Colonel Robert F. Larsen currently serves as the U.S. Army staff’s division chief of Acquisition and Sustainment Program Analysis in the Program Analysis Evaluation Directorate, G-8, providing systems engineering and system analysis support. His previous assignment was as the Plans Branch Chief, Joint Capability Division, J-8, where he wrote and managed the Chairman’s Program Assessment and the Chairman’s Program Recommendation, and assisted the Functional Capability Boards in their support of the Joint Requirement Oversight Council and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the Army’s lead operational analyst working with the Department of Defense and Joint Force Structure challenges in the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). He was also the lead operational analyst for the Army’s modernizations alternatives during QDR 2001. Following that he was the division chief, leading the Army’s risk analysis to pay for Future Combat Systems and to conduct the affordability analysis for the Milestone B decision in 2003.

He has written and presented numerous papers for the International Council on Systems Engineering, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Military Operations Research Society and many other organizations, and has written articles for military journals. Colonel Larsen holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from George Mason University.