PENTAGON ACQUISITION REFORM - CounterStrikeMedia

The New Russian MiG-35, Moscow's Flawed War Fighting Concepts

6/26/2017

RUSSIA: MiG-35, Russia’s New 4th/5thGen Fighter
By Hope Hodge Seck, DefenseTech: “he next addition to Russia's roster of fighter jets that bridge fourth- and fifth-generation technology may join units as soon as 2019, officials with the MiG Corporation told Military.com here at the Paris Air Show.”

Russia's New and Unrealistic Naval Doctrine
By Dmitry Gorenburg, War on the Rocks: “The Russian Navy is keen on showy demonstrations of strength. Just in the last week, it has begun an exercise with the Chinese navy in the Baltic Sea and sent its largest warship, the Peter the Great nuclear cruiser, and the world's largest submarine, the Dmitry Donskoi, from the Northern Fleet to the Baltic to participate in the Navy Day parade on July 30.”

Dept. of Defense & Civil-Military Relations, emerging Conflicts

6/22/2017

CSIS

Professional Military Education: Need for Reform

6/22/2017

Ike’s Lament: In Search of a Revolution in Military Education
By Robert H. Scales, War on the Rocks: “Suzy died in the summer of 2005, a time when Ike became, by his own admission, a tortured soul. He was fearful that his signature military reform, the Goldwater-Nichols act of 1986, was failing. Ike’s passion for educational reform in the 1980s was born in the belief that the military had performed so poorly during the invasion of Grenada in 1983 because the services had not learned to fight together.”

From Heart & Soul: The Caliber of an Idea
By Andrew Loftesnes, Small Wars Journal: “The caliber of a bullet and the damage it does to the enemy is not dependent on the rank of the Marine pulling the trigger. Likewise, in this warfighting organization, the caliber of an idea and the potential impact it can have on battlefield success should not be dependent on the rank of the mind which conceived it.

Professional Military Education: What Is It Good For?
By Pauline Shanks Kaurin, Strategy Bridge: “Professional Military Education (PME) covers a wide range of activities. In one sense it refers to a plethora of training, continuing education, and other activities designed to provide development to members of the military at various points in their career and to prepare them for the next level of responsibilities. The U.S. military requires professional education for both officers and enlisted personnel and its form, content, and objective varies across rank, service, and military role. But what is its overarching purpose? Why do we invest so much in this effort?”

Dunford Speaks About War Fighting & Budget Caps

6/20/2017

Breaking Defense

Frank Rose writes: Of all the arguments offered by opponents of the LRSO, the most credible appears to be that the current strategic modernization program as a whole is unaffordable. They very well may be right. However, cancelling the LRSO is unlikely to reap the cost savings that they seek. Therefore, other tradeoffs will likely need to be made in order to make the program affordable over the long-term. This will certainly be one of the key issues addressed in the on-going Nuclear Posture Review. However, based on its military capabilities, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, it is critical that the LRSO remains a key part the strategic modernization program. – War on the Rocks

Operating Environment Inadequate for SuperCarrier

6/19/2017

Jerry Hendrix writes: Without a large enough, lethal enough and long-range carrier air wing the super carrier will not be the preeminent symbol of its national power. If the aircraft are not capable of penetrating the enemy’s advanced defenses, if there are not enough of them to sustain the fight, or lack the basic mission tanking ability to enable them to reach their targets, then all other basic assumptions regarding American naval power are placed in doubt. Given the nature of international competition today, doubt is not a word the nation should wish to have associated with its Navy and its Navy’s carriers. – Breaking Defense

Moscow Seeks NATO Parity: Will Putin Get IT?

6/15/2017

Moscow’s Pursuit of Military Strategic Parity With NATO
By Roger McDermott, Eurasia Daily Monitor: “As Moscow prepares to finalize the new State Armaments Program to 2025 (Gosudarstvennaya Programma Vooruzheniya—GPV) in September 2, numerous reports hold out the prospect of continued military modernization with an emphasis on high-technology and modern assets. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu promises the arrival of the PAK FA (T-50) fifth-generation fighter jet in 2019 and the new S-500 surface-to-air missile system the following year. Shoigu believes such procurements will help to protect Russia against modern means of aerospace attack. While, Colonel (retired) Viktor Baranets argues that such developments, coupled with other trends in Russia’s military modernization, will offer the country a level of “strategic parity” with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This view reflects both Moscow’s modernization of the Russian nuclear deterrent as well as progress in the transformation of the conventional Armed Forces.”

Winning the Ideological Front In "The Long War"

6/15/2017

Winning the War of Ideology
By John J. Houser, Strategy Bridge: “Leveraging common principles found in different religions forms a foundation to undermine those using religious differences as a weapon. Expressing a deeper sense of religious understanding paints the U.S. as a pluralist society in a world where “more than eight-in-ten people identify with a religious group.” Some assert Samuel Huntington prophetically warned about a pending “Clash of Civilizations” citing religiously inspired violence ranging from organized terror groups to “lone wolf” incidents as evidence of a world bound for a cultural collision. Although terrorists represent only a small portion of a religious population, their ability to project global influence indicates the current international framework of nation-states is reaching a tipping point.”

The Operational Environment To 2035: Service Chiefs Concepts of Warcraft

6/15/2017

The Operational Environment Through 2035
By Ian M. Sullivan, John C. Bauer, Eric L. Berry and Luke Shabro, Small Wars Journal: “The Operational Environment (OE) is a combination of conditions and variables that impact a commander’s decision-making process and his/her ability to employ capabilities. The factors that define a given OE stretch across the Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic (DIME) spheres and form the broad setting in which the Army and any of its units, along with its joint and combined partners, conduct operations. Our ability to conceptualize and understand the OE and its lattice-work of variables – the political, military, economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical terrain, and time factors (PMESII-TT) – allows us to not only conceptualize, plan, and train for the types of missions we will face in the near-term, but also to explore the types of capabilities and processes we will need to develop and/or adopt to contend with the threats we will face in the future. Our analysis of the OE indicates that key potential adversaries are focusing on developing capabilities and employing hybrid strategies that will provide direct challenges to Army and Joint and Combined forces.”

What Happened To The F-35?

6/15/2017

What Went Wrong With the F-35?
By Michael P. Hughes, The Conversation: “The F-35 was billed as a fighter jet that could do almost everything the U.S. military desired, serving the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy – and even Britain’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy – all in one aircraft design. It’s supposed to replace and improve upon several current – and aging – aircraft types with widely different missions. It’s marketed as a cost-effective, powerful multi-role fighter airplane significantly better than anything potential adversaries could build in the next two decades. But it’s turned out to be none of those things.”

Special Operational Foreces Need Specific Operational Designs: Here's The Story

6/13/2017

SOF Operational Design
By Tony Rivera and Robert Schafer, Small Wars Journal: “Since SOF Operational Design articulates that SOF power is the ability to understand and influence the Human Domain, then SOF Operational Design is also theory and art. Yet, while this addresses two major problems—what is SOF power and what is the theory and art of SOF Power, SOF Operational Design, as we noted focuses on operations, and does not account for bridging operational design and strategic design, leaving many strategic planners, particularly civilian leaders, largely unaware of the true nature of the force they are relying upon more than ever.”

HOW U.S. NAVY PLANS TO CRUSH RUSSIAN & CHINESE AIR DEFENSES

6/9/2017

The Navy's Plan to Crush Russia and China's Air Defenses
By Dave Majumdar, The National Interest: “The next increments of the U.S. Navy’s Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) will have little in common with the Raytheon-built AN/ALQ-249 Increment 1 pod that is currently under development for the Boeing EA-18G Growler. The frequency bands those follow-on pods will have to operate in necessitates an almost completely new design for those jammers.”

RUSSIA: Russia’s Military Precision Strike Capability Prioritizes Iskander-M
By Roger McDermott, Eurasia Daily Monitor: “As Russia’s Armed Forces await the details and specific implications of the new State Armaments Program to 2025 (Gosudarstvennaya Programma Vooruzheniya—GPV), there is widespread expectation that the military will receive more high-precision strike systems to complement its efforts to develop greater operational capabilities. Among these, the Iskander-M road-mobile theater ballistic missile system raises serious concerns for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), not least due to its deployment in Kaliningrad and the fact that it is capable of carrying either a conventional or a nuclear warhead.”

The Marine Corps & C.O.I.N. OP's

6/9/2017

Marines Must Embrace Counter-Insurgency Ops
By Nicholas Wilcox, Proceedings Magazine: “Amphibious warfare is being made irrelevant by new and sophisticated technologies many nations and non-state entities are acquiring and by the changing character of war. The Marines must adapt and refine their identity through training and funding if they are to retain the title as the U.S. premier fighting force.”

China's Use of A.I. In War & Strategic War Planning

6/8/2017

Strategic Planning in China's Military
By Elsa B. Kania, The Diplomat: “As the China’s next national defense white paper should be forthcoming this summer, the Central Military Commission’s Strategic Planning Office, an organization that may play a critical role in its development, merits closer consideration.”

数字化 – 网络化 – 智能化: China’s Quest for an AI Revolution in Warfare
By Elsa B. Kania, Strategy Bridge: “China aspires to surpass the U.S. in artificial intelligence, seeking to take advantage of the unique opportunities that this critical emerging technology could confer to its economic competitiveness and military capabilities. To date, the scale of Chinese research in artificial intelligence, as reflected by the number of papers published and cited, has already exceeded that of the U.S., and China also ranks second in AI patent applications.”

The Wickedness of China
By Mark Thomson, The Strategist (ASPI): “So long as the rest of the world treats the CCP as the legitimate rulers of China, we have nothing to gain and much to lose by doing otherwise. If there was ever a debate in the West about what the right thing to do was, it was drowned out by the rush to turn a profit. It’s not that we’ve renounced our values; rather, like everyone else, our values have a price. As China’s power grows, we may soon find out what that price really is.”

China’s Maritime Strategy
By Nan Li, China Brief: “In January 2017, a long-anticipated reshuffle of the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) took place. The PLAN and its three fleets each received new commanders. Less noticed, but more significant, was the replacement of General Wang Jiaocheng with Vice Admiral Yuan Yubai (袁誉柏), former commander of the PLAN’s North Sea Fleet, as commander of the Southern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) (Global Times, January 22; Global Times, January 22). This is the first time in PLA history that a naval officer has been appointed to command the multi-service forces of one of its regional combatant headquarters (China Brief, March 31). Most importantly, his appointment is indicative of the shift in China’s military posture from continental defense to maritime security, and the importance of the Southern Theater as a predominantly maritime arena for PLA operations (China Brief, July 22, 2016).

That '70's Show: The Service Chief's & Warcraft

6/7/2017

A Case of Decline? Examining the U.S. Strategic Position in the Mid-1970s
By Peter Kouretsos, Strategy Bridge: “Many individuals have taken to the pen and the podium to compare the United States’ current situation with those of the past. Some have analogized that the US is in the same position as it was during the Interwar period, while others have compared 2017 to 1949, periods both marked by strategic uncertainty, rising threats, finite resources, and dynamic technological change. We should be wary of analogies, but we should also recognize that past developments could serve as case studies to help us think about today’s developments. History provides perspective, something Americans sorely lack today. The United States is witnessing momentous change, as are many states around the world today.”

Central PLanning, The Pentagon & Current Crisis of Personnel

6/7/2017

Hoover

How Terrorists Counter Drones

6/6/2017

Al-Qaeda's Attempts to Counter Drone Strikes
By Tobias J. Burgers & Scott N. Romaniuk, Terrorism Daily Monitor: “As the use of armed drones continues, however, their targets — terrorists and terrorist organizations, particularly al-Qaeda — have grown accustomed to the threat. The increased deployment of Predators and Reapers, which militants often refer to as spy planes (الطائرات الجاسوسية), has played a direct role in changing the tactical and operational character of organizations like al-Qaeda. The constant threat of drone strikes has forced them to change their tactics from simply attempting to evade drone attacks to developing and employing active anti-drone measures.”

Secrets To The Art of War

6/6/2017

“Modelez-Vous”: Deriving Frameworks From History
By Olivia Garard, Strategy Bridge: “It is oft quoted in numerous aphorisms and proverbs that we should learn from the past. According to Napoléon Bonaparte’s last maxim, in his Maximes de Guerre de Napoléon, one should “Lisez, relisez les campagnes d’Alexandre, Annibal, César, Gustave, Turenne, Eugène, et de Frédéric; modelez-vous sur eux; voilà le seul moyen de devenir grand capitaine, et de surprendre les secrets de l’art de la guerre” [“Read, reread the campaigns of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Vicomte of Turenne, Prince Eugene of Savoy and Frederick the Great; model yourself on them; that there is the only way to become a great commander, and to obtain the secrets of the art of war.”]”

"Centers of Gravity" & the Misnomer of Strategic Thought

6/2/2017

Moving Beyond Mechanical Metaphors
Debunking the Applicability of Centers of Gravity in 21st Century Warfare
By Peter Layton, Strategy Bridge: “As many historians like to point out, 19th century Prussian military theorist and army officer Carl von Clausewitz’s (1780-1831) seminal work, On War, was not written to be a “how-to” manual about waging warfare, but instead as a timeless treatise on the nature of war. Yet, Clausewitz was a product of both his time and experience. As a result, some of the ideas and metaphors Clausewitz used to describe his understanding of war and warfare might have outlived their utility. This is certainly not to say On War or Clausewitzian theory no longer carries value, but instead suggests some of the concepts therein need reexamined in relation to the passing of time.”

eaglen_china_one-pager.pdf
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GOLDWATER DoD REFORM
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2023 INDEX U.S. MILITARY STRENGTH
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JAMES HOLMES 'REPLICATOR' 19FORTYFIVE.COM

DoD REFORM
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WHY ARE GENERALS DON'T WIN WARS
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ELAINE McCUSKER AEI/DoD

REFORMING DEFENSE BUDGETING
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FIXING DEFENSE BUDGET
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TRANSPARENCY & COST CAPABILITY
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MACKENZIE EAGLEN
AEI

DEFENSE STRATEGY-PRIORITIES
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DEFENSE INNOVATION PROBLEMS
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REBUTAL TO EAGLEN
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DOD ACQUISITION REFORM

twelve problems_negatively_impacting_defense_innovation___american_enterprise_institute_-_aei.pdf
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the_1960s_had_their_day__changing_dod’s_acquisition_processes_and_structures___realcleardefense.pdf
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Dr. Kathleen Hicks

getting_to_less.pdf
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THUCYDIDES & THE LONG WAR PROBLEM

FORCE PLANNING IN AGE OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION

AGAINST ALL ODDS: CHANGING ACQUISITION CULTURE

THE CRISIS OF AMERICAN MILITARY PRIMACY

NATIONAL MILITARY STRATEGY: REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

UNDERSTANDING MILITARY MODERNIZATION

5 STRATEGIES FOR SEC. OF DEFENSE

WHY THE 3RD OFFSET FAILS

INADEQUATE DOCTRINES FOR IRREGULAR WAR

ALTERNATIVE WAR STRATEGIES & FORCE POSTURE

REVERSING DECLINE: ELIZABETHIAN ENGLAND

U.S. GRAND STRATEGY FOR WINNING WORLD WAR IV

MULTI-DOMAIN BATTLE REPLACES R.M.A.

GLOBAL DEFENSE SPENDING.pdf
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REBUILDING AMERICAN MILITARY.pdf
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Tweets by WilliamHolland

Principles Guiding Pentagon Acquisition Reform
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