I'm getting to this debate late, but my understanding of the situation (informed by Dima Adamsky's book, among others) is that revolution in military affairs (RMA) theory developed in the Soviet Union as a reaction to two trends. First, the Soviets determined (following the Yom...
military doctrine
Yglesias misleads: It's a little pat to just say that things like the bus incident are unavoidable in a war zone -- even "unavoidable" incidents can occur with frequency --.
Over at ID, I respond to some noodlings on baseball and naval force structure.
Dima Adamsky's The Culture of Military Innovation is a very recent contribution to the literature on culture, military innovation, and the Revolution in Military Affairs. Adamsky's question is this: Why did theorization of the RMA begin in the Soviet Union, while the practical technological developments...
A few people have forwarded me this WaPo article about how the USAF is dealing with the increasing importance of drones. Unfortunately, the article doesn't really live up to its.
The building blocks of the Afghan National Army:The Afghan government is dominated by former mujahedeen guerrillas; both the minister of defense and the army chief of staff are former anti-Soviet.
References to the "Long War" in 2006 QDR: 31, not counting the 10 pages in the chapter titled "Fighting the Long War"References to the "Long War" in 2010 QDR: 0The 2006 QDR was explicitly structured around the concept of the "Long War," which is essentially...
By and large, progressives don’t care so much about the QDR. This shouldn’t be taken as an absolute statement; every progressive think tank has specialists on defense, there are many.
First, I don't think that there's quite enough appreciation of this:But the choice between a mindset that says “the main purpose of the military is to scare China & Russia”.
BruceR, responding to a question about Afghan army training from Matt Yglesias:Building anew is harder than renovating. In Afghanistan as in Iraq we really are doing our best to junk the old system, recognizing correctly that it was part of the problem in the first...
This post, on the prospect for Russian military reform, is absolutely fabulous. A taste:These reforms amount to the complete destruction of Russia’s mass-mobilization military, a legacy of the Soviet army..
Al Mauroni argues that we're bringing third-generation thinking to a fourth generation fight:Military analysts and politicians continue to view NBC weapons and CBRN hazards in terms of third-generation warfare. Any.