Operational Art: Operational art is the skilful employment of military forces to attain strategic goals through the design, organisation, sequencing and direction of campaigns and major operations. The essence of operational art lies in being able to produce the right combination of effects, in time and ...Read more >

Military Operations is about warfare, the conduct of war. It will normally focus on war on land. It aims to foster debate and ...Read more >

The pattern of our military interventions over the last 50 years has been to respondbefore matters get worse to intolerable aspects of the grand strategic situation in places that have not been at the center of our ...Read more >

How do governments know whether they.re winning or losing a military campaign? That question is devilish enough in the context of conventional wars with pitched battles, as conflicts often take surprising twists and turns en route to their endgame. It was more than sheer bravado that led Charles De Gaulle, who knew a thing or two about military operations, to declare in June 1940, France has lost the battle, but France has not lost the ...Read more >

I feel sorry for the British Army for they seem to have been taken in by the American Armys consumption with Counterinsurgency and its theoretical premise that military force can change entire societies for the better. Of course this quote is attributed to one of Americas leading Counterinsurgency experts retired Army Lieutenant Colonel John ...Read more >

This paper represents nearly two years of work and active consideration both in the academic domain and in the field of conflict of the problems confronting the British military in contemporary and future ...Read more >

This edition of the U. S. Army War College Guide to National Security Policy and Strategy continues to reflect the structure and approach of the core national security strategy and policy curriculum at the War ...Read more >

Disrupting an insurgent’s access to sanctuary and safe-haven is a critical aspect of operational planning for counterinsurgent forces. By denying an insurgent’s access to safe-havens early in the conflict, the counterinsurgent will gain a marked advantage over the initially weaker force. Only through a deep understanding of how the insurgent is using international, tribal, or cultural borders to evade the counterinsurgent force can the counterinsurgent disrupt the insurgent ...Read more >

The U. S. Army War College Guide to National Security Issues is the latest edition of the U. S. Army War College Guide to National Security Policy and Strategy, which the college has published sporadically under different titles since 2001. As begun with the last publication, this edition of the Guide is in two volumes that correspond roughly to the two core courses that the Department of National Security and Strategy teaches: “Theory of War and Strategy” and “National Security Policy and ...Read more >

Sing Goddess, of the wrath of Achilles, Peleus son. So begins the Iliad, the greatest war epic in western culture. Since the dawn of recorded history, the history of man has been nearly synonymous with the history of war, a history that begins with Homer and continues today. Then as now, war remains the ultimate arbiter of human affairs, an awful and ever-present reminder of humanitys failure to escape its wrathful roots. Seemingly inescapable, war is supremely important because it is the great ...Read more >

The central idea of TRADOC Pam 525-3-0, operational adaptability, depends fundamentally on educating and developing leaders capable of understanding the situation in depth, critically assessing the situation and adapting actions to seize and retain the initiative. Leaders must direct efforts to fight for information, consolidate gains and transition between tasks and operations to ensure progress toward achieving policy goals and strategic objectives. Accomplishing the mission will demand ...Read more >

If the war on terrorism is any guide, globalization is changing the nature of war in several ways. First, it is strengthening the role that politics will play in war by affording it the capability to exert greater real time control over military operations. Of course, this control will vary depending on the personalities involved as well as a combatants ability to interdict its opponents communications. Second, globalization is increasing the criticality of the element of hostility. ...Read more >

Much of what passes for American strategic thinking today is a confused jumble of briefly fashionable buzzwords of uncertain authority or merit. This confusion of ideas rests and is promoted by a confusion of alleged categories of wars and types of warfare. In a widely praised book published in 2007, Brian McAllister Linn offers the following uncompromisingly negative judgment on the conceptual health of recent and current defense ...Read more >

The United States and its allies will remain at war for the foreseeable future. We will continue to battle a networked, technologically modern adversary that utilizes non-conventional methods of warfare as its primary means of operation. Traditional concepts of military response will no longer succeed in defeating the current enemy or removing the underlying conditions that give rise to similar future adversaries. In order for the U.S. to defeat these enemies, the U.S. Special Operations ...Read more >