Silicon (Si) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) solar cells have shown success in back-contact designs. However, solar cells with back contacts have not been implemented on copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS). To show the advantages of using this type of solar cell on unmanned aircraft, data from the Puma 3 AE was used. Our objective was to model 144 staggered back contact (SBC) CIGS cells onto a Puma and prove that it would extend the flight time, all at a minimal cost to the U.S. military. There...
Topics: solar cell, CIGS, thin film, SILVACO, UAS, UAV
Military family housing programs are in crisis, the product of a policy-strategy mismatch resulting from competing interests among the United States Congress, Department of Defense, private real-estate developers, and the military members and families who rely on military housing. Through a policy-centered literature review, survey instrument, and analysis, this thesis investigates the mismatch and its impacts on military member and family health and readiness. Responses to this study’s...
Topics: military family housing, affordable, quality, safe, health, healthy, habitable, uninhabitable,...
This thesis studies the correlation between annual military accessions and local disease burden using county-level data from 2016 to 2019. One of the biggest challenges the military faces today is maintaining a healthy, professional, and strong military appropriately equipped—mentally, physically, and emotionally—to complete assigned missions and tasks. The worsening prevalence of obesity and other underlying diseases in the civilian population significantly affects the total number of...
Topics: accession, Air Force, Army, BMI, diabetes, disqualifying conditions, heart disease, Marine Corps,...
This research examines whether distributing energy storage systems (ESS) improves microgrid resilience. A resilience definition appropriate for a military context substantiates the selection of three resilience measures for quantifying the change in resilience between a single ESS baseline microgrid architecture, and double and quintuple ESS architectures. Mission impact (MI) from Peterson (2019), islanding time from Van Broekhoven et al. (2014), and average θ glideslope, θg, adapted from...
Topics: energy storage, microgrid, resilience, distributed energy storage, resilience simulation,...
This paper investigated one possible solution for procuring propellent needed for future space exploration missions. This study examined the feasibility of using an electromagnetic launcher (EML) to transport raw materials used in propellent production from the lunar south pole to NASA’s Lunar Gateway. This proposed space station, located in a lunar near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), is a critical part of NASA’s Artemis program. Cheaply and efficiently sourcing lunar hydrogen from surface...
Topics: NASA, Artemis, Lunar Electromagnetic Launcher, lunar gateway, near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit Lunar...
Naval Postgraduate School
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May 30, 2021
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May 30, 2021
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Bethancourt, Daniel; Hatch, Thomas H.; Nibert, Shawn M.; Wirth, Daniel J.
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This project develops a tool to better understand the impact of resource allocation on fleet readiness for the future guided-missile frigate, FFG(X). This project assesses the FFG(X) in terms of the PESTONI pillars (Personnel, Equipment, Supply, Training, Ordnance, Network, and Infrastructure). To use the PESTONI framework as a way to increase FFG(X) readiness, both a qualitative and a quantitative solution were developed. The qualitative solution is a series of failure propagation chain...
Topics: future guided-missile frigate, FFG(X), PESTONI pillars
Naval Postgraduate School
0
0.0
May 30, 2021
05/21
May 30, 2021
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Birkenfeld, Martin L., Jr.
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Every law enforcement agency uses records management systems (RMS) that contain a wealth of information essential for investigations or intelligence. This information includes crime reports, arrest reports, name records, and property records. The ability to share this information between law enforcement agencies, especially those with bordering jurisdictions, would appear beneficial to the homeland security enterprise; however, this thesis reveals that sharing RMS data is not occurring as often...
Topics: police records management, RMS, records management systems, law enforcement records management...
Naval Postgraduate School
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May 30, 2021
05/21
May 30, 2021
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Bolen, Curtis D.; Chu, Victoria; Dang, Andy Q.; Kim, Paul T.; Proctor, Christian; Shideler, Bridget R.
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Existing military microgrid analysis tools lack an integrated system analysis process to fully assess energy resilience and microgrid cost. This capstone describes the development of a common streamlined tool and methodology to improve the ability to assess energy resilience for military microgrids using event scenarios including deliberate attacks and natural disasters. The resilience metric used in this report, defined as the expected lifecycle mission impact (ELMI), quantifies microgrid...
Topics: microgrid, resilience, system engineering, naval installation, trade-off analysis, cost, expected...
This thesis is a single-case study of Puerto Rico’s experience with Hurricane Maria and its catastrophic impacts. As the nation faces more complex and frequent catastrophic disasters, practitioners must consider how to build resilience in a meaningful way by beginning with the community. America’s approach to disaster preparedness and response outlined in the National Preparedness Goal (NPG) and the National Response Framework (NRF) has respectively produced “whole community” concepts...
Topics: National Preparedness Goal, NPG, National Response Framework, NRF, disaster resilience, community...
Globally, only 23 countries recognize women as indispensable support in combat positions. American and Norwegian women are effectively utilized in Female Engagement Teams, and Israeli women are known to enhance combat effectiveness in infantry units. Nevertheless, gender gaps in equality still remain, particularly in Latin American militaries. In this thesis, Norway, Israel, and the United States illustrate the differing approaches and successes of female integration into combat positions. It...
Topics: Latin American region, women in combat, gender mainstreaming, gender equality, critical mass...
The Defense Language Institute (DLI) trains most of the cryptologic language analysts (CLA) that perform translation and analysis of data to support the United States military and intelligence communities. Students take the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) when graduating, passing if they achieve a score of L2/R2 (2 on the Listening portion, 2 on the Reading). DLI has been ordered to improve its students’ scores upon graduation. It seeks an improved model to screen applicants for the...
Topics: DLI, Defense Language Institute, Defense Language Proficiency Test, DLPT, language, success,...
The CIA's initial regime change operations between 1953 to 1961 were marred by intelligence leaks and lacked critical mission assessments. In addition, perceptions held by top-level decision makers were so distorted that unsupported claims of communist infiltration were made in order to support the decision to proceed with an operation. Three operations were conducted in the span of eight years with nearly indistinguishable similarity, and the third operation resulted in failure. It was only...
Topics: CIA, organizational learning, regime change, international affairs
This thesis evaluates the recent improvement of Russia's submarine program in light of the overall modernization of Russia's undersea capabilities. It is based on a combination of qualitative assessments from unclassified official publications from Russian maritime defense institutions, historical articles on Soviet submarine development, along with their use during the Soviet era, and contemporary studies of Russian submarines. It concludes that the Russian Navy is well on its way to replacing...
Topics: Russia, Russian, nuclear, diesel, SSBN, SSN, hybrid, warfare, deterrence, submarines, Cold War,...
The purpose of this research was to determine the significance of Marine Corps officer accession sources in relation to achieving career-level promotion benchmarks. The study first determined what characteristics the Marine Corps values in selecting officers for promotion to major and lieutenant colonel. Then, the study compared the focus variables of accession source to determine if any specific program is more likely to produce career-level officers. Logit multivariate analysis models were...
Topics: accession source, commissioning source, retention, promotion, major, lieutenant colonel
The Ship Integration Program Office (PMW760) is interested in the prospect of having a unified, cohesive communications protocol that can be used by all unmanned systems under their purview. The Data Distribution Service (DDS) is a prime candidate for such cohesive communications using point-to-point links. The objective of this thesis is to assess the performance of DDS in a network architecture that fits the naval use case criteria. We propose a network architecture that incorporates...
Topics: DDS, Mininet, SATCOM, WiFi, throughput, latency, unmanned systems
Unexploded ordnance (UXO) poses a threat to soldiers operating in mission areas, but current UXO detection systems do not provide the required safety and efficiency to protect soldiers from this hazard. Recent technological advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) present an opportunity to explore a novel concept for a UXO detection system. The system proposed in this study integrates a sUAS with an onboard single- or multiple-spectrum (MS)...
Topics: unexploded ordnance, UXO, artificial intelligence, AI, small unmanned aerial systems, sUAS, object...
All across the country, officials and planners of the first-responder community plan for events of various types, yet their plans do not adequately account for crowd behavior when the event is interrupted by an act of violence that turns into a mass-casualty incident, or a “focus event.” This research contests early crowd psychology studies and presents the contemporary social identity theory, elaborated social identity model, and emergence model as better lenses for crowd behavior in...
Topics: crowds, crowd behavior, focus event, Boston Marathon bombing, Las Vegas shooting, CAS, complex...
As aviation continues to be the fastest and most efficient form of global transportation, airports across the country continue to see exponential growth in size and population. This expansion means airports will remain a high-value target to crime and terrorism. The need to protect the airport environment against these threats is essential. The responsibility of policing the nation’s major airports is unique and full of challenges. Airport police must balance the requirements of providing...
Topics: airport, aerotropolis, aviation, police, policing, law enforcement, security, critical...
To maintain its maritime advantage, the Navy must select and develop effective leaders. Organizations widely use information on personality traits of employees to help identify and develop leaders. In this thesis, I investigate whether extroverts are more likely to become leaders, and whether extroverts make better leaders. I use data on U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen who complete the Myer Briggs Test Indicator (MBTI) for personality type awareness. In their senior year, midshipmen have...
Topics: performance, leadership, extroversion
This thesis conducted a systematic literature review to synthesize and analyze current research on cybersecurity investment risk that may inform the Marine Corps’ future cybersecurity investment decisions. Using both public and private sector research on cybersecurity investment risk allowed for a broad look at academic studies that approached similar issues. This thesis makes recommendations on framework and two models that may be adopted by the Marine Corps as effective decision-making...
Topics: cybersecurity investment, risk, discretionary spending, non-discretionary spending, military buying...
Developing democracies, especially in countries such as Sierra Leone, that have experienced military interventions in politics, face challenges in establishing civilian control over their armed forces. Until the UK-led post-war defense reform of 2002, Sierra Leone’s military was politicized and had a history of intervening in politics following the country’s independence in 1961. While the government is still consolidating post-reform gains, attendant problems of civilian control are...
Topics: civilian control, military prerogatives, ministry of defense, civilian supremacy, civil-military...
This research examines the Coast Guard’s maritime security relationship with the Cuban Border Guard—before, during, and after normalization—through a qualitative case study comparison of five distinct mission areas: drug interdiction, migrant interdiction, search and rescue, marine environmental protection, and port security. By reviewing the aftereffects of the Trump administration’s rollback of U.S.-Cuba policy, specifically the impact on the Coast Guard-Cuban Border Guard security...
Topics: counterdrug, counternarcotics, drug interdiction, illegal migration, human smuggling, migrant...
Each year the Marine Corps recruits more than 30,000 enlistees. In an effort to obtain high-quality enlistees, over 40 percent of enlistees ship to bootcamp during the June, July, August, and September trimester. In this thesis, I analyze the Marine Corps’ accession plan and the relationship between a Marine's accession trimester and time awaiting training, as well as their likelihood to re-enlist after their first term and the probability of attrition prior to completing their first term....
Topics: attrition, bootcamp, accession, performance, retention, recruiting, time awaiting training, Marines...
Police-related civilian deaths, caused by direct force or occurring during custody, pose one of the central challenges to police legitimacy. This thesis studied five police departments that experienced such a crisis of legitimacy, as evidenced by either deadly retaliatory violence against police or substantial civil unrest in response. Specifically, this thesis examined how each agency implemented expert-recommended legitimacy-developing policies before and in response to the challenge of these...
Topics: police, New York, Eric Garner, Daniel Pantaleo, Ferguson, Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, Baltimore,...
This capstone explores the applicability of the Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) framework and the System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) methodology to guide consideration of system safety concerns posed by future variants of Sea Hunter. The author analyzed the Sea Hunter’s navigational mission behaviors from a high-level perspective of a functional hierarchy, discussing the specific steps of how basic STAMP/STPA can be used to identify safety hazards and safety...
Topics: safety, autonomous weapon systems, STAMP, STPA
In recruiting, the phrase “you recruit who you are” describes a presumed relationship—recruiters attract and enlist individuals who are similar to themselves or within their in-group. This research evaluates the correlation of high-quality recruiters on high-quality enlistees. For the 264,681 recruiter-enlistee pairs from 2011 to 2019, quality is defined and determined for both recruiters and enlistees with five metrics using DOD enlistment standards and Marine Corps promotion and...
Topics: recruiting, Marine Corps, enlistee, recruiter, recruiting assignment, special duty assignment, SDA,...
Research has shown that machine learning holds promise as a technique to improve the identification and classification of signals of interest. This study proposes the use of machine learning, specifically generative adversarial networks, to classify received signals based on their down-converted, but not demodulated, in-phase and quadrature signals and evaluate their probability of being of interest. The approach used a generative adversarial network to train a classifier convolutional neural...
Topics: generative adversarial network, neural network, deep learning
Under President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rolled out the controversial parent-child separation policy, also known as zero tolerance, and the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program in 2018–19. How DHS conducts strategic communications about such controversial policies is directly related to public and stakeholder perception of these policies. A newly developed stakeholder-centric measurement and evaluation model used to evaluate these two policy case studies...
Topics: strategic communications, immigration enforcement, immigration policy, measurement and evaluation...
Over the past decade, Southeast Asian countries have struggled to devise effective responses to China’s efforts to assert its claims in the South China Sea. This thesis aims to explain why some of those responses have been more successful than others. Using five case studies from 2012–2020, this thesis examines how the following four factors account for the success or failure of Vietnamese and Malaysian responses: increased external balancing with the U.S., increased internal balancing,...
Topics: Southeast Asian responses, regional responses, South China Sea, Chinese coast guard, Chinese...
The Mission Dependency Index (MDI) is a metric used by all U.S. military services for guiding operations, management, and funding decisions for facilities at military installations. Despite its broad adoption, several studies on MDI suggest it may have flaws that limit its efficacy. We present the first rigorous technical analysis of MDI as to how its flaws impact decisions and determine ways to overcome them. We develop a formal mathematical definition of MDI based on multilayer networks that...
Topics: Mission Dependency Index, MDI, infrastructure, network, multilayer
Naval Postgraduate School
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7.0
May 30, 2021
05/21
May 30, 2021
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HersterDudley, Marcella R.
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In support of the National Defense Strategy, the Department of Defense (DoD) has recognized energy security as an essential part of its strategic intent. In keeping with the DoD's strategic goals, the Department of the Navy announced three pillars of success to meet those goals: Resilience, Reliability, and Efficiency. To best establish energy security for DoD installations, microgrids have been embedded into the energy systems as additional energy sources and controls that support mission...
Topics: resilience, recovery procedures, microgrid, energy, reliability
Meteorological remote sensing efforts have advanced operational decision making and scientific research over the last half-century by providing high-quality global observations of the land, atmosphere, and ocean. The continued development of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and Bayesian neural networks shows potential for allowing some of these datasets to be synthetically produced where they cannot be directly observed. In this thesis, global precipitation measurement mission (GPM) data is...
Topics: artificial intelligence, remote sensing, tropical meteorology, convolutional neural networks, CNN,...
In 2018, the Colorado Department of Transportation was hit with a ransomware attack that resulted in the first-ever state emergency declaration for a cyber attack. Cyber attacks against the nation and its infrastructure are expected to increase, yet no extensive research exists on the United States' designated response framework for them. This thesis investigated the application of the Incident Command System (ICS) in significant cyber incidents and how the system may be improved for these...
Topics: Incident Command System, ICS, National Incident Management System, NIMS, cyber response,...
Proper talent management is essential to the longevity of the Marine Corps, and it is vital that policies exist to support and retain current personnel. Parenthood is a common experience among Marines, and Marine families continue to contribute to the Marine Corps’ overall mission accomplishment. The majority of research has evaluated how childbirth impacts traditional families, but little emphasis has been dedicated to Dual-military (Dual-mil) families. My research examines parenthood...
Topics: parenthood, retention, recruitment, Dual-military, parental leave policy, pregnancy
This thesis utilizes a soft power framework to examine U.S. public diplomacy (PD) efforts in Central America’s Northern Triangle—El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—between 2009 and 2016. During this period, the region experienced seemingly similar security, development, and migration challenges that affected U.S. foreign policy objectives; however, what would explain any variation in U.S. PD approaches to persuade or attract the host nation’s public within these three countries? This...
Topics: public diplomacy, U.S. foreign policy, soft power, smart power, Central America, Northern Triangle,...
Naval Postgraduate School
0
0.0
May 30, 2021
05/21
May 30, 2021
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Heyde, John J.; Mellendick, Kevan M.
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Minimal research to date has examined the impact of new parenthood on either military personnel or medical professionals. This thesis aims to identify the specific impacts of new parenthood on performance of military medical professionals, a group of highly skilled, in-demand, and costly-to-train servicemembers. Using quarterly data from 2013-2019 obtained from the Army Person Data Environment, we used individual fixed effects models to identify how new parenthood impacts physical performance...
Topics: parenthood, performance, military, medical, readiness
Although many alternatives to the standard model of policing have been proposed, none of them meaningfully engages with the massive social and technological changes that have occurred since the mid-20th century. This thesis asks if complexity theory can serve as a theoretical foundation for a new model of policing. Literature on complexity, complex adaptive systems, and network theory is examined and finds that observed behavior of street robberies in Washington, DC, can be understood as a...
Topics: complexity, complex adaptive system, network, netwar, policing, cynefin
In the past five years, the United States has seen a noticeable increase in racially, ethically motivated violent extremist (REMVE) activity. By examining the relevance of defining terrorism as international or domestic, this thesis identifies antiquated assumptions that have hindered the U.S. federal approach to investigating and prosecuting REMVE organizations. It also explores whether U.S. legal and judicial frameworks are adaptive enough to address emerging REMVE trends and how the homeland...
Topics: racially, ethnically motivated violent extremism, REMVE, domestic terrorism, designation
Naval Postgraduate School
0
0.0
May 30, 2021
05/21
May 30, 2021
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Kelly, Shannon A.; Kilber, Megan E.
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The Marine Corps’ current manpower system focuses on producing quantity over quality and fails to encourage those it wants and needs to keep to increase the diversity and longevity of its officer corps. A renewed emphasis has been placed on understanding what factors may affect an officer’s decision to remain serving. Literature suggests that a mentoring relationship may have a positive effect on retention. In this study, we first explore the predictive power of socio-demographic variables...
Topics: retention, mentorship, NROTC, MOI
The U.S. electoral system and democracy are under continued attack by foreign adversaries and political extremists intent on manipulating U.S. elections. Election officials and homeland security stakeholders must search for alternative methods to help strengthen the resiliency of the system. The question then becomes: How can red teaming and systems thinking be applied to reinforce the integrity of the U.S. electoral system? The goal is to analyze the system in its entirety to ensure the system...
Topics: election integrity, election security, red teaming, systems thinking, U.S. Secret Service, DHS,...
Naval Postgraduate School
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0.0
May 30, 2021
05/21
May 30, 2021
by
Jackson-Seales, Keyaira; Caballero, Anthony
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This thesis develops surveys using Likert scales and open-ended questions to measure inclusive behaviors in the Navy. We compared responses across gender and racial/ethnic groups as well as between sailors stationed on the East Coast vs. the West Coast. The survey we created can be used to assess inclusive and exclusive behaviors in the fleet. We examined what inclusion and exclusion behaviors look like among sailors and showed which inclusion and diversity (I&D) competencies, when...
Topics: inclusion, diversity, underrepresented groups, minorities, sea-duty, shore-duty, exclusion, Task...
Predicting military attrition due to conditions that existed prior to service is a complicated problem. My thesis explores underwriting practices and risk assessment in the life and health insurance industries with the aim to link private sector underwriting techniques to the military medical screening process. I review the current prediction models in the economic, actuary, and medical fields and find many of these models utilize complicated machine-learning algorithms to include random...
Topics: logistic, predictions, attrition, medical, pre-existing conditions, MEPS
This thesis assesses the U.S. National Guard State Partnership Program through a review of three partnerships: West Virginia National Guard-Qatar, Colorado National Guard-Jordan, and Massachusetts National Guard-Kenya. The partnerships are first analyzed within a national security and military doctrinal framework for security cooperation in counterterrorism and humanitarian crisis response. Then, they are evaluated based on an academic framework regarding counterterrorism and military...
Topics: National Guard Bureau, State Partnership Program, national security, security cooperation,...
How can the Navy become a better learning organization? This thesis addresses this question by taking a precise look at what a learning organization is, what its essential parts are, and why they are important. This research is qualitative in nature and includes analyses of published literature, public records, congressional testimonies, committee hearings, and documented reform attempts. The work attempts to answer why the Navy has struggled to become a learning organization in the past, where...
Topics: learning organization, organizational learning, learning, innovation, collaboration
Web applications that process sensitive information have become prevalent. Modern web applications rely heavily on dynamic content (i.e., page updates made by the browser using an XMLHttpRequest, and more recently the JavaScript Fetch API). Ajax technology provides fast client-server communication, which generates web traffic that updates the document object model (DOM) object in the browser interface often induced by user input. Therefore, the user’s actions are strongly correlated with...
Topics: network traffic analysis, keystroke biometrics, dynamic web traffic, side channel attack, recurrent...
Sub-Saharan African countries with established space programs have pursued a variety of different space policies, some focusing on national security, some focusing on socioeconomic development, or some on a mix of the two. Which factors—foreign partners, domestic politics, bureaucratic institutions, or economic capacity—are the strongest drivers of these policy decisions in African space programs? This thesis uses a qualitative case study analysis of the two most advanced space programs in...
Topics: space policy, South Africa, Nigeria, developing countries, emerging space actors, sub-Saharan...
Energy usage and conservation are perennial challenges facing the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE) and the U.S. Navy (USN) writ large. In order to promote USN energy conservation, the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) established the Air Energy Conservation (Air ENCON) program to further analytics-driven energy consumption assessment, and assist the USN to meet broader conservation goals. This study used a flight sortie data set built by Deloitte Consulting, constructed from three separate data...
Topics: fuel, fuel conservation, F/A-18, E-2D, E/A-18, naval aviation, machine learning, predict
Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems provide a unique problem for users in the law enforcement domain. On one hand, AI systems provide an opportunity for optimizations and faster workflows, especially in the environment of growing data. On the other hand, if left unchecked AI systems have the potential to negatively affect the community served by law enforcement. This research focuses on three types of AI systems currently used by law enforcement: facial recognition, predictive risk...
Topics: artificial intelligence, machine learning, AI
Data streams are becoming more numerous and complex, driven by an increased number of capable sensors. The complex, highly dimensional datasets created by these sensors contain information critical to our understanding of the battlefield situation. A significant change in the adversary's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) leads to a shift in the collected sensor data. The shift in the distribution of features in the data stream is known as concept drift, and this drift can be detected...
Topics: concept drift, drift detection, ensemble learning, adaptive learning, classification, supervised...
Recent active shooter incidents and other on-the-job violent encounters have caused U.S. fire departments to consider arming their personnel. Since governmental bodies and safety agencies have failed to establish firearms-use guidelines within the fire sector, many fire service decision-makers have arbitrarily adopted gun carry policies. This thesis investigates the most relevant factors such as firearms program costs, gun training concerns, and safety agency positions on firearms for the U.S....
Topics: firearms, fire service, gun policies, fire safety organizations, concealed carry permits, tactical...
Currently, many squadrons in the Naval Aviation community handwrite their daily flight schedules, which is typically an all-day effort. This thesis creates an optimization model to build schedules computationally instead of manually for Navy’s Training Squadron 22 (VT-22), which specializes in Intermediate Jet and Advanced Strike training. An optimized scheduling process can improve the efficiency of the training pipeline, saving money and improving aviation readiness. A preliminary model,...
Topics: optimization, naval aviation, scheduling, Training Event Scheduling Tool, TEST, VT-22
The online transmission of child pornography has exploded in recent years, and law enforcement does not have the resources to stop it. This thesis seeks to determine the advantages and disadvantages of using citizen volunteers to help investigate child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Specifically, it investigates whether incorporating civilians into certain aspects of CSAM investigations could assist law enforcement in filling gaps in resources needed to ensure all recovered images be fully...
Topics: CSAM, child sexual abuse material, volunteers, crowd sourcing, open-source investigative...
This thesis seeks to determine how the Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear (CBRN) Response Enterprise’s urban search and rescue (US&R) elements can better accomplish the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Defense Support of Civil Authorities mission following a domestic nuclear attack. To this end, it poses the following research question: How can the DOD maximize the employment of existing CBRN Response Enterprise US&R capabilities to support civil authority–directed lifesaving...
Topics: urban search and rescue, urban search & rescue, USAR, US&R, chemical biological...
Maintenance is a constant throughout the lifetime of a ship and needs to be as efficient as possible for the U.S. Navy to maintain the readiness, capability, and capacity of its surface fleet. The inability to find a maintenance item on a ship by repair personnel during a maintenance period is unacceptable. The current process relies on the written description of a work order, which besides the ship compartment, offers little guidance regarding the precise physical location of the maintenance...
Topics: augmented reality, shipboard maintenance, subject testing, maintenance availability, surface warfare
Why do people choose to serve with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)? How has USCIS articulated its mission and organizational values since its creation? What mission values do employees believe in versus what USCIS asks of them? This thesis uses public service motivation (PSM) theory and value congruence theory to interpret the alignment of USCIS employee value perceptions with organizational values from 2015 to 2020. An examination of the USCIS mission from 2003...
Topics: homeland security, public service motivation, mission statement, organizational storytelling,...
In 2019, the Commandant of the Marine Corps stated in his planning guidance that “we should use money like a focused weapon, and aim it at the exact individual we need.” In response to this call for targeted talent management reform, I use FITREP duty station preference and performance data to conduct fixed effects difference-in-differences and survival analysis to examine how assignment to a desired duty station affects the future performance and retention of Marines. Results indicate that...
Topics: talent management, retention, USMC, Marine Corps, Marine, duty station, duty assignment, personnel,...
This research builds on the work of Helene Caniac's Naval Postgraduate School thesis \"All Aboard! Benchmarking Human Resources Onboarding Practices,\" by assessing current Department of the Navy (DoN) onboarding practices of Navy civilian executives and providing recommended human resource solutions to support the onboarding of those executives. This research analyzes the onboarding of leaders within organizations through interviews of subject-matter experts and the application of an...
Topics: Onboarding, leadership, SES, human resources, HR, training, development, civilian, senior executive...
Unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAV) have made significant contributions to reconnaissance and surveillance missions in past U.S. military campaigns. As the prevalence of UAVs increases, there have also been improvements in counter-UAV technology that make it difficult for UAVs to successfully obtain valuable intelligence within an area of interest. Hence, it has become important that modern UAVs can accomplish their missions while maximizing their chances of survival. In this work, we...
Topics: reinforcement learning, agent-based environment, online optimization, reward-based game, UAV flight...
Political leaders, military leaders, and the general public gather information from images and video to make decisions. Media can be spread instantaneously throughout the world at low cost and anonymously using social media, allowing small groups to gain powerful influence. This leaves the United States vulnerable to deception by media forgery. The problem of media forgery is not new, but the recent advances in machine learning have led to the development of DeepFakes, which are more...
Topics: DeepFake, deep learning, machine learning
Democracy stands at a critical juncture in the current environment of mis-, dis-, and mal-information spreading in the media ecosystem and intensifying disaster challenges. This thesis examines how democratic governments can maintain legitimacy after a catastrophic disaster in the age of false information. It uses the comparative case study method to evaluate three international catastrophic disaster responses—the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant disaster in Japan;...
Topics: disaster, crisis, misinformation, disinformation, legitimacy, ethics, democracy, international,...
This thesis examines how the African Union (AU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have responded to China’s attempts to enhance its regional influence in Africa and Southeast Asia. I conclude that the AU is a weak institution because it lacks financial resources and management capacity to enforce desired regional norms. The thesis also finds that because of these shortcomings, China exercises a greater degree of influence in the AU. Additionally, China has set up the...
Topics: China, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN, African Union, AU, Forum on China-Africa...
This thesis examines the political and security implications of China's economic expansion into the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. It employs a comparative case study method to assess the PRC's relations with three Arab states: Saudi Arabia, which is a major source of China's petroleum imports; Egypt, which is a significant destination for Chinese infrastructure development resources and a participant in China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); and Jordan, which has relatively weak...
Topics: China, Middle East, Sino-Saudi, Sino-Egyptian, Sino-Jordanian, Belt and Road Initiative,...
In this current hyperconnected era, many could argue that multifaced daily news events, arranged into univocal storylines, generate effects well beyond the media environment. Empirically speaking, most explorations of media and cyberspace focus discretely on one or the other, parochially missing their potential interaction. More specifically, could negative media events, laced with dueling narratives, aimed at the United States and its interests by other countries on a given day, impact the...
Topics: media effects theory, narrative theory, two-level theory of international affairs, two-step flow of...
Improving the quality of Marines retained has long been an objective of the Marine Corps’ mission. This study assesses the effectiveness of utilizing a recently proposed binary logistic regression to select the most qualified Marines, based on their performance data, for pre-approved retention. Currently, all Marines desiring retention must submit a Reenlistment, Extension, and Lateral Move (RELM) request and await the Marine Corps’ approval or rejection decision. Implementing a targeted...
Topics: talent management, reenlistment, pre-approval, USMC, retention, First-term Alignment Plan, FTAP
The Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, also known as the Rio Treaty, is one of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) founding agreements. The treaty includes language that provides for collective hemispheric defense, and it has been invoked on multiple occasions. However, Rio Treaty invocations have consistently struggled to generate salient multilateral security cooperation. This thesis hypothesizes, and finds, that the Rio Treaty has been unsuccessful at producing...
Topics: Rio Treaty, security cooperation, alliance, Inter-American Security System, Organization of...
Cold spray technology has the potential to greatly reduce the effects of corrosion on susceptible materials. Lack of adhesion strength is one of the limitations currently preventing cold spray from becoming a dominant resource. Adhesion strength is the strength of the bond between the cold-sprayed coating and the substrate. Without good adhesion, the coating provides minimal protection against corrosion and could potentially make corrosion worse. In order to determine how to increase cold spray...
Topics: cold spray, adhesion strength, surface treatment, particle distribution, packing, aluminum,...
Naval Postgraduate School
0
0.0
May 30, 2021
05/21
May 30, 2021
by
Niemann, Natasha K.; Blockmon, Raymond G.
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In the past, cybersecurity professionals relied upon Security Event and Information Management systems to ingest network, server, and host logs to assist in detecting suspicious and malicious activity in the network. Detecting threat activities also included manually inspecting packet captures to glean clues of nefarious activity. Our research involves machine learning. We developed a model that observes the packet headers’ characteristics when a user accessed a remote file server. Data sets...
Topics: machine learning, networks, security, network operation centers, cyber center, cyber, security...
This thesis explores the use of Bayesian statistical postprocessing to rapidly train a highly accurate forecast from a 1 km resolution gridded WRF model forecast over a 100 km by 100 km area. These methods leverage three modeled forecast variables—10 m winds, sea-level pressure, and terrain elevation—in conjunction with downstream observations and prior model runs to identify model inaccuracies. Using only three days of data, a Bayesian corrected forecast is produced and analyzed for...
Topics: wind, forecast, Bayesian, WRF, model, accuracy, precision, small-scale, local
This thesis has a geopolitical focus, establishing U.S. interests and indigenous protectionism as factors that explain why the Darien Gap remains undeveloped. An analysis of U.S. influence on the development of the Darien Gap establishes a correlation between U.S. interests and the progress of constructing the Pan-American Highway and railroad across time and space. Heightened U.S. interest was influenced by the presence of extra-hemispheric threat in the Western Hemisphere and the timing...
Topics: Panama border, Colombia border, Darien Gap, transportation, infrastructure, Pan-American Highway,...
Within the Islamic world, the religious past often plays a formative role in our understanding of contemporary issues. One such rhetorical idiom from the past, the label “Kharijite,” has been, and is still, used as a pejorative by both state and non-state actors against myriad Islamist organizations and entities. Through an intensively researched description of historical, religious, and contemporary literature, this thesis examines the historical origins of the ancient Kharijite narrative...
Topics: Kharijite, Islamic extremism, Political Islam, Islamic State, Muslim Brotherhood, Islam, Islamism,...
The enlisted infantry community, all of whom acquire their training at Infantry Training Battalion (ITB), comprises approximately 15% of the Marine Corps. It is therefore concerning when, on average, 12.9% of the Marines who attend ITB fail to graduate. The majority are dropped from ITB training for four reasons: MOS Specific Physical Standards (MSPS) assessment failures, academic failure, medical injuries, and administrative issues. Of the four reasons, MSPS accounts for the majority of the...
Topics: Infantry Training Battalion, Marine Corps, Countermovement Jump, Force Platforms
Results of all special and general courts-martial in the Marine Corps from January 2017 to August 2020 were analyzed for systemic differences in terms of trial outcomes and punishments. Trial outcomes were obtained from the Marine Corps' legal database and combined with demographic and service data obtained from the Total Force Data Warehouse. Multiple regression analysis was performed with trial outcomes and various categories of punishments awarded utilized as outcome variables....
Topics: courts-martial, legal, systemic, regression, race, ethnicity, UCMJ, equity, bias
The U.S. Navy offers a unique opportunity to explore the social role of smoking in the military, as it is used as a stress-relief tool in a high-pressure work environment. Navy ships are socially isolated, and smoking breaks serve as one of the few reprieves away from daily work. Through these observations, the aim of this research is to answer these questions: 1) Are there any peer effects affecting the propensity to smoke among specific job types in the Navy? 2) Are there variations in...
Topics: destructive behaviors, smoking, tobacco, afloat commands, Navy
Autonomous vehicle systems, including multi-vehicle systems, are becoming increasingly relevant in military operations. A problem emerges, however, when logging data within these systems. In particular, loss of individual vehicles and inherently lossy and noisy communications environments can result in the loss of important mission data. This thesis presents a novel distributed ledger protocol that can be used to ensure that the data in such a system survives. To test the efficacy of the...
Topics: distributed ledger, blockchain, unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV, unmanned vehicle system, UVS,...
The U.S. Navy (USN) relies on ports to enable operations and project power, but many of our ports remain vulnerable to attack and natural disaster. To manage future conflict, the USN must plan for port resilience and develop resilience-enabling technologies that support ship refueling operations. We develop a framework and model capable of studying refueling at ports before and after disruptions. Our framework adapts standard tools for discrete event simulation of ship arrival and refueling,...
Topics: U. S. Navy, USN, resilience, discrete event simulation, refueling, vulnerability, sustainability,...
Naval Postgraduate School
10
10.0
May 30, 2021
05/21
May 30, 2021
by
Perez, Emillenicholas O.
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The DOD consumes more energy than any other federal agency to power its many installations and operational assets, prompting the need for robust energy management and solutions. With emerging technologies and a growing reliance on electrical systems, the DOD and DON recognize that energy production, procurement, and usage must be further optimized and secured. This study aims to support research toward a portable and affordable electric generation system capable of supplying power to...
Topics: gas turbine, turbojet, JetCat, kerosene, propane
This study investigates the impact of high school quality and peer group characteristics on the misconduct and attrition of enlisted Marines. Multivariate regression models employ personnel data from the USMC Total Force Data Warehouse on 22,177 enlisted Marines who joined the USMC during fiscal year 2013 and high school identifiers from the Common Core of Data. Misconduct incidents per year of service, propensity to commit misconduct, propensity to attrite within six years, and propensity to...
Topics: education, proficiency, misconduct, manpower, enlisted, Marine
With the policy goal of gaining access to a higher quality and quantity of diverse Marine officer candidates, this thesis examines the spatial distribution of Officer Selection Offices relative to the Qualified Candidate Population (QCP) through the census by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA). For context, the structure of U.S. Marine Corps Recruiting Command (MCRC) and the officer selection process are examined before exploring the types and methodology of the QCP process, including the...
Topics: diversity, female, Marine Corps, officer, recruiting
Survey and polling data suggest that the U.S. homeschooled student population is increasing. Annual Marine Corps enlistments of homeschool graduates are also rising after a provision contained in the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act granted homeschoolers the same enlistment status as high school graduates. The purpose of this study is to determine how these trends impact Marine Corps recruiting efforts and whether homeschooled students differ significantly from the Marine Corps’...
Topics: attrition, recruiting, TAPAS, homeschool, Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System
The U.S. Department of Defense has employed an initiative to become more conservative and efficient regarding uses of energy across all military services. The Naval Postgraduate School supported development toward this initiative by studying the possibility of electrical power generation using waste heat recovery within shipboard engine exhaust. This research included the development of a heat exchanger to use compressed carbon dioxide gas as the working fluid to run within a Brayton cycle....
Topics: waste heat recovery, heat exchanger, carbon dioxide, gas turbine
Since the late 1990s, few incidents have captured the national spotlight more than active shooter events. These events are a significant concern to the public, and as questions arise surrounding these incidents, the focus often turns to law enforcement and its ability to protect the public. Often, law enforcement’s response to inquiries surrounding prevention strategies concludes with officials explaining that they did everything possible to prevent the attack. This thesis analyzes the...
Topics: monitor, active shooter, tracking, potential active shooter
College football stadiums in the Big Ten Conference can host 100,000 fans each home game, which make them potential targets for terrorists or lone wolves who seek to further their agenda through mass casualty events. This thesis answers the following question: How do campus police in the Big Ten Conference protect football stadiums against potential terrorist attacks and coordinate with outside agencies to ensure crowd security without sacrificing the fans’ experience? Using a multi-level...
Topics: NCAA football, campus police, campus police failings, terrorism, campus threats, professionalized,...
Internet traffic choke points within country-level logical networks exist at the Autonomous System (AS) level, with consequences and implications for country-level network topology and vulnerability to network disruption or surveillance. This thesis introduces the concept of such “Gateway ASs,” which serve to connect the logical interior of a given country’s network to the larger internet and further demonstrates it to be a well-defined and useful concept. By fully characterizing the...
Topics: networking, autonomous systems, internet censorship, internet topology, border gateway protocol
This thesis examines the political reasoning behind the decisions of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to get involved in an intervention in Libya and their ultimate desire to ask the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to get involved. The political reasoning for the three countries' decisions varied from wanting to obtain political capital in an election year to wanting to avoid a humanitarian crisis, especially in a location so close to Europe’s southern border. NATO...
Topics: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, Libya
The advent of 5G promises a new age of speed and connectivity of mobile devices. Location-based services will reach a new state of accuracy as well. 4G/LTE implemented the timing advance group (TAG) to increase throughput by allowing user equipment (UE) to connect to multiple base stations (BSs). Timing advance (TA) commands are utilized in order to maintain time synchronization between each servicing BS by directing when the UE should transmit based on the distance to each associated BS. For...
Topics: 5G, timing advance group, TAG, location privacy, Cramér-Rao Lower Bound, CRLB, user equipment, UE,...
Across the fleet, Marine Corps installations provide childcare services to support military members and their families. These on-base services include those provided by the Childcare Development Center (CDC), which serves infants and children through age five. While the main goal of the CDC is to provide high quality and easily accessible childcare to military families, many locations have developed excessive waitlists. This thesis compares the CDC capacity data to the population, by age group,...
Topics: Childcare Development Center, CDC, waitlists, infants, military families, Marine Corps families
This thesis examines the port visits of two U.S. naval deployments to Latin America (USS AMERICA [LHA 6] in 2014 and the USS GUNSTON HALL [LSD 44] in 2018) to find what strategic effects the United States is achieving through this aspect of naval diplomacy. Using an original framework, the study compares primary Latin American news sources to U.S. press releases that cover the visits to identify influence and relates those findings to bilateral relationships, theater objectives, and routine...
Topics: naval diplomacy, gunboat diplomacy, naval presence, influence, soft power, port visits
Resilience is a term ubiquitously used to gauge how communities fare during and following disasters. Academics and practitioners see resilience as a critical driver of a community’s success or failure in recovering or bouncing back from disasters. This thesis aims to provide insight into improving resilience by bridging how it is studied in theory and practiced in the field. This thesis examines resilience in the literature and presents four case studies, which focus on resilience governance...
Topics: resilience, community resilience, disaster studies, recovery, academic and practitioner, case...
Fitchburg Fire Department’s (FFD) membership today is not diverse, primarily because the department has experienced limited success in recruiting motivated, diverse firefighter candidates. This thesis poses the following research questions: What can be done to identify current barriers that discourage or hamper reflective recruitment in FFD? And what can be done to overcome recruitment obstacles? The research relied on a focus group composed of Fitchburg-area civic leaders who could share a...
Topics: diversity, recruitment, community representation, reflective workforce, employment outreach,...
Rotational programs—whereby employees temporarily work within a different part of an organization to gain new skills and knowledge—have become the rage across the country. Benefits of these programs in the private sector include continual learning, agility in job skills, and a “try before you buy” approach to job satisfaction for both the employee and employer. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has implemented two rotational programs; however, these initiatives are in the early...
Topics: rotational assignments, professional development, government
Under what circumstances is Russia successful in waging hybrid operations, short of the use of armed force? For the last two decades, Russia has undertaken structured cyber attacks, political destabilization, subversive activities, and psychological influence throughout the world as part of what has become known as \"hybrid warfare\" or “New-Type War” (NTW). This thesis examines two contemporary European case studies—Estonia and Montenegro—where Russia has used indirect means...
Topics: Russia, hybrid, New-Type Warfare, non-state actors, near-abroad, influence
Propaganda imagery and rhetoric has played a role in mass persuasion leading to an escalation of political violence connected to ethnic hatred as found in Germany in the 20th century—and beyond. By examining the anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery used in Nazi Germany, this study examines the propaganda of racial hatred as a mechanism for gaining domestic political power—and then for launching a systematic strategy of mass-murder of Europe’s Jews. While the Nazis employed the most modern...
Topics: Nazi, propaganda, anti-Semitism, imagery, rhetoric
This research addresses the decreasing worth of the Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance (SGLI) payout based on the year a servicemember dies. The SGLI maximum has stagnated at $400,000 for over 16 years and nearly every other servicemember entitlement or benefit has increased in this timeframe. Using four principal steps, this research first determines what the SGLI maximum should be using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and compounding inflation rates. Second, it conducts trend...
Topics: servicemembers group life insurance, SGLI, ordinary least squares, OLS
This thesis studied China’s energy security policies’ primary drivers and, more specifically, how China acquires the energy needed to satisfy its social and economic needs. This thesis examined three primary drivers of China’s energy security policies: the diversification of resources due to foreign pressures, the development of green energy, and the increase in growth and urbanization. After systematic analysis, this thesis found that China has not achieved energy independence because of...
Topics: China, energy security, foreign reliance, green energy, diversification of resources
There is a widely accepted notion that fiscal spending increases at the end of the fiscal year across different government levels. This phenomenon, particularly across the military services, is driven by the notion that follow-on-year authorizations will be decremented because these funds were not obligated to a 99.8% level of execution. There is anecdotal evidence of increased spend rates in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year. This study analyzes cost-driving trends across intermediate...
Topics: beyond capable maintenance, beyond capability of maintenance, cost drivers, aviation depot level...
Naval Postgraduate School
0
0.0
May 30, 2021
05/21
May 30, 2021
by
Smith, Christopher G., II; Akpunku, Jude Jr.
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This thesis uses a mixed method approach to evaluate the impact of job satisfaction on the retention of minority officers in the Surface Warfare Officer community. In the context of this study, job satisfaction includes the following components: sense of affiliation, sense of inclusion, need to belong, and perceived organizational support. Using these components, this thesis performs a comparative analysis of survey data from junior officers (O1 to O3) and thematic analysis of twelve interviews...
Topics: inclusion and diversity, retention, manpower
Systems engineering (SE) is a field of study filled with various topics, and professionals enter the field along different educational pathways. Some system engineers have formal education, while others rely on prior background studies or on-the-job training. Although past studies highlight the core competencies needed to perform in an SE position adequately, they do not address the core concepts learned by students in a foundational SE course. This research identified the core concepts...
Topics: systems engineering, Delphi method, concept inventory, engineering education, Massachusetts...
As increased border security measures are adopted along the United States’ southern land border, researchers believe that an increase in illicit maritime traffic can be expected. As the primary maritime security agency, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) is suffering from a lack of interdiction assets and resources and admits it is already only capable of responding to one-third of all known maritime smuggling events. Based on current data regarding drug interdictions within the maritime domain and...
Topics: U.S. Coast Guard, USCG, U.S. Navy, USN, autonomous systems, unmanned surface vehicles, USV,...
The MV-22 Osprey is a critical component of national defense as it provides the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) with long-range, assault support capabilities to transport combat troops and equipment from ships and land bases to the battlefield. The MV-22 fleet has yet to maintain its readiness expectations; given the number of variables that contribute to squadron readiness, it is difficult to determine what resources to reallocate to guarantee consistent performance. This study examined...
Topics: MV-22, Osprey, aviation, readiness, squadron, maintenance, Integrated Product Support, IPS
Police reform is a long-standing objective in America. In one form or another, the same fundamental problem persists: police have never consistently navigated the tension between effectively policing society and being a part of it. In part, systems theory helps explain why traditional best-practice reforms have not been consistently effective. The solution to these problems may lie not in reform but in reframing the approach to police organizations through systems thinking. This thesis seeks to...
Topics: police, police reform, systems, systems thinking, policing, policing management, reflective...
