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Out of more than 160 congressional statutes authorizing the U.S. government to undertake security cooperation (SC) with foreign partners, 123 of them apply to DoD

• These Title 10 authorities constitute a complex patchwork that creates confusion within DoD and with foreign partners, leading to uncertainties, canceled events, and setbacks in relationship-building and capacity-building efforts.
• It also risks tying the hands of DoD staffers working with foreign partners to counter emerging threats.

Our analysis of the challenges DoD faces in pursuing SC with foreign partners suggests that the risks of maintaining Title 10 authorities in their existing form are high

• After multiple discussions with DoD stakeholders and over a dozen congressional staff members who play key roles in security cooperation, there appears to be some agreement over the need for streamlining Title 10 authorities and potential options for doing so.

A proposed hybrid framework that categorizes standardized and specialized authorities as activity-, mission-, or partner-based helps rationalize the patchwork and reduce complexity

• Using this framework, we found options to reduce the overall number of "core" authorities — those that directly authorize engagement with foreign partners — by 15, going from 106 to 91, while strengthening and better aligning the remaining statutes.

The web of legal complexities and vested institutional interests that surround these authorities will take considerable time and effort to properly untangle

• Although there is more to do to fully realize a simplified and more-effective system of Title 10 authorities, the framework and analysis in this report should provide a useful step forward.