The Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is an open source research organization of the U.S. Army. Founded as the Soviet Army Studies Office in 1986, it was an innovative program that brought together military specialists and civilian academics to focus on military and security topics derived from unclassified, foreign media. The results were unclassified articles and papers that provided new understandings and broad access to information from a base of expertise in the U.S. Army, Department of Defense, and foreign and U.S. defense communities and universities.

Today FMSO maintains this research tradition of special insight and highly collaborative work. FMSO conducts unclassified research of foreign perspectives of defense and security issues that are understudied or unconsidered but that are important for understanding the environments in which the U.S. military operates. FMSO’s work today is still aimed at publication in unclassified journals and its research findings are taught in both military and civilian venues in the United States and around the world. FMSO is organized in the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command under the TRADOC G-2.

Featured FMSO Publications

• Cyber Silhouettes Shadows Over Information Operations, by Mr. Timothy L. Thomas

• Geothinking Like the Chinese: A Potential Explanation of China's Geostrategy, by Mr. Timothy L. Thomas

• The Delafield Commission: Forerunner of the FAO Program, by Mr. Lester W. Grau

• Turk Concerns With US Withdrawal From Iraq, by Karen Kaya

• Southeast Asia — Indo or China, by Mr. Ivan Welch

• The Turkish-American Crisis: An Analysis of 1 March 2003, by Karen Kaya

• Changing Civil Military Relations in Turkey, by Karen Kaya

• PKK's Changing Tactics and Rhetoric Mimic Insurgencies, Al-Qaida, by Karen Kaya

• One Face of the Modern Russian Army: General Vladimir Shamanov, by Ray Finch

• China on Peacekeeping: I hate you…I tolerate you…I embrace you, by Scott J. Henderson

• Things That Irritate Dragons: China's strategic interests in Southeast Asia, by Scott J. Henderson

• Revisiting the Songs of the Chu, by Scott J. Henderson

• Snapshot of a War Crime: The Care of Russian Colonel, Yuri Budanov, by Ray Finch

Featured International Research Collaboration

• Sri Lankan 4th ARMOURED REGIMENT – Wheels to Tracks, by Brigadier C S N B Mudannayake RWP USP psc, edited by Ivan Welch, FMSO Foreign Analyst

• Belarus: Is There any Way out of the "Kremlin Trap"? by Leonid Zaiko

• Central Asian Energy: A Point of Contention or Collaboration in Russia-China Relations by Ruoxi Du

Featured University Research Collaboration

• Homeland vs. Our Land Conflicting Identities in Crimea by Nathaniel Ray Pickett

• Radical Islam's Western Foothold: Hugo Chavez and Hezbollah, by Sam Pickell

• Central Asian Energy: A Point of Contention or Collaboration in Russia-China Relations by Ruoxi Du