Archive for December, 2012

Charting the erosion of senior officer responsibility

Army Lt. Col. Paul Yingling wrote in these pages that today a private who loses his weapon “suffers far greater consequences than a general who …

Lt. Cmdr. David Coghlan’s recommendation that NORTHCOM absorb EUCOM has merit, except that it fails to take into account the political aspect of that combatant command’s interaction with NATO.

Making the NORTHCOM …

Shifting U.S. units from Western Europe makes readiness, fiscal sense

As the U.S. military prepares to trim its 80,000-strong force in Europe by 10,000 soldiers, it’s a good time to rethink a …

10 steps toward a lighter, better endgame

After 11 years of war, the U.S. military is applying a strategy in Afghanistan that works, based on gradually empowering the Afghanistan government to take …

To DoD’sacquisition policymakers, who are launching the latest in a long series of reforms meant to bring costs down. Dubbed Better Buying Power 2.0, the package contains one particularly interesting facet: Arms …

The Army lacks the battle drills that would help it fight on

Unprepared soldiers are ineffective soldiers, and the rise of the networked battle space has made this ancient wisdom no less …

Smaller, focused reviews should replace this resource-gobbling monster

The original concept was sensible: Conduct a major study at the beginning of every administration to establish a new strategy and, from that, set …

Assured cyberspace is a foundation for global vigilance, global reach and global power. Essential to all Air Force missions, cyberspace is a domain in which, from which and through which missions are …

I cannot believe that anyone in their rational mind would believe that there is anything to salvage out of the Afghanistan fiasco as described by Joseph Collins in “No time to go …

When U.S. forces plunged into Iraq in 2003, chemical weapons were much on the minds of leaders and troops alike. Countless alerts sent privates and generals alike scrambling into bulky, hot MOPP …