We’ve been using the wrong OODA picture

The October 2011 AFJ article “Goodbye, OODA Loop” should have set off alarm bells across the U.S. defense community. In their well-written article, Kevin Benson …

What history tells us we’ll need tomorrow

Here we go again. As active participation in Iraq and Afghanistan fizzle out, the defense intellectual community casts about looking for the next enemy. Picking …

Andrew Marshall’s lessons for strategic forecasting

There are numbers that count, and numbers that don’t. Andrew Marshall has spent a lifetime trying to assess which ones are which. In October 1973, Arab …

It’s time to get serious about countering unmanned enemy aircraft

America’s wars of the last decade have vaulted the UAV from novelty to workhorse. Yet too little is being done to prepare …

TO THE NAVY, for forgetting to factor in basic human behavior.

The epic plumbing failure aboard the carrier George H. W. Bush — since May, the toilets have worked only intermittently and, …

A decade of war has vaulted unmanned aircraft from intriguing peripherals to integral players, at least in the U.S. way of war, and yet we have barely begun to imagine the uses …

How the Afghanistan invasion changed combat airlift

Shortly after 9 p.m. on Dec. 6, 2001, machine-gun fire erupted on the perimeter of Camp Rhino, Afghanistan. Capt. Mike Flatten, an Air Force officer …

Campaign burnished Europe’s leadership yet underscored spending shortfalls

A year ago, in an article published at the Center for European Policy Analysis, we argued that “some voices increasingly insist that the age …

Naval mines are China’s quintessential asymmetric ‘A2/AD’ threat

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Princeton Professor Aaron L. Friedberg focused on China’s asymmetric “anti-access/area-denial” strategies, operations and weapons that could neutralize …

With access to data, outside researchers can help guide cost-cutters

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the challenges faced by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as he works to manage the …