Publications

You could call it "Extreme Makeover: Central Asian Edition." Today, among the five post-Soviet republics that make up the region, there are heartening signs of political dynamism and a newfound drive for integration.

At the center of these changes is the Republic of Uzbekistan, which has launched a far-reaching program to reform and modernize the state.

Though Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, or drones) are now an essential part of the U.S. national security toolkit, military views of UAVs were less than enthusiastic when the technology first emerged. In the early days of drones, the most prominent roadblocks to widespread adoption by the armed forces were inconsistency in performance, spiking costs, and, perhaps more importantly, a significant lack of interest on the part of military leaders, who could not quite envision a tactical use for the technology and thus had little incentive to push for the investment that such systems required. Today, by contrast, UAVs are an accepted, even vital, part of military and intelligence operations.