Research Strategy & Design
Translate broad mission concerns into clear questions, hypotheses, work plans, evidence requirements, and review points.
Methods & research capabilities
The method should fit the question.
Phantoms Institute brings structured inquiry and independent analysis to complex national-security problems. Each project is designed around the evidence the decision requires.
Research capabilities
Structure for difficult questions.
The following capabilities describe how the Institute can contribute to a research program. Availability depends on scope, appropriate expertise, legal requirements, and research safeguards.
Strategic & Operational Studies
Examine how emerging concepts, technologies, policies, or organizational choices could affect missions and operating environments.
Assumption & Alternatives Analysis
Identify hidden premises, explore counterfactuals, compare approaches, and make uncertainty visible.
Experiment & Assessment Design
Develop testable objectives, evaluation criteria, data requirements, and assessment plans for concepts requiring validation.
Technical Synthesis & Decision Support
Organize evidence into literature reviews, landscape assessments, options analyses, research briefs, and decision-ready products.
Transition-Pathway Development
Identify remaining evidence gaps, follow-on research, stakeholder decisions, and credible routes toward further development or application.
Research products
Outputs designed to be used and examined.
Deliverables are matched to the research question, intended audience, release constraints, and decision timeline.
Research plans
Questions, hypotheses, evidence requirements, methods, milestones, and review points.
Study reports
Findings, sources, analysis, limitations, and implications documented for serious review.
Assessment frameworks
Objectives, measures, criteria, test conditions, and evidence-collection strategies.
Landscape reviews
Structured views of technologies, concepts, evidence, actors, and unresolved questions.
Decision briefs
Concise synthesis of alternatives, tradeoffs, uncertainties, and justified next steps.
Transition roadmaps
Evidence gaps, dependencies, stakeholders, decision gates, and follow-on work.
Standards before scale
Credibility comes from the research record.
The Institute's work is expected to state what was asked, how it was examined, what the evidence supports, what remains uncertain, and who funded or influenced the work.
Traceability
Material sources, assumptions, methods, and analytic choices are documented.
Proportional review
Review practices match the consequence, complexity, and release context of the work.
Disclosed limits
Constraints, uncertainties, conflicts, and sponsor relationships are stated appropriately.
Responsible release
Publication decisions respect lawful restrictions, agreements, safety, and research ethics.
Define the decision
What must the evidence make clearer?
Begin with a non-confidential description of the problem, intended audience, and decision context.