Small Wars Journal

My apologies for not first reading your link before my curt response. Both the article and website are interesting in their own way. First a primer on websites reporting military/intelligence affairs: two sites that occupy the ends of the credibility spectrum, http://smallwarsjournal.com and http://www.debka.com. The first is a forum for junior military officers and professional analysts for discussing tactics and strategy. The articles all have by-lines, mostly by Captains and Majors (i.e. recently promoted Captains). The editorial board is made up of professionals. You will never read any classified information here. You may read some good war stories, but mostly you will read professional treatments of modern tactics by professionals for professionals. On the other extreme many consider debka a conduit for the Mossad. Good luck separating the information from the disinformation on this site, but the articles can be a good read, if you can deal with the wilderness of mirrors. In between these extremes keep in mind that intelligence analysis is about connecting the dots. Even the professionals seldom know anything for sure, and sources and means of gathering information are usually more important than any individual datum. If it makes it to print (or html), there’s probably a reason. So where does this leave http://www.strategypage.com ? Let’s look at the staff bios on the about us page. Of the four "staff" exactly one has any military/intelligence background at all.…

That's what it should be doing. There's plenty of analysis out there about Iran's strategy (my favorite so far: https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/05/21/mosaic-defense-dispersed-comma… but I get no sense that anybody actually in charge is trying to attack Iran's strategy. Instead they just attack Iran.

Here the Russia experts interpret this to be a classical case of беспредел, bespredel [1]. They also reiterate that the actions are against the international law and will have consequences for Russia and its economy for decades to come. What they left out is the public's criticism that the business risks were never properly understood or taken into account in the first place. [1] https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/bespredel-and-the-conduct-of-rus…

No, they said SWJ, the journal dedicated to intrastate conflicts.[1] Not to be confused with the WSJ. [1]https://smallwarsjournal.com/

> Yet, they choose not to do so and allowed their enemies to develop nuclear weapons on their own. If they had a choice to not allow them develop lethal weapons, they would by all means. McCarthyism executed a few, incarcerated several & targeted scores on charges of defense espionage, over a decade, including Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Not a great example. If the world has misunderstood this grandiosity, US should be willing to let Iranians & Koreans build their nuclear weapons, no? > The US has been an incredible force of good in the world for the most part. Reference needed to make such "exceptional" statement. The natural status quo would have inadvertently kept some power balance with or without US. International policing has just made the waters murkier. AFAIK US has meddled with politics of dozens of countries for political & economic gains. Count almost the whole of Latin America in it. Confessions of an economic hitman is a good read (it exaggerated several claims but the theme is consistent & accepted to be major US policies) Middle East is a quagmire, and hard to comment in this post - but what was the rationale of pitting Pakistan against India militarily for decades & now India against China. This is setting up a war of attrition on someone else's expense. As an Indian by birth, I know the numbers run into thousands of soldiers & civilians killed in conflict, mostly funded by arms & assistance to Pakistan over 80s & 90s. Could you…

Even more surprising is that everyone of these [Wikileaks supporters] I know are ardent freaks about keeping their own lives private. Privacy of the individual is not the same as privacy of a government[1], we must take into consideration the balance of power. If you look at things with respect to power it makes sense that the most private individuals want powerful organizations to be more transparent as they have disproportionate power over individuals. The author didn't clearly explain why he hates Wikileaks but presumably it is because of what was leaked: diplomatic cables as opposed to something that uncovered massive criminal conspiracy. We haven't seen anything to suggest that these leaks are dangerous to the US. Defense secretary Robert Gates basically said they were embarrassing and awkward but won't have much of an effect on foreign policy[2]. For earlier leaks on the US military shootings he said there was no apparent fallout[3]. [Wikileaks] are my enemy, and I support any use of state force against them, up to and including lethal force. This is an overreaction. The information was not that valuable or that hostile to the US. Most of it was a confirmation of stuff we already knew. And even if it was serious, I don't want my government going around assassinating people for leaking documents to the media. I don't know how that can justify lethal force. Maybe if it was strategic military routes or something that is obviously not newsworthy. 1:…

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/an-intelligence-professional’s-r… The magazine was a new discovery for me as well as the annual reading list.

Stochastic terrorism involves actual murder. https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/buffalo-shooter-stochastic-terro…

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/turkeys-drone-war-syria-red-team… I think it was this one, but there was also one in Forbes. The whole benefit of the drone as artillery eyes, comes into full view, if one reads up on modern artillery. Drones do not have to carry the weapons, thus have more room for spare tanks, thus can circle longer. Artillery has virtual salvos now (if they do not do the full distance combat, which allows them to fire salvos at different arcs, that arrive simultaneously. I have also read somewhere, that some artillery shells now have "last meters" impact guidance (somewhat similar to guided bombs). I can not find that article though.

It's safe to assume this operation was in the planning at least since 2014. 8 years. It had weeks of operations at the border to sort out the logistics. And it had overwhelming military/intelligence superiority and access to the front from 3 sides. It should have taken hours to break through. The operation was a shamble, even if it might succeed over time. In 20 years of NATO operations over 5 different war theatres there have been 74 captured soldiers (src: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/prisoners-in-the-war-on-terror-c… ). Here there have been 10's in a matter of days. Either he's gone full potato, or he's still very calculating but everyone around him is feeding false information upwards to "look nice" and because they can't say no. Neither scenario bodes extremely well for his chances of success.

The Mission Command concept actually stems from the German concept of auftragstaktik which was a contributing factor in their early successes during the Blitzkrieg campaigns early in WW2. See for example https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/how-germans-defined-auftragstakt…

Read Secy Gates' response to the notion that this leak will hurt them or that countries work with the US because they trust their interactions will be kept secret: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/11/quotable-secretary-gates-on-w…

> yes, but there's always some trail this way... travel logs, mailing logs, someone there to set it up, etc All meaningless if you don't fly and use only cash, and a fake ID > again, just easier to shoot someone... we don't need to make up imaginary drone violence, there's not much reason for it outside of a warzone I didn't think it was easier than shooting someone. All of this stems from me saying it's only a matter of time until a psycho mounts a gun onto a drone and flies it over a crowd. We have a mass shooting once a week. Tech is easier and more accessible and only continues to be easier and more available. If soldiers are taking off the shelf drones and using them to easily kill people on the cheap, it's only a matter of time until instead of a box of ammo and trench coat, someone throws on a dji vr headset and flies a drone with either a gun on it or a bomb. It's not imaginary > Just a few months ago, a head of state was attacked with off-the-shelf consumer drones — an apparent first. It happened in broad daylight on August 4 in Venezuela. According to police, the drones exploded and missed their target https://www.defenseone.com/feature/against-the-drones/ > Armed men allegedly identified as members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) attacked the community of Pinolapa, in the municipality of Tepalcatepec, in the state of Michoacán, with drones loaded with explosives. > residents of the area indicated that the drones were loaded with C4 explosives…

I'm really worried that cheap, abundant and reliable is not something our defense industry is capable of. - As a result of deindustrialization, we can't ramp up production of critical components. We make up for that by prepositioning supply depots around the world, and these depots allow a brigade or so to fight for a few weeks. But once that runs out, things get hairy. See this article: https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-running-out-weapons-send-u… which talks about "surge" capability after a four year ramp up time and also here: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/us-not-ready-peer-peer-fight-eur… - We have little sea lift capacity to move gear around to the hot spot even if we were able to produce it in large quantities. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/12/31/the-us-military-ran-the-l… see also https://gcaptain.com/new-report-says-us-navy-capacity-is-very-weak/ A nice summary of US military logistics is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIpPuJ_r8Xg - US gear has a reputation of being expensive to maintain and breaking down easily, even though it is generally best in class. - We critically rely on air dominance Basically we've optimized our military for global police actions by pre-positioning small amounts of troops and supplies around the world, rather than maintaining an industrial base with a large amount of slack and the ability to quickly ramp up production to…

The problem is that we have seen this all before. It is freaking scary to pick up a history book after reading the news. "The Algerian War of Independence does provide such similarities in terms of geography and topography, social makeup, as well as military and insurgent forces at play. The French, however, lost Algeria after eight years of bitter fighting and the subject is further obscured by the emotions surrounding the atrocities by both sides, thus making the collation of objective testimonies difficult. Most confusing, though, are the circumstances specific to a troubled France at the time, such as the profound tensions that existed between citizens in the métropole and French immigrants in Algeria proper, the continued effort to resume its former place as a major power in the world, the collapse of the Fourth Republic in 1958,..."[1] The technology might improve and the tactics might go through a revision or two but what is the possibility of similar outcomes? Is unilateral, and sometimes excessive, force the only possibility? [1]http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/french-counterinsurgency-in-alger… [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_War#French_counter-insurgency_op…

Long War Journal http://www.longwarjournal.org/ Small Wars Journal http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/recent World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org/ Inter-Press Service http://ipsnews.net/ Think tanks: The Hudson Institute leans to the right. http://www.hudson.org/ The Washington Institute centers on Middle East affairs. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateI01.php The US Army has its own think tank. http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/ The Knight Center concentrates on Western Hemisphere affairs and threats to journalistic freedom. http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/en/blog Blogs: Fausta is a capitalist perspective on Latin American affairs, mostly a link aggregator. http://faustasblog.com/ Jihad Watch mixes world war news with anti-Muslim agitation, but it's one of the only sources for finding detailed news reports on these events. I will recommend reading it, but I do not recommend believing it. http://www.jihadwatch.org/ There are a large number of blogs dedicated to correcting the mainstream media's factual errors in reporting the Arab-Israeli conflict. http://r-mew.blogspot.com/ http://blog.camera.org/ http://www.ngo-monitor.org/ http://honestreporting.com/backspin-blog/ If you have an interest in Israel, the Elder of Ziyon is one of the better bloggers on that subject, with a pro-Israel bias. http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/

"... They depend on their small-unit leaders, who contend with an infinite assortment of situations and variables, to understand the mission, evaluate the circumstances carefully, and exercise initiative in the absence of orders. The military's training has undergone painstaking changes over the past decade to produce exactly this kind of soldier ..." What happened to the "Strategic Corporal" vision that was borne from the lessons of Mogadishu? Krulak tried to lower the command level of decision making required in todays complex battleground and called it the "Three block War". From peace keeper to low intensity warfare to full out civil war ~ http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1834 "... A strategic corporal is a soldier that possesses technical mastery in the skill of arms while being aware that his judgment, decision-making and action can all have strategic and political consequences that can affect the outcome of a given mission and the reputation of his country ..." Read here how the Aus military is approaching this (pdf, 60Kb) ~ http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/liddy.pdf A measured leadership at the lowest level. A lot like startups.

> It’s how Islamic State managed to establish themselves in the first place. No that was widely credited to the power vacuum created by the United States of America when they publicly hanged the President of Iraq for all the Muslim world to see. [1][2][3] Serious error of judgement by White House royalty trying to make their ancestors proud. The US gave the Taliban a decade of training, funding and weapons.[4][5][6][7] They gave ISIS the perfect environment for them to grow big and everyone knows it. It doesn't matter what business you are in, everyone is always trying to create more work for themselves, the military and intelligence services are no exception. [1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/americas-failed-strategy-middle-east-los… [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/23/how-the-un… [3] https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/iraqs-power-vacuum-counterfactua… [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone > described as the "biggest bequest to any Third World insurgency." [5] https://theintercept.com/2019/08/21/taliban-peace-talks-afghanistan-mi… [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA%E2%80%93al-Qaeda_controversy [7] https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/who-is-respon…