HomeOffice of Sponsored ProgramsResearchArticles


Article Search

Research Articles

  • Cultural Understanding in Deterrence and Compellence

    A prerequisite to deterrence and compellence is crafting your message so that it will be understood by your target audience. This requires effective cross-cultural communication and a deep understanding of the target audience’s sociocultural worldview. How can the SOE develop the level of

  • Sustainability of the Force

    During the past two decades, SOF have conducted innumerable counterterrorism and direct-action activities around the world in places like Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The taxing operational tempo and unforgiving dwell time of operational units resulted in former USSOCOM Commander Admiral William

  • Coordination and Collaboration

    The genesis of the great power competition has created an operational environment that demands a greater collaboration/ synthesis between SOF and the interagency (including the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID], allies, and partners) to enable future SRR.

  • Recruitment, Training and Education for Supporting/Advising Resistance

    While resistance and resilience tend to be discussed in terms of the people resisting, or the state or population within which resilience is being built, this topic calls for a shift in focus toward the forces offering support for resistance and/or resilience. Those forces might be U.S.

  • Understanding the Will to Resist

    Support to Resistance and Resilience (SRR) is focused on people— both for the populations who are building resilience and resistance skills, and on the SOF professionals who advise and assist those populations. Understanding, defining, and measuring the will to resist is a complex topic. What

  • Resiliency Approaches Through Women, Peace and Security (WPS)

    The role of women in both resilience and resistance is a neglected area of study that is rich in potential for transforming understanding of the human role in SRR. The UN’s Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) initiative focuses on including the role of gender in conflict prevention, management,

  • The Future of Information and Influence

    There are many ways in which current technologies shape the ways that people receive information. The ability to create realistic, believable information, events, documents, pictures, and video based on a computer prompt makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction.

  • Black Swan Capabilities

    Historically, technological innovations drive changes to the ways in which conflicts are fought. However, it is not always easy to see which technologies will drive such changes, or the ways that such technologies will be incorporated and deployed by militaries. New technologies in a variety of

  • Interrelationship Between Intelligence and Technology

    Intelligence has a role to play in the identification of emerging technologies and assessment of how they may be used by adversaries. Within the SOE, how can collaboration be encouraged between the intelligence practitioners and the technological specialists? How can SOF best couple bottom-up-driven

  • Legal, Moral and Ethical Considerations of New Technologies

    What are the core legal, moral, and ethical principles that transcend technology? How can the SOF best prepare for the legal, moral, and ethical challenges inherent in new technologies? How can SOF develop personnel who understand the legal, moral, and ethical implications of new technologies?