What a genuinely fantastic class. Prof. Robinson was in the Navy and still has hella connections to DoD so he gets different research needs/projects from different branches of DoD and we split into groups of 4-5 and do research on them for a semester– basically policy consulting. My group's topic was Chinese military-to-military engagements with African ground forces, but topics my semester ranged from nuke deterrence to joint interoperability. There are various milestones you hit to keep your group accountable (problem paper, lil presentation to the class, solution white paper), but a lot of the class really is just left to you to do good work. Robinson is super smart and passionate and will help you significantly if you reach out. My one complaint was that the midterm was literally just DoD lingo with some parts pulled from slides we barely went over in class– I don't think anyone did well on that test. Besides that, though, it was a super enriching experience and I recommend everyone, Batten or not, do it. You end the semester with a really professional piece of work that could actually be disseminated into US policy, which is super rewarding.