Policy Currents | The newsletter for policy people
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** Feb. 25, 2025
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Improving the Efficiency of the Military Compensation System
Military personnel costs amounted to more than $226 billion in the U.S. Department of Defense's budget request for fiscal year 2023. A major contributor to these costs is military compensation, which includes basic pay; allowances for housing, food, and cost of living; special and incentive pays; retired pay; and health care for military families and retirees.
In a new report, RAND's Beth Asch reviews the literature on military compensation and identifies potential ways to improve efficiency within the system. Efficiency does not only mean meeting the Pentagon's strategic human resource objectives at the lowest cost, she writes. It may also mean improving performance at the same cost. For example, efficiency improvements could take the form of increased performance incentives for individual service members or reforming pay, benefits, and allowances in such a way that the full value of the compensation package is clearer to service members.
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Countering Attacks on U.S. Waterways
U.S. adversaries could carry out blockship attacks by deliberately sinking ships, running them aground, or crashing them into fixed infrastructure. Blocking U.S. ports or waterways could delay military movements and impose economic damage until the obstruction is cleared. A new RAND paper examines the risk of such attacks and how to counter them. The findings are timely: Given the size of modern cargo ships relative to the width of critical waterway bottlenecks, it's crucial to understand how to diminish the probability and impact of blockship attacks.
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Time to Rethink the Role of Your Sleep Tracker?
Like many others, RAND's Wendy Troxel uses a sleep tracker to monitor her shut-eye. When her tracker glitched recently, Troxel, a sleep scientist, was reminded that it's easy to become overly dependent on nightly data. Trusting how you feel is also important, she says. In fact, your subjective sleep experience--how rested and refreshed you feel upon waking--is one of the sleep metrics most reliably linked with health outcomes. That's something no tracker can measure, she says. "Sleep trackers are tools, not the ultimate judge of your sleep quality or life choices."
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** RAND Recommends
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- Carolyn Bull, a leading Australian national security expert, has been named the new director of RAND Australia.
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- North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia in Ukraine are estimated to have suffered considerable casualties. This may be because North Korean personnel are being used in frontal assaults for which they are largely untrained, says RAND's Bruce Bennett.
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** Events
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Policy Lab: AI Risks and Benefits in Clinical Care
Wednesday, February 26, 2025 (Online)
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Admissions Webinar: Master of National Security Faculty Panel
Thursday, March 6, 2025 (Online)
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The U.S.-Japan Alliance Series
Monday, March 10, 2025 (Los Angeles, CA, and Online)
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RAND Health Care Workforce Summit
Monday, March 17, 2025 (Washington, DC)
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** Learn the Tools of Defense Policy Analysis
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Applications are open for Pardee RAND Graduate School's new Master of National Security Policy degree program. Full-time and part-time schedules are available at our campuses in Santa Monica, CA, and Arlington, VA.
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