The Center on Contemporary Conflict (CCC) has a respected eleven-year track record for providing research and timely analysis on a variety of topics to the leading decision makers in the Department of Defense community. CCC research broadly addresses national security research including the following areas: 

• Resource scarcity and conflict
• Proliferation and deterrence
• Innovation and terrorism
• U.S. strategy
• Non-state actors and violence
• State failure and governance
• Regional security and alliances

Ordinary individuals adapt to changing circumstances on an everyday basis. In the dusty and dangerous hills of Southeastern Afghanistan, however, U.S. forces face a constantly shifting threat environment inhabited by Taliban insurgents, tribal leaders of shifting association, suspect Afghan security forces, and civilians just looking to get by.  Thus, Paktia, Paktika, and Khost provinces in Southeastern Afghanistan are not places of everyday innovation.  

In an effort to develop lessons learned for American forces involved in Afghanistan’s irregular warfare, and understand how U.S. units innovate in the field, Dr. James A. Russell—an Associate Professor at the department of National Security Affairs—is currently preparing to embed with troops in Afghanistan. His research will bring to light the tactical innovation soldiers cultivate in austere environments. Of particular focus at the moment are Village Stabilization Operations, where small bands of soldiers embed in Afghan villages to develop trust, thereby weakening insurgent control. Through an exhaustive study of these operations, Professor Russell and the Center on Contemporary Conflict can provide a critical link between overall counterinsurgency performance and real-time, lower level, unit adaptation.

In addition to federally sponsored research, the CCC supports federal missions by managing programs and facilitating federal sponsorships for other private institutions. Our largest such effort is the Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC). The CC serves as the program planning and implementation office, research center, and intellectual clearinghouse for the execution of analysis and future-oriented studies and dialogues for DTRA-Strategies and Plans. We cultivate interconnected national and international strategic research community partnerships and bring scientific, technical and social science experts to look well into the future to help understand and anticipate WMD/WME capabilities.

 Launching  PASCC's first project cycle in 2011-2012, after a competitive review of over 200 proposals, we are initiating approximately 30 project awards to 15 different institutions, including NPS.

PASCC reports are publicly available on the CCC website.