To explore what extended competition between the United States and China might entail out to 2050, the authors of this report identified and characterized China’s grand strategy, analyzed its component national strategies (diplomacy, economics, science and technology, and military affairs), and assessed how successful China might be at implementing these over the next three decades.

This monograph assesses China's aerospace capabilities and the extent to which China's participation in commercial aerospace markets and supply chains is contributing to the improvement of those capabilities. It examines China's commercial aviation manufacturing capabilities, its commercial and military capabilities in space, Chinese government efforts to encourage foreign participation in the development of China's aerospace industry, transfers of foreign aerospace technology to China, the extent to which U.S. and other foreign aerospace firms depend on supplies from China, and the implications of these issues for U.S. security interests. China's aerospace industry has advanced at an impressive rate over the past decade, partly due to the increasing participation of its aerospace industry in the global commercial aerospace market and the supply chains of the world's leading aerospace firms. China's current ability to meet demand with indigenous aircraft is limited, however, and much of the demand will be filled by imported aircraft. China's space capabilities have improved rapidly, on the other hand, and it has developed and deployed an increasingly wide range of satellites. China's growing civilian aerospace capabilities are unquestionably contributing to the development of its military aerospace capabilities, but whether the United States could significantly improve its security through alterations of its policy toward civil aerospace cooperation with China without having a significant negative effect on its own economic interests is unclear.

This report assesses Chinese investment in U.S. aviation from 2005 to 2016. It provides context in China’s demand for aviation products and aviation industrial policies, while assessing technology transfers and impact on U.S. competitiveness. Chinese investment in U.S. aviation over the past decade has primarily involved lower-technology general aviation manufacturers that do not affect U.S. competitiveness.

The authors assess alternatives for a next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) across a broad set of potential characteristics and situations. They use the current Minuteman III as a baseline to develop a framework to characterize alternative classes of ICBMs, assess the survivability and effectiveness of possible alternatives, and weigh those alternatives against their cost.

The U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD's) acquisition system has undergone significant reform. The authors of this report propose that DoD leaders manage the defense acquisition system (DAS) according to its ability to develop and produce capabilities that solve operational problems outlined in the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), discuss why this perspective is warranted, and suggest steps that the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment (OUSD [A&S]) could take if it wishes to pursue this approach. The authors recommend that OUSD (A&S) engage DoD's force planning and development apparatus, develop and institutionalize a mechanism to inform OUSD (A&S) leadership and staff on emerging operational and solution concepts, and conduct an experiment to understand the opportunities and limitations of this new approach.

Economic shocks are unanticipated changes in the conditions upon which resource allocation decisions are based. Economic shocks include a wide range of events, from typhoons to trade policy changes to mergers and acquisitions-any event that causes a decisionmaker to reconsider such choices as what to buy or sell, how much work to do, what production technology to use, or what price to pay or charge. The concern underlying this report is the possibility that economic shocks could induce the same effects as classic kinetic supply interdiction efforts: the degradation of reliable military capability, diversion of resources from high-priority military initiatives, and imposition of costs. The purpose of this report is to assist Department of Defense (DoD) decisionmakers called upon to respond to adverse economic shocks by identifying opportunities for improving analysis of shocks and their effects on U.S. defense postures. The authors examined historical and hypothetical instances in which shocks threatened or would threaten defense postures to identify questions that an analytic capability might be able to answer. They also reviewed data analysis methods used in the economics literature on shocks. Research findings suggest that DoD might benefit from improving its capability to analyze shocks. Moreover, although existing methods from economics provide insights necessary for achieving the desired analytic capability, they are not sufficient for fully providing that capability. Novel techniques employing multidisciplinary approaches appear best suited to help close gaps between existing and desired analytic capability, but additional research is needed to develop and refine such techniques.

Testimony presented before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on April 13, 2023.

The authors present a framework and methodology to identify the roles and responsibilities (R & R) of those implementing Department of Defense policies and also potential conflicts, ambiguities, gaps, inconsistencies, and redundancies in those policies. They introduce a new software tool that automates one step of the methodology-EPIC-and demonstrate its use with three case studies to illustrate the technique and also the tool's flexibility. EPIC allows analysts to efficiently analyze multiple policy documents to detect potential conflicts in policy early on, thereby allowing policy developers to focus their attention on the need for clarification and, possibly, changes in policy. The authors relate executive positions to R & R and the products that result from their execution. If it can be shown that more than one actor is assigned to take the same action on the same product, then a potential conflict exists in the body of policy. If, on the other hand, no executive is assigned to take action on a product, then there is a potential gap in the body of policy. Use of this new tool will result in better and more consistent defense policy.

"This report assesses Chinese investment in U.S. aviation from 2005 to 2016. It provides context in China's demand for aviation products and aviation industrial policies, while assessing technology transfers and impact on U.S. competitiveness. Since 2005, Chinese companies have steadily increased investment in U.S. aviation by acquiring, merging, or establishing joint ventures with more than a dozen U.S. aviation companies without directly running afoul of U.S. regulation. The combination of Chinese government policy to become globally competitive in aviation and the availability of capital drives these investments, but they are constrained by U.S. government foreign investment and export laws as well as classic business concerns about return on investment. While China has unambiguous government policies supporting the development of a globally competitive aviation industry, Chinese investment in U.S. aviation over the past decade has primarily involved lower-technology general aviation manufacturers that do not affect U.S. competitiveness. Chinese demand for large commercial aircraft may be as much as one-fifth of global demand, but the duopoly nature of global aviation also creates barriers to China's goal of developing a globally competitive commercial aircraft manufacturer, as any manufacturer of a new commercial aircraft struggles to achieve efficiencies of scale"--Publisher's description.

Economic shocks are unanticipated changes in the conditions upon which resource allocation decisions are based. The concern underlying this study is the possibility that economic shocks could induce the same effects as classic kinetic supply interdiction efforts: the degradation of reliable military capability, the diversion of resources from high-priority military initiatives, and the imposition of costs. The purpose of this study is to identify opportunities for improving analytic support to decisionmakers responsible for managing the effects of economic shocks on defense equities. Analysis of 11 instances in which shocks threatened defense equities suggests a suite of analytic capability requirements. Review of existing methods for empirically studying shocks, in combination with application of workhorse empirical methods to a real-world case study, delineate the value and limits of existing approaches to satisfying those analytic capability requirements. Based on our research findings, we recommend DARPA or another defense entity invest in a program for advancing data-informed management of economic shocks.