As America ends its military commitment to Iraq and continues its drawdown in Afghanistan, a lively discussion has emerged on what future challenges the Nation faces. High on every list is the requirement to deal with a rising ...Read more >

Few writers have a better knowledge of special operations over the past 40 years than Dick Couch, who graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) in 1969 and served in Vietnam with SEAL Team ...Read more >

Fred Kaplan has a good story to tell and he tells it well. Unfortunately, his account, although adding a great deal to the story, is both incomplete and, in a significant number of assertions, inaccurate. As participants in many of the events Kaplan partly covers and as scholars of those and other related events, we seek here to both fill out the story as well as correct the ...Read more >

This essay introduces the special issue, drawing together the different studies around the central theme of the nature of the force used by Britain against colonial ...Read more >

While the outcome of the Iraq war seems to have validated the U.S. Armys counterinsurgency manual FM 3-24, the war in Afghanistan seems to indicate there are fundamental problems associated with its historical principles and ...Read more >

U.S. Army COIN Center participated in subject conference, the purpose of which was to identify effective practices in the application of counterinsurgency fundamentals to company level operations in support of deploying ...Read more >

Counterinsurgency has defined the United States conventional military experience from the summer of 2003 to the present. During this period American military forces faced multiple insurgencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, and other areas. These operations brought heightened military and academic interest in counterinsurgency history, theory, and doctrine, precipitating efforts to update counterinsurgency ...Read more >

For a while now we have been telling ourselves that Counterinsurgency and Irregular Warfare are different, more complex, and even the graduate level of warfare. Although I disagree with the latter two terms, I do think COIN and IW are different than traditional ...Read more >

This article is a modest attempt to bring general strategic theory to the intellectual feast of rival ideas and doctrines about COIN, or should it be counterinsurgency, that continues to excite combative ...Read more >

How does the Army learn? What will we take from Afghanistan? How long before we think well know what we should have done differently? Well, if Vietnam is any guide, then in forty years we will still be arguing amongst ourselves what we should have ...Read more >

At one end of the Spectrum, ranks of electronic boxes buried deep in the earth hungrily consume data and spew out endless ...Read more >

Given ongoing conflicts and the likelihood of executing counterinsurgency in the future, it is vital to conduct effective campaign planning for counterinsurgency. Additionally, effective campaign planning is essential for rapid and effective operational and tactical ...Read more >

The marked changed in the types of wars fought over the last ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated the need for commanders at echelons below the campaign level to develop and continuously refine operational approaches to guide their decisions and tactical actions within an assigned area of ...Read more >

This study uses a comparative analysis of the Malayan Emergency, the American experience in Vietnam, and Operation IRAQI FREEDOM to examine the role and effectiveness of artillery units in complex ...Read more >