Since Vietnam, the US Army has focused an unprecedented degree of effort on capturing lessons learned in training and on the battlefield and communicating them to other affected units. The Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), established after Operation URGENT FURY, is the prime example of the Army's efforts to institutionalize the process of learning during the Cold War. CALL continues to function and provide lessons learned in the current Global War on Terror, while other grassroots organizations have sprung up within the Army to target the learning needs of specific segments of the force. One such organization is CompanyCommand.com, an online professional forum of Army leaders dedicated to outstanding leadership at the small-unit level. This talk will discuss the evolution of organizational learning in the Army since Vietnam, and examine how organizations like CALL and CompanyCommand complement one other in the pursuit of excellence.

Captain Raymond A. Kimball is a native of Reading, Pennsylvania, and was commissioned through the United States Military Academy in 1995. After completing initial officer and flight training, he was assigned to the 1st Battalion (Attack), 10th Aviation Regiment, at Fort Drum, New York in November 1996. While assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, he served as an aeroscout platoon leader and logistics and support officer. In those positions, he participated in the full range of Army operations, from home station training to counter-drug operations along the Mexican border to peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In May of 2001, after completing further officer training, he reported to the 3rd Infantry Division, where he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 7th U.S. Cavalry. He took command of F Troop, 3-7 Cavalry in July of 2001. The troop consisted of 88 soldiers and $6 million in equipment and was responsible for all aspects of support and maintenance for the squadron's sixteen scout helicopters. In January of 2003, the troop deployed as part of 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, to Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. During combat operations the troop supported 870 flight hours over a period of twenty-one days while moving 700 kilometers through enemy territory without the loss of a single soldier. He gave up command of F Troop in June of 2003 and returned to the United States to begin graduate studies in history at Stanford. In addition to his coursework, he serves as a research assistant to the Preventive Defense Project in CISAC. For the past two years, he has also served as a Topic Lead and advisor to CompanyCommand.com. His next assignment will be as an Associate Professor of History at the United States Military Academy. His awards include the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, and the Humanitarian Service Medal. He is married to the former Mindy Hynds of Vacaville, California; they have one son, Daniel.

The presentation examines the practical problems of reducing the danger of accidental launch and suggests that the current approach to the problem should be reconsidered. First, the U.S. launch-on-warning posture may represent a bigger problem than that of Russia. Second, the efforts to repair or augment the Russian early-warning system should not be pursued as part of the de-alerting agenda, since they probably increase risk of an accidental launch. Finally, the notion of transparency in de-alerting should be reconsidered, for verification prevents de-alerting from being effective. (A short summary of the presentation can be found at russian forces).

Pavel Podvig joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He spent several years as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years. At the Center for Arms Control Studies, he worked on various technical and political issues of missile defense; U.S.-Russian arms control negotiations, and structure and history of the Russian strategic forces. During that time he was a principal investigator of a Russian Nuclear Forces research project, which produced a book, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

Change in the structure of a political elite can offer a window into political change and transformation of a state socialist regime. Soyoung Kwon will present a study of the North Korean political elite, focusing on its composition between 1980 and 2004. Her research is based on a profile analysis of the social and career attributes of the Party Central Committee members. Dr. Kwon examines the changes to the North Korean political elite to see whether it displayed a similar pattern of change in the Soviet and Chinese elites. Her analysis compares the major characteristics of the political elites of the past 24 years in order to identify the level of elite diversification, changing group representation, and any structural adjustment in the elite group under the Kim Jong Il leadership.

Buffet lunch will be provided to those who RSVP to Jasmin Ha at jaha@stanford.edu by Tuesday, February 1.

Buffet lunch will be provided to those who RSVP to Jasmin Ha at jaha@stanford.edu by Tuesday, January 18.

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen is a doctoral candidate at Yale University and a CISAC social science fellow. She is currently working on her dissertation, entitled "Between the Storms: An International History of the Second Indochina War, 1968-1973," for which she did multiarchival research in Vietnam, the United States, and Europe. She has two upcoming chapters in volumes on the First and Third Indochina Wars, to be published by the presses at Harvard University and the London School of Economics, respectively. She is a member of the American Historical Association, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Association for Asian Studies, and she serves on the executive committee of the Vietnam Studies Group. She received an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania.

Paul Stockton is Associate Provost at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and is Director of its Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Stockton is the Editor of Homeland Security (forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2005). His research has appeared in Political Science Quarterly, International Security and Strategic Survey. He is Co-Editor of Reconstituting America's Defense: America's New National Security Strategy (1992). Mr. Stockton has also published an Adelphi Paper and has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James Lindsay and Randall Ripley, Eds., U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War (1997).

Mr. Stockton received a B.A. summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1976 and a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 1986. Dr. Stockton served from 1986-1989 as Legislative Assistant to US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Dr. Stockton was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship for 1989-1990 by the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University. In August 1990, Dr. Stockton joined the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School. From 1995 until 2000, he served as Director of the NPS Center for Civil-Military Relations. From 2000-2001, Dr. Stockton founded and served as the Acting Dean of the NPS School of International Graduate Studies. He was appointed Associate Provost in 2001.