Media

• Press Releases   •  Media Clips   •  Newsletters •  Downloads

Press Releases

• 2004
• 2003
• 2002
• 2001
• 2000
• Archives

National Center for Unconventional Thought

28 February, 2002

FORMER SECNAV TO LAUNCH NEW POTOMAC CENTER

Arlington, VA-Former Secretary of the Navy, Dr. John F. Lehman will be the keynote speaker on February 28th as the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies announces the formation of the National Center for Unconventional Thought (NCUT). This new center will explore and develop unconventional and innovative concepts in areas such as homeland security, emerging asymmetrical threats, military robotics, and defense reform initiatives. It will provide its findings and recommendations to the U.S. defense community, including the U.S. Defense Department's Transformation Office, the federal interagency community, and the private sector.

The National Center for Unconventional Thought will be led by retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Gary Anderson. Col. Anderson recently headed the Marine Corps' Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) as its executive director. While on active duty, Anderson served as the first Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in Quantico, Va., and formed the Hansen Institute for Tactical Innovation in Okinawa, Japan. He has written extensively on innovation for a number of publications and is a contributing columnist to the Washington Times. In announcing the leadership of the new center, Potomac Institute's CEO and Chairman Michael S. Swetnam said, "The National Center for Unconventional Thought greatly enhances the Potomac Institute's efforts to explore how the defense community must evolve in the face of emerging asymmetrical threats. I am confident that Gary Anderson's leadership and vision will provide the out-of-the-box thinking and creative problem solving required to tackle such important issues."

The Center has begun work in the following areas: cooperation with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on the use of advanced military robotics; strategic and operational urban warfare experimentation; cooperation with Joint Forces Command on asymmetrical "red teaming"; and cooperation with the Defense Department's Transformation Office in a Town Hall seminar series on military transformation.

Dr. Lehman chairs J.F. Lehman & Company, a New York based private equity firm. He served as Secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987.