Archive for November, 2009

Cyber threats: We don’t know what we don’t know

“As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is …

There is certainly a lot of hand-wringing, chin-rubbing and forceful exhaling going on these days over the increasingly challenging war in Afghanistan, where nearly 70,000 U.S. troops are duking it out with …

Robotic systems can’t replace a pilot’s gut instinct

Our defense establishment has become seduced by the idea of unmanned airpower. Futurists predict an eventual combat force of unmanned systems performing existing wartime …

I read with great interest Lt. Col. Mike Grice’s article [Air power’s limits,” September], and while he was very eloquent, I think he missed the boat on some key issues. Grice says …

The international community has striven to reduce corruption through encouraging development of robust autonomous auditing agencies, increasing the pay of public sector officials, and enhancing the criminal justice system — however, this …

I’m concerned by the overuse of the term “information operations” (IO) in Armed Forces Journal and a number of other recent publications, particularly when attributed to our adversaries.

In the U.S., our …

TO THE AIR FORCE AND THE NAVY for their apparent jitters over the JTRS radio program. For sure, the Joint Tactical Radio System has had a checkered history with the usual tangle …

At their core, insurgencies are about political power struggles, usually between a central government and those who reject its authority, where the objective of the conflict is the population itself and the …

This summer, we lost two icons of the Vietnam War: Robert McNamara, its steward, and Walter Cronkite, its chronicler. In remembrance, commentators have repeated narratives about the men that twist the war’s …

The dark side of tracking all shipping: Pirates can do it too

Maritime domain awareness (MDA) is imperiling global maritime security. Developed and implemented correctly, MDA is one tool among a panoply …