You know you’re making progress in bureaucratic struggles when you start attracting serious criticism. That’s why proponents of AirSea Battle, and associated broader efforts to ensure America retains its decades-long lead in military technology in the air, on the seas, and in space and cyberspace, should take heart from Army Colonel Scott Gerber’s guns-blazing, all-fronts …

There is an ongoing debate about the role of the AirSea Battle (ASB) concept in a military strategy; that is, should ASB be a central component of U.S. military strategy?  On one side are those in favor of this proposition (who I will call the AirSea Battlers) and on the other are those who are …

Having studied the initial writings on AirSea Battle (ASB) in 2010, the Office of the Secretary of Defense-Policy (OSD-P) did not think the United States could afford the technology ASB called for nor could they see a strategic application for ASB.  While it provided a concept for defeating anti-access/area denial systems, it did not provide …

In my view, the world would be a much better place without “AirSea Battle” (ASB).  Not the concept, mind you, but the limited public knowledge thereof leading to misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and intellectual malpractice.  It would have been much better for the Department of Defense (DoD) never to have acknowledged that it was working on the …

Over the past several months there has been a lot of earnest discussion of the potential risks and rewards of the Pentagon’s concept called Air-Sea Battle (ASB).  Many national security thinkers, pundits, and both active and retired officers have weighed in with what they think ASB means for our future. Despite all of the writing …

 The Air Sea Battle (ASB) debate continues to simmer in a variety of forums.  Over at the National Interest Sean Miski expounds on his theory of how a war with China might be won via blockading.  Young Marine officers challenge the need for the concept at the U.S. Naval Institute’s blog.  RAND has issued an …

It is 2030. Russian leaders still use nationalism and threats of external conflict to distract their citizens from corruption at home. Despite a dysfunctional economy, the Russian government still fields a large conventional ground force that conducts snap exercises and threatens multiple NATO member states as part of a “New Generation warfare” campaign to secure …

The armies of the Islamic State running roughshod over government forces in Iraq and Syria. Russian little green men infiltrating eastern Ukraine following the military annexation of Crimea. Houthi rebels overthrowing the Yemeni government and seizing large swaths of the country. Taliban fighters seizing an Afghan provincial capital and carving out ever-larger strips of the …

Invisibility cloaks? Mako anti-antisubmarine drones? Robotic “lobsters”? Stims? F-40 Shrike fighters? Imaginative science fiction or harbingers of the future? In his recent novel Ghost Fleet, Peter Singer, one of Washington’s most influential technologists, has written a fictional account of a future war with China that has caught the attention of national security geeks. With co-author …

What key lessons should U.S. policymakers and defense planners take away from the last 14 years of conflict? How relevant is the recent past? What does our strategic and operational performance suggest we need to retain as core competencies? These are critical questions for the design of tomorrow’s U.S. military. Being rigorously critical about our …

“We are accustomed to speak of naval and military strategy as though they were distinct branches of knowledge, which had no common ground. It is a theory of war [that] brings out their intimate relation. It reveals that embracing them both is a larger strategy [that] regards the fleet and army as one weapon, which …

Charlie Hebdo Style Attacks Coming to the UK? Friend of WOTR Shiraz Maher’s latest for the New Statesman examines the Paris attacks from the perspective of British foreign fighters, with whom he is regularly in touch from his perch in London at ICSR (profiled here by The Guardian). These English-speaking jihadists, many fighting in Syria, …

Happy Friday the 13th, WOTR readers. Ordinarily this would be the unluckiest day of the year, but luckily, we’ve got your favorite weekly roundup of the best things we read this week. It was another big week: all eyes are on Iraq, where ISIS made major, and shocking, territorial gains this week. Here’s what you …

TGIF, WOTR readers! It’s Friday, which means another roundup of the week’s best foreign policy and national security reads from around the Web. While nothing in this roundup can beat this, it’s been another interesting week in foreign affairs, so we hope you’ll check out what we’re reading this weekend. “The most powerful vice-president in …

Not long after America’s withdrawal from South Vietnam, Harvard Professor Stanley Hoffmann observed that, “Of all the disasters of the last decade, the worst could be our unwillingness to learn enough from them.” The same appears true today.  For all the ink spilt and bytes used, it is hard not to want to paraphrase Dr. …