Dr. David C. Arnold is a Professor of National Security Strategy. He received his PhD from Auburn University, his MA from Colorado State University, and his BA from Purdue University, all in history. He is also a 2004 graduate of Air Command and Staff College and a 2011 graduate of U.S. Army War College. Before joining the faculty at the National War College in 2013, Dr. Arnold did space policy and strategy work in the Pentagon, responsible for developing policy and strategy on space issues related to national, international, and commercial topics. He is a career space and missile professional who retired from the Air Force in 2015 as a colonel. Before his second assignment to the Pentagon, he served as Deputy Commander, 821st Air Base Group, and deputy installation commander, Thule Air Base, Greenland, a remote facility 700 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Prior to that assignment, he served as the commander of the 22d Space Operations Squadron, responsible for operational direction of the eight worldwide remote tracking stations constituting the Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN). A native of Washington, DC, he has served as an ICBM operations officer and a satellite operations crew commander. He also served a remote assignment at the AFSCN site aboard U.S. Navy Support Facility Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean Territory.
Dr. Arnold has taught history at 7,258 feet, 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and in cyberspace, and written extensively on space. His latest publications include “We Choose to Go to the Moon”: An Analysis of a Cold War Means-Developing Strategy (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2022), available from https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2901517/we-choose-to-go-to-the-moon-an-analysis-of-a-cold-war-means-developing-strategy/ and “All ‘Shook’ Up: Bob Hope, the USO, and how a night in Greenland changed television,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television (published online summer 2021, forthcoming in print).
Functional Expertise: Spacepower History, Theory, and Doctrine; Military Space Operations and Capabilities; Nuclear Missiles and Deterrence
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