the required Combat Air Force sorties to meet Joint Force Commander objectives in the 2029-2041 timeframe?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis of The Defense and Restoring Dominance in Counter-Mobility

    How can NATO leverage historical defense-in-depth lessons alongside a high-low capability mix of modernized counter-mobility, attritable loitering munitions, and cargo-launched air vehicles to deter and defeat peer adversaries along the Eastern Flank?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Lessons for Operations in the Pacific

    How does General George Kenney's innovative and adaptive airpower approach in the South Pacific during World War II compare to the strategic and technological requirements for a potential future conflict with China?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • How to Derive Confidence in Reliability in Low-Density Critical Assets

    How can the military effectively evaluate and express changes in reliability confidence over time for low-density critical assets when limited stockpile sizes preclude regular live-release testing?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact of Technological Advancements, Passive Detection, and Cheap SDRs on Air Warfare

    How must the United States military adapt its Agile Combat Employment concepts to maintain overall air superiority against the proliferation of cheap, networked software-defined radios and advanced passive detection technologies that increasingly threaten to rapidly find and fix dispersed forces?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Temperature on Mobility Aircraft Performance in the PACAF Region

    How can a decision-making tool or vulnerability assessment framework be developed using climate projection data to assess how temperature will degrade aircraft performance and impact the projection of combat power, considering effects on operational planning, logistics, and strategic basing?

  • Impacts of Unmanned, Automated Platforms for Logistics Under Attack

    What are the operational requirements, platform suitability factors, and sustainment needs for autonomous unmanned platforms to effectively augment intra-theater airlift in a Logistics Under Attack scenario?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing AI/ML Tool Suites for Cyber and Information Operations

    How must the military develop, integrate, and govern AI and machine learning tool suites to safely automate complex offensive and defensive cyber tasks, thereby enhancing the overall pace and quality of Information Operations?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • In-Space Logistics, Point-to-Point Cargo Delivery, and Spacecraft Operational Energy

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the U.S. Space Force design a resilient in-space logistics framework, overcome fundamental spacecraft operational energy constraints, and evaluate point-to-point cargo delivery alternatives to balance immediate mission needs against optimal cargo staging for sustained, responsive orbital operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge

    How must the US Army evolve its doctrine, organizational structures, and materiel to fully integrate cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations at the tactical level to sustain an information advantage during multidomain operations?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Integration, Training, and the Evolution of Mission Ready / Multi-Capable Airmen

    How should the Air Force evolve its integration models to optimize human capital for Great Power Competition, specifically by evaluating the creation of a dedicated Mission Ready Airman AFSC for Agile Combat Employment and fully integrating specialized career fields, like 1C3 Command Post Controllers, into the nuclear enterprise's Sentinel Integrated Command Centers?

  • Intel Fusion

    Can a repeatable process be developed to create cross-functional Analysis and Exploitation Teams capable of producing high-quality reports that meet theater requirements within three months of their initial establishment?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • JADO Essential Information Requirements, Data Fabrics, and Joint/Coalition Interoperability

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force identify essential information requirements and employ advanced technical and policy solutions—such as zero-trust architectures and containerization—to overcome legacy classification barriers and securely integrate interagency and coalition data into a unified Joint All-Domain Command and Control data fabric?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Leadership in Combat Wings

    How must the USAF officer development paradigm shift to cultivate leaders with the necessary breadth of knowledge and mission-focused perspective required to effectively command the new multi-functional Combat Wing formations?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Light and Lean: ACE Maneuver Unit Footprint Reduction

    Explore the impact of reducing the overall deployment footprint of operational units during ACE operations. 

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Long-Range, Low-Fuel Consumption Turbine Engines

    How can the use of smaller, more efficient engines, such as small-scale turbofans, reduce fuel consumption while effectively accomplishing ISR, strike, and other missions in permissive to semi-contested environments, and what are the associated benefits to sustainment and overall mission capability?

  • Medical Operations, Hospital Outflow, and Return to Duty in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    To handle high casualties in large-scale combat operations, U.S. military medicine must execute comprehensive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to treat and return patients to duty closer to the front lines, while formalizing civilian infrastructure conversion models like Hotel2Hospital to absorb massive patient surges in the homeland.

  • Missions for the USSF: Planetary Defense

    What specific roles and responsibilities should the U.S. Space Force assume in the critical areas of asteroid detection and planetary defense?

  • Mitigating Airlift Vulnerability: Building a Resilient Army Surface Deployment Capability

    What DOTMLPF-P changes must the Army implement within its logistics enterprise to develop a resilient surface deployment capability that mitigates the Joint Force's critical vulnerability to limited strategic airlift during peer-level conflicts?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Nuclear Wargaming, Simulation Realism, and the Lessons Learned Pipeline

    How must the United States Air Force and the broader nuclear enterprise overcome systemic bottlenecks and cultural barriers to modernize wargaming realism, leveraging historical lessons and AI-enabled analysis to translate simulation data into actionable doctrine without compromising the readiness of on-alert deterrent forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operationalizing the Drone Effect and Integrating Remotely Piloted Aircraft in Joint All-Domain Operations

    How must the United States Air Force conduct a comprehensive mission substitution analysis to effectively integrate Remotely Piloted Aircraft into Joint All-Domain Operations, optimizing fuel efficiency, logistical sustainment, and mission capabilities across permissive and semi-contested environments?

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimization of Cargo Processing, Load Planning Tools, and Supply Chain Velocity

    How must the United States Air Force optimize the global positioning of its mobility fleet and integrate precision cargo processing with advanced load planning tools to eliminate supply chain bottlenecks, maximize fuel efficiency, and enhance overall global power projection?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Information Warfare and Cyber Force Structures

    How must the United States Air Force and Department of Defense optimize their current cyber force structures and reorganize their institutional frameworks to accelerate the development and execution of integrated Information Warfare capabilities?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • PLA Meteorological Challenges and Dependencies

    What are the meteorological challenges and dependencies that a PLA combined arms assault on Taiwan would face? (557 WW) 

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruitment, Training, Development, Retention, and Analytic Certification of Air Force Intelligence Personnel

    How must the Air Force reform its recruiting, development, and retention pipelines for intelligence personnel to integrate emerging data science and space-based capabilities, and can Analytic Certification serve as a viable framework to enhance the overall effectiveness of the Intelligence Community?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Reevaluating Educational Experience and Generational Differences

    How must the military adapt its recruitment, training, and physical or educational standards to accommodate generational differences and attract digital natives for specialized roles—like cyber and information operations—without degrading the professional standards of the broader force?

  • Resourcing and Deterrence Prioritization in the Nuclear Enterprise

    How must the Department of the Air Force balance strategic resourcing and optimize long-term budgetary trade-offs between the physical security, sustainment, and certification of nuclear weapons versus the acquisition and survivability of modernized delivery platforms (such as Sentinel, B-21, and LRSO) to maintain a credible and effective strategic deterrent?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Cyberspace Operations: Strategy, Capabilities, Commercial Support, and Influence Activities

    How must the United States assess Russia's cyberspace strategy, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign commercial technologies to anticipate retaliatory attacks, while simultaneously evaluating the evolving tactical procedures of Russian security services and their convergence of cyber warfare with influence operations?

  • Russian War of War: Military Planning, Strategy and Assessment

    To what extent are lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine—and its evolving expectations of conflict with NATO—reshaping Russian strategic operations such as the Operation of Strategic Deterrence Forces (OSDF), Strategic Aerospace Operations (SAO), and the Strategic Operation of Theater Military Forces (SOTMO), and how these operations nest within and modify Russian military doctrine.

  • Russian Way of War: Doctrine and Military Thought

    To what extent is the war in Ukraine—and Russian expectations of future conflict with NATO—reshaping its doctrine, its internal debates about the conduct of contemporary and emerging warfare, and the positions of its leading strategic thinkers, including how they can be categorized and where their perspectives diverge?

  • Russian Way of War: Future Military Force Structure and Design

    To what extent are the major factors shaping Russian future force structure through 2042—its strategic priorities, programmatic continuities and cancellations, gaps between intent and implementation, and required investments—revealing Russia’s underlying military intent and the feasibility of its long‑term force development plans.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Interdependence, Interoperability and Integration with Conventional Forces

    How can Special Operations Forces and Conventional Forces enhance their interdependence, interoperability, and integration to create a decisive joint force advantage over adversaries within the frameworks of Joint All-Domain Operations and the Joint Warfighting Concept?

  • SOF Targeting in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    How can SOF adapt its targeting processes, refined during two decades of counterterrorism, for the complexities of Large-Scale Combat Operations, by defining its unique contributions to the joint targeting process and leveraging advanced technologies for effective dynamic targeting in a multi-domain environment?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • South Korea as a Power-Projection Platform and Chinese Views of U.S. Presence

    How do the People's Republic of China and the People's Liberation Army perceive the U.S. military footprint in the Indo-Pacific, and how does the potential use of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea as a regional power-projection platform impact PRC contingency planning and crisis response?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space Force Basing

    Analyze various aspects of the future of Space Force basing.

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF U.S. Strategic Command Nexus: How to Build Capability Greater than the Sum of Its Parts to Achieve Joint Effects

    How can space, cyber, SOF, and STRATCOM entities move beyond ad-hoc relationships to form an enduring partnership that allows for formal joint training and deployment, enabling combatant commands to better employ these integrated forces to achieve strategic objectives?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF-U.S. Strategic Command Nexus

    How can the synergy between space, cyber, SOF, and U.S. Strategic Command be maximized to achieve greater joint effects in future conflicts, considering the necessary organizational structures, joint training processes, and the associated legal and policy implications?

  • Strategic Airlift: 2029-2041 Major Conflict Scenario

    Given the projected air and ground threat density, to what extent can the JFACC sustain operations using strategic airlift for a major conflict scenario in the 2029-2041 timeframe?

  • Strategic Basing, Fuel Benchmarking, and High-Fidelity Simulation

    How can the Air Force leverage high-fidelity training simulations for new aircraft like the KC-46 and F-35 to generate comparative metrics that inform strategic basing decisions while simultaneously establishing reliable fuel usage benchmarks for optimized mission planning and anomaly detection?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Leadership, Force Development, and Career Path Professionalization in JADO/JADC2

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt strategic leadership practices, reform talent management structures, and evaluate the creation of a formalized Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) career field to successfully inculcate a joint culture and prepare personnel for 21st-century multi-domain conflict?

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Strategic Sabotage/Irregular Warfare

    How should special operations forces optimize their irregular warfare capabilities, including strategic sabotage, to proactively disrupt peer adversaries across all instruments of national power below the threshold of armed conflict in the mid-twenty-first century?

  • Sustaining SOF Maritime Mobility

    How can persistently forward-postured SOF, in collaboration with allies and partners, sustain resilient and fiscally sustainable land, sea, and air mobility within various archipelagoes?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Total Force and Homeland Defense

    How must the military identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across defense and civilian critical infrastructure, employ Joint Force capabilities for resilience and recovery, and evaluate whether to redesign reserve components into purpose-built homeland defense forces without degrading overall total force readiness and modernization?

  • Training and Education for Space Professionals

    How should the U.S. Space Force evolve the education and training of space professionals by evaluating the necessity of mandatory STEM degrees, integrating civilian space courses, and leveraging partnerships with universities, commercial agencies, and international allies to meet future operational requirements?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • Trustworthy Integration of Large Language Models: Data Ingestion, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and Analytic Tradecraft

    How must the United States Air Force engineer reliable Large Language Model pipelines—leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation and fine-tuning techniques—to securely parse widespread datasets while strictly adhering to Intelligence Community Directive 203's analytic tradecraft standards to prevent hallucinations and ensure verifiable intelligence outputs?

  • U.S. Alliance System, SOCOM Partnerships, and Multinational Air Operations

    How can the U.S. military apply historical lessons from its alliance system and specific insights from Special Operations Command's partner operations to shape and enhance the future integration and execution of multinational air operations?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Unmanned Warfare and the Implications of Militarily Relevant COTS Technologies

    Does the rapid proliferation of dual-use, commercial-off-the-shelf unmanned and autonomous technologies across all domains constitute a true revolution in military affairs, and how can the Department of Defense accelerate its adoption of these systems while effectively controlling their diffusion to prevent adversaries from gaining a strategic advantage?

  • USAF Supply Chain Protection and Cyber Weapon System Infrastructure Accreditation

    How can the Air Force holistically protect its critical IT networks by integrating physical supply chain security and chain of custody best practices with a streamlined, enterprise-wide accreditation process that resolves existing Risk Management Framework conflicts between base enclaves and cyber weapon systems?

  • Utilization of Cyberspace Proxies in Unconventional Warfare

    How can a review of the current legal framework and historical examples be used to develop recommendations that enable the effective and legal use of cyber proxies by SOF throughout the phases of an unconventional warfare campaign?

  • Value of Landpower

    How must the fundamental role of soldiers and land formations adapt to maintain the value and relevance of Landpower in a multidomain conflict with China, particularly in a future operational environment characterized by emerging technologies, ubiquitous space-based capabilities, and an increasing reliance on autonomous systems?

  • Weapon System Vulnerabilities Introduced by Cloud Environments and Cyber Survivability

    How can the Air Force prioritize cyber survivability and streamline disjointed risk authorization processes to mitigate the unique vulnerabilities introduced by the integration of distributed cloud environments into critical weapon systems and ensure mission execution in contested domains?

  • What Does Intelligence Support to Next-Generation ICBMs Look Like?

    How should intelligence support for the next-generation Sentinel ICBM system and its crews be optimally structured, and how can this ideal end-state be adapted for a resource-constrained environment?

  • Worldwide Deployable Dual-Capable Aircraft, Extended Deterrence, and What Comes after the B61-12

    How does the global deployment of dual-capable aircraft paired with the B61-12 impact extended deterrence and adversary perceptions beyond NATO, and what specific capabilities must the next generation of theater nuclear weapons possess to ensure a flexible, politically sustainable strategic advantage?

ISR

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

Education

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Assessing Civilian Vulnerabilities and Resource Protection in Conflict

    How must the Joint Force prioritize the protection and provision of critical resources in severely constrained environments like the Middle East to prevent the weaponization of scarcity and refugees, while simultaneously minimizing its own logistical footprint to ensure sustainable long-term stabilization?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Autonomy, Active Border Defenses, and Partner-Centric Approaches to Security Cooperation

    How do partner nation political will, absorptive capacity, and institutional factors shape U.S. security cooperation strategy in the Middle East, and can the implementation of active border defense constructs successfully enable these nations to assume primary responsibility for their own long-term territorial defense?

  • China’s Global Expansion and Soft Power/Economic Approaches

    How must the United States evaluate the People's Republic of China's use of economic soft power and global expansion to understand its strategic impact on the international aerospace domain?

  • Chinese Aerospace Force Modernization Across Core Mission Sets

    How have comprehensive changes to the People's Liberation Army's DOTMLPFP framework enhanced the operational effectiveness of its aerospace forces across seven critical mission areas, ranging from air defense and precision strike to space and nuclear operations?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Chinese Economic Ties to India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How does China leverage economic interdependence as a tool of statecraft to impose costs and constrain the foreign policy and security choices of key regional powers like India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • CNI--How to Integrate Conventional and Nuclear Munition on American Bomber and Fighter Aircraft

    Given the shift in the modern warfare paradigm, should the U.S. revisit its Cold War-era policy that restricts the co-loading of conventional and nuclear weapons on the same aircraft?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Non-State Actors

    How can the United States develop a comprehensive, medium-term interagency strategy that leverages unique government authorities and international partnerships to effectively counter newly designated transnational cartels and gangs?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Crisis Response Preparedness, Security Cooperation, and U.S. Support to Peacekeeping Operations

    How can the United States transition from primarily financial support to directly contributing critical logistical enablers for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, and what risks regarding command and control, reimbursements, casualties, and local perceptions must be mitigated to ensure successful integration?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • Crowdsourcing

    How can the Air Force more effectively crowdsource solutions to capability and capacity gaps across the industrial-military complex while balancing security concerns? 

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Detention Operations in United States Indo-Pacific Command

    How must the Joint Force adapt its doctrine and policies to execute detention operations in the Indo-Pacific region despite adversary anti-access/area-denial capabilities, reserve force deployment delays, and varying partner-nation capacities and legal agreements?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Force Protection: Threats and Risks to SOF

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive strategy to mitigate the growing technical and privacy threats from the digital environment to its personnel and operations, balancing operational security with personal privacy by leveraging new technologies, fostering multi-sector collaboration, and creating effective risk mitigation strategies?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Economic Investments and Prioritization of Efforts in Africa

    How can the U.S. military identify high-priority African nations for partnerships aimed at countering terrorism and securing critical minerals, and which engagement strategies and private-sector investment models offer the highest strategic return on investment?

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Historic PRC–Taiwan Provocation Cycle

    Through an analysis of politics, military capabilities, regional posture, economics, and the information environment, what historical patterns emerge in the People's Republic of China's military provocations toward Taiwan?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: US Army–Operated Terminals During World War II

    How can a historical study of the organization, location selection, and civil-military coordination of US Army-operated terminals during World War II inform modern military preparations and address capability gaps for large-scale mobilization and combat operations?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • How to Derive Confidence in Reliability in Low-Density Critical Assets

    How can the military effectively evaluate and express changes in reliability confidence over time for low-density critical assets when limited stockpile sizes preclude regular live-release testing?

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Base of India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How can an analysis of the industrial base capacity, projectability, economic growth trends, and potential for defense-sector expansion in India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia inform a U.S. cost-imposition strategy within the context of the strategic competition with China?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Leveraging Institutional Capacity Building in Security Cooperation

    What approaches work best to leverage institutional capacity building in support of the NDS and other national security objectives, including military effectiveness, rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights?  

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Targeting

    How can SOF best utilize machine learning and AI to revolutionize the targeting process, especially by enhancing automated detection and expediting the processing of large datasets?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise: Resourcing and Building a Profession

    How must the Department of Defense reform its manning and resourcing models to overcome institutional barriers and transform the security cooperation workforce from a compliance-driven, temporary assignment system into a professionalized, right-sized career path capable of executing multi-year strategic strategies?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • Metrics of Industrial Base Capacity

    What are the key economic, political, technological, and demographic indicators that define the capacity of an industrial base? How do these metrics interact with each other and impact the overall industrial capacity of a country?  

  • Military Construction

    What specific policy, funding, and procedural reforms to the military construction process are required to accelerate the modernization of the organic industrial base so it can match the agility and execution speed of the private-sector defense industrial base?

  • Missions for the USSF: Planetary Defense

    What specific roles and responsibilities should the U.S. Space Force assume in the critical areas of asteroid detection and planetary defense?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Nuclear Industrial Base and the Credibility of U.S. Deterrence

    How does the capacity of the U.S. nuclear industrial base—including infrastructure, production, and sustainment—directly affect the credibility of deterrence by signaling strategic durability or institutional weakness to allies and adversaries?

  • Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

    What are the primary drivers and potential consequences of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and what comprehensive strategies can be developed to effectively mitigate these risks?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Individuals, Personal Relationships and Security Cooperation Out-Comes

    How can the nuanced effects of relationship-building programs in security cooperation be empirically measured to understand how factors like shared values, trust, and intellectual interoperability translate into enhanced burden-sharing and institutional change, despite personnel turnover and political complexities?

  • Operationalizing Irregular Warfare: How to Conduct Long-Term and Transregional Irregular Warfare Campaigns

    How can USSOCOM best support the global, long-term requirements of irregular warfare campaigning for joint all-domain operations and the joint warfighting concept, given that the current DoD structure is primarily organized for regional, large-scale combat?

  • Operationalizing Strategic Influence and Shaping the Information Environment

    How must the Joint Force and theater commands operationalize strategic influence and integrate information operations across the competition continuum to build allied credibility, shape the narrative against near-peer adversaries, and effectively measure these efforts across the joint, interagency, and multinational enterprise?

     

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing Information Warfare and Cyber Force Structures

    How must the United States Air Force and Department of Defense optimize their current cyber force structures and reorganize their institutional frameworks to accelerate the development and execution of integrated Information Warfare capabilities?

  • Optimizing SOF Production and Capitalizing on Non-Commissioned Officers’ Advanced Degrees

    How must the Special Operations Forces enterprise leverage emerging technologies to optimize operator production pipelines and implement data-driven talent management reforms to effectively employ highly educated non-commissioned officers in specialized, institutional roles?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Protracted Warfare, Indirect Approaches, and Campaigning

    How can the Joint Force integrate indirect approaches, non-attributable actions, and strategic deception into protracted campaigning to counter peer adversaries like the PRC without triggering catastrophic escalation across the conflict continuum?

  • Psychological and Cognitive Conditioning for High-Stress, Multi-Domain Scenarios

    How can SOF training programs be optimized to address the psychological and cognitive challenges of multi-domain operations by integrating effective cognitive training techniques and ongoing mental health support to improve decision-making and sustain long-term readiness?

  • Public Opinion and Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the role of public opinion in shaping nuclear deterrence policies and strategies?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruiting, Readiness, and the All-Volunteer Force

    How can the military sustain the health of the All-Volunteer Force by modernizing its stationing strategies, value proposition, and career pathways to attract younger generations and retain mid-career leaders, and what lessons can be drawn from alternative service models or allied nations to optimize Total Force readiness?

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    How can the U.S. government reform its recruitment, training, and educational frameworks to build a force with the diverse perspectives required to effectively support resistance and resilience, while also fostering a common interagency understanding and developing shared doctrine with allies?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Reevaluating Educational Experience and Generational Differences

    How must the military adapt its recruitment, training, and physical or educational standards to accommodate generational differences and attract digital natives for specialized roles—like cyber and information operations—without degrading the professional standards of the broader force?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Cooperation with the West: Multi-Domain Arenas, Transnational Threats, and Common-Pool Resource Management

    How must the United States and its NATO allies identify and leverage transactional cooperation with the Russian Federation in shared non-military domains—such as Arctic search and rescue, Low Earth Orbit collision avoidance, and countering transnational cybercrime—to manage common-pool resources and reduce overall strategic friction amidst intense geopolitical rivalry?

  • Russian Cyberspace Operations: Strategy, Capabilities, Commercial Support, and Influence Activities

    How must the United States assess Russia's cyberspace strategy, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign commercial technologies to anticipate retaliatory attacks, while simultaneously evaluating the evolving tactical procedures of Russian security services and their convergence of cyber warfare with influence operations?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Defense Industrial Capability and Capacity

    To what extent can Russia sustain its war against Ukraine, modernize, and regenerate its military given the strengths, adaptations, weaknesses, and structural limits of its defense‑industrial base—shaped by sanctions, wartime economic mobilization, leadership decisions, and initiatives intended to generate competitive advantage?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Military Leadership

    To what extent are trends in Russian senior officer promotions, postings, and the emergence of a new military elite—shaped by competency, obedience, and patronage networks—revealing the future trajectory of Russian military leadership and its implications for the General Staff.

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Regime Stability and Domestic Control

    To what extent are evolving dynamics in Russian society, culture, governance, elite networks, and the national economy—along with shifts in conglomerates and domestic control mechanisms—shaping the stability of the Russian system and influencing its defense and foreign‑policy behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Objectives, Adversary Alignments and Strategic Partnerships

    To what extent are shifts in Russian perceptions of NATO defense and deterrence—along with Russia’s deepening military cooperation with China, North Korea, Iran, India, Belarus, Turkey, and other regional partners—reshaping Russian strategic objectives, generating new threats and challenges for the United States, and revealing Russia’s evolving theory of competition?

  • Russian Training, Readiness, and Force Adaptation

    How has the Russian military adapted its training, mobilization, and readiness systems during the war in Ukraine, and what are the long-term implications of its ability to integrate combat lessons on the force's overall morale, professionalism, and future capabilities?

  • Russian War of War: Military Planning, Strategy and Assessment

    To what extent are lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine—and its evolving expectations of conflict with NATO—reshaping Russian strategic operations such as the Operation of Strategic Deterrence Forces (OSDF), Strategic Aerospace Operations (SAO), and the Strategic Operation of Theater Military Forces (SOTMO), and how these operations nest within and modify Russian military doctrine.

  • Russian Way of War: Doctrine and Military Thought

    To what extent is the war in Ukraine—and Russian expectations of future conflict with NATO—reshaping its doctrine, its internal debates about the conduct of contemporary and emerging warfare, and the positions of its leading strategic thinkers, including how they can be categorized and where their perspectives diverge?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Logistics and Sustainment

    To what extent is Russia’s logistics and sustainment ecosystem—its wartime adaptations, modernization efforts, structural strengths, and persistent vulnerabilities—evolving in response to lessons from the war in Ukraine, and how might this trajectory shape future challenges and implications for U.S. operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Vulnerabilities

    To what extent do the vulnerabilities, risks, and biases embedded in Russian doctrine, strategy, operational concepts, tactics, and capability development—along with flawed threat perceptions, escalation pathways, and systemic weaknesses across the Russian state and military—create potential for miscalculation and escalation risks for the United States.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Military Posture and Power Projection

    To what extent is the regional and global expansion of Russia’s military presence—its progress, obstacles, and alignment with state policy objectives—shaping future Russian posture and its ability to challenge U.S. access, basing, and operations?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Security Cooperation and Capacity Building: Methods and Evidence

    How can the Department of Defense optimize its assessment, monitoring, and evaluation methodologies and improve data accessibility to build a rigorous evidence base that accurately measures the effectiveness of defense capacity building programs in cultivating capable, interoperable allies and perform that mission?

  • Security Cooperation in an Evolving Strategic Context

    Existing research on security cooperation needs updating because the global context has changed significantly due to shifts in military technology, the nature of war, and the strategic environment. It is now essential to examine how emerging technologies, new warfighting domains, and global competition impact U.S. national security strategy and its security cooperation activities.

  • Security Vacuums and Great Power Competition in Africa

    How could a prolonged U.S.–Iran conflict create African security vacuums exploitable by China, Russia, and Iran, and how can historical insights from past Great Power involvement guide U.S. strategy in mitigating these modern threats?

  • Setting the Theater for Homeland Defense, Power Projection, and Operational Shifts

    How must the U.S. military set the domestic theater to balance expanding homeland defense and border security missions with global force projection and large-scale combat readiness, while reshaping the Total Force and implementing necessary legal and ethical frameworks to mitigate the unique risks of operating within the United States?

  • Sino-Indian Strategic Competition: The Line of Actual Control and the 'Necklace of Diamonds' Strategy

    How must the United States and its partners leverage strategic cooperation in the air and space domains to support India's regional maritime strategies and counter the People's Republic of China's multi-domain aggression along the Line of Actual Control?

     

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Civilian Workforce Optimization

    How can the SOF enterprise best optimize its use of the civilian workforce to be more efficient and lethal following multiple rounds of workforce cuts in 2025?

  • SOF Interoperability

    How can SOF, its partners, and allies (including NATO) overcome cultural and linguistic differences and improve collaboration to enhance interoperability and cohesion in addressing global security challenges?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • SOF's Role in Protecting the Homeland and Countering Designated Other Terrorist Organizations--International Cartels

    How can SOF most effectively leverage its unique capabilities, in conjunction with partners and allies, to degrade and defeat newly designated terrorist organizations and transnational cartels in the Western Hemisphere while maintaining the element of surprise?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space Force Basing

    Analyze various aspects of the future of Space Force basing.

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Special Operations Command Central: Geostrategic Shifts from Peak Oil, Emerging Sea Lanes, and the Changing Calculus of VEOs

    How can we better understand and anticipate shifts in the Middle East's regional balance of power by analyzing the complex interplay of diplomatic alliances, economic developments, global energy transitions, and their potential to alter the risk-reward calculus for both state and non-state actors?

  • Special Operations Command Europe: Postwar Ukraine

    How must the Ukrainian military and its specialized forces transition from a total-war footing to a sustainable peacetime defense posture while retaining critical asymmetric capabilities, optimizing reserve forces, and preparing for integration into the NATO alliance?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Empathy in Intelligence Analysis

    How can the skill of "strategic empathy"—the ability to understand and identify with a competitor or adversary's perspective—be effectively developed and integrated to optimize analytical capabilities in the intelligence and strategic communities?

  • Strategic Influence through SOF

    How can SOF systematically enhance its strategic influence capabilities by integrating the necessary authorities, synchronizing tactical actions with strategic messaging, and leveraging insights from academic and business disciplines?

  • Strategic Posture and Sustainment for Dispersed Forces in the Pacific

    How must the Joint Force adapt its logistics and sustainment architecture, integrate advanced manufacturing, and effectively distribute fuel and munition nodes to support dispersed forces in the contested Indo-Pacific, while empowering leadership to balance operational readiness against survivability?

     

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Strategic Sabotage/Irregular Warfare

    How should special operations forces optimize their irregular warfare capabilities, including strategic sabotage, to proactively disrupt peer adversaries across all instruments of national power below the threshold of armed conflict in the mid-twenty-first century?

  • Strategic Stability, Trilateral Frameworks, and the Future of Arms Control in a Multipolar World

    How must the United States explore novel trilateral arms control frameworks and strategic risk-mitigation dialogues—such as leveraging the P5 forum—to maintain strategic stability, integrate emerging technologies, and evaluate the subsequent impacts on Department of War and Air Force nuclear force structures in a multipolar world?

  • Successful Resistance Movements

    By analyzing the political-military parameters and governmental approaches that determine success and failure in conflicts against resistance movements, what are the most effective strategies for countering both armed and nonviolent resistance?

  • Support to Resistance and Resilience Approaches to Preventing or Deterring Aggression

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive framework for assessing, planning, and implementing support to resilience and resistance, incorporating human-centric strategies, measurable metrics, and lessons from past conflicts to effectively deter aggression and navigate complex civil-military dynamics?

  • Tactical Nuclear Deterrence and the Impact of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

    How do Russia's conventional losses in Ukraine affect its likelihood of using nuclear weapons, how does deterrence operate in a tactical nuclear scenario, and must traditional U.S. deterrence models and policies be modified to address tactical nuclear threats?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Technological Support to Civil Resistance and Virtual Special Warfare in the Future Operating Environment

    How must Special Operations Forces leverage emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence and secure communications—and navigate the associated security risks to effectively execute virtual special warfare and support civil resistance movements against oppressive regimes in the future operating environment?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • Total Army Power Projection Equipment

    What modifications to the composition, location, and sustainment of Army pre-positioned stocks are required to implement the TAP2E Strategy, and what critical gaps must be addressed to ensure the strategy is both operationally relevant and fiscally sustainable?

  • Total Force and Homeland Defense

    How must the military identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across defense and civilian critical infrastructure, employ Joint Force capabilities for resilience and recovery, and evaluate whether to redesign reserve components into purpose-built homeland defense forces without degrading overall total force readiness and modernization?

  • Total Force Posture Shift, Indo-Pacific Deterrence, and Permanent Stationing

    How must the U.S. military adjust its Total Force posture to establish persistent Indo-Pacific deterrence, and what are the operational, economic, and quality-of-life implications—along with the strategic risks—of transitioning from rotational forces to a permanently stationed brigade combat team in South Korea?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • U.S. Approach to Strategic Partnerships, Burden Sharing, and Technical Interoperability

    How must the Department of Defense operationalize the strategic shift toward allied burden-shifting by tailoring regional security cooperation, overhauling Foreign Military Sales to prioritize asymmetric self-defense capabilities, and focusing on data interoperability rather than platform parity during realistic multilateral exercises?

  • U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Posture and Historical Forms of Strategic Risk Management without Arms Control

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the broader U.S. military adapt their nuclear deterrence strategy, extended deterrence commitments, and capability development if the United States shifts from legally binding arms control treaties to politically binding confidence-building measures to manage strategic risk with peer adversaries?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Understanding the Will to Resist and Measuring Resilience and Resistance

    How can the military and Special Operations Forces effectively define, quantify, and measure a population's psychological "will to resist" using doctrinal analytical frameworks like PMESII-PT to better inform, shape, and predict future Support to Resistance and Resilience operations?

  • Unmanned Warfare and the Implications of Militarily Relevant COTS Technologies

    Does the rapid proliferation of dual-use, commercial-off-the-shelf unmanned and autonomous technologies across all domains constitute a true revolution in military affairs, and how can the Department of Defense accelerate its adoption of these systems while effectively controlling their diffusion to prevent adversaries from gaining a strategic advantage?

  • USAF Supply Chain Protection and Cyber Weapon System Infrastructure Accreditation

    How can the Air Force holistically protect its critical IT networks by integrating physical supply chain security and chain of custody best practices with a streamlined, enterprise-wide accreditation process that resolves existing Risk Management Framework conflicts between base enclaves and cyber weapon systems?

Russia

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Russian Cooperation with the West: Multi-Domain Arenas, Transnational Threats, and Common-Pool Resource Management

    How must the United States and its NATO allies identify and leverage transactional cooperation with the Russian Federation in shared non-military domains—such as Arctic search and rescue, Low Earth Orbit collision avoidance, and countering transnational cybercrime—to manage common-pool resources and reduce overall strategic friction amidst intense geopolitical rivalry?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Russian Training, Readiness, and Force Adaptation

    How has the Russian military adapted its training, mobilization, and readiness systems during the war in Ukraine, and what are the long-term implications of its ability to integrate combat lessons on the force's overall morale, professionalism, and future capabilities?

  • Historical Analysis: Military Assistance and Crisis Security Cooperation

    How can the U.S. military leverage historical precedent and contemporary lessons from crisis response organizations like the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine to optimize the training, equipping, and coordination of military assistance for geographically diverse partners without becoming a direct combatant or allowing adversaries to exploit these methods?

  • Comparative Models for the Deployment of Theater Nuclear Forces in Europe and Indo-Pacific

    How do the models for credibly deploying theater nuclear forces differ between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and which elements of the European model are transferable to establish a region-specific deterrence posture in Asia?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Force Posture and Special Operations in the Arctic

    How must the U.S. military and Special Operations Forces adapt their Arctic force posture, technological capabilities, and interoperability with conventional forces, interagency partners, and new NATO allies like Finland and Sweden to effectively secure the northern approaches amid great-power competition?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Russian Cyberspace Operations: Strategy, Capabilities, Commercial Support, and Influence Activities

    How must the United States assess Russia's cyberspace strategy, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign commercial technologies to anticipate retaliatory attacks, while simultaneously evaluating the evolving tactical procedures of Russian security services and their convergence of cyber warfare with influence operations?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Regime Stability and Domestic Control

    To what extent are evolving dynamics in Russian society, culture, governance, elite networks, and the national economy—along with shifts in conglomerates and domestic control mechanisms—shaping the stability of the Russian system and influencing its defense and foreign‑policy behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Defense Industrial Capability and Capacity

    To what extent can Russia sustain its war against Ukraine, modernize, and regenerate its military given the strengths, adaptations, weaknesses, and structural limits of its defense‑industrial base—shaped by sanctions, wartime economic mobilization, leadership decisions, and initiatives intended to generate competitive advantage?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Military Leadership

    To what extent are trends in Russian senior officer promotions, postings, and the emergence of a new military elite—shaped by competency, obedience, and patronage networks—revealing the future trajectory of Russian military leadership and its implications for the General Staff.

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Objectives, Adversary Alignments and Strategic Partnerships

    To what extent are shifts in Russian perceptions of NATO defense and deterrence—along with Russia’s deepening military cooperation with China, North Korea, Iran, India, Belarus, Turkey, and other regional partners—reshaping Russian strategic objectives, generating new threats and challenges for the United States, and revealing Russia’s evolving theory of competition?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Vulnerabilities

    To what extent do the vulnerabilities, risks, and biases embedded in Russian doctrine, strategy, operational concepts, tactics, and capability development—along with flawed threat perceptions, escalation pathways, and systemic weaknesses across the Russian state and military—create potential for miscalculation and escalation risks for the United States.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Logistics and Sustainment

    To what extent is Russia’s logistics and sustainment ecosystem—its wartime adaptations, modernization efforts, structural strengths, and persistent vulnerabilities—evolving in response to lessons from the war in Ukraine, and how might this trajectory shape future challenges and implications for U.S. operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Military Posture and Power Projection

    To what extent is the regional and global expansion of Russia’s military presence—its progress, obstacles, and alignment with state policy objectives—shaping future Russian posture and its ability to challenge U.S. access, basing, and operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Future Military Force Structure and Design

    To what extent are the major factors shaping Russian future force structure through 2042—its strategic priorities, programmatic continuities and cancellations, gaps between intent and implementation, and required investments—revealing Russia’s underlying military intent and the feasibility of its long‑term force development plans.

  • Russian War of War: Military Planning, Strategy and Assessment

    To what extent are lessons from Russia’s war against Ukraine—and its evolving expectations of conflict with NATO—reshaping Russian strategic operations such as the Operation of Strategic Deterrence Forces (OSDF), Strategic Aerospace Operations (SAO), and the Strategic Operation of Theater Military Forces (SOTMO), and how these operations nest within and modify Russian military doctrine.

  • Russian Way of War: Doctrine and Military Thought

    To what extent is the war in Ukraine—and Russian expectations of future conflict with NATO—reshaping its doctrine, its internal debates about the conduct of contemporary and emerging warfare, and the positions of its leading strategic thinkers, including how they can be categorized and where their perspectives diverge?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • Successful Resistance Movements

    By analyzing the political-military parameters and governmental approaches that determine success and failure in conflicts against resistance movements, what are the most effective strategies for countering both armed and nonviolent resistance?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • U.S. Alliance System, SOCOM Partnerships, and Multinational Air Operations

    How can the U.S. military apply historical lessons from its alliance system and specific insights from Special Operations Command's partner operations to shape and enhance the future integration and execution of multinational air operations?

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    How can the U.S. government reform its recruitment, training, and educational frameworks to build a force with the diverse perspectives required to effectively support resistance and resilience, while also fostering a common interagency understanding and developing shared doctrine with allies?

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Total Force Posture Shift, Indo-Pacific Deterrence, and Permanent Stationing

    How must the U.S. military adjust its Total Force posture to establish persistent Indo-Pacific deterrence, and what are the operational, economic, and quality-of-life implications—along with the strategic risks—of transitioning from rotational forces to a permanently stationed brigade combat team in South Korea?

  • U.S. Space Policy, International Space Law, and Responsible Behavior in Space

    How must the United States adapt its national space policy and collaborate internationally to establish regulations, define thresholds for hostile actions, and codify norms of responsible behavior in an increasingly congested and accessible space domain, including cis-lunar operations?

  • Technological Innovation & Integrated Deterrence

    How can the Department of Defense and the Air Force reconcile the reactive "pacing" approach to nuclear modernization with the proactive "get there first" R&D strategy to best support and message an integrated deterrence posture?

  • Russian Unconventional & Counter-Unconventional Warfare

    What are Russia's strategic approaches and operational capabilities for conducting both unconventional and counter-unconventional warfare?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Worldwide Deployable Dual-Capable Aircraft, Extended Deterrence, and What Comes after the B61-12

    How does the global deployment of dual-capable aircraft paired with the B61-12 impact extended deterrence and adversary perceptions beyond NATO, and what specific capabilities must the next generation of theater nuclear weapons possess to ensure a flexible, politically sustainable strategic advantage?

  • Tailored Integrated Deterrence and Security Cooperation in a Multipolar World

    How must the Department of Defense align the DIME model with nuclear capabilities to execute tailored integrated deterrence, leverage security cooperation and irregular warfare with allies, and optimize the operational authorities and counter-WMD roles of Special Operations Forces against diverse competitors?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Security Vacuums and Great Power Competition in Africa

    How could a prolonged U.S.–Iran conflict create African security vacuums exploitable by China, Russia, and Iran, and how can historical insights from past Great Power involvement guide U.S. strategy in mitigating these modern threats?

  • Weapon System Vulnerabilities Introduced by Cloud Environments and Cyber Survivability

    How can the Air Force prioritize cyber survivability and streamline disjointed risk authorization processes to mitigate the unique vulnerabilities introduced by the integration of distributed cloud environments into critical weapon systems and ensure mission execution in contested domains?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Public Opinion and Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the role of public opinion in shaping nuclear deterrence policies and strategies?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Total Force and Homeland Defense

    How must the military identify and mitigate vulnerabilities across defense and civilian critical infrastructure, employ Joint Force capabilities for resilience and recovery, and evaluate whether to redesign reserve components into purpose-built homeland defense forces without degrading overall total force readiness and modernization?

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Understanding the Will to Resist and Measuring Resilience and Resistance

    How can the military and Special Operations Forces effectively define, quantify, and measure a population's psychological "will to resist" using doctrinal analytical frameworks like PMESII-PT to better inform, shape, and predict future Support to Resistance and Resilience operations?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • Special Operations Command Central: Geostrategic Shifts from Peak Oil, Emerging Sea Lanes, and the Changing Calculus of VEOs

    How can we better understand and anticipate shifts in the Middle East's regional balance of power by analyzing the complex interplay of diplomatic alliances, economic developments, global energy transitions, and their potential to alter the risk-reward calculus for both state and non-state actors?

  • Special Operations Command Europe: Postwar Ukraine

    How must the Ukrainian military and its specialized forces transition from a total-war footing to a sustainable peacetime defense posture while retaining critical asymmetric capabilities, optimizing reserve forces, and preparing for integration into the NATO alliance?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Transforming Multidomain Commands, Cross-Service Integration, and Command Relationships

    How must forward-stationed Multidomain Commands in allied nations like Japan reorganize across the DOTMLPF-P framework to balance traditional bilateral roles with Joint All-Domain Operations, and what adaptations to command relationships and core service functions are required to exploit interservice dependencies and optimize cross-domain warfighting?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Strategic Empathy in Intelligence Analysis

    How can the skill of "strategic empathy"—the ability to understand and identify with a competitor or adversary's perspective—be effectively developed and integrated to optimize analytical capabilities in the intelligence and strategic communities?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Tactical Nuclear Deterrence and the Impact of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

    How do Russia's conventional losses in Ukraine affect its likelihood of using nuclear weapons, how does deterrence operate in a tactical nuclear scenario, and must traditional U.S. deterrence models and policies be modified to address tactical nuclear threats?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Technological Support to Civil Resistance and Virtual Special Warfare in the Future Operating Environment

    How must Special Operations Forces leverage emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence and secure communications—and navigate the associated security risks to effectively execute virtual special warfare and support civil resistance movements against oppressive regimes in the future operating environment?

  • U.S. High Yield Weapon Strategy

    What priority should a high-yield nuclear weapon capability hold within U.S. nuclear strategy and the Program of Record, considering its potential psychological effect on adversaries' decision-making versus the physical damage it can create?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Transnational Threats, Cybercrime, and Non-State Actors

    How can the U.S. military enable regional partners to counter transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, and how should U.S. cybersecurity policy define restraint, allocate resources, and determine the threshold at which state-affiliated cybercrime and ransomware operations escalate from a law enforcement matter to a national security risk requiring a military response?

     

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Unmanned Warfare and the Implications of Militarily Relevant COTS Technologies

    Does the rapid proliferation of dual-use, commercial-off-the-shelf unmanned and autonomous technologies across all domains constitute a true revolution in military affairs, and how can the Department of Defense accelerate its adoption of these systems while effectively controlling their diffusion to prevent adversaries from gaining a strategic advantage?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • SOF Talent Management, Sustainability, and Repetitive Assignments

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise adapt its talent management, retention strategies, and force sustainability programs to develop resilient personnel equipped for strategic competition and support to resistance, while reconciling conflicting service and combatant command priorities regarding repetitive geographic assignments?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Support to Resistance and Resilience Approaches to Preventing or Deterring Aggression

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive framework for assessing, planning, and implementing support to resilience and resistance, incorporating human-centric strategies, measurable metrics, and lessons from past conflicts to effectively deter aggression and navigate complex civil-military dynamics?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • War Termination Processes and Prospects

    How do the contemporary dynamics of strategic patience, multi-level conflict structures, and evolving metrics of success influence the war termination process, and what empirical models and historical case studies can guide military and political leaders in negotiating effective exit strategies during protracted campaigns?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • U.S. Nuclear Deterrent Posture and Historical Forms of Strategic Risk Management without Arms Control

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the broader U.S. military adapt their nuclear deterrence strategy, extended deterrence commitments, and capability development if the United States shifts from legally binding arms control treaties to politically binding confidence-building measures to manage strategic risk with peer adversaries?

  • Strategic Stability, Trilateral Frameworks, and the Future of Arms Control in a Multipolar World

    How must the United States explore novel trilateral arms control frameworks and strategic risk-mitigation dialogues—such as leveraging the P5 forum—to maintain strategic stability, integrate emerging technologies, and evaluate the subsequent impacts on Department of War and Air Force nuclear force structures in a multipolar world?

  • U.S. Space Policy

    What are the pros and cons of increased government regulation of space systems, and what historical lessons from past arms races can inform U.S. National Space Policy as access to space becomes more widespread?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Sabotage/Irregular Warfare

    How should special operations forces optimize their irregular warfare capabilities, including strategic sabotage, to proactively disrupt peer adversaries across all instruments of national power below the threshold of armed conflict in the mid-twenty-first century?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Strategic Influence through SOF

    How can SOF systematically enhance its strategic influence capabilities by integrating the necessary authorities, synchronizing tactical actions with strategic messaging, and leveraging insights from academic and business disciplines?

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • SOF Requirements

    How can NATO and national SOF, in response to key geopolitical trends, enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills, competencies, and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Utilization of Cyberspace Proxies in Unconventional Warfare

    How can a review of the current legal framework and historical examples be used to develop recommendations that enable the effective and legal use of cyber proxies by SOF throughout the phases of an unconventional warfare campaign?

  • SOF Future Requirements

    Considering key geopolitical trends, how can SOF enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

JADO

Leadership

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • AI in Personnel Analytics and the Civilian Hiring Process

    How can the military leverage AI to enhance the timeliness and accuracy of civilian hiring while establishing the necessary ethical guardrails, oversight mechanisms, and cultural principles to ensure that algorithm-driven personnel analytics maintain trust, the military's values, and individual dignity?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Application of AI for Global Transportation Planning

    How can the Joint deployment and distribution enterprise leverage artificial intelligence to analyze legacy transportation data sets and processes, thereby increasing its decision advantage for global military logistics?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Asymmetric Core: Axiomatic Instability in a Peer Triad with Regional Nuclear Peripheries

    How does the application of cooperative game theory to a "Peer Triad" of major nuclear powers demonstrate that the inclusion of asymmetric regional players renders simultaneous, globally stable deterrence mathematically impossible?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Autonomy, Active Border Defenses, and Partner-Centric Approaches to Security Cooperation

    How do partner nation political will, absorptive capacity, and institutional factors shape U.S. security cooperation strategy in the Middle East, and can the implementation of active border defense constructs successfully enable these nations to assume primary responsibility for their own long-term territorial defense?

  • China’s Global Expansion and Soft Power/Economic Approaches

    How must the United States evaluate the People's Republic of China's use of economic soft power and global expansion to understand its strategic impact on the international aerospace domain?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Chinese Economic Ties to India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How does China leverage economic interdependence as a tool of statecraft to impose costs and constrain the foreign policy and security choices of key regional powers like India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • CNI--How to Integrate Conventional and Nuclear Munition on American Bomber and Fighter Aircraft

    Given the shift in the modern warfare paradigm, should the U.S. revisit its Cold War-era policy that restricts the co-loading of conventional and nuclear weapons on the same aircraft?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Countering Non-State Actors

    How can the United States develop a comprehensive, medium-term interagency strategy that leverages unique government authorities and international partnerships to effectively counter newly designated transnational cartels and gangs?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • Crowdsourcing

    How can the Air Force more effectively crowdsource solutions to capability and capacity gaps across the industrial-military complex while balancing security concerns? 

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Data Convergence, Analytics, and Intelligence Sensor Data Flow in Information Warfare

    How must the military adapt Army tactical data convergence concepts and reengineer intelligence sensor data flows to automate cross-domain sharing, enhance analytical collaboration, and preserve decision advantage within the information warfare environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Detention Operations in United States Indo-Pacific Command

    How must the Joint Force adapt its doctrine and policies to execute detention operations in the Indo-Pacific region despite adversary anti-access/area-denial capabilities, reserve force deployment delays, and varying partner-nation capacities and legal agreements?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • Disposition of Forces (DOF) Consolidation

    How can the dissemination, visualization, storage, and cataloging of battlespace characterization and Disposition of Forces (DOF) data be optimized through a common solution or application framework to improve usability and effectiveness for end-users?

  • Distinct Maintenance Principles and Facility Standards for ICBMs vs. Aircraft

    How must the Air Force differentiate maintenance principles and facility standards for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) from those of conventional aircraft, and what approaches ensure these unique operational and nuclear security requirements are properly accounted for in maintenance execution and future facility design?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Economic Investments and Prioritization of Efforts in Africa

    How can the U.S. military identify high-priority African nations for partnerships aimed at countering terrorism and securing critical minerals, and which engagement strategies and private-sector investment models offer the highest strategic return on investment?

  • Effectively Assessing OAI Impacts to PRC Behavior

    How can PACAF develop effective methodologies to accurately and succinctly measure the cumulative impacts of its Operations, Activities, and Investments (OAI) on PRC perceptions and behaviors over time?

     

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Engineering Victory and Setting the Theater

    How can the Department of War synchronize Joint logistics, reserve engineering capabilities, and strategic policy to rapidly set and sustain a protracted large-scale combat theater in the Indo-Pacific, and how might emerging technologies and digital planning tools be leveraged to optimize resource allocation across combatant commands?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Epic Fury: Lessons Learned

    What lessons can be learned from Operation EPIC FURY to identify and formalize the most effective ad-hoc tactical C2 integration efforts into enduring Air Force and Joint air and missile defense systems?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical Performance and Moral Injury

    How must the Joint Force and the Special Operations Enterprise identify, measure, and educate against ethical lapses to inculcate a culture of high ethical performance, and how can targeted military ethics training be leveraged to effectively mitigate the invisible wounds of post-combat moral injury?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Force Posture and Special Operations in the Arctic

    How must the U.S. military and Special Operations Forces adapt their Arctic force posture, technological capabilities, and interoperability with conventional forces, interagency partners, and new NATO allies like Finland and Sweden to effectively secure the northern approaches amid great-power competition?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Formation and Culture of the Space Force

    How must the U.S. Space Force manage its cross-service personnel integration and structural evolution to overcome legacy institutional thinking, cultivate a unified service identity, and define the necessity and execution of a distinct domain-specific warfighting mindset?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of Air Mobility in a Kinetic/Contested Environment with China

    How must Air Mobility Command adapt its operational planning to effectively project and sustain forces in a kinetic, contested environment with China, specifically by exploring Bypass Theory and the evolution of the Critical Path for Air Mobility?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Ground-Based C2 in Forward Theaters

     How can USAF leverage planned ABADS MD fielding to enable a resilient distributed ground-based command and control capability in forward theaters? What DOTmLPF-P changes are needed to support this?

  • Ground-Based Fuel Ecosystem

    Considering the entire ground-based fuel ecosystem, to what extent will bases in the Forward and Sustaining Installations Categories be able to generate the required Combat Air Force sorties to meet Joint Force Commander objectives in the 2029-2041 timeframe?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Historic PRC–Taiwan Provocation Cycle

    Through an analysis of politics, military capabilities, regional posture, economics, and the information environment, what historical patterns emerge in the People's Republic of China's military provocations toward Taiwan?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis: Military Assistance and Crisis Security Cooperation

    How can the U.S. military leverage historical precedent and contemporary lessons from crisis response organizations like the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine to optimize the training, equipping, and coordination of military assistance for geographically diverse partners without becoming a direct combatant or allowing adversaries to exploit these methods?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: US Army–Operated Terminals During World War II

    How can a historical study of the organization, location selection, and civil-military coordination of US Army-operated terminals during World War II inform modern military preparations and address capability gaps for large-scale mobilization and combat operations?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: World War II Southwest Pacific Area Theater of Operations Ports of Debarkation

    How can a historical analysis of US access, basing rights, and the use of key ports in the World War II Southwest Pacific Area inform modern military transportation planners about the region's geopolitical landscape?

  • Historical Lessons for Operations in the Pacific

    How does General George Kenney's innovative and adaptive airpower approach in the South Pacific during World War II compare to the strategic and technological requirements for a potential future conflict with China?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • How to Derive Confidence in Reliability in Low-Density Critical Assets

    How can the military effectively evaluate and express changes in reliability confidence over time for low-density critical assets when limited stockpile sizes preclude regular live-release testing?

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How can the US Army combine and integrate emerging disruptive technologies with legacy platforms to create low-cost, scalable capabilities, and what DOTMLPF-P adjustments are required to implement these systems?

  • Integrating Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge

    How must the US Army evolve its doctrine, organizational structures, and materiel to fully integrate cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations at the tactical level to sustain an information advantage during multidomain operations?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Integration, Training, and the Evolution of Mission Ready / Multi-Capable Airmen

    How should the Air Force evolve its integration models to optimize human capital for Great Power Competition, specifically by evaluating the creation of a dedicated Mission Ready Airman AFSC for Agile Combat Employment and fully integrating specialized career fields, like 1C3 Command Post Controllers, into the nuclear enterprise's Sentinel Integrated Command Centers?

  • Intel Fusion

    Can a repeatable process be developed to create cross-functional Analysis and Exploitation Teams capable of producing high-quality reports that meet theater requirements within three months of their initial establishment?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence in Strategic Competition

    How should the SOF intelligence enterprise adapt its practitioners and culture to meet the unique intelligence challenges of strategic competition, moving beyond its post-9/11 mindset to cultivate the strategic foresight and counterintelligence focus required in this new era?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Joint SOF Modular Formations

    How can the SOF enterprise best develop and manage joint SOF modular formations by transforming its personnel systems to cultivate the required expertise and capabilities, while ensuring the enduring relevance of core SOF principles?

  • Language Proficiency for Cryptologic Language Analysts

    Can full-time distance learning be an effective training medium for experienced and proficient Cryptologic Language Analysts to acquire an additional foreign language?

  • Leadership in Combat Wings

    How must the USAF officer development paradigm shift to cultivate leaders with the necessary breadth of knowledge and mission-focused perspective required to effectively command the new multi-functional Combat Wing formations?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Leveraging Institutional Capacity Building in Security Cooperation

    What approaches work best to leverage institutional capacity building in support of the NDS and other national security objectives, including military effectiveness, rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights?  

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise: Resourcing and Building a Profession

    How must the Department of Defense reform its manning and resourcing models to overcome institutional barriers and transform the security cooperation workforce from a compliance-driven, temporary assignment system into a professionalized, right-sized career path capable of executing multi-year strategic strategies?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • Metrics of Industrial Base Capacity

    What are the key economic, political, technological, and demographic indicators that define the capacity of an industrial base? How do these metrics interact with each other and impact the overall industrial capacity of a country?  

  • Military Construction

    What specific policy, funding, and procedural reforms to the military construction process are required to accelerate the modernization of the organic industrial base so it can match the agility and execution speed of the private-sector defense industrial base?

  • Mission Command

    How can military commanders integrate AI into battle command and decision-making systems without undermining the core tenets of mission command, mutual trust, and disciplined initiative?

  • Missions for the USSF: Planetary Defense

    What specific roles and responsibilities should the U.S. Space Force assume in the critical areas of asteroid detection and planetary defense?

  • Mitigating Airlift Vulnerability: Building a Resilient Army Surface Deployment Capability

    What DOTMLPF-P changes must the Army implement within its logistics enterprise to develop a resilient surface deployment capability that mitigates the Joint Force's critical vulnerability to limited strategic airlift during peer-level conflicts?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Nuclear Wargaming, Simulation Realism, and the Lessons Learned Pipeline

    How must the United States Air Force and the broader nuclear enterprise overcome systemic bottlenecks and cultural barriers to modernize wargaming realism, leveraging historical lessons and AI-enabled analysis to translate simulation data into actionable doctrine without compromising the readiness of on-alert deterrent forces?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Nuclear Maintenance Manning, Career Field Consolidation, and MRA/ACE Efficiencies

    How must the Air Force overcome severe nuclear maintenance manning shortages by evaluating civilian contracting for ICBMs, consolidating specialized career fields, and integrating Mission Ready Airmen concepts to support Agile Combat Employment and the growing demands of modern weapon systems?

  • Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

    What are the primary drivers and potential consequences of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and what comprehensive strategies can be developed to effectively mitigate these risks?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Individuals, Personal Relationships and Security Cooperation Out-Comes

    How can the nuanced effects of relationship-building programs in security cooperation be empirically measured to understand how factors like shared values, trust, and intellectual interoperability translate into enhanced burden-sharing and institutional change, despite personnel turnover and political complexities?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operationalizing Irregular Warfare: How to Conduct Long-Term and Transregional Irregular Warfare Campaigns

    How can USSOCOM best support the global, long-term requirements of irregular warfare campaigning for joint all-domain operations and the joint warfighting concept, given that the current DoD structure is primarily organized for regional, large-scale combat?

  • Operationalizing Strategic Influence and Shaping the Information Environment

    How must the Joint Force and theater commands operationalize strategic influence and integrate information operations across the competition continuum to build allied credibility, shape the narrative against near-peer adversaries, and effectively measure these efforts across the joint, interagency, and multinational enterprise?

     

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Optimizing Information Warfare and Cyber Force Structures

    How must the United States Air Force and Department of Defense optimize their current cyber force structures and reorganize their institutional frameworks to accelerate the development and execution of integrated Information Warfare capabilities?

  • Optimizing SOF Production and Capitalizing on Non-Commissioned Officers’ Advanced Degrees

    How must the Special Operations Forces enterprise leverage emerging technologies to optimize operator production pipelines and implement data-driven talent management reforms to effectively employ highly educated non-commissioned officers in specialized, institutional roles?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • PLA Meteorological Challenges and Dependencies

    What are the meteorological challenges and dependencies that a PLA combined arms assault on Taiwan would face? (557 WW) 

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Protracted Warfare, Indirect Approaches, and Campaigning

    How can the Joint Force integrate indirect approaches, non-attributable actions, and strategic deception into protracted campaigning to counter peer adversaries like the PRC without triggering catastrophic escalation across the conflict continuum?

  • Psychological and Cognitive Conditioning for High-Stress, Multi-Domain Scenarios

    How can SOF training programs be optimized to address the psychological and cognitive challenges of multi-domain operations by integrating effective cognitive training techniques and ongoing mental health support to improve decision-making and sustain long-term readiness?

Nuclear

Strategic Competition

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Adversary Lessons from Ukraine, Operational Endurance, and Decision Making

    How are U.S. adversaries, particularly the PRC, internalizing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding operational endurance, defense industrial integration, and unmanned systems, and how will these insights drive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to sustain protracted conflict and deter U.S. intervention?

  • Adversary Military Projection and Regional Influence in Latin America

    How can U.S. military forces assess partner relationships and analyze China's expanding military power projection and dual-use infrastructure in Latin America to develop strategies that rebuild strategic influence and prevent adversarial entrenchment without engaging in direct competition?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Asymmetric Core: Axiomatic Instability in a Peer Triad with Regional Nuclear Peripheries

    How does the application of cooperative game theory to a "Peer Triad" of major nuclear powers demonstrate that the inclusion of asymmetric regional players renders simultaneous, globally stable deterrence mathematically impossible?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Autonomy, Active Border Defenses, and Partner-Centric Approaches to Security Cooperation

    How do partner nation political will, absorptive capacity, and institutional factors shape U.S. security cooperation strategy in the Middle East, and can the implementation of active border defense constructs successfully enable these nations to assume primary responsibility for their own long-term territorial defense?

  • Battlefield Airman for Duty in the Pacific AOR

    Better Trained and Equipped Battlefield Airman (TACP, CCT, etc.) for Duty in the Pacific AOR  

  • China’s Global Expansion and Soft Power/Economic Approaches

    How must the United States evaluate the People's Republic of China's use of economic soft power and global expansion to understand its strategic impact on the international aerospace domain?

  • Chinese Aerospace Force Modernization Across Core Mission Sets

    How have comprehensive changes to the People's Liberation Army's DOTMLPFP framework enhanced the operational effectiveness of its aerospace forces across seven critical mission areas, ranging from air defense and precision strike to space and nuclear operations?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Chinese Economic Ties to India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How does China leverage economic interdependence as a tool of statecraft to impose costs and constrain the foreign policy and security choices of key regional powers like India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia?

  • Chinese Use of Resistance Groups

    By analyzing the PRC's historical support for resistance movements and the current influence operations of the CCP United Front, how can a strategy be developed to counter China's potential future sponsorship of dissident organizations as its elite capture strategies become less effective?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Comparative Models for the Deployment of Theater Nuclear Forces in Europe and Indo-Pacific

    How do the models for credibly deploying theater nuclear forces differ between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and which elements of the European model are transferable to establish a region-specific deterrence posture in Asia?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI), Resource Prioritization, and Allied Capabilities

    How must the United States Air Force prioritize limited bomber and tanker resources and integrate allied capabilities in conventional-nuclear environments to preserve the survivability and credibility of the nuclear air leg deterrent during prolonged conventional conflicts?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Crisis Response Preparedness, Security Cooperation, and U.S. Support to Peacekeeping Operations

    How can the United States transition from primarily financial support to directly contributing critical logistical enablers for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, and what risks regarding command and control, reimbursements, casualties, and local perceptions must be mitigated to ensure successful integration?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Security in Space-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

    How can the U.S. military integrate Cyber-Physical System concepts with advanced AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to develop a comprehensive, proactive cyber defense strategy that ensures holistic situational awareness and standardized risk mitigation across military and commercial space systems against near-peer adversaries?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Dependence of United States Air Force on its Allies and Partners

    How must the United States Air Force assess its operational dependence on allies and partners, and how are these critical dependencies actively integrated and managed during joint concept development and experimentation?

  • Detention Operations in United States Indo-Pacific Command

    How must the Joint Force adapt its doctrine and policies to execute detention operations in the Indo-Pacific region despite adversary anti-access/area-denial capabilities, reserve force deployment delays, and varying partner-nation capacities and legal agreements?

  • Deterrence by Denial, Geography, and Strategic Signaling in the Indo-Pacific

    How do distinct geographic environments in the Indo-Pacific—from the First Island Chain to more distant locations like Oceania and Diego Garcia—affect the viability of a deterrence-by-denial strategy, and how must the U.S. military adapt its force posture and nuclear signaling to manage escalation risks across these diverse regions?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Disposition of Forces (DOF) Consolidation

    How can the dissemination, visualization, storage, and cataloging of battlespace characterization and Disposition of Forces (DOF) data be optimized through a common solution or application framework to improve usability and effectiveness for end-users?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Economic Investments and Prioritization of Efforts in Africa

    How can the U.S. military identify high-priority African nations for partnerships aimed at countering terrorism and securing critical minerals, and which engagement strategies and private-sector investment models offer the highest strategic return on investment?

  • Effect-Based Metrics Posture

    How can modeling and simulation be used to develop heuristics that connect engineering-level improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency to operationally valued capabilities within campaign scenarios?

  • Effectively Assessing OAI Impacts to PRC Behavior

    How can PACAF develop effective methodologies to accurately and succinctly measure the cumulative impacts of its Operations, Activities, and Investments (OAI) on PRC perceptions and behaviors over time?

     

  • Effectiveness of Extended Deterrence

    Is the extended deterrence provided by tactical nuclear weapons a cost-effective strategy that successfully assures allies and further deters adversaries beyond the capabilities of existing strategic platforms?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Engineering Victory and Setting the Theater

    How can the Department of War synchronize Joint logistics, reserve engineering capabilities, and strategic policy to rapidly set and sustain a protracted large-scale combat theater in the Indo-Pacific, and how might emerging technologies and digital planning tools be leveraged to optimize resource allocation across combatant commands?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Force Posture and Special Operations in the Arctic

    How must the U.S. military and Special Operations Forces adapt their Arctic force posture, technological capabilities, and interoperability with conventional forces, interagency partners, and new NATO allies like Finland and Sweden to effectively secure the northern approaches amid great-power competition?

  • Forecasting Unintended Consequences

    How must the Joint Force and the broader defense enterprise utilize cross-regional planning and comprehensive risk characterization frameworks to mitigate the unintended consequences and escalation risks of global operations, while effectively communicating strategic risk and risk aversion to policymakers?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of Air Mobility in a Kinetic/Contested Environment with China

    How must Air Mobility Command adapt its operational planning to effectively project and sustain forces in a kinetic, contested environment with China, specifically by exploring Bypass Theory and the evolution of the Critical Path for Air Mobility?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historic Case Studies of U.S. Allies Neglecting Treaty Obligations and Testing Partner Reliability

    How can the U.S. military analyze historical case studies of allies failing to meet their treaty obligations to develop a framework that actively tests and measures the true reliability and resilience of current coalition partners before a crisis emerges?

  • Historic PRC–Taiwan Provocation Cycle

    Through an analysis of politics, military capabilities, regional posture, economics, and the information environment, what historical patterns emerge in the People's Republic of China's military provocations toward Taiwan?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis of The Defense and Restoring Dominance in Counter-Mobility

    How can NATO leverage historical defense-in-depth lessons alongside a high-low capability mix of modernized counter-mobility, attritable loitering munitions, and cargo-launched air vehicles to deter and defeat peer adversaries along the Eastern Flank?

  • Historical Analysis: Military Assistance and Crisis Security Cooperation

    How can the U.S. military leverage historical precedent and contemporary lessons from crisis response organizations like the Security Assistance Group–Ukraine to optimize the training, equipping, and coordination of military assistance for geographically diverse partners without becoming a direct combatant or allowing adversaries to exploit these methods?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: US Army–Operated Terminals During World War II

    How can a historical study of the organization, location selection, and civil-military coordination of US Army-operated terminals during World War II inform modern military preparations and address capability gaps for large-scale mobilization and combat operations?

  • Historical Case Study Analysis: World War II Southwest Pacific Area Theater of Operations Ports of Debarkation

    How can a historical analysis of US access, basing rights, and the use of key ports in the World War II Southwest Pacific Area inform modern military transportation planners about the region's geopolitical landscape?

  • Historical Lessons for Operations in the Pacific

    How does General George Kenney's innovative and adaptive airpower approach in the South Pacific during World War II compare to the strategic and technological requirements for a potential future conflict with China?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • How Does SOF Conduct Deliberate and Dynamic Targeting as a Function in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    Drawing on their historical success with strategic and mobile targets beyond conventional capabilities, what is the specific role for SOF in conducting fires to achieve effects on priority targets within the modern frameworks of large-scale combat operations, JADO, and the joint warfighting concept?

  • Human Rights as a Weapons System

    How could the USAF utilize the promotion of human rights as a weapon system to isolate strategic competitors like China and Russia, forcing them to either become international pariahs or alter their behavior to be less threatening to U.S. interests?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Dynamic Force Employment on Indo-Pacific Bomber Deterrence

    How can the U.S. optimize its deterrence and assurance posture against China and Russia by transitioning from a Continuous Bomber Presence to a more dynamic Bomber Task Force employment model?

  • Impact of Lawfare on Warfare

    How are legal strategies reshaping the traditional paradigms of warfare?  

  • Impact of Technological Advancements, Passive Detection, and Cheap SDRs on Air Warfare

    How must the United States military adapt its Agile Combat Employment concepts to maintain overall air superiority against the proliferation of cheap, networked software-defined radios and advanced passive detection technologies that increasingly threaten to rapidly find and fix dispersed forces?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Temperature on Mobility Aircraft Performance in the PACAF Region

    How can a decision-making tool or vulnerability assessment framework be developed using climate projection data to assess how temperature will degrade aircraft performance and impact the projection of combat power, considering effects on operational planning, logistics, and strategic basing?

  • Impacts of Unmanned, Automated Platforms for Logistics Under Attack

    What are the operational requirements, platform suitability factors, and sustainment needs for autonomous unmanned platforms to effectively augment intra-theater airlift in a Logistics Under Attack scenario?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Base of India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How can an analysis of the industrial base capacity, projectability, economic growth trends, and potential for defense-sector expansion in India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia inform a U.S. cost-imposition strategy within the context of the strategic competition with China?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • In-Space Logistics, Point-to-Point Cargo Delivery, and Spacecraft Operational Energy

    How must the Department of the Air Force and the U.S. Space Force design a resilient in-space logistics framework, overcome fundamental spacecraft operational energy constraints, and evaluate point-to-point cargo delivery alternatives to balance immediate mission needs against optimal cargo staging for sustained, responsive orbital operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How can the US Army combine and integrate emerging disruptive technologies with legacy platforms to create low-cost, scalable capabilities, and what DOTMLPF-P adjustments are required to implement these systems?

  • Integrating Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge

    How must the US Army evolve its doctrine, organizational structures, and materiel to fully integrate cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations at the tactical level to sustain an information advantage during multidomain operations?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence in Strategic Competition

    How should the SOF intelligence enterprise adapt its practitioners and culture to meet the unique intelligence challenges of strategic competition, moving beyond its post-9/11 mindset to cultivate the strategic foresight and counterintelligence focus required in this new era?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • International Atomic Energy Agency & Nuclear Proliferation

    Has the IAEA's ability to ensure nuclear safety and non-proliferation been compromised by the political maneuvering of great powers, and can it reassert its authority to effectively manage the challenges of a new, more complex nuclear age?

  • Interoperability, Interdependence, and the Definition of Integration in Combined Operations

    How must the United States military and U.S. Forces Japan define the conceptual boundaries of interoperability, interdependence, and integration with Japan's Joint Operations Command, and strategically leverage the Military Personnel Exchange Program across optimal echelons to maximize return on investment and build seamless combined operational readiness for large-scale conflict?

     

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • JADO Essential Information Requirements, Data Fabrics, and Joint/Coalition Interoperability

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force identify essential information requirements and employ advanced technical and policy solutions—such as zero-trust architectures and containerization—to overcome legacy classification barriers and securely integrate interagency and coalition data into a unified Joint All-Domain Command and Control data fabric?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Joint SOF Modular Formations

    How can the SOF enterprise best develop and manage joint SOF modular formations by transforming its personnel systems to cultivate the required expertise and capabilities, while ensuring the enduring relevance of core SOF principles?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Leveraging Institutional Capacity Building in Security Cooperation

    What approaches work best to leverage institutional capacity building in support of the NDS and other national security objectives, including military effectiveness, rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights?  

  • Light and Lean: ACE Maneuver Unit Footprint Reduction

    Explore the impact of reducing the overall deployment footprint of operational units during ACE operations. 

  • Logistic and Resupply Operations in a Chemical or Radiological Environment

    Is the Air Force adequately prepared with the necessary logistics strategies, guidance, and capabilities to sustain critical re-supply operations in the face of chemical or radiological hazards in austere environments?

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Long-Range, Low-Fuel Consumption Turbine Engines

    How can the use of smaller, more efficient engines, such as small-scale turbofans, reduce fuel consumption while effectively accomplishing ISR, strike, and other missions in permissive to semi-contested environments, and what are the associated benefits to sustainment and overall mission capability?

  • Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

    How can SOF adapt its risk methodologies, decision-making, and resource allocation to better plan for, and manage the follow-on effects and subsequent de-escalation campaigns of, low-probability, high-consequence events?

  • Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Targeting

    How can SOF best utilize machine learning and AI to revolutionize the targeting process, especially by enhancing automated detection and expediting the processing of large datasets?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Measuring Foreign Influence in Hegemonic Powers

    What variables measure decreasing and/or diminishing foreign influence in a hegemonic power? (AFWIC)

  • Medical Operations, Hospital Outflow, and Return to Duty in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    To handle high casualties in large-scale combat operations, U.S. military medicine must execute comprehensive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to treat and return patients to duty closer to the front lines, while formalizing civilian infrastructure conversion models like Hotel2Hospital to absorb massive patient surges in the homeland.

  • Metrics of Industrial Base Capacity

    What are the key economic, political, technological, and demographic indicators that define the capacity of an industrial base? How do these metrics interact with each other and impact the overall industrial capacity of a country?  

  • Military Construction

    What specific policy, funding, and procedural reforms to the military construction process are required to accelerate the modernization of the organic industrial base so it can match the agility and execution speed of the private-sector defense industrial base?

  • Mitigating Airlift Vulnerability: Building a Resilient Army Surface Deployment Capability

    What DOTMLPF-P changes must the Army implement within its logistics enterprise to develop a resilient surface deployment capability that mitigates the Joint Force's critical vulnerability to limited strategic airlift during peer-level conflicts?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • NATO’s Nuclear Posture, Hybrid Warfare, and Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

    How must the United States and NATO evaluate the strategic, political, and operational implications of forward-deploying theater nuclear capabilities to the Eastern Flank to effectively deter Russian hybrid warfare and sub-threshold coercion without accelerating crisis instability or compromising alliance cohesion?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Next-Generation Missile Operators

    Given the potential changes in the future strategic environment, what impact would this have on the development of missileers? Should current developmental programs remain the same for Sentinel operators? (20 AF)

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Ethics, Utility, and the "No First Use" Dilemma

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic and ethical implications of adopting a "No First Use" nuclear policy on extended allied deterrence, while simultaneously assessing the future necessity and structural viability of the land-based ICBM leg within a modernized nuclear triad?

  • Nuclear Industrial Base and the Credibility of U.S. Deterrence

    How does the capacity of the U.S. nuclear industrial base—including infrastructure, production, and sustainment—directly affect the credibility of deterrence by signaling strategic durability or institutional weakness to allies and adversaries?

  • Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

    What are the primary drivers and potential consequences of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and what comprehensive strategies can be developed to effectively mitigate these risks?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operationalizing Irregular Warfare: How to Conduct Long-Term and Transregional Irregular Warfare Campaigns

    How can USSOCOM best support the global, long-term requirements of irregular warfare campaigning for joint all-domain operations and the joint warfighting concept, given that the current DoD structure is primarily organized for regional, large-scale combat?

  • Operationalizing Irregular Warfare: How to Conduct Long-Term and Transregional Irregular Warfare Campaigns

    How can USSOCOM overcome structural limitations and leverage unique capabilities to conduct more effective long-term and transregional Irregular Warfare campaigns in support of Joint All-Domain Operations and the Joint Warfighting Concept?

  • Operationalizing Strategic Influence and Shaping the Information Environment

    How must the Joint Force and theater commands operationalize strategic influence and integrate information operations across the competition continuum to build allied credibility, shape the narrative against near-peer adversaries, and effectively measure these efforts across the joint, interagency, and multinational enterprise?

     

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • PLA Meteorological Challenges and Dependencies

    What are the meteorological challenges and dependencies that a PLA combined arms assault on Taiwan would face? (557 WW) 

  • Political Limitations on Operations

    How can SOF effectively plan and execute deep area operations by mitigating political restraints, while simultaneously developing tailored counternarratives to combat adversary influence campaigns that create those very limitations?

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Protracted Warfare, Indirect Approaches, and Campaigning

    How can the Joint Force integrate indirect approaches, non-attributable actions, and strategic deception into protracted campaigning to counter peer adversaries like the PRC without triggering catastrophic escalation across the conflict continuum?

Information Warfare

Technological Development

  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • Adapting to China’s Presence and Countering Gray-Zone Activities

    How must the U.S. military adapt its global theater posture, particularly in the Middle East, to account for China's strategic expansion, and what interagency measures are required to counter PRC gray-zone activities—such as strategic land purchases, economic coercion, and intellectual property theft—that threaten domestic critical infrastructure and allied readiness?

  • Advanced Data Acquisition and Management for Joint SOF

    How can SOF best define its requirements for, acquire, and utilize the advanced data management and processing systems necessary to effectively employ AI/ML for operational advantage?

  • Advanced Resilience and Resistance in Digital Battlespaces: Countering Multi-Platform Influence Operations through Adaptive Communications Networks

    How can USSOCOM establish effective counter-narrative capabilities that leverage platform-specific affordances and audience engagement patterns to build resilience against sophisticated adversarial influence campaigns?

  • Adversary Approaches to Political Warfare, Information, and Propaganda

    How must the United States analyze the structure and mission command of Russian and Chinese political warfare apparatuses to counter strategic influence campaigns, and evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies like generative AI and virtual reality on global information resilience?

  • Aging Nuclear Fleet and Transition Plan to Replacements

    How can the U.S. maintain a relevant and credible nuclear deterrent amidst delays and approaching initial operating capability dates for critical replacement systems like Sentinel, B-21, and the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon?

  • AI in Personnel Analytics and the Civilian Hiring Process

    How can the military leverage AI to enhance the timeliness and accuracy of civilian hiring while establishing the necessary ethical guardrails, oversight mechanisms, and cultural principles to ensure that algorithm-driven personnel analytics maintain trust, the military's values, and individual dignity?

  • Allied Nations as Power-Projection Platforms, Security Cooperation, and Readiness

    How can the U.S. military leverage pre-conflict security cooperation and defense-industrial coordination to enable allied nations like Japan to serve as effective power-projection platforms, and how do these preparations translate into meaningful operational support and burden-sharing during armed conflict?

  • America-First Arms Transfer Strategy

    How can the US military leverage allied defense capabilities, innovative acquisition models, and co-production opportunities to rebuild domestic industrial capacity and enhance burden-sharing in alignment with the America-First Arms Transfer executive order?

  • Application of AI for Global Transportation Planning

    How can the Joint deployment and distribution enterprise leverage artificial intelligence to analyze legacy transportation data sets and processes, thereby increasing its decision advantage for global military logistics?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/Characterizing the Changing Global Market for Arms

    How can the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the evolving global arms trade by better understanding the market's complex dynamics, including the drivers of exporter and importer behavior and the perceptions of major export systems?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Challenge of Constrained Supply

    How can the U.S. defense industrial base be best postured to simultaneously meet growing domestic and partner demand by stimulating investment, expanding production capacity, and strategically navigating international armaments cooperation in an increasingly competitive market?

  • Arms Trade and Defense Sales/The Value of Defense Sales

    How can a nuanced theoretical investigation and rigorous empirical analysis clarify the true benefits, costs, and risks of arms imports and exports, challenging the conventional wisdom on consequences like dependence, political leverage, and economic development?

  • Artificial Intelligence and Efficient Intelligence Support to Operations

    How must the Air Force leverage artificial intelligence to optimize intelligence workflows, determine the minimum viable support team, and enable dynamic asset retasking to effectively execute Agile Combat Employment?

  • Artificial Intelligence in Warplans and Contemporary AOC Capabilities

    How must the military rapidly integrate off-the-shelf artificial intelligence capabilities into the Air Operations Center and leverage intelligent automation to accelerate the development and execution of real-time war plans?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Warfare, and Emerging Threats to Nuclear Stability

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command evaluate the strategic risks of adversary AI capabilities, assess the safety and escalation potential of introducing AI or cyber vulnerabilities into nuclear command and control networks, and identify non-command enterprise applications to preserve nuclear stability?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Autonomous Systems, National ROE, and Legal Frameworks in Coalition Mosaic Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force engineer novel legal, policy, and technical architectures to reconcile the machine-speed integration of autonomous systems in coalition mosaic warfare with rigid, nationally constrained Rules of Engagement, establishing the legal nationality of AI platforms and building allied trust without degrading tactical agility?

  • Chinese Aerospace Force Modernization Across Core Mission Sets

    How have comprehensive changes to the People's Liberation Army's DOTMLPFP framework enhanced the operational effectiveness of its aerospace forces across seven critical mission areas, ranging from air defense and precision strike to space and nuclear operations?

  • Chinese Aerospace Policies, Acquisition Processes, and Industrial Capacity

    How must the United States and its defense research institutions evaluate the People's Republic of China's national aerospace policies, the physical manufacturing capacity of its defense industrial base, and systemic bottlenecks within the People's Liberation Army's acquisition pipeline to accurately assess the strategic trajectory and timelines of China's aerospace force modernization?

  • Chinese Civil-Military Relations, Political Work, and the Military-Civil Fusion Strategy

    How must the United States evaluate the balance of Chinese civil-military relations by analyzing the People's Liberation Army's internal political work and the external Military-Civil Fusion strategy to understand their impact on overall force effectiveness and aerospace operations?

  • Chinese Cyberspace Operations: Leadership Tasking, Commercial Support, and TTPs

    How do the Chinese Communist Party and People's Liberation Army senior leadership task, coordinate, and structurally integrate military, civilian, proxy, and commercial cyber actors to execute operations and manage incident responses across the cyberspace domain?

  • Civil and Military Collaboration in Space Infrastructure Resilience

    How can the U.S. military optimize its space-supporting infrastructure by integrating the Eastern and Western launch ranges, leveraging the domestic space industry to enhance resilience against environmental and adversarial threats, and navigating the operational trade-offs of shared commercial access on military facilities?

  • Civil Support to Defense Activities and Interagency Command and Control

    How can the Department of Defense formalize a Civil Support to Defense Activities (CSDA) framework to effectively leverage interagency resources during homeland defense operations, while utilizing JADC2 to build unified command and control structures that overcome interagency classification and communication challenges?

  • Coalition Partners in Space and Safe/Responsible Behavior

    How can the U.S. Space Force and its international allies enhance coalition integration by establishing shared norms and rules of engagement, expanding shared surveillance capabilities, protecting commercial assets, and executing synchronized, globally integrated operations to deter and defeat adversary aggression in the space domain?

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional and Nuclear Munitions Integration, Acquisition, and Agile Fielding

    How must the Air Force adapt its capability development, acquisition processes, and restrictive policy constraints to rapidly and safely field dual-capable conventional and nuclear platforms in response to modern strategic competition?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Cost Imposition in Strategic Competition and PRC Views of U.S. Systems

    How must the Department of the Air Force leverage the principle of cost imposition to guide its resource allocation by analyzing the People's Republic of China's internal sensitivities, strategic guidelines, and historical reactions to U.S. military systems?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Critical Infrastructure Risk and Resource Allocation: Balancing Quality of Life, Readiness, and Resilience

    How can military leaders utilize data-driven decision support tools and frameworks to comprehensively assess infrastructure risk, balancing finite budget allocations between immediate quality-of-life installations and long-term energy and critical infrastructure resilience to ensure mission continuity during disruptions?

  • Crowdsourcing

    How can the Air Force more effectively crowdsource solutions to capability and capacity gaps across the industrial-military complex while balancing security concerns? 

  • C-UAS Passive Defenses

    What is the effectiveness, cost, and fielding requirements of passive counter-small Unmanned Aerial System defenses for protecting High Value Airborne Assets in a CONUS environment?

  • Cyber Security in Space-Based Cyber-Physical Systems

    How can the U.S. military integrate Cyber-Physical System concepts with advanced AI, machine learning, and cloud computing to develop a comprehensive, proactive cyber defense strategy that ensures holistic situational awareness and standardized risk mitigation across military and commercial space systems against near-peer adversaries?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Cyber's Impact on Risk Mitigation and Integrated Deterrence

    From a risk mitigation perspective, how do strategic cyber capabilities fundamentally differ from nuclear weapons, and how can they be effectively integrated into new or existing arms control frameworks to enhance strategic stability without undermining the DAF's integrated deterrence posture?

  • Cyberspace Awareness and Exploiting Internet-of-Things (IoT) Operations Sensors

    How can the Air Force leverage fortuitously placed Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and non-traditional physical sensors, integrated with cyber-surveillance and reconnaissance, to overcome physical access barriers, enhance cyberspace situational awareness, and streamline data integration into staff analytics to mitigate critical intelligence gaps?

  • Data Convergence, Analytics, and Intelligence Sensor Data Flow in Information Warfare

    How must the military adapt Army tactical data convergence concepts and reengineer intelligence sensor data flows to automate cross-domain sharing, enhance analytical collaboration, and preserve decision advantage within the information warfare environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Develop Improved Assessments of Landing Weights

    What is the full fiscal and maintenance readiness impact of mobility aircraft frequently landing with excessive weight due to carrying more fuel than required, and how does this practice affect both short and long-term aircraft sustainment?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Force Protection: Threats and Risks to SOF

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive strategy to mitigate the growing technical and privacy threats from the digital environment to its personnel and operations, balancing operational security with personal privacy by leveraging new technologies, fostering multi-sector collaboration, and creating effective risk mitigation strategies?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Directed Energy Weapons in Modern Conflict: Peer Proliferation, Tactical Integration, and Non-Lethal De-Escalation

    How must the United States Government and Joint Force counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial directed energy weapons, evaluate their potential classification as Weapons of Mass Destruction, and clarify their operational boundaries with electronic warfare to effectively develop non-lethal Concepts of Operations for escalation management?

  • Disposition of Forces (DOF) Consolidation

    How can the dissemination, visualization, storage, and cataloging of battlespace characterization and Disposition of Forces (DOF) data be optimized through a common solution or application framework to improve usability and effectiveness for end-users?

  • DPRK Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and State Coordination

    How does the Democratic People's Republic of Korea define its cyberspace doctrine and escalation red lines, and how are its cyber organizations structured, equipped, and coordinated internally and with foreign state actors to execute these operations?

  • Due Regard and Changing Borders

    How should the Air Force prioritize the modernization of its airborne surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to ensure survivability and operational effectiveness in response to increasing and aggressive adversary actions in international airspace?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Effect-Based Metrics Posture

    How can modeling and simulation be used to develop heuristics that connect engineering-level improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency to operationally valued capabilities within campaign scenarios?

  • EiTaaS Tier 1 Maintenance Support

    With Tier 1 maintenance and operations for the unclassified Air Force network being contracted out under EiTaaS, how will 16th Air Force and the 688th Cyberspace Wing effectively conduct their Cyber Security Service Provider responsibilities?

  • Emerging, Asymmetric, and Non-State Cyber Threats

    How must the United States and the Joint Force adapt their cyber defense postures to counter an increasingly complex threat landscape comprising emerging state adversaries, hacktivist collectives influencing geopolitical conflicts, and foreign terrorist organizations leveraging commercial technologies and social media for cyber operations?

  • EMP Effects on Nuclear Arsenal

    What are the specific effects of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) on nuclear weapons systems, and what are the most effective measures that can be taken to mitigate these risks?

  • Engineering Victory and Setting the Theater

    How can the Department of War synchronize Joint logistics, reserve engineering capabilities, and strategic policy to rapidly set and sustain a protracted large-scale combat theater in the Indo-Pacific, and how might emerging technologies and digital planning tools be leveraged to optimize resource allocation across combatant commands?

  • Enhancing Integrated Deterrence and Forward-Deployed Posture in the Indo-Pacific

    How must the U.S. military integrate conventional, nuclear, and cyber capabilities into a cohesive denial strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and how can leveraging a forward-deployed posture in Japan enhance this integrated deterrence against adversaries like China without inadvertently accelerating escalation?

  • Epic Fury: Lessons Learned

    What lessons can be learned from Operation EPIC FURY to identify and formalize the most effective ad-hoc tactical C2 integration efforts into enduring Air Force and Joint air and missile defense systems?

  • Era of Nuclear Proliferation: Impacts on Global Conflict, Foreign Militaries, and U.S. Deterrence

    How must the United States re-evaluate its national security policy, force projection capabilities, and the viability of its extended nuclear deterrence in response to the changing dynamics of regional conflict and foreign military programs driven by global nuclear proliferation?

  • Ethical Implications of Increased Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

    As advances in computing are implemented in JADO, what are the ethical implications of increased use of artificial intelligence and machine learning?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolution of the Nuclear Mindset, Strategic Stability, and Disruptive Technology

    How does the integration of emerging technologies like AI and hypersonic weapons into nuclear command and control structures impact the strategic stability of mutually assured destruction, and what adaptations are required to prevent machine-speed escalation and maintain deterrence?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Exploiting CCP/PLA Cyber Vulnerabilities in the Indo-Pacific

    How can  cyber and electronic warfare operations, integrated into a Joint Force alongside key allies, target the critical cyber vulnerabilities of the CCP and PLA to degrade their cyber campaigns and disrupt their A2/AD strategy in the INDOPACOM theater?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Foreign Operating Concepts and Future Battle Networks in Air Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the evolution of foreign operating concepts and future battle networks to strategically adapt command structures, allocate resources, and maintain air superiority against emerging nation-state and non-state adversaries?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Future Space-Based ISR Capabilities

    Considering bandwidth constraints and emerging counter-space threats, can the space-based ISR capabilities projected for 2030 realistically achieve the required performance for long-range kill chains against mobile targets in contested environments?

     

  • FY28-32 Space Based ISR Capabilities

    Can projected space-based ISR capabilities fielded in the FY28-32 timeframe provide sufficient bandwidth and data throughput to meet joint force targeting timelines and battlespace awareness requirements in contested environments, or do fundamental capacity limitations necessitate alternative architectures/airborne operations?

  • Global Presence

    How can SOF optimize its global posture by identifying key geostrategic locations and balancing physical and virtual presence to best support persistent campaigning, rapid capability fusion, and its role as the partner of choice for advancing U.S. interests?

  • Great Power Decision-Making

    How will the interplay of global economic, demographic, and technological trends, particularly the rise of AI-enabled decision-making, affect the future power balance between the United States, Russia, and China, and what strategies can be employed to effectively influence their decision calculus?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF better capitalize on data-analytics systems, data-driven technologies, and AI/ML-enabled capabilities to develop new warfighting concepts for irregular warfare?

  • Harnessing Data for Irregular Warfare

    How can SOF, working with partners like USSPACECOM, ethically and effectively integrate data-driven technologies and AI/ML into irregular warfare operations by developing the necessary new warfighting concepts?

  • Historical Analysis of Reconstitution and Military Modernization

    How will Russia leverage historical precedents, defense economy investments, and modernization trade-offs to reconstitute its military after heavy losses, and how must NATO integrate these strategic insights into its Eastern Flank deterrence planning to counter future threats?

  • Historical Analysis of The Defense and Restoring Dominance in Counter-Mobility

    How can NATO leverage historical defense-in-depth lessons alongside a high-low capability mix of modernized counter-mobility, attritable loitering munitions, and cargo-launched air vehicles to deter and defeat peer adversaries along the Eastern Flank?

  • Historical Battle Networks

    By analyzing the evolution and effectiveness of battle networks as integrated systems of sensors, analytics, and strike in previous conflicts, what can be learned about the most efficient and adaptable operational approaches, organizational concepts, and command structures for their employment?

  • Historical C2 lessons for JADC2

    What historical C2 lessons are relevant for the JADC2 construct?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Historical Studies for Space

    By examining the historical development of civil and military satellite tracking, including the impact of Sputnik and lessons from the post-Vietnam era, how should the USSF evolve its collaborative tracking efforts and prepare for future contested space operations?

  • Historical Uses of Information in War

    What are the long-term historical trends in the role and value of information in warfare, and how have these trends shaped the character and outcome of conflicts?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Human-Machine Teaming, AI Data Fusion, and Force Protection

    How can the Military Police Corps leverage predictive AI tools, real-time data fusion, and human-machine teaming to protect critical assets, including the nuclear enterprise from rear-area threats during large-scale combat operations, and how must the military adapt leader development models to build trust and ensure appropriate human control over these autonomous systems?

  • Hypersonic Messaging, Strategic Stability, and Nuclear Thresholds

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force evaluate the impact of dual-capable hypersonic weapons on strategic nuclear deterrence and decision-making timelines, while developing strategic messaging playbooks and signaling mechanisms to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and inadvertently lowering the nuclear threshold?

  • Impact of Autonomous Systems on Multinational Air Operations and Trust in Non-US Systems

    How will the integration of autonomous systems alter the dynamics of multinational air operations, and what frameworks must be established to ensure sufficient trust in non-U.S. autonomous technologies to enable effective human-machine teaming within coalition forces?

  • Impact of Technological Advancements, Passive Detection, and Cheap SDRs on Air Warfare

    How must the United States military adapt its Agile Combat Employment concepts to maintain overall air superiority against the proliferation of cheap, networked software-defined radios and advanced passive detection technologies that increasingly threaten to rapidly find and fix dispersed forces?

  • Impact on Deterrence by Emerging Technology

    How will the emergence and global diffusion of dual-use technologies capable of strategic effects, such as biotechnology, impact the U.S. deterrence posture, and can international agreements effectively mitigate these new risks?

  • Impacts of Temperature on Mobility Aircraft Performance in the PACAF Region

    How can a decision-making tool or vulnerability assessment framework be developed using climate projection data to assess how temperature will degrade aircraft performance and impact the projection of combat power, considering effects on operational planning, logistics, and strategic basing?

  • Impacts of Unmanned, Automated Platforms for Logistics Under Attack

    What are the operational requirements, platform suitability factors, and sustainment needs for autonomous unmanned platforms to effectively augment intra-theater airlift in a Logistics Under Attack scenario?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing AI/ML Tool Suites for Cyber and Information Operations

    How must the military develop, integrate, and govern AI and machine learning tool suites to safely automate complex offensive and defensive cyber tasks, thereby enhancing the overall pace and quality of Information Operations?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Improving Conventional and Nuclear Integration (CNI) into Wargaming

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force design and execute dedicated Conventional-Nuclear Integration (CNI) wargames to identify critical command and control vulnerabilities, operational seams, and resource stressors, translating those lessons into modernized doctrine and force-generation concepts to sustain conventional operations in a nuclear-effects environment?

  • Industrial Base of India, South Korea, Japan & Australia

    How can an analysis of the industrial base capacity, projectability, economic growth trends, and potential for defense-sector expansion in India, South Korea, Japan, and Australia inform a U.S. cost-imposition strategy within the context of the strategic competition with China?

  • Industrial Preparedness and Capacity for Competition

    How must the DoW urgently transform its defense industrial base through immediate policy, economic investment, and procurement changes to overcome acquisition and supply-chain limitations, ensuring the capacity to field capabilities at the speed and scale necessary for effective deterrence and protracted strategic competition?

  • Influence of Conventional Arms on Nuclear Deterrence

    What is the influence of advanced, long-range conventional weapons on the nuclear escalation ladder, and how do they affect an adversary's decision-making in a crisis?

  • Influence of Operational Tempo on Nuclear Deterrence

    AI, multi-domain C3BM, and non-kinetic weapons (especially effects at a distance) are allowing an increase in the tempo of decision making and operational tempo. How will the speed of conflict and decision making influence decisions to use nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence?  

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Cross-Domain Deterrence, Space-Based Technologies, and Escalation Management

    How must the United States construct integrated cross-domain deterrence architectures—leveraging emerging space-based technologies, cyber, and hypersonics—to deter theater-level conventional aggression while effectively managing delicate, cross-domain escalation thresholds with Russia and China?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integrated Air and Missile Defense Mission in INDOPACOM AOR

    How can a coalition of willing nations in the INDOPACOM AOR synergistically develop and employ an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture capable of deterring Chinese aggression or effectively executing combat operations against its advanced multi-domain threats?

  • Integrating Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How can the US Army combine and integrate emerging disruptive technologies with legacy platforms to create low-cost, scalable capabilities, and what DOTMLPF-P adjustments are required to implement these systems?

  • Integrating Information Advantage at the Tactical Edge

    How must the US Army evolve its doctrine, organizational structures, and materiel to fully integrate cyber, electronic warfare, and information operations at the tactical level to sustain an information advantage during multidomain operations?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Intelligence Production in Agile Combat Employment

    How can Large Language Models and other AI tools be leveraged to automate and scale the production of intelligence products, using the 363rd ISRW as a test case, to meet the rapid demands of Agile Combat Employment?

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Iranian Cyberspace Operations: Policy, Capabilities, and Tactics

    How must the United States assess Iran's cyberspace doctrine, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign technology or commercial entities to effectively counter its evolving tactical procedures and asymmetric cyber operations?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) integration into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)

    What is the optimal strategy for integrating Joint Cyber Command and Control (JCC2) into Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), considering risks, the balance between redundancy and resiliency, required tools, and scalable resourcing?

  • Joint Force Design and Concepts

    How can the DoW develop and implement compelling new operational concepts that address critical gaps in areas like contested logistics, autonomy, and electronic warfare, while overcoming the institutional barriers that hinder innovation and the effective integration of new technologies?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Lessons Learned from the Cold War

    What critical deterrence factors, largely ignored since the end of the Cold War, must be re-examined and reintegrated into U.S. strategy to effectively address the challenges of the current strategic environment?

  • Light and Lean: ACE Maneuver Unit Footprint Reduction

    Explore the impact of reducing the overall deployment footprint of operational units during ACE operations. 

  • Logistics under Threat: Strategic Competitor Targeting and Resupply Challenges

    How can the DoW counter Chinese and Russian cyber-physical threats to vulnerable supply chains and adapt its intelligence, medical support, and industrial base—potentially through a Manufacturing Security Program—to ensure the rapid mobilization and sustainment of the Joint Force in highly contested environments?

  • Long-Range, Low-Fuel Consumption Turbine Engines

    How can the use of smaller, more efficient engines, such as small-scale turbofans, reduce fuel consumption while effectively accomplishing ISR, strike, and other missions in permissive to semi-contested environments, and what are the associated benefits to sustainment and overall mission capability?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Metrics of Industrial Base Capacity

    What are the key economic, political, technological, and demographic indicators that define the capacity of an industrial base? How do these metrics interact with each other and impact the overall industrial capacity of a country?  

  • Mission Command

    How can military commanders integrate AI into battle command and decision-making systems without undermining the core tenets of mission command, mutual trust, and disciplined initiative?

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modeling and Simulating Multi-Competitor Deterrence in a Dynamic Geopolitical National Security Environment

    How can a multi-dimensional, multi-party wargaming model be developed to simulate the dynamic geopolitical environment of the 21st century, enabling senior leaders to more effectively deter multiple competitors and operate inside their decision cycles?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Multi-Level Security for Mobile Platforms vs Static Ground-Based Systems

    Is a Multi-Level Security (MLS) capability that allows for the controlled downward flow of data feasible for both mobile and static platforms in the near future, and what best practices, such as AI/ML, can be used to solve this complex data sharing problem?

  • Next-Generation Counter-Drone Jamming, Private Cellular Networks, and Electronic Mitigation Strategies

    How must the military adapt its counter-drone strategies, technical mitigations, and tactics to neutralize adversaries utilizing resilient commercial cellular networks, without crippling critical public infrastructure, while integrating modern warfare lessons from actions like the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?

  • Next-Generation ISR/Tactically Relevant for Advanced Situational Awareness

    How can SOF develop next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems while simultaneously leveraging AI and machine learning to process the vast amounts of resulting data for pattern identification and predictive analysis?

  • Nexus/Triad Strategic-Level Synthesis

    How can USSOCOM overcome strategic-level integration challenges, such as information sharing and clearance issues, to rapidly synthesize and implement a space-SOF-cyber nexus with allies and partners for effective deterrence and conflict operations?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Offense Versus Defense Dominance, Unmanned Systems, and Retrospective Lessons from Russia and Ukraine

    How must the Joint Force adapt its DOTMLPF-P framework and force structure to integrate a high-low capability mix, leveraging lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War regarding how unmanned systems alter the offense-defense balance, the resilience of cloud computing, and the crisis instability introduced by hypersonic weapons?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Individuals, Personal Relationships and Security Cooperation Out-Comes

    How can the nuanced effects of relationship-building programs in security cooperation be empirically measured to understand how factors like shared values, trust, and intellectual interoperability translate into enhanced burden-sharing and institutional change, despite personnel turnover and political complexities?

  • Operational Assessment and Reflections in the Information Environment: Measuring Non-Kinetic Effects and Proving the Negative

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop modern, data-driven assessment frameworks—integrating behavioral analysis, data science, and advanced sensors—to mathematically and observationally measure the non-kinetic effects of Information Warfare and solve the epistemological dilemma of "proving the negative" in strategic influence campaigns?

  • Operational Energy Peer-Adversary Competition & Deterrence

    How does maintaining a competitive edge in operational energy technologies, such as advanced airframes and alternative propulsion, impact strategic competition with China and Russia, and what are the long-term risks of prioritizing the sustainment of legacy fleets over the acquisition of next-generation systems?

  • Operationalizing the Drone Effect and Integrating Remotely Piloted Aircraft in Joint All-Domain Operations

    How must the United States Air Force conduct a comprehensive mission substitution analysis to effectively integrate Remotely Piloted Aircraft into Joint All-Domain Operations, optimizing fuel efficiency, logistical sustainment, and mission capabilities across permissive and semi-contested environments?

  • Operations in Space, the OODA Loop, and TTP Validation

    How must the U.S. Space Force adapt the OODA loop for the space domain to execute timely offensive operations, and can leveraging commercial or intelligence community methodologies effectively streamline the validation of its Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) to keep pace with emerging threats?

  • Optimal C-UAS and Missile Defense Capabilities

    What is the optimal mix of Counter-UAS and Missile Defense capabilities required across Air Force bases to ensure installation protection and the continued ability to meet homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection requirements?

  • Optimizing and Fielding Space and High-Altitude ISR Architectures for Multidomain Operations

    How must the U.S. invest in, layer, and transition advanced space and high-altitude ISR architectures from the science and technology community to the warfighter to enable long-range kill chains for multidomain operations in contested environments?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Optimizing Information Warfare and Cyber Force Structures

    How must the United States Air Force and Department of Defense optimize their current cyber force structures and reorganize their institutional frameworks to accelerate the development and execution of integrated Information Warfare capabilities?

  • Options for AFGSC in Response to the Next Potential ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ and Space-Based Nuclear Deterrence

    How must Air Force Global Strike Command proactively deter the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons, and what strategic posture adjustments, capability developments, or allied assurances are required to respond if adversaries abandon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • Post 9/11 Transformations and Continuity in Warfare

    How must the United States Air Force synthesize the profound transformations of post-9/11 warfare—including hybrid tactics, cyber operations, and emerging technologies—with the timeless principles of armed conflict to effectively adapt its operational strategies for the modern battlefield?

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Priority of Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat

    What priority should a Hard and Deeply Buried Target (HDBT) defeat capability take within U.S. nuclear strategy, considering its influence on the decision calculus of various potential adversaries and its overall role in deterrence and employment?

  • Protecting the Homeland: C-sUAS Strategy and Integrating Unmanned Aircraft in the National Airspace System

    How must the Department of Defense implement a cohesive, multilayered counter-small unmanned aerial system strategy—integrating joint investments, interagency partnerships, and robust command and control frameworks—to protect both military and non-DoD critical infrastructure while safely operating within the National Airspace System?

  • Rapid All-Domain Fusion for SOF

    What concepts, capabilities, and command and control solutions must SOF develop to effectively act as the synchronizer for a multi-domain (space, cyber) nexus that delivers strategic effects for the joint force?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Reconceptualizing Wargaming for Competitive Statecraft, Future Operations, and Converging Capabilities

    How must the United States military modernize its wargaming architectures, organizational structures, and technological integration to effectively simulate competitive statecraft and train future leaders to wield converging multi-domain capabilities within the information environment?

  • Recruitment, Training, Development, Retention, and Analytic Certification of Air Force Intelligence Personnel

    How must the Air Force reform its recruiting, development, and retention pipelines for intelligence personnel to integrate emerging data science and space-based capabilities, and can Analytic Certification serve as a viable framework to enhance the overall effectiveness of the Intelligence Community?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Re-evaluating Decision Timelines and the 'Imminent Threat' Standard in the Age of Accelerated Nuclear Breakout

    Are current U.S. Strategic Forces' planning and decision timelines, particularly the traditional "imminent threat" standard for preemptive self-defense, rendered obsolete by highly compressed modern nuclear breakout capabilities, and if so, what alternative legal and strategic frameworks are needed to address these accelerated proliferation threats?

  • Risks to the Strategic Domain of Space from an Ablation Cascade

    What are the risks of an adversary deliberately initiating an ablation cascade to deny U.S. strategic space assets, and what protective measures, including potential revisions to the Outer Space Treaty, can be undertaken to mitigate this threat?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Cyberspace Operations: Strategy, Capabilities, Commercial Support, and Influence Activities

    How must the United States assess Russia's cyberspace strategy, geopolitical red lines, and reliance on foreign commercial technologies to anticipate retaliatory attacks, while simultaneously evaluating the evolving tactical procedures of Russian security services and their convergence of cyber warfare with influence operations?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Defense Industrial Capability and Capacity

    To what extent can Russia sustain its war against Ukraine, modernize, and regenerate its military given the strengths, adaptations, weaknesses, and structural limits of its defense‑industrial base—shaped by sanctions, wartime economic mobilization, leadership decisions, and initiatives intended to generate competitive advantage?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Regime Stability and Domestic Control

    To what extent are evolving dynamics in Russian society, culture, governance, elite networks, and the national economy—along with shifts in conglomerates and domestic control mechanisms—shaping the stability of the Russian system and influencing its defense and foreign‑policy behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Deterrence, Escalation Management, Coercion and Assurance

    To what extent are Russian perceptions of strategic deterrence, escalation management, coercion, assurance, and conflict termination—shaped by shifting threat perceptions, changes in decision‑maker worldviews, evolving signaling practices, new doctrinal ideas, and the collapse of Russia‑U.S. arms control agreements—driving misinterpretation, miscalculation, and future Russian strategic behavior?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Strategic Objectives, Adversary Alignments and Strategic Partnerships

    To what extent are shifts in Russian perceptions of NATO defense and deterrence—along with Russia’s deepening military cooperation with China, North Korea, Iran, India, Belarus, Turkey, and other regional partners—reshaping Russian strategic objectives, generating new threats and challenges for the United States, and revealing Russia’s evolving theory of competition?

  • Russian Training, Readiness, and Force Adaptation

    How has the Russian military adapted its training, mobilization, and readiness systems during the war in Ukraine, and what are the long-term implications of its ability to integrate combat lessons on the force's overall morale, professionalism, and future capabilities?

  • Russian Way of War: Future Military Force Structure and Design

    To what extent are the major factors shaping Russian future force structure through 2042—its strategic priorities, programmatic continuities and cancellations, gaps between intent and implementation, and required investments—revealing Russia’s underlying military intent and the feasibility of its long‑term force development plans.

  • Russian Way of War: Military Logistics and Sustainment

    To what extent is Russia’s logistics and sustainment ecosystem—its wartime adaptations, modernization efforts, structural strengths, and persistent vulnerabilities—evolving in response to lessons from the war in Ukraine, and how might this trajectory shape future challenges and implications for U.S. operations?

  • Russian Way of War: Military Vulnerabilities

    To what extent do the vulnerabilities, risks, and biases embedded in Russian doctrine, strategy, operational concepts, tactics, and capability development—along with flawed threat perceptions, escalation pathways, and systemic weaknesses across the Russian state and military—create potential for miscalculation and escalation risks for the United States.

  • Russian Way of War: Russian Novel Weapons Systems and Emerging Technologies

    To what extent are the capabilities Russia is developing and deploying to counter U.S. strengths or exploit U.S. vulnerabilities—along with its concepts for employing novel weapons systems, their doctrinal alignment, escalation logic, and actual versus stated performance—revealing Russia’s strategic intent and shaping its future wartime planning?

  • Safeguarding AFCYBER's Critical Infrastructure

    How can the NIST-evaluated post-quantum cryptography algorithms, such as CRYSTALS-Kyber, be most effectively implemented within AFCYBER's critical digital infrastructure to ensure robust cybersecurity against future quantum threats?

  • Scaling of SOF Authorities and Permissions from Competition to Conflict

    How can SOF authorities and permissions be structured to scale from competition to conflict at the speed necessary to gain a joint force advantage, particularly when operating in a degraded communications environment?

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Security Cooperation and Capacity Building: Methods and Evidence

    How can the Department of Defense optimize its assessment, monitoring, and evaluation methodologies and improve data accessibility to build a rigorous evidence base that accurately measures the effectiveness of defense capacity building programs in cultivating capable, interoperable allies and perform that mission?

  • Security Cooperation in an Evolving Strategic Context

    Existing research on security cooperation needs updating because the global context has changed significantly due to shifts in military technology, the nature of war, and the strategic environment. It is now essential to examine how emerging technologies, new warfighting domains, and global competition impact U.S. national security strategy and its security cooperation activities.

  • Size of the Future Nuclear Force and Theater Capabilities in a Two-Peer Environment

    How must the United States size and structure its future overall nuclear force and specific theater capabilities to successfully deter simultaneous aggression from two nuclear peers—Russia and China—while also managing regional threats like North Korea and reassuring global allies?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • SOF Future Requirements

    Considering key geopolitical trends, how can SOF enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Requirements

    How can NATO and national SOF, in response to key geopolitical trends, enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills, competencies, and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Targeting in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    How can SOF adapt its targeting processes, refined during two decades of counterterrorism, for the complexities of Large-Scale Combat Operations, by defining its unique contributions to the joint targeting process and leveraging advanced technologies for effective dynamic targeting in a multi-domain environment?

  • SOF Use of Non-Governmental Hackers in Support of Strategic Objectives

    What legal, ethical, and operational frameworks, including command and control relationships, would be necessary for SOF to effectively and accountably utilize non-governmental hacking groups in support of national security objectives?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • Space Acquisitions

    How can the defense acquisition process be reformed to foster greater competition and innovation from small businesses, potentially through a more independent space acquisition authority, while ensuring agile and effective procurement for a rapidly evolving space domain?

  • Space Force Basing

    Analyze various aspects of the future of Space Force basing.

  • Space Situational Awareness and Space Debris

    How must the United States and the international community evolve Space Situational Awareness to manage a congested cis-lunar environment, mitigate collision risks from nanosatellites, and implement legal or financial frameworks for space debris removal?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF U.S. Strategic Command Nexus: How to Build Capability Greater than the Sum of Its Parts to Achieve Joint Effects

    How can space, cyber, SOF, and STRATCOM entities move beyond ad-hoc relationships to form an enduring partnership that allows for formal joint training and deployment, enabling combatant commands to better employ these integrated forces to achieve strategic objectives?

  • Space-Cyber-SOF-U.S. Strategic Command Nexus

    How can the synergy between space, cyber, SOF, and U.S. Strategic Command be maximized to achieve greater joint effects in future conflicts, considering the necessary organizational structures, joint training processes, and the associated legal and policy implications?

  • Special Operations Command Central: Geostrategic Shifts from Peak Oil, Emerging Sea Lanes, and the Changing Calculus of VEOs

    How can we better understand and anticipate shifts in the Middle East's regional balance of power by analyzing the complex interplay of diplomatic alliances, economic developments, global energy transitions, and their potential to alter the risk-reward calculus for both state and non-state actors?

  • Strategic Basing, Fuel Benchmarking, and High-Fidelity Simulation

    How can the Air Force leverage high-fidelity training simulations for new aircraft like the KC-46 and F-35 to generate comparative metrics that inform strategic basing decisions while simultaneously establishing reliable fuel usage benchmarks for optimized mission planning and anomaly detection?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Implications of Emerging Disruptive Technologies

    How will emerging and disruptive technologies shape the Army's capability to deter China in the 2045 operational environment, and what are the resulting implications for force structure, doctrine, and acquisition?

  • Strategic Influence through SOF

    How can SOF systematically enhance its strategic influence capabilities by integrating the necessary authorities, synchronizing tactical actions with strategic messaging, and leveraging insights from academic and business disciplines?

  • Strategic Posture and Sustainment for Dispersed Forces in the Pacific

    How must the Joint Force adapt its logistics and sustainment architecture, integrate advanced manufacturing, and effectively distribute fuel and munition nodes to support dispersed forces in the contested Indo-Pacific, while empowering leadership to balance operational readiness against survivability?

     

  • Strategic Realignment and Evolving Integrated Air and Ballistic Missile Defense

    How must the military integrate the new Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative into broader deterrence strategies against advanced threats in a nuclear-proliferated environment, and what policy, organizational, and resource trade-offs are required to prioritize these homeland defense missions over traditional overseas force structures?

  • Support to Resistance and Resilience Approaches to Preventing or Deterring Aggression

    How can SOF develop a comprehensive framework for assessing, planning, and implementing support to resilience and resistance, incorporating human-centric strategies, measurable metrics, and lessons from past conflicts to effectively deter aggression and navigate complex civil-military dynamics?

  • Sustaining SOF Maritime Mobility

    How can persistently forward-postured SOF, in collaboration with allies and partners, sustain resilient and fiscally sustainable land, sea, and air mobility within various archipelagoes?

VR/AR

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  • Accelerating and Modernizing Acquisition: Emerging Technologies, Authorities, and the Defense Innovation Base

    How can the Joint Force accelerate defense acquisition and reduce costs by reforming authorities, improving public-private partnerships, and leveraging emerging technologies like AI and blockchain to streamline workflows and better incentivize the commercial tech industry?

  • AI in Personnel Analytics and the Civilian Hiring Process

    How can the military leverage AI to enhance the timeliness and accuracy of civilian hiring while establishing the necessary ethical guardrails, oversight mechanisms, and cultural principles to ensure that algorithm-driven personnel analytics maintain trust, the military's values, and individual dignity?

  • Artificial Intelligence, Synthetic Media, and Defensive Measures for Generative Adversarial Networks

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force develop technical defensive measures, cognitive resistance capabilities, and systemic training frameworks to effectively detect, mitigate, and counter the rapid proliferation of adversarial high-fidelity synthetic media and AI-driven disinformation?

  • Battlefield Airman for Duty in the Pacific AOR

    Better Trained and Equipped Battlefield Airman (TACP, CCT, etc.) for Duty in the Pacific AOR  

  • Command and Control (C2) in Space and JADO Integration

    How must the United States military evolve its organizational architecture and unify military and civilian command and control networks to seamlessly integrate the Space Force into Joint All-Domain Operations and ensure operational resiliency during a space conflict?

  • Continuous Learning and Adapting

    How can the SOF enterprise cultivate a culture and implement the necessary processes for continuous learning and adaptation at all echelons to remain effective in the evolving strategic environment?

  • Conventional Support to Irregular Warfare, Coalition Operations, and the Utility of SOF in Strategic Competition

    How must Special Operations Forces integrate with conventional capabilities and leverage allied networks to operationalize irregular warfare, utilizing both historical lessons and emerging technologies to achieve strategic deterrence and "win without fighting" in an era of global competition?

  • Countering Hybrid Warfare in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape

    How must SOF adapt its training, doctrine, and strategies to effectively counter the evolving threats of hybrid warfare employed by both state and technologically advanced non-state actors?

  • Creative Sourcing, Alternative Service Models, and Cyber Personnel Retention

    How must the Department of the Air Force navigate the legal, operational, and technical challenges of establishing a Civil Cyber Patrol—modeled after the Civil Air Patrol—to serve as an exit-ramp mitigation tool that retains the invaluable expertise of departing cyber Airmen in a part-time auxiliary capacity?

  • Cyber Education, Tailored Awareness Training, and Enterprise Talent Management

    How must the defense enterprise implement strategic talent management reforms across the DOTMLPF-P framework to upskill legacy personnel and transition from one-size-fits-all annual requirements to role-specific, progressive cyber-awareness training to maintain cyberspace overmatch against peer adversaries through 2040?

  • Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance and Mission Risk Reduction for Security Mitigation Efforts

    How must the United States Air Force realign its enterprise authorities and resources to establish an integrated Cyber Threat-Based Mission Assurance pipeline that empowers mission owners to prioritize active cyber defense and risk-informed trade-offs over low-value administrative compliance?

  • Cyber Threats against Air Mobility Operations and Forces

    What are the specific cyber threats unique to Air Mobility Command's operational environment, and what effective countermeasures can be developed and implemented to mitigate them?

  • Cyber-Awareness Training Model for ISR Collection Managers (CMs) (ACC/A22C)

    How can a specialized cyber-awareness training model be developed for ISR Collection Managers to overcome their current lack of familiarity with cyber concepts and enable them to effectively support requirements management in a multi-domain environment?

  • Defensive Cyberspace Operations and Hunt Kits for ICS, SCADA, and Serial Networks

    How must the military equip and train defensive cyber operators with specialized, open-source hunt kits and tailored playbooks to effectively detect and counter malicious activity on mission-critical Industrial Control Systems, SCADA environments, and serial networks without disrupting operations?

  • Developing Cyberspace Infrastructure Terrain Subject Matter Expertise

    How can the Air Force develop and integrate the necessary cyberspace infrastructure terrain expertise to defend its diverse basing postures, leveraging existing models and aligning with current investments and command structures?

  • Digital Twin Technology for Skill Acquisition and Training

    How can research explore the effectiveness of using digital twin technology for training SOF functions and support efforts by examining instructional design, user strategies, and the impact on skill transfer and performance improvement?

  • Dynamic Spectrum Sharing and EMS/EW Awareness

    How can the military implement dynamic spectrum-sharing technologies to balance commercial broadband and defense requirements, while simultaneously re-instilling a force-wide culture of electromagnetic spectrum awareness and integrating electronic and cyber operations into the broader Information Warfare framework to enhance coalition operations?

  • Ethical Performance and Moral Injury

    How must the Joint Force and the Special Operations Enterprise identify, measure, and educate against ethical lapses to inculcate a culture of high ethical performance, and how can targeted military ethics training be leveraged to effectively mitigate the invisible wounds of post-combat moral injury?

  • Ethical, Legal and Operational Challenges of AI-Driven Warfare and Autonomous Systems

    How can SOF navigate the complex ethical, legal, and operational challenges of deploying AI-driven autonomous systems, ensuring accountability and compliance with international law while balancing the need for rapid decision-making with the preservation of human rights?

  • Evolving Contexts of Deterrence, Nuclear Signaling, and Miscalculation

    How must the United States Department of State, Air Forces Strategic, and the broader nuclear enterprise design effective deterrence communication strategies and signaling frameworks to prevent catastrophic miscalculation and unintended escalation among multipolar nuclear-armed competitors with distinct strategic cultures and signaling dialects?

  • Fiscal Agility, Cyber Innovation Centers, and Organic Software Development

    How must the military restructure its resourcing frameworks to continuously fund AI-driven command-and-control applications, and how can tactical-edge coding environments and cyber innovation centers be integrated into agile acquisition processes under the guidance of Chief Software Offices to ensure measurable decision advantage?

  • Flexible Logistics and Degraded Resupply: Institutional Challenges Under Attack

    How can the military develop agile energy logistics and survivable forward communications to sustain operations under attack, and what institutional training is required to prepare tactical and operational leaders to mitigate risk and execute missions in highly contested environments where resupply is severely degraded?

  • Future Force Posture, Theater Nuclear Concepts, and Scientific/Technical Implications of Conventional-Nuclear Integration

    How must the Joint Force address DOTMLPF-P challenges and prioritize scientific and technical research to advance Conventional-Nuclear Integration, enabling U.S. forces to operate effectively through nuclear environments and adapt theater campaigns to counter pacing threats like China and Russia?

  • Future of U.S. SOF Enterprise: Flat, Fast and Focused

    How can the SOF enterprise adapt its structure, processes, and workforce optimization strategies to become flatter, faster, and more focused, enabling the rapid decision-making required by the increased speed of modern warfare?

  • Ground-Based C2 in Forward Theaters

     How can USAF leverage planned ABADS MD fielding to enable a resilient distributed ground-based command and control capability in forward theaters? What DOTmLPF-P changes are needed to support this?

  • Historical Review of Successful USAF Military Transformations

    What historical lessons can the USAF draw from its past successful military transformations to better understand and navigate the systemic challenges of conceiving, embracing, and executing change in response to today's strategic shifts?

  • Human-Machine Teaming and the Human-Technology Interface

    How must the military redesign its leader development models and cultural norms to cultivate a force capable of human-machine symbiosis with artificial general intelligence (AGI), and how can the military balance human-hardware priority, expand a human's span of control, and calibrate trust to mitigate the risks of technology-dependent decision-making?

  • Implementation, Absorption Capacity, and Bridging the Gap from Innovation to Sustainment

    How must the United States Air Force analyze the People's Liberation Army's capability absorption capacity while reforming its own Category Management frameworks and DOTMLPF integration to bridge the innovation "Valley of Death" and accelerate fielding at scale?

  • Implementing ML & AI for Automatic ELINT Identification

    What specific AI-enabled suite of tools can be developed to help intelligence operators more rapidly and accurately distinguish between land, sea, and air-based tracks in a dense electronic intelligence environment, thereby increasing the pace and quality of threat-processing and warning?

     

     

  • Information - A Joint Function

    What are the Air Force's implications for the Chairman's designation of "Information" as a joint function, and how does the service's emerging concept of information warfare differ from the joint definition of information operations?

  • Integrated Deterrence

    What specific operational, fiscal, and legal authorities does SOF require to effectively execute its role in global and theater-level integrated deterrence, including campaigning, engagement, irregular warfare, and nuclear deterrence support?

  • Integration of Emerging Technologies into SOF Operations

    How can SOF effectively integrate emerging technologies like AI, ML, and cyber capabilities, including in multinational settings, to enhance mission success while balancing the associated operational gains and risks?

  • Integration, Training, and the Evolution of Mission Ready / Multi-Capable Airmen

    How should the Air Force evolve its integration models to optimize human capital for Great Power Competition, specifically by evaluating the creation of a dedicated Mission Ready Airman AFSC for Agile Combat Employment and fully integrating specialized career fields, like 1C3 Command Post Controllers, into the nuclear enterprise's Sentinel Integrated Command Centers?

  • Intel Fusion

    Can a repeatable process be developed to create cross-functional Analysis and Exploitation Teams capable of producing high-quality reports that meet theater requirements within three months of their initial establishment?

  • Intelligence Collection in Great Power Competition

    How can new conceptual frameworks and units of measure be developed to more effectively translate intangible intelligence capabilities, like analytic production, into the Global Force Management process, especially when leveraging AI to navigate the complexities of the information environment?

  • Interrelationship between Intelligence and Technology

    How can the SOF enterprise foster effective collaboration between its intelligence practitioners and technology specialists to better identify and adapt to emerging technologies, using historical case studies to inform a balanced approach that embraces innovation while maintaining a healthy skepticism?

  • Is the USAF Meeting Congress' Intent to Properly Resource, Man, Fund and Equip AFGSC to Support 2/3 of Nuclear Enterprise?

    Despite clear congressional intent to consolidate nuclear deterrence responsibilities under AFGSC, why have the command's authorities and responsibilities been altered or diminished over time, and what specific changes are needed to restore its intended function as the single lead MAJCOM for the nuclear mission?

  • JADO Command Philosophy, Distributed Headquarters, and Mission-Type Orders

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architectures and develop multi-domain mission-type orders to enable resilient, distributed headquarters and decentralized execution in highly contested, communications-denied environments?

  • Joint SOF Modular Formations

    How can the SOF enterprise best develop and manage joint SOF modular formations by transforming its personnel systems to cultivate the required expertise and capabilities, while ensuring the enduring relevance of core SOF principles?

  • Language Proficiency for Cryptologic Language Analysts

    Can full-time distance learning be an effective training medium for experienced and proficient Cryptologic Language Analysts to acquire an additional foreign language?

  • Leadership in Combat Wings

    How must the USAF officer development paradigm shift to cultivate leaders with the necessary breadth of knowledge and mission-focused perspective required to effectively command the new multi-functional Combat Wing formations?

  • Leading and Developing Cryptologic Forces: Squadron Constructs, Tradecraft, and Command Relationships in National-Tactical ISR Operations

    How must the United States Air Force optimize its legacy squadron constructs, command relationships, and specialized training pathways to effectively lead and develop joint-embedded cryptologic forces operating across national intelligence, cyber, and space enclaves?

  • Learning Technology and Serious Gaming for Information Warfare and Advantage

    How can the Joint Force and Special Operations Enterprise leverage learning technologies and serious gaming to effectively train personnel in the complexities of Information Warfare, enhance existing education programs, and measure the resulting improvements in information advantage capabilities?

  • Legal, Moral, and Ethical Considerations of New Technology and Ethical Autonomy

    How must the military navigate the profound legal and ethical challenges of integrating human enhancement technologies—such as wearables, edibles, and injectables—to establish proper authorities, protect personnel privacy, and ensure operators maintain their fundamental autonomy and ethical decision-making capabilities to prevent moral injury?

  • Leveraging Institutional Capacity Building in Security Cooperation

    What approaches work best to leverage institutional capacity building in support of the NDS and other national security objectives, including military effectiveness, rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights?  

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise/Coordination and Efficiency across a Decentralized and Distributed Enterprise

    How can the vast and fragmented security cooperation enterprise overcome its structural complexities to achieve strategic alignment, process efficiency, and accountability by closing knowledge gaps regarding its actors, incentives, and pathways for institutional change?

  • Managing the Security Cooperation Enterprise: Resourcing and Building a Profession

    How must the Department of Defense reform its manning and resourcing models to overcome institutional barriers and transform the security cooperation workforce from a compliance-driven, temporary assignment system into a professionalized, right-sized career path capable of executing multi-year strategic strategies?

  • Medical Operations, Hospital Outflow, and Return to Duty in Large-Scale Combat Operations

    To handle high casualties in large-scale combat operations, U.S. military medicine must execute comprehensive DOTMLPF-P adaptations to treat and return patients to duty closer to the front lines, while formalizing civilian infrastructure conversion models like Hotel2Hospital to absorb massive patient surges in the homeland.

  • Mobile Nuclear Posture, CONUS Deployment Constraints, and Movement Security

    How must the United States evaluate the strategic necessity and domestic constraints of developing a road-mobile ICBM system, while simultaneously optimizing the logistical sustainment, tactical security, and physical transport methods required to safely move nuclear assets in increasingly contested environments?

  • Modernizing Nuclear Wargaming, Simulation Realism, and the Lessons Learned Pipeline

    How must the United States Air Force and the broader nuclear enterprise overcome systemic bottlenecks and cultural barriers to modernize wargaming realism, leveraging historical lessons and AI-enabled analysis to translate simulation data into actionable doctrine without compromising the readiness of on-alert deterrent forces?

  • Modernizing Professional Military Education and SOF Learning Pathways through Emerging Technologies

    How must the defense enterprise, particularly the Joint Special Operations University, leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing to modernize professional military education, personalize learning pathways, and cultivate the specialized critical thinkers required for strategic competition?

  • Money as a Weapon System and Security Cooperation Strategies

    How can the Department of Defense evolve the concept of "money as a weapon system" into a strategic instrument of statecraft, leveraging financial resources and security cooperation to achieve deterrence and build partnerships while overcoming institutional barriers to align with national security objectives?

  • Moon Shot

    How can the Army leverage cutting-edge commercial AI/ML technologies over the next five to ten years to develop revolutionary capabilities that provide a decisive operational advantage against adversaries, while simultaneously streamlining staff workflows to reduce headquarters manpower and optimize operational forces?

  • Novel Operating Environments

    Given the evolving geostrategic landscape and technological advancements, what new roles, missions, and sustaining capabilities must SOF develop to effectively operate as part of the Joint Force in novel and extreme environments such as the polar regions, the deep ocean, and outer space?

  • Nuclear Deterrence Education

    How can the Air Force and DoD create a more effective educational framework to comprehensively inform personnel at all levels, particularly General Officers, on the complexities of the nuclear enterprise, including requirements, mission sets, and operational processes?

  • Nuclear Maintenance Manning, Career Field Consolidation, and MRA/ACE Efficiencies

    How must the Air Force overcome severe nuclear maintenance manning shortages by evaluating civilian contracting for ICBMs, consolidating specialized career fields, and integrating Mission Ready Airmen concepts to support Agile Combat Employment and the growing demands of modern weapon systems?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Burden Sharing in Practice

    How can practitioners bridge the gap between security cooperation theory and practice to design tailored, coordinated engagements that effectively influence partners and achieve coherent outcomes despite a fragmented U.S. government decision-making process?

  • Operational and Industrial Burden Sharing/Individuals, Personal Relationships and Security Cooperation Out-Comes

    How can the nuanced effects of relationship-building programs in security cooperation be empirically measured to understand how factors like shared values, trust, and intellectual interoperability translate into enhanced burden-sharing and institutional change, despite personnel turnover and political complexities?

  • Optimizing Drone Use and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems Strategies

    How can SOF optimize the operational use of drones, develop robust counter-UAS strategies, and adapt its training and tactics to keep pace with the rapid evolution of these technologies as seen in conflicts like Ukraine?

  • Optimizing SOF Production and Capitalizing on Non-Commissioned Officers’ Advanced Degrees

    How must the Special Operations Forces enterprise leverage emerging technologies to optimize operator production pipelines and implement data-driven talent management reforms to effectively employ highly educated non-commissioned officers in specialized, institutional roles?

  • Organizational Structure, Total Force, and U.S. Statutory Constructs for the Space Force

    How should the U.S. Space Force optimize its organizational and Total Force constructs—including the integration of a Space National Guard and Reserve—and adapt statutory models to legally support commercial space activities while navigating frameworks like the Posse Comitatus Act?

  • Organizing & Training for Counter Small UAS Operations

    Given the increasing threat from Group 3-sized small unmanned aerial systems, how should the Air Force organize, train, and authorize operators and leaders to effectively employ more complex counter-UAS and short-range air defense capabilities?

  • Organizing SOF for Irregular Warfare: Networks, TSOC Restructuring, and Collaboration

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise restructure its global networks, Theater Special Operations Commands, and interagency liaisons to effectively integrate allied strategies and the space-SOF-cyber triad for transregional irregular warfare and Support to Resistance and Resilience?

     

  • Overcoming the Nuclear Enterprise Sustainment Crisis: MMIII Supply, COTS, and Institutional Bottlenecks

    How can the Air Force overcome the Minuteman III sustainment crisis and severe supply bottlenecks to maintain the weapon system until 2052 by implementing long-term institutional changes, exploring interim targeting solutions, and reforming rigid approval processes to allow tactical-level COTS and AFREP solutions without compromising nuclear surety?

  • Personnel and Career Fields in the USSF

    How must the U.S. Space Force model its personnel accessions to sustain future senior leadership, evaluate retention drivers against commercial sector opportunities, and determine whether to establish a dedicated "Space Maintenance" career field and fully transition critical acquisition and support roles from the Air Force?

     

  • Precision Access

    How can SOF enhance its "precision access" imperative by overcoming physical and virtual infiltration challenges, modernizing platforms and ISR systems, and optimizing its special skills and capabilities to operate in any environment?

  • Predictive Analytics and AI Integration for Logistics, Maintenance, Equipment Demand, and Mission Support Operations

    How can the military integrate predictive analytics, machine learning, and large language models into its logistics and maintenance workflows to optimize equipment demand forecasting and streamline transportation networks while overcoming data security and integration challenges?

  • Preparation for Theater Special Operation Command Assignments

    How can a flexible and prioritized training and education pipeline be developed for newly assigned TSOC personnel, considering various providers and delivery methods, to effectively prepare them for success despite potentially lacking prior SOF or joint experience?

  • Psychological and Cognitive Conditioning for High-Stress, Multi-Domain Scenarios

    How can SOF training programs be optimized to address the psychological and cognitive challenges of multi-domain operations by integrating effective cognitive training techniques and ongoing mental health support to improve decision-making and sustain long-term readiness?

  • Readiness Impacts of Traditional Aerospace Parts Manufacture on Aging Fleet

    How can the U.S. Air Force leverage innovative manufacturing technologies and lightweight materials from both aerospace and non-aerospace industries to create a more cost-effective, adaptive, and scalable production model for replacement parts for its aging aircraft fleet?

  • Recruiting, Readiness, and the All-Volunteer Force

    How can the military sustain the health of the All-Volunteer Force by modernizing its stationing strategies, value proposition, and career pathways to attract younger generations and retain mid-career leaders, and what lessons can be drawn from alternative service models or allied nations to optimize Total Force readiness?

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    How can the U.S. government reform its recruitment, training, and educational frameworks to build a force with the diverse perspectives required to effectively support resistance and resilience, while also fostering a common interagency understanding and developing shared doctrine with allies?

  • Recruitment, Training, Development, Retention, and Analytic Certification of Air Force Intelligence Personnel

    How must the Air Force reform its recruiting, development, and retention pipelines for intelligence personnel to integrate emerging data science and space-based capabilities, and can Analytic Certification serve as a viable framework to enhance the overall effectiveness of the Intelligence Community?

  • Reestablishing Nuclear Surety Culture at Previous Nuclear Installations

    How can AFGSC and the nuclear enterprise develop a comprehensive approach to instill a robust culture of nuclear surety and build the requisite expertise in leadership, training, and personnel at installations transitioning to the B-21 bomber?

  • Reevaluating Educational Experience and Generational Differences

    How must the military adapt its recruitment, training, and physical or educational standards to accommodate generational differences and attract digital natives for specialized roles—like cyber and information operations—without degrading the professional standards of the broader force?

  • Resourcing and Deterrence Prioritization in the Nuclear Enterprise

    How must the Department of the Air Force balance strategic resourcing and optimize long-term budgetary trade-offs between the physical security, sustainment, and certification of nuclear weapons versus the acquisition and survivability of modernized delivery platforms (such as Sentinel, B-21, and LRSO) to maintain a credible and effective strategic deterrent?

  • Role of AI in Enhancing Regional Security and Multi-Domain Training

    How can SOUTHCOM, JSOU, and NATO forces integrate AI and synthetic environments into multi-domain training and operations to improve interoperability, decision-making, and readiness against transnational threats in the Western Hemisphere, while navigating ethical considerations?

  • Role, Functions, and Organizational Changes of the USAF

    How must the United States Air Force adapt its organizational structure to successfully integrate the new capabilities and warfighting approaches outlined in the Secretary of the Air Force's Operational Imperatives and the Chief of Staff's Future Operating Concept amid an increasingly vulnerable and rapidly evolving air domain?

  • Russian Strategic Decision Making: Military Leadership

    To what extent are trends in Russian senior officer promotions, postings, and the emergence of a new military elite—shaped by competency, obedience, and patronage networks—revealing the future trajectory of Russian military leadership and its implications for the General Staff.

  • Secure Collaboration on Personally Owned Devices and Mitigating Mobile Adware Tracking for Force Protection

    How must the military mitigate the severe operational security risks of mobile adware tracking and the widespread use of insecure commercial messaging apps by developing a secure, user-friendly collaboration platform for personal devices and implementing comprehensive force protection policies and countermeasures?

  • Social Impact of Technological Change

    How do emerging technologies, from AI to ubiquitous connectivity, fundamentally reshape social structures, institutional roles, and human relationships, and what are the comparative societal impacts and ethical implications across different cultures and scales?

  • SOF Civilian Workforce Optimization

    How can the SOF enterprise best optimize its use of the civilian workforce to be more efficient and lethal following multiple rounds of workforce cuts in 2025?

  • SOF Components and Joint Special Operations Command

    How should the SOF service components and JSOC optimize their structures, training, and unique capabilities to effectively execute strategic competition and integrated deterrence missions, while also identifying and developing necessary new technologies and joint force integration best practices?

  • SOF Future Requirements

    Considering key geopolitical trends, how can SOF enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Interoperability

    How can SOF, its partners, and allies (including NATO) overcome cultural and linguistic differences and improve collaboration to enhance interoperability and cohesion in addressing global security challenges?

  • SOF Requirements

    How can NATO and national SOF, in response to key geopolitical trends, enhance their capabilities and develop the necessary skills, competencies, and training to effectively operate in future conflict scenarios?

  • SOF Talent Management, Sustainability, and Repetitive Assignments

    How must the Special Operations Enterprise adapt its talent management, retention strategies, and force sustainability programs to develop resilient personnel equipped for strategic competition and support to resistance, while reconciling conflicting service and combatant command priorities regarding repetitive geographic assignments?

  • SOF’s Relationship with Space and Cyber / Space Operations Forces and SOF

    How must Special Operations Forces formally integrate with space and cyber components to establish a mutually supporting SOF-Space-Cyber Triad, mitigate electromagnetic vulnerabilities, and potentially redefine the concept of an "operator" to include missions supporting U.S. interests in cislunar space?

  • Space Force Basing

    Analyze various aspects of the future of Space Force basing.

  • Special Operations Command Europe: Postwar Ukraine

    How must the Ukrainian military and its specialized forces transition from a total-war footing to a sustainable peacetime defense posture while retaining critical asymmetric capabilities, optimizing reserve forces, and preparing for integration into the NATO alliance?

  • Spirituality, Cognition, and Resilience against Cognitive Warfare

    How can the military leverage mental health, spirituality, and individual resilience to protect against China's cognitive warfare, while simultaneously enhancing organizational decision-making, force preservation, and creative problem-solving across the enterprise?

  • Strategic Blind Spots, Planning for the Unexpected, and Black Swan Capabilities

    How must the Department of Defense and the Special Operations Enterprise implement blind spot analysis, strategic forecasting models, and flexible public-private partnerships to identify emerging technological disruptions and prevent cognitive failures during unexpected "black swan" events?

  • Strategic Empathy in Intelligence Analysis

    How can the skill of "strategic empathy"—the ability to understand and identify with a competitor or adversary's perspective—be effectively developed and integrated to optimize analytical capabilities in the intelligence and strategic communities?

  • Strategic Leadership, Force Development, and Career Path Professionalization in JADO/JADC2

    How must the United States Air Force and Joint Force adapt strategic leadership practices, reform talent management structures, and evaluate the creation of a formalized Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) career field to successfully inculcate a joint culture and prepare personnel for 21st-century multi-domain conflict?

  • Strengthening SOF Capabilities in DoW Workforce Optimization

    How can SOF implement broader DoW workforce optimization efforts to become more efficient and lethal by strengthening critical capabilities, addressing unique challenges, and applying lessons from past transformations like JTF-SREC?

  • Technological Undermatch and the Joint Force in a Technological World

    How must the Joint Force adapt its historical reliance on exquisite technology and manage the integration of emerging innovations—such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and quantum computing—to effectively operate, mask its physical and virtual signatures, and maintain a competitive advantage in future conflicts characterized by technological undermatch?

  • Temporal Orientation, Strategic Patience, and Culturally-Shaped Decision Making

    How must the military and Special Operations Forces adapt their training and operational planning to account for culturally distinct temporal orientations, leveraging historical case studies of strategic patience to better anticipate adversary decision-making and achieve long-term national outcomes?

  • Training and Education for Space Professionals

    How should the U.S. Space Force evolve the education and training of space professionals by evaluating the necessity of mandatory STEM degrees, integrating civilian space courses, and leveraging partnerships with universities, commercial agencies, and international allies to meet future operational requirements?

  • Understanding the Will to Resist and Measuring Resilience and Resistance

    How can the military and Special Operations Forces effectively define, quantify, and measure a population's psychological "will to resist" using doctrinal analytical frameworks like PMESII-PT to better inform, shape, and predict future Support to Resistance and Resilience operations?

  • USAF Supply Chain Protection and Cyber Weapon System Infrastructure Accreditation

    How can the Air Force holistically protect its critical IT networks by integrating physical supply chain security and chain of custody best practices with a streamlined, enterprise-wide accreditation process that resolves existing Risk Management Framework conflicts between base enclaves and cyber weapon systems?