Get Out of Your Lane: The End of Discrete Domains 
From Greg Grant & Paul Benfield, War on the Rocks “Speaking to the Army War College in early 2015, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work charged the Army with developing a new operational concept to account for the changing character of war, a concept he termed “AirLand Battle 2.0.” The Army went even further with its work on what it calls multi-domain battle — a vision for future combined arms operations against advanced adversaries. Multi-domain battle (MDB) is an emerging warfighting concept initiated by the Army and Marine Corps, but coordinated across all services. It aims to account for new technologies and adversaries able to contest the United States in all domains, including in cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum.” ​

General George Washington: America’s First Operational Artist
From Amos C. Fox, Strategy Bridge: “The American Revolution’s New Jersey campaign, in which George Washington led the Continental army to victory against Hessian mercenaries at Trenton and the British regulars at Princeton, provides an instructive case study in operational art and on the concept’s discrete character. Washington’s conduct at the First Battle of Trenton demonstrated the effective use of sequential tactical action in the pursuit of strategic objectives, synchronized in time, space, and purpose, within the means he possessed. As such, George Washington emerged as the first American operational artist.” ​

Idealogues: An Innovative Approach to Growing Small Unit Creativity
From Strategy Bridge: “Innovation is a powerful term in today’s defense lexicon. We desire a flexible and adaptable service member, enhanced and intuitive technology, and creative and niche-capable organizations. To make this happen, many military leaders have railed against the status quo with respect to problem-solving approaches and overall Department of Defense bureaucracy. With all the discussion about innovative change, one may question what it specifically looks like, especially down at the small  unit level within the military. With this question in mind, the purpose of this article is to describe what such an innovative change can look like in the form of junior leader engagement by introducing our concept of the idealogue.” ​

False Faith: The Third Offset Isn’t a Strategy and Won’t Win Our Next War
From ML Cavanaugh, : “We’re past idea, beyond buzzword, and have shot right past cliché—overuse and overapplication has rendered the phrase “Third Offset” effectively meaningless. When I hear the term used, it’s akin to the dashboard warning light in my aging car, letting me know I’m approaching a serious deficiency. The fault is geographically diverse; in recent assignments from West Point to Korea to Space and Missile Defense, I’ve heard well-meaning military professionals automatically apply “Third Offset Strategy” as a solution for just about everything, from military education to Kim Jong Un to the Russians and Chinese. But a solution everywhere is a solution nowhere—the Third Offset faithful routinely misunderstand and misrepresent this otherwise valuable weapons and concept development program as a true strategy that will win the next war. That mistake is as dangerous as it is wrong.” ​

Re-Thinking the High-Low Mix
From Scott Bledsoe & Mike Benitez, War on the Rocks: “The “high-low mix” is often invoked in the manner Sen. McCain describes. Although there has been no shortage of ink spilled by defense analysts, tacticians, industry executives, and policy wonks in discussion of the high-low mix, the term is widely used but still lacks a meaningful definition or historical understanding. As a result, the high-low mix has lingered in a purgatory of relevance, and few examples in procurement exist that fit neatly within its binary construct.” ​

Light Attack: Removing the Veil on OA-X
From Mike Pietrucha, War on the Rocks: “There has been a recent flurry of press attention on OA-X, an Air Force effort to obtain off-the-shelf light attack aircraft. Sen. McCain's recent publication of Restoring American Power — which calls for the Air Force to acquire 300 light attack aircraft — will no doubt intensify interest in the idea, with many constituencies trying to define OA-X for their own benefit and profit. Appearing to emerge out of the blue, the idea has garnered some degree of instant opposition, not all of it informed.”
Stealth Bombers Flying from Aircraft Carriers?
From Robert Farley, The National Interest: “This article concentrates on five systems that died, but that might have had transformative effects if they had survived. These transformations would only rarely have changed the course of wars (countries win and lose wars for many reasons besides technology), but rather would have had ripple effects across the entire defense industrial base, altering how our military organizations approached warfighting and procurement. Not all the changes would have been for the best; sometimes programs are canceled for sound reasons.”

Doing Better at Teaching Army Doctrine
From Chris Budihas, The Military Leader: “As historian Hew Strachan states in The Direction of War, “Operational thinking finds its intellectual focus in doctrine.” Doctrine drives how leaders think and fight. But when the Army publishes new doctrine, as an institution we owe it to ourselves to do a better job informing, then educating, the Total Army force.” 

Reorganizing the Joint Force for a Trans-Regional Threat Environment
From Chad Pillai, Strategy Bridge: “Entering 2017, the nature of the threat the U.S., and in particular the Department of Defense, faces will be more multi-polar due to the continued rise of China in the Asia-Pacific sphere; the revanchment of Russia in Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia; an unpredictable North Korea in Northeast Asia; Iran seeking hegemonic status in the Middle East; and the continued threat of terrorist organizations like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. While the U.S. remains the single most powerful actor on the international stage, its influence and ability to react to the growing threat that transcends its own internal artificial boundaries and planning processes is not keeping pace with the evolution of the environment. As a result, the Defense Department needs to change its planning and decision making model by breaking from its regional geographic combatant command (GCC) centric system to compete more effectively globally against the emerging trans-regional, multi-domain, multi-functional threats.” ​

New Nuclear-Armed Subs Win Pentagon Approval
From Anthony Capaccio, Bloomberg: “The new Columbia-class submarine is part of a trillion-dollar program to modernize the U.S.’s sea-air-land nuclear triad over the next 30 years, including maintenance and support. Obama has backed the effort, to the chagrin of some arms control advocates, and President-elect Donald Trump has seemed to signal his support. “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” Trump wrote in a Twitter posting.”
Land, Sea, and Air: U.S. Military Readiness in the Navy and Marine Corps
From Will Edwards, The Cipher Brief: “In broad terms, military readiness is defined by a unit’s ability to carry out what it was designed to do, and what it is being asked to do. The criteria include the training of personnel, number of personnel, and equipment quality and quantity. Each branch measures differently based on its core mission, and the platforms and personnel types it has available to it. Increased training and new equipment improve readiness, while extended deployments without adequate rotation of units diminishes readiness. The complexity of determining readiness means there is a variety of opinions, ranging from it being a military-wide crisis to being in need of perennial adjustment and alignment. The bottom line, however, is that the task of maintaining and improving readiness is never complete.”

Rethinking Defense Acquisition: Zero-Base the Regulations
From Scott Chandler, War on the Rocks: “The defense acquisition system is clearly broken. It equips the most powerful military in the world, but the process alone devours far too much time and one third of procurement dollars. Writing for War on the Rocks, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said  “our broken defense acquisition system is a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.” The Defense Department’s own Defense Business Board made its number one recommendation to “zero-base the entire system, including all directives and regulations.” Or as Arnold Punaro suggested for the thousands of pages of acquisition regulations: just “[p]ut a match to it.”” ​