Archive for January, 2013

Why Air Force special operators need acquisition skills

The Air Force’s special operators, having spent a decade honing their skills in far-flung combat zones, must begin to seek expertise in a different …

If “a ship’s a fool to fight a fort,” as the Nelsonian wisdom had it, what happens when the fort can see and shoot over the horizon? Or when the “fort” becomes …

Responding to the proliferation of information-based weapons

High-end cyber weapons and espionage platforms such as Stuxnet and Flame are to cyber power what the Navy SEALs are to the U.S. military — …

Weave sleep into your ops plan or give the enemy an advantage

F atigue in war is as old as war itself, and somehow has become an ennobling virtue when endured. Many …

To DARPA for putting a new wrinkle in weapons development: crowd-sourcing.

Having achieved more or less spectacular results in the field of autonomous vehicles through its Grand Challenge contests, the research agency …

To President Obama for nominating Chuck Hagel as defense secretary.

As the U.S. moves beyond a decade of furious op tempo and price-is-no-object spending, the American military will need to make best …

Will the U.S. get serious about performance-based logistics?

Whatever happened to performance-based logistics? In 2001, the Pentagon declared PBL its preferred approach to maintaining and supporting weapons. The Defense Department still believes …

The Joint Operational Access Concept, which describes how the U.S. military will approach anti-access and area-denial challenges, identifies three trends that require a joint force solution: the growth of anti-access and area-denial …

Preparing a smaller U.S. force for a more diverse set of tasks

The American armed forces have once again come full circle on counterinsurgency doctrine and operations. They became involved with counterinsurgency …

The authors of “Unloved Aerial Vehicles” [November 2012] appear to have lost link with reality. They argue that a biased Air Force leadership, blinded by tribal loyalty, is retrograding the service into …