James S. Chow

James S. Chow is vice president and director of RAND Project AIR FORCE, and a senior engineer at the RAND Corporation. He has studied a variety of issues in the national defense and homeland security fields, from aircraft and weapons-related force planning issues to detailed modeling and simulation of aircraft and air defense interactions. He recently led an effort examining mixes of future long-range strike capabilities. Other recent research includes studying system trades improving aircraft survivability, electronic warfare, communications, cyber, looking at new roles for unmanned air vehicles, and examining the threat to commercial aviation from shoulder-fired missiles. Chow has developed and worked on several combat models to aid in the study of topics such as air defense, route planning for low observable aircraft, and mine countermeasures. He served as the chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board between 2017 and 2020. He earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University.