Auftragstaktik: Decentralization in Military Command
By Kevin Kallmes, Notes on Liberty: “Many 20th century theorists who advocated central planning and control (from Gaetano Mosca to Carl Landauer, and hearkening back to Plato’s Republic) drew a direct analogy between economic control and military command, envisioning a perfectly functioning state in which the citizens mimic the hard work and obedience of soldiers. This analogy did not remain theoretical: the regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, and Lenin all attempted to model economies along military principles . . . ”  ​

Military Adjusts to Emergent Domains of Warfare 
By Mark Pomerleau, C4ISR & Networks: “The Army — and the military writ large — is undergoing the initial stages of a fundamental change in thinking, organizing and, ultimately, fighting.” ​

Multi-Domain Battle: An Emerging Operational Doctrine 
By Amos C. Fox, Small Wars Journal: “The 19th century Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz defined war in three ways. He postulated that war is a duel, an act of force to compel one’s enemy to do its will, and a collision of living forces. Further, Clausewitz stated that the use of force is the means of war, and that the true aim of war is to render the enemy powerless, “That the grand objective of all military action is to overthrow the enemy – which means destroying his armed forces.””

The Reconnaissance and Security Strike Group: A Multi-Domain Battle Enabler
By MAJ Nathan A. Jennings, Armor Magazine: “When the U.S. Army reorganized its final armored cavalry regiment (ACR) in 2011, it divested its institutional capability to enable corps maneuver with forceful reconnaissance and security (R&S) at the operational level of war.”

Fight, Survive, Win - Imagining Multi-Domain Battle
By Mark Olsen, Strategy Bridge: “The United States faces a changing and more uncertain military future. The military dominance that the United States easily assumed following the end of the Cold War – and demonstrated in the Gulf War – is no longer so assured. Potential American adversaries are developing capabilities to challenge American strengths. The American military must develop new concepts and capabilities to continue to guarantee the military supremacy Americans expect. ”
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What It Would Really Take to Sink a Modern Aircraft Carrier 
By Robert Farley, Jalopnik: “There's a lot of consternation about whether or not the United States should even have massive supercarriers anymore. Obviously, the answer here is "depends on how much explosives you've got." But while sinking an aircraft carrier is difficult, it's not impossible. The key is what it's used for, and who it's used against. But if you wanted to sink one, here's what you'd have to do, and what you'd be up against." ​

China's Embattled Military Modernization 
From Stratfor: “China's sweeping military reforms are proceeding apace. In a meeting in Beijing on Tuesday with the country's top military leadership, President Xi Jinping announced the start of the next phase in the effort to thoroughly modernize the Chinese military. The program, launched in late 2015, aims to enable China to wage modern warfare by updating the military's structure, its command and control, and, in particular, its service branches' ability to conduct joint operations. Xi's latest announcement highlights his administration's progress with the plan, expected to be in place by 2020. Nevertheless, it will be a hard-fought campaign for Beijing.” ​

From Cultural Intelligence to Cultural Understanding
From Lawrence E. Cline, Small Wars Journal: “One of the critical areas in recent operations that has been identified as a major shortfall for the Army has been that of understanding the cultures and societies in which it has been operating.  Virtually every report that has analyzed problems in Iraq and Afghanistan has noted a lack of cultural understanding, leading to difficulties in conducting operations.  In particular, the report from Major General Michael Flynn et al. described a series of weaknesses in understanding the Afghan people and culture. The Flynn report in many ways argued that the U.S. military was not really living up to its doctrine of a more population-centric approach, and considerably greater attention needed to be paid to this aspect of COIN. ” ​

US airpower unready & What is to be done? @jedbabbin

But those years have taken us from cliche to crisis. Three factors have combined to create an emergency in airpower. First is the wear and tear imposed by nearly 16 years of combat. Second are with the massive, reckless cuts in defense spending imposed by President Obama which, under the Budget Control Act of 2011, are scheduled to continue for at least four years. Third is the near-criminal neglect of our forces by Mr. Obama’s generals and admirals. As a result, so many of our combat aircraft are incapable of flying combat missions that the president is deprived of options that may be critical to any war, large or small.

Air power — the ability to clear the skies of enemy aircraft and destroy the enemy’s ground forces — has been a critical element of warfare for nearly a century. Offensively and defensively, air power is the sine qua non of military action.

Constant pilot training and American technological advantages have meant that every generation of American fighter pilots since World War II has inherited air supremacy — domination of the skies — as a birthright. That is no longer the case.

In February, the Navy confirmed that 74 percent of the Marines’ F/A-18s — 208 of 280 aircraft — are incapable of flying combat missions.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/16/us-airpower-not-at-crisis-level/

Organizational Agility: Winning in Today’s Complex Environment
From Zayn Knaub, Strategy Bridge: “What does it take for militaries to win in today’s interconnected, interdependent, and complex environment? I would argue that in contrast with the battlefield of the past,  today’s environment demands much more organizational agility.  I define organizational agility as the degree to which a team or company is resourceful and adept at flexing in response to both internal and external factors.  An agile organization has the ability to be radically innovative, adapt, and institute process improvement with grace in a rapidly changing, complex environment.” ​

The Necessity of Self-Sacrifice 
From Robert Mihara, Strategy Bridge: “Jus in bello and jus ad bellum require an explicit understanding of what gives one’s survival moral standing and what should supersede the primacy of moral and physical self-preservation. Self-sacrifice as a first principle helps strategists to remain faithful to the essential characteristics of a nation’s vital national interests, and it can prevent them from getting lost in moral absolutism when taken as a first among equals rather than as an overriding imperative. In other words, an attitude of self-sacrifice enables strategists to make strategic choices. This principle of self-abnegation is of foremost importance to strategists because its antithesis in limited wars effectively precludes the proper function of strategy and thereby undermines the utility of war.” ​

F-22 Raptor Versus Russian Air Defenses in Syria 
From Dave Majumdar, The National Interest: “The stealthy supersonically cruising air superiority fighters are the only fighters in the U.S. inventory that can safely fly within the engagement envelope of Russian S-400 and S300V4 surface-to-air missiles defense while the Pentagon ascertains how the Kremlin will respond to the American cruise missile attack on Syria last week.”   ​

Tet à Tête: Vietnamese Exploitation of American Misapprehension 
From Olivia Garard, Strategy Bridge: “The Vietnam War is an aggregate of two very different wars: the Vietnamese war for independence and the American war to contain Communism. Linguistically, this contradiction is manifest in each country’s labels used to describe the war. America refers to the conflict as the Vietnam War, whereas Vietnam considers it either the American War in Vietnam or the Second Indochina War. From the American point of view, the Vietnam War was fought against the specter of Communism with Vietnam defined explicitly as the enemy. However, the Vietnamese considered the American War in Vietnam to be an American construct, an invasion and battle against their ability and right to define themselves. America, after the French in the First Indochina War, became the second imperialist defeated by the Vietnamese in their quest for independence and self-determination. The Vietnamese saw continuity between the two wars because they were—from their perspective—the same war of independence. The fervent nationalism did not change or dissipate between the First and the Second Indochina War—only the enemy did. These labels of the war are symptomatic of the fundamental and existential incompatibilities of the war America was fighting and the war Vietnam was fighting.” ​

Realign the Army for Multi-domain Battle 
From Nathan A. Jennings, AUSA: “Following more than a decade of counterinsurgency focus, the U.S. Army has found itself increasingly challenged by adversaries in Eastern Europe and East Asia who are modernizing their area denial capabilities. As argued by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the 39th chief of staff of the Army, “Land-based forces now are going to have to penetrate denied areas for the rest of the joint force” while having the capacity to “operate in all domains simultaneously.”” ​

Maritime Power and U.S. Strategic Influence in Asia 
From Patrick Cronin, War on the Rocks: “Three decades ago, Gen. Liu Huaqing, the military commander who modernized China’s navy declared, “Without an aircraft carrier, I will die with my eyelids open.” When he passed away in 2011, China had finally started building an aircraft carrier and it took to the seas the next year.  If recent trends were to hold, it is doubtful whether the U.S. Navy could preserve its longstanding supremacy for sea control — especially within Asia’s first island chain — even a decade or two into the future.” ​

U.S. Military: Joint Regional Experts 
From Justin M. Cobb, Damon B. Loveless and Angela M. Lewis, Small Wars Journal: “If success was measured by how often a subject is mentioned or written about the U.S. military would surely be a smart culture-savvy force to be reckoned with.  Despite developing individuals as regional experts and publishing droves of manuals, doctrine, and easy listening audio and online material, the Department of Defense (DoD) continues to provide no standardization or meaningful guidance to the Services on their subsequent use in the Joint environment.  Is it more important that every corporal understand the proper tribal morning greeting or that the flag officer understands the deeper sociocultural and historical underpinnings of an adversary militaries paradigm?  In terms of the development of regional experts, each Service personnel management process presents a uniquely uncoordinated and non-standard process that provides an almost textbook example of opportunities lost.” ​

Too Much Faith in the F-22 and F-35? 
From Sebastien Roblin, The National Interest: “An F-22 has a combat radius of some five hundred miles on internal fuel. The F-35 can fly 875 miles when loaded for air-to-air combat. Now consider the thousands of kilometers lying between U.S. bases in the Pacific and Europe and various potential conflict zones.” ​

The Army's Urgent Need to Close Capability Gap 
From Daniel Gouré, The National Interest: “Over the past year the U.S. Army has been conducting a Strategic Portfolio Analysis Review (SPAR) of its 780 weapons and equipment programs. Championed by Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley, the key requirement of the SPAR is to identify modernization priorities that must be pursued in order to maintain and eventually regain overmatch to credibly deter and defeat near-peer adversaries.” ​