Center for a New American Security

Robert B. Killebrew is a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.  Killebrew is a retired Army colonel who served 30 years in a variety of assignments that included Special Forces, tours in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, XVIII Airborne Corps, high-level war planning assignments and instructor duty at the Army War College.

During his active-duty time, he served as a Special Forces platoon leader, an advisor to the Vietnamese airborne division, as a battalion commander in the 82nd Airborne Division, commander of a joint task force in central America under both a regional commander and U.S. ambassador, as the Chief of Staff/ plans officer to the U.S. relief mission to Rwanda and as a special assistant in organizing the U.S.-led UN force in Haiti. (The latter two while detached from the Army War College). His final assignment in the Army was organizing the Army's future concepts program that is still extant.

Since leaving active duty, Killebrew has been an independent consultant. He served on the Hart-Rudman study on national security requirements for the 21st century, has participated in several wargames and one Department of Defense (DoD) summer study on future national security requirements, and, among other activites, consulted on a several-year series of experiments and wargames on nuclear deterrence and net assessment of future threats. More recently, Killebrew supervised a State/DoD study, The Country Team in American Strategy, on enhancing the role of country teams and military assistance programs in pre-insurgency stability operations; he is currently consulting on a variety of studies involving Defense and State Department concepts and requirements for stability operations in future strategy, and is the author of The Left-Hand Side of the Spectrum, a major study on post-Iraq stability operations for the Center for a New American Security. His most recent articles, including the cover piece for the December 2008 Armed Forces Journal, have focused on the growing connection between terrorism and criminal gangs.

Killebrew is a 1965 graduate of The Citadel and holds advanced degrees in history and international relations. While on active duty he spent one year as a postgraduate fellow at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario; he is a graduate of the Naval Staff College and taught national and military strategy at the Army War College. He is an occasional university lecturer, speaks on military and strategic subjects and is the author of numerous articles and one book on national strategy. He is married to his first trophy wife, Pixie, and and have one daughter, an Army lieutenant colonel, who serves alongside her husband in the Washington D.C. area. There have two lovely granddaughters.