Department Of Defense Directive Research Articles

US Department of Defense Support of Civilian Vector Control Operations Following Natural Disasters.

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) employs advanced-degreed entomologists as Preventive Medicine and Public Health Officers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. While the primary objective of military entomologists is service member health and readiness ("force health protection"), military entomology resources can provide support to civil authorities as directed by the President or Secretary of Defense through Department of Defense Directive 3025.18, Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA). The employment of DSCA is complex and involves the consideration of such factors as the proper request process, funding, legality, risk, appropriateness, and readiness. Once approved and mobilized, however, military preventive medicine assets can be of significant help to civil authorities when dealing with emergency vector control. This paper will address some of the policy issues surrounding the use of DSCA, outline the resources available from the individual military services, and provide examples of DoD contingency vector control support to civil authorities.

Military Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Awareness Training for Health Care Providers Within the Military Health System [Formula: see text

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals serving within the U.S. military and their beneficiaries have unique health care requirements. Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" created a barrier for service members to speak candidly with their health care providers, which left specific health care needs unaddressed. There are no standardized cultural education programs to assist Military Health System (MHS) health care providers in delivering care to LGBT patients and their beneficiaries. The purpose of this project was to develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of an LGBT educational program for health care providers within the MHS to increase cultural awareness in caring for this special population. This multisite educational program was conducted at Travis Air Force Base and Joint Base Lewis-McChord from November 15, 2014, to January 30, 2015. A 15-question multiple-choice questionnaire was developed based on the education program and was administered before and after the education program. A total of 51 individuals completed the program. Overall posttest scores improved compared to pretest scores. This program was designed to begin the process of educating health care providers about the unique health care issues of military LGBT Service Members and their beneficiaries. This program was the first to address the disparities in LGBT health care needs within the Department of Defense. It also provided a platform for facilitating open communication among providers regarding LGBT population health needs in the military.

A Systematic Review of the Prevention and Treatment of Prescription Drug Misuse.

This is a review and evaluation of the current clinical guidelines and empirical literature in relation to the Department of Defense (DoD) policies and directives regarding prescription drug misuse (PDM). Sources were 11 clinical guidelines and consensus statements, 20 DoD Directives and the published literature from 2000 to 2012. Articles were included if they specifically focused on the prevention or treatment of PDM. DoD directives were evaluated in relation to the clinical guidelines and the relevant research literature. Empirical evidence supporting the directives was limited. There is little empirical evidence for the prevention and treatment of PDM and the majority of published guidelines and studies focus on prescription opioids. Important limitations include the lack of information about appropriately identifying and managing persons at risk for PDM. More research is needed to identify and recommend effective mechanisms for the prevention and treatment of PDM.

Implementing Firearms Restriction for Preventing U.S. Army Suicide

Suicide among U.S. Army soldiers remains a significant concern for both population health and personnel readiness, with firearms constituting the majority of soldier suicides. Means restriction, or removing an at-risk soldier’s access to lethal means, is a well-established procedure for reducing suicides. Nonetheless, various cultural, legal, and practical concerns may encumber firearms restriction implementation in the U.S. Army. This article reviews policy relevant to firearms restriction, including federal laws, Department of Defense directives, and U.S. Army regulations. Recommendations are provided for providers and commanders that balance the rights of soldiers with the need to ensure safety. In particular, installation restriction, field settings, enlisting supportive others, unit engagement, and off-installation storage are discussed. These approaches span the public health intervention model, providing numerous potential avenues to a balanced approach for firearms restriction in preventing suicide.

The Unarmed Army: Evolving Second Amendment Rights and Today's Military Member

In 1992, Department of Defense Directive 5210.56 and strict military regulations hollowed out the core of the Second Amendment for members of the United States Armed Forces. Consequently, more than two million military members show up to work each day — in defense of this nation — but lacking the inherent right of self-defense acknowledged in the Constitution by the Supreme Court and guaranteed to ordinary citizens. After a series of mass shooting events on military bases, it remains unconscionable that military men and women are left vulnerable at home in the United States.First, this Article addresses Second Amendment issues raised by the restrictive military gun regulations. In doing so, it investigates the historic tensions between the Supreme Court and military jurisprudence, and the balancing of military “order and discipline” against enumerated constitutional rights. Beginning with the Global War on Terror, the Supreme Court has demonstrated an increased willingness to involve itself in military matters — a stark contrast to its deference and avoidance during the Vietnam War.Second, this Article provides a survey of the Department of Defense Directive effecting these bans, and the implementation of the Directive through Army headquarters regulations and local base regulations. These regulations affect all members of the military community including uniformed service members, family members, civilian employees, contractors, and even retired veterans who access military installations for groceries and healthcare. By their association with the military, all of these individuals suffer severe restrictions on their Second Amendment rights.Third, this Article explores two landmark judicial decisions concerning Second Amendment rights. In each decision, the judiciary applied an in-depth textual and historical analysis, and found a right of self-defense to be the core of the Second Amendment. In both federal courts and state legislatures, a modern right of self-defense outside of the home with a handgun is now recognized. This right should equitably be extended to military members who are both citizens and soldiers of the United States. This Article concludes by proposing several means to restore this right to military members, while arguing for sensible policy and implementation.

The Obligation to Exercise Discretion in Warfare: Why Autonomous Weapon Systems are Unlawful

Introduction The question of ‘killer robots’, or autonomous weapons systems (AWS), has garnered much attention in recent discourse. While officials often downplay the prospect of such systems making targeting and other crucial decisions, their own statements reveal the possibility that such capabilities would be developed in the near future. For instance, in late 2012, the US Department of Defense (DoD) imposed a de facto moratorium on the development of fully autonomous weapons systems, by emphasizing that weapons ‘shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force’. From the mere fact that the DoD felt the need to constrain the development and use of AWS for the time being and in several ways, we can learn that the prospect of such weapons is realistic. Indeed, DoD Directive 3000.09 includes a bypass clause in which deviations from its requirements can be approved by high-ranking officials through special procedures. There is therefore a consensus, among commentators, that the motivation to develop and deploy AWS will eventually overcome these temporary constraints. This makes the discussion of AWS a timely one. When discussing the legality and legitimacy of such weapons, the claim that machines should not be making ‘decisions’ to use lethal force during armed conflict is an intuition shared by many. However, the current discussion as to just why this is so is rather unsatisfying. The ongoing discourse on AWS is comprised of nuanced approaches found between two extremes, arguing against each other roughly along consequentialist and deontological lines. On one side of the spectrum is the approach that if AWS could deliver good results, in terms of the interests protected by international humanitarian law (IHL), there is no reason to ban them. On the contrary, as the argument goes, if we take humanitarian considerations seriously, we should encourage the development and use of such weapons. Of course, proponents of this approach envision technological advancements that would actually make such results possible. Found on the other side of the spectrum are those that claim that even if AWS could, in terms of outcomes, adhere to the basic norms of IHL, their use should still be prohibited, whether on ethical or legal grounds. Usually, those holding this position are also sceptical that technology would ever be able to produce such benevolent systems.

U.S. Department of Defense Directive on Autonomous Weapons Systems

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Limits to Confidentiality in U.S. Army Treatment Settings

A number of reports detail ethical concerns of behavioral health providers in the U.S. Military regarding limited confidentiality. This article provides a review of limits to confidentiality in behavioral health settings as outlined by U.S. Army regulations and Department of Defense directives. Specific limits are discussed under seven categories, including: medical treatment and oversight, command notification, threats to safety, public health purposes, judicial or administrative proceedings, law enforcement investigation, and specialized personnel programs. Specific attention is given to war crimes reporting, special duty, and command involvement. Lessons learned for best practice across service branches are provided as a collaborative model for resolving perceived conflict between the APA Ethics Code and military regulations.

Energy management under policy and technology uncertainty

Energy managers in public agencies are subject to multiple and sometimes conflicting policy objectives regarding cost, environmental, and security concerns associated with alternative energy technologies. Making infrastructure investment decisions requires balancing different distributions of risks and benefits that are far from clear. For example, managers at permanent Army installations must incorporate Congressional legislative objectives, executive orders, Department of Defense directives, state laws and regulations, local restrictions, and multiple stakeholder concerns when undertaking new energy initiatives. Moreover, uncertainty with regard to alternative energy technologies is typically much greater than that associated with traditional technologies, both because the technologies themselves are continuously evolving and because the intermittent nature of many renewable technologies makes a certain level of uncertainty irreducible. This paper describes a novel stochastic multi-attribute analytic approach that allows users to explore different priorities or weighting schemes in combination with uncertainties related to technology performance. To illustrate the utility of this approach for understanding conflicting policy or stakeholder perspectives, prioritizing the need for more information, and making investment decisions, we apply this approach to an energy technology decision problem representative of a permanent military base.

Dirty Windows and Burning Houses: Setting the Record Straight on Irregular Warfare

After a slow start, the U.S. military has made remarkable strides in adapting to irregular warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is beginning to institutionalize those adaptations. Recent Department of Defense (DOD) directives and field manuals have elevated stability operations and counterinsurgency to the same level of importance as conventional military offensive and defensive operations. These changes are the outcome of deep reflection about the nature of current and likely future threats to U.S. national security and the military’s role in addressing them. They represent important steps toward transforming a sclerotic organizational culture that long encouraged a 'we don’t do windows' posture on so-called 'military operations other than war,' even as the nation’s leaders called upon the armed forces to perform those types of missions with increasing frequency. Despite the clear need for change from a Cold War military to one that can deal with the threats of the current century, numerous military officers and civilian experts have challenged the U.S. military’s development of improved theory and practice for irregular warfare.

Let the Small Changes Begin: President Obama, Executive Power and Don't Ask Don't Tell

This article advocates that President Obama should act unilaterally to change how the Department of Defense (DoD) implements Don't Ask Don't Tell. It is a controversial position and not one generally supported even by those seeking to repeal the law. Given President Clinton's experience attempting to lift the ban on gays and lesbians openly serving in the armed forces, proponents of repeal are hesitant to suggest that President Obama act without first building consensus within the military and Congress. It is widely perceived that President Clinton's efforts to initiate change backfired, leading to the DoD's discriminatory policy being codified and slowing his legislative agenda. Conventional wisdom holds that to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton Administration, President Obama must not push Congress or the military too quickly. President Obama should not wait for Congress to act. He has both the constitutional and statutory authority to implement change immediately. In Part II, I discuss the historical context of Don't Ask Don't, specifically focusing on the lessons of the Clinton era and President Clinton's successful use of executive power to affect gay and lesbian service members. In Part III, I explain why President Obama must act pending congressional action, describing the status of repeal efforts in Congress and exploring potential barriers to success. I also explore the recent circuit court decisions on Don't Ask Don't Tell which interestingly set the stage for President Obama's first executive decision on the issue - whether to seek certiorari in Witt v. Air Force. Finally, Part IV provides examples of five amendments to the current DoD directives implementing the statute that would improve the lives of the estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian members serving under the shadow of the statute.

The Return of Net Assessment

It has been almost two decades since the notion of ‘net assessment’ preoccupied strategic thought during the Cold War. It has not been revisited in a sustained manner since a flurry of articles and...

Organising for Nation Building

As countries and international institutions become increasingly involved in nation-building efforts, committing personnel and resources for prolonged periods of time, they often face major capabili...

Ensuring Respect for Persons When Recruiting Junior Enlisted Personnel for Research

Junior enlisted personnel in the Navy at training commands or recruit depots who are recruited for research can be considered a "captive audience" and therefore require special precautions to ensure that the ethical principle of respect for persons is maintained. Unfortunately, this can be difficult because of the hierarchical structure of the military and closed communities of junior enlisted personnel at training commands and recruit depots. This article provides a theoretical discussion of the ethical issue of autonomy and the essential elements of informed consent that Navy researchers need to address when recruiting subjects from this population. Two relevant policy statements to Navy researchers, Department of Defense Directive 3216.2 and Bureau of Medicine and Surgery Instruction 3900.6B, which provide guidance for protection of human subjects, are reviewed and critiqued, and a suggested plan to ensure the ethical principle of respect for persons is presented.

3 Software Engineering and Systems Engineering in DoD

AbstractAs the Department of Defense (DoD) moves toward acquisition without rigid DoD standards, acquisition is becoming less an issue of hardware vs. software or software engineering vs. systems engineering – it is becoming an integrated whole. New DoD directives, an integrated Capability Maturity Model, highly trained acquisition personnel, and a partnership with industry to manage risk will help us meet the challenges of acquisition in the next century.

Managing compliance and risk on military testing and training ranges

AbstractThe downsizing of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the closure of military installations have resulted in attempts to end DOD control of large tracts of military testing and training ranges. In some cases, potential risks associated with unexploded ordnance and ordnance‐related contaminants have hampered base closure and the transfer of DOD‐controlled property. Such potential risks at both closing and active military installations have resulted in the promulgation of DOD directives and regulations by both the Department of Defense Explosives Safety Board and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Furthermore, a DOD‐authored regulation addressing risks to human health and the environment on closed and transferred military ranges, the Military Range Rule, is expected in the near future. This article describes the basic regulatory framework that is driving and will drive operations at active and closed military ranges. It also describes one strategy that can be used to manage compliance and risk on military testing and training ranges. The strategy involves developing a multi‐phased information system that documents range‐related activities and provides for increasingly sophisticated data collection and analysis techniques. In Phase I, the information system is assembled using existing information sources. In Phase II, the information collected in Phase I is used to populate a database is linked to maps by means of a Geographic Information System.

Pollution Prevention/Environmental Life Cycle Impact Analyses: Are Your Products Affected?

Pollution prevention is a concern to numerous industries. Aerospace manufacturers have a new challenge in the technical arena known as life cycle environmental engineering. The Department of Defense (DoD) now incorporates these requirements into its acquisition policies and directives. The focus is to minimize or eliminate the use of hazardous materials throughout the life cycle of future DoD products. This new and emerging technology necessitates that another element be added to the design, manufacturing, testing, and maintenance of DoD products. Aerospace industries must incorporate this task into their business objectives if they are to compete in today's defense marketplace. This paper answers questions concerning DoD directives and explains how companies can develop an approach to meeting these environmental life cycle requirements.

Ada—the project

The Department of Defense (DoD) High Order Language Commonality program began in 1975 with the goal of establishing a single high order computer programming language appropriate for DoD real-time embedded computer systems. A High Order Language Working Group (HOLWG) was chartered to formulate the DoD requirements for High Order Languages, to evaluate existing languages against those requirements, and to implement the minimal set of languages required for DoD use. Other parts of the effort included administrative initiatives toward the eventual goal. Specifically, DoD Directive 5000.29 which provided that new defense systems should be programmed in a DoD “approved” and centrally controlled high order language and DoD Instruction 5000.31 which gave the interim defining list of approved languages. The HOLWG language requirements were widely distributed for comment throughout the military and civil communities worldwide. Each successive version of the requirements, from STRAWMAN through STEELMAN, produced a more refined definition of the proposed language. During the requirement development process, it was determined that the set of requirements generated was both necessary and sufficient for all major DoD applications (and the analogous large commercial applications). Formal evaluations were performed on dozens of existing languages. It was concluded that no existing language could be adopted as a single common high order language for the DoD, but that a single language meeting essentially all the requirements was both feasible and desirable. Four contractors were funded to produce competitive prototypes. A first-phase evaluation reduced the designs to two, which were carried to completion. In turn, a single language design was subsequently chosen. Follow-on steps included the test and evaluation of the language, control of the language and validation of compilers. The production of compilers and a program development and tool environment were to be accomplished separately by the individual Service Components. The general requirements and expectations for the environment and the control of the language were addressed in another iterative series of documents. A language validation capability (the test code suite) and associated facilities were established to assure compliance to the language definition of compilers using the name “Ada”. The name Ada was initially protected by a DoD-owned trademark.

Liveware Survey of Human Systems Integration (HSI) Technologies: Need for Comprehensive Survey and Available Database

Downsizing the Department of Defense (DoD) means accomplishing more with fewer people. Enlightened design that considers all requirement and interaction issues simultaneously is the key to productivity. In the past, human issues have been difficult to quantify or depict during the systems engineering process. Recently, there has been an explosion of affordable HSI technologies. Despite the new DoD directives that require HSI analyses throughout acquisition, it is difficult to identify the most appropriate technology for HSI analyses. Defense acquisition managers, contractors, and the HSI research and development (R&D) community need a database of information about HSI tools, databases, and test facilities. They need this database to identify technology available in each of the Liveware domains of Manpower, Personnel, Training, (MPT) Safety, Health Hazard Prevention, and Human Factors Engineering (HFE) and to fully integrate human consideration into the acquisition process. However, no comprehensive catalog of HSI technology exists. Under the sponsorship of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Force Management and Personnel) HSI office and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Research Study Group.21 (RSG.21), TPDC and CSERIAC are surveying the HSI community for a comprehensive database of HSI technologies, an ambitious effort requiring the help of all HSI technology developers, owners, and users. This paper reviews previous HSI-related technology studies. It supports the thesis that a comprehensive survey and database are needed to improve prioritization of HSI technology R&D aid in HSI technology identification and use; and take full advantage of the new acquisition climate. It also describes the survey and database which is now being populated, and highlights the need for HSI community participation.

Implications of R&M 2000 on Software

This paper presents the implications on software of the US Air Force Reliability and Maintainability Action Plan: R&M 2000, whose objective is to improve defense system reliability and maintainability. These implications are very important, even though R&M 2000 does not explicitly mention software. However, Air Force Regulation 800-18, which implements R&M 2000, does state that ``system ... comprises both hardware and software elements'' and includes the requirement to ``integrate the development of reliable software into the overall system development and acquisition program.'' Further, the US Department of Defense (DoD) Software Initiatives, new DoD Directives, and other Air Force Regulations on software, together with industry/academic initiatives, are intended to result in policies, standards, and specifications which lead to defense system software with requisite reliability and maintainability. This difficult goal can be achieved provided that: •The DoD Software Initiatives successfully create new software technology and transfer it to industry. •Industry associations (eg, Electronic Industries Association [EIA], National Industrial Security Association INSIA]) and professional societies (eg, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers [IEEE], American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics [AIAA]) create and improve software reliability and maintainability standards through effective committee work. •Industry/Academe upgrade software development procedures to be consistent with software engineering principles based on Ada® technology.