Rhiannon Hutton
Dr. Rhiannon Hutton is an Assistant Director and Research Staff Member in the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division (SFRD) at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA). A member of SFRD’s Nuclear Strategy & Policy team, her research focuses on nuclear operations and force structure, including the characterization of the challenges and risks in sustaining and modernizing the nuclear deterrent force. She led IDA’s analytic effort informing the 2022-2023 Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, served as the Deputy Project Lead for IDA’s 2019 Independent Assessment of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Plutonium Strategy, and continues to lead several long-term projects for Air Force Global Strike Command while supporting analytic efforts for the Office of Nuclear Matters and other DoD Sponsors.
Prior to joining SFRD, Dr. Hutton was in the System Evaluation Division (SED) at IDA, where she worked on a broad range of studies related to ballistic missile defense, cybersecurity, and modeling and simulation of nuclear weapons effects. She also supported the JASON program as an IDA fellow (2017), and served as a member of the Independent Strategic Assessment Group for Air Force Global Strike Command (2018-2019).
Prior to IDA, Dr. Hutton was a Director’s Postdoc Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, performing high-precision neutron-induced fission measurements. She holds a Ph.D. in physics from Michigan State University and a B.S. degree in physics from Florida State University.