The Advanced Research and Assessment Group (ARAG) was a department of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom concerned with long-term planning and threat assessment. ARAG was established in 2005 by Chris Donnelly CMG, the former principal advisor to NATO Sec. Gen. He realised that across the UK MoD and wider government no organisation was either adaptable or innovative enough to research 21st Century security challenges. ARAG brought together experts from the military, academia and other fields in "research clusters" dedicated to specific areas of concern, in order to provide policy-makers with focussed analysis of international security issues. ARAG members were hand-picked and came from a wide background of skills, experience and nationalities. ARAG subsumed the Conflict Studies Resea