Montgomery McFate, PhD is the Minerva Chair at the Strategic Research Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies, Naval War College. Having been a Supervisory Social Scientist for the Human Terrain System of the US Army, Montgomery McFate co-edited the book Social Science Goes to War: The Human Terrain System in Iraq and Afghanistan.

1. Montgomery McFate

2.  Montgomery McFate, PhD is the Minerva Chair at the
Strategic Research Department of the Center for Naval
Warfare Studies, Naval War College. Having been a
Supervisory Social Scientist for the Human Terrain
System of the US Army, Montgomery McFate co-edited
the book Social Science Goes to War: The Human
Terrain System in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Over the past decade, the social sciences have been
employed to resolve intercultural conflict and to give
the US military an advantage in its conflicts with Iraq
and Afghanistan. The intent of applying and
combining social sciences with these war efforts was to
reduce the lethality of warfare through understanding
and catering to a foreign population’s interests.

3.  In these particular conflicts, social scientists were
embedded with military units to gather qualitative
anthropological data, help understand the Iraqi
and Afghani populations, and advise military
units as to how to interact with them to persuade
those populations to cooperate with, rather than
oppose, the military efforts.
Since then, there has been a shift toward
quantitative data for use in forecasting the actions
of large groups of people involved in conflicts,
such as predicting what types of individuals are
likely to be drawn to join insurgent groups.