This report defines and describes will to fight and provides a model of unit will to fight that can be applied to ground combat units of any scale. The model provides a research-grounded template for case-by-case adviser assessment of partner or allied military forces and the intelligence analysis of adversary forces. This report also provides a theoretical basis for adding will to fight to military war gaming and simulation.

Will to Fight: Analyzing, Modeling, and Simulating the Will to Fight of Military Units

History

Marcellino, William

Castillo, Jasen J.

Posard, Marek N.

Connable, Ben

McNerney, Michael J.

Frank, Aaron

Lander, Natasha

Zimmerman, S. Rebecca

Hargrove, Henry

Sladden, James

Military

RAND Corporation

In this report, RAND researchers explore the factors, contexts, and mechanisms that shape a national government's decision to continue or end military and other operations during a conflict (i.e., national will to fight). To help U.S. leaders better understand and influence will to fight, the researchers propose an exploratory model of 15 variables that can be tailored and applied to a wide set of conflict scenarios.

National Will to Fight: Why Some States Keep Fighting and Others Don’t

Paul, Christopher

Madden, Dan

Blum, Ilana

Fernandes, Benjamin J.

Seol, In Hyo

Parasiliti, Andrew

This report provides recommendations for how the Air Force's survey system for monitoring abuse and misconduct in Basic Military Training can best be adapted for use in technical training and flying training environments. The report also provides background on the training environments, revisions to tailor the survey content for these environments, survey pretest results, strategies to promote participation, and recommendations for future use.

A Survey System to Assess Abuse and Misconduct Toward Air Force Students in Occupational Specialty Training

Business & Money

Wagner, Lisa

Burns, Rachel M.

Robson, Sean

Farris, Coreen

Matthews, Miriam

Miller, Laura L.

Keller, Kirsten M.

Holliday, Stephanie Brooks

Bicksler, Barbara

Matsuda, Mauri

Management & Leadership

Given the size and scope of the Russian propaganda campaign that targeted the U.S. electorate in 2016, it is critical to understand the impact of that campaign and mechanisms that can reduce the impact of future campaigns. This report, the third in a series, describes a study that assessed how people react to and engage with this propaganda, and found that media literacy advisories and labeling the source of the propaganda had a counter effect.

Russian Propaganda Hits Its Mark: Experimentally Testing the Impact of Russian Propaganda and Counter-Interventions

Computers & Technology

Helmus, Todd C.

Marrone, James V.

Schlang, Danielle

Networking & Cloud Computing

The U.S. Army invests significant resources in recruiting, training, and preparing new soldiers. When a soldier does not complete a full contract term, the Army views this as a net loss. The goal of the research summarized in this report is to determine whether organizational factors matter for producing attrition and to generate hypotheses regarding the mechanisms by which organizational factors generate attrition. The authors made use of the random assignment of soldiers to their first battalion to determine whether the "luck of the draw"-the battalion to which the soldier is assigned and the senior noncommissioned officer (NCO) at that battalion-is directly linked to the observed variation across assignments in eventual first-term outcomes. The authors complemented that analysis with interviews exploring the factors that could be driving differences across units, such as leadership and command culture, availability of soldier supports, management of deployment and training cycles, and installation amenities. The quantitative part of the report shows that organizational factors affect attrition above and beyond the effects of soldier characteristics. The qualitative part highlights potential pathways through which battalion-level characteristics might manifest in differential attrition outcomes. Rather than conceptualizing attrition as a soldier being "fired" for poor performance, this report describes attrition as a process in which leadership may fail to provide needed interventions or to perpetuate a culture in which soldiers want to and are able to remain in service. The authors identify opportunities to address the factors under the Army's control that are associated with attrition. Book jacket.

Organizational and Cultural Causes of Army First-Term Attrition

Jensen, Rebecca

Kidder, Katherine L.

Panis, Christina

Constant, Louay

This report, the fourth in a series on election threats, describes research from focus groups and individual interviews on responses to memes sourced in Russia that were designed to breed dissension and to a public service announcement warning about such online manipulation. It then outlines a strategy to counter such interference that involves coordinating with social media companies and releasing simple PSAs for use during election cycles.

Countering Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections

Reininger, Hilary

Exploratory Examination of Agent-Based Modeling for the Study of Social Movements

Frank, Aaron B.

Grana, Justin

Marcinek, Krystyna

Kahn, Omair

Zutshi, Rushil

Reference

The authors of this report developed and tested the potential for new interviewing methods, including the use of machine learning (ML), to detect speech patterns that reflect attempts at deception or truthfulness during simulated background investigation interviews. They found that ML models are promising tools that have the capacity to augment existing security clearance background investigation processes.

Looking for Lies: An Exploratory Analysis for Automated Detection of Deception

Ellinger, Emily

Johnson, Christian

Melin, Julia L.

Computer Science

Not the X-Files: Mapping Public Reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Across America

Lee, Mary

Gromis, Ashley

Americas

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