James Rodney Schlesinger was an American economist and public servant who was best known for serving as Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Prior to becoming Secretary of Defense, he served as Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) from 1971 to 1973, and as CIA Director for a few months in 1973. He became America's first Secretary of Energy under Jimmy Carter in 1977, serving until 1979.
The United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment (ONA) was created in 1973 by Richard Nixon to serve as the Pentagon's "internal think tank" that "looks 20 to 30 years into the military's future, often with the assistance of outside contractors, and produces reports on the results of its research". The Director of Net Assessment is the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense on net assessment.
The Smith Richardson Foundation is a private foundation based in Westport, Connecticut that supports policy research in the realms of foreign and domestic public policy.
The United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) is one of the eleven unified combatant commands in the United States Department of Defense. Headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, USSTRATCOM is responsible for strategic nuclear deterrence, global strike, and operating the Defense Department's Global Information Grid. It also provides a host of capabilities to support the other combatant commands, including integrated missile defense; and global command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR). This command exists to give "national leadership a unified resource for greater understanding of specific threats around the world and the means to respond to those threats rapidly".
Edward "Pete" Cleveland Aldridge Jr. is an aerospace engineer and former government official in the U.S. Defense Department. He was also selected as a payload specialist for the Space Shuttle mission STS-62-A, scheduled to launch in July 1986. The mission was canceled after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986, and Aldridge never flew.
Philip Merrill was an American diplomat, publisher, banker, and philanthropist.
The National Defense University (NDU) is an institution of higher education funded by the United States Department of Defense aimed at facilitating high-level education, training, and professional development of national security leaders. As a chairman's Controlled Activity, NDU operates under the guidance of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), with Lieutenant General Michael T. Plehn, USAF, as president. It is located on the grounds of Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C., near the White House and the US Congress.
David Keith McCurdy is an American lobbyist, lawyer, and former politician who was the Democratic U.S. Representative from Oklahoma's 4th congressional district, in office from 1981 to 1995. Described as a moderate or conservative Democrat, McCurdy was a chair the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. In 1994, he ran for the U.S. Senate, but lost to fellow Representative Jim Inhofe.
The Department of National Defense is the executive department of the Philippine government responsible for guarding against external and internal threats to peace and security in the country. The Department of National Defense exercises executive supervision over the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Office of Civil Defense (OCD), the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO), the National Defense College of the Philippines (NDCP), the Government Arsenal (GA), and Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC). It is also responsible for disaster preparation and management in the country.
Steven Kent Metz is an American author and professor of national security and strategy at the U.S. Army War College specializing in insurgency and counterinsurgency, American defense policy, strategic theory, the African security environment, and future warfare.
Andrew Francis Krepinevich Jr. is a defense policy analyst who is a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a Washington, D.C. based think tank founded in 2007 by Michèle Flournoy, board member of military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, and Kurt M. Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs in the Biden Administration. Funded by Northrop Grumman, dozens of military contractors, Chevron, Amazon, Google and other large corporations, CNAS specializes in United States national security issues, including terrorism, irregular warfare, the future of the U.S. military, the emergence of Asia as a global power center, war games pitting the US against the People's Republic of China and the national security implications of natural resource consumption.
Military capability is defined by the Australian Defence Force as "the ability to achieve a desired effect in a specific operating environment". It is defined by three interdependent factors: combat readiness, sustainable capability and force structure.
Richard L. Kugler is an American thinker and writer on U.S. national security policy and defense strategy.
Michael Paul Pillsbury is an author, and former public official in the United States. He has been the Director of the Center on Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. since 2014. Before Hudson, he held various postings in the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Senate. He has been called a "China-hawk", and an "architect" of Trump's signature policy on China.
Robert Orton Work is an American national security professional who served as the 32nd United States Deputy Secretary of Defense for both the Obama and Trump administrations from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, Work was the United States Under Secretary of the Navy from 2009 to 2013, and before that served as a colonel in the United States Marine Corps; Work retired in 2001 and worked as a civilian at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) and the George Washington University in various positions relating to military and strategic study. From 2013 to 2014, he was the CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). After his time as Deputy Secretary of Defense, he went on to serve on the board of Raytheon.
AirSea Battle is an integrated battle doctrine that forms a key component of the military strategy of the United States. The doctrine became official in February 2010, and was renamed to Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC) in 2015.
The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) is a U.S. Department of Defense joint services school and research laboratory located at Patrick Space Force Base, Florida, offering both resident and off-site courses, and working in areas of equal opportunity, intercultural communication, religious, racial, gender, and ethnic diversity and pluralism. Courses and research are meant to support the readiness of civilian and military personnel working with the American armed forces.
Ross Eden Babbage is the Chief Executive Officer of Strategic Forum Pty Ltd and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) in Washington DC. Babbage is also Managing Director of Strategy International, a national security consulting and educational services company. Babbage formerly held the position as Head of Strategic Analysis in the Office of National Assessments and Assistant Secretary for ANZUS and then Force Development in the Department of Defence. He has also been an advisor to various government ministers and departments
Paul Joseph Selva is a retired United States Air Force general who served as the tenth vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity, he was the nation's second-highest-ranking military officer, and the highest-ranking officer in the Air Force. He assumed his last assignment on July 31, 2015, and retired on August 1, 2019. Selva is a command pilot with more than 3,100 hours in the C-5, C-17A, C-141B, C-37, KC-10, KC-135A and T-37.
