"RAND conducted an examination of operations analysis, modeling, and simulation support to decisionmaking in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom to illustrate how these tools can support decisionmaking in irregular warfare."

Government organizations have put substantial effort into detecting and thwarting terrorist and insurgent attacks by observing suspicious behaviors of individuals at transportation checkpoints and elsewhere. This report reviews the scientific literature relating to observable, individual-level behavioral indicators that might, along with other information, help detect potential violent attacks.

New concepts such as network-centric operations and distributed and decentralised command and control have been suggested as technologically enabled replacements for platform-centric operations and for centralised command and control in military operations. But as attractive as these innovations may seem, they must be tested before adoption. This report assesses the effects of collaboration across alternative information network structures in carrying out a time-critical task, identifies the benefits and costs of local collaboration, and looks at how Oinformation overload' affects a system.

The authors develop a mathematical framework for assessing how information is processed in a human world. Assessing how technology contributes to information superiority and decision dominance a major challenge, in part because it demands quantitative measures for what are usually considered qualitative concepts. The authors have developed a mathematical framework to aid these efforts. Additional work, such as data fitting, experimentation, linking decisions and actions, historical analysis, and gaming will further advance knowledge in this area.