Lt Col James Coughlin

About

James “Gumbo” Coughlin, representing the U.S. Air Force, is a National Security Affairs Fellow for the academic year 2017-­‐2018 at the Hoover Institution.

James R. Coughlin is a Lieutenant Colonel and a cyberspace operations officer in the Air Force. He has a BS in Information Systems, a MA in Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict, and a MMAS in Strategic Studies and is working on his doctorate in education leadership. He conducted base level, tactical and joint communications, joint planning/operations, counter insurgency and information operations planning, force protection and knowledge management. He has been a member of Combined Joint Task Forces conducting operations in the Pacific with the militaries of the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan and Australia. He has served at the Squadron, Group, Wing, Numbered Air Force, Major Command, Headquarters Air Force and Combatant Command levels and commanded the service’s only active duty engineering installation squadron. He deployed as Special Operations Task Force Antiterrorism Officer and as a Combined Joint Special Operations Air Component Communications Director.

As a fellow at Hoover, Lieutenant Colonel Coughlin will center his research on what was ignored in NDAA 2001 and what it cost the United States. He will also look into how historical strategists would write about cyber policies. His doctoral research will center on the benefit of community educational foundations to high schools. Other interests will center around robotics and drones.