Dr. Brian Collins (USAF, Ret.)

Dr. Brian Collins joined the ICAF/ES faculty in 2009. He was previously the Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs at the National War College. 

A retired Air Force officer, he served staff tours on the Joint Staff, where he worked NATO issues in J-5 including NATO-Russia and NATO-Ukraine, and at SHAPE, in Mons, Belgium, where he established the initial military-to-military contacts between NATO and Warsaw Pact members after the fall of the Wall. This eventually blossomed into NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. 

His operational assignments included flying tours in various Air Battle Manager positions in both USAF and NATO AWACS units, where he participated in operations, exercises, flight testing, and training over the Persian Gulf and Middle East region, the Balkans, as well as over the US and other NATO countries. While with the NATO AWACS Component, he was the Component Test Director, responsible for all flight testing. He led the combined program acceptance and Initial Operational Test and Evaluation of the NATO‐US AWACS Radar System Improvement Program. He also led the Follow-On Test and Evaluation of the Mod Block I to establish standard operating procedures for the ESM and JTIDS modifications. Finally, he led the NATO Operations, Logistics, and Software team participation in the Integrated Product Team development of the NATO AWACS Mid-Term Modification Program. 

Dr. Collins was an Olmsted Scholar at the Freie Universität Berlin and is a graduate of the Air Force Academy (BS Soviet Area Studies), Harvard University’s Kennedy School, and Georgetown University (PhD international relations). He is also a graduate of the USAF Fighter Weapons School and the German Armed Forces Staff College (Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr). He has published numerous articles and two books:  Behind the Cyberspace Veil: The Hidden Evolution of the Air Force Officer Corps and NATO: A Guide to the Issues.