★★★ General Donn A. Starry made the following comments on the genesis of this March 1981 article and AirLand Battle: “The ultimate lesson of `Active Defense’ and the 1976 edition of FM [US Army Field Manual] 100-5 [Operations] is that it is virtually impossible to substantively rewrite doctrine satisfactorily in a matter of three years,... Continua a leggere →
★★ Once upon a time there were two cartridges: the rifle and the pistol. The first one hits far and hard, but is difficult to control, while the second one is convenient, they have already learned to make good submachine guns from it, but it is limited in the range of effective use and does... Continua a leggere →
★★★ Let’s hit a reset, please. Attrition is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and abused ideas in contemporary military thinking. Policymakers, military practitioners, and theorists often use and abuse a slew of pejoratives to undercut attrition.1 This phenomenon is a byproduct of 1980s and 1990s writing, which advocated non attritionalist forms of warfare that appeared... Continua a leggere →
★★★ Warfare exists in the realm of both art and science – as a phenomenon in which sensing and intuition (in other words, art) play a complementary role to education and training (science). Just as a painter must have more than one color on his pallet, the practitioner of warfare must understand more than one... Continua a leggere →
★★★★ Though many of the figures central to the reform of the Prussian army and state that took place between the battle of Jena-Auerstadt (1806) and the final defeat of Napoleon (1815) were of humble birth, none came from circumstances more desperate than those of August Neidhardt von Gneisenau. Gneisenau was born on the 27th... Continua a leggere →
★★★★ Accurately measuring combat effectiveness is a cornerstone of military and political science research. Lanchester (1916) laid the foundation for this field with his renowned Lanchester equations, which focus on quantifying casualties based on the number of engaged combatants. These equations have profoundly influenced subsequent research, inspiring numerous variants over the decades. Notable adaptations include... Continua a leggere →
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