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462. Evolving Army Needs for Space-Based Support
- Author:
- Jeffrey L. Caton
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
- Abstract:
- The Army has been involved with space-based military operations for well over a half-century. During this time, space operations have changed from a realm exclusive to scientists and engineers, to highly classified activities largely unknown to the general population, to the unveiling of space-based communication, imagery, surveillance, and environment capabilities that have become a foundation for all modern warfare. Today, such support is so ingrained into daily operations that most soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines assume it has been, and always will be, available for their use. But with such reliance comes vulnerability that potential adversaries may try to exploit. The evolution of Army space operations is well documented in many sources, thus this monograph serves not as a comprehensive history or detailed critique of the myriad accomplishments. Rather, it serves as a primer for current and future space-based operations to provide senior policymakers, decision-makers, military leaders, and their respective staffs an overall appreciation for existing Army space capabilities and the challenges, opportunities, and risks associated with their use in joint operations.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Science and Technology, War, Military Strategy, and Military Affairs
463. Another Brick in the Wall: The Israeli Experience in Missile Defense
- Author:
- Dr. Jean-Loup Samaan
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
- Abstract:
- For the last 4 decades, Israel has been challenged by the rise of ballistic arsenals in the Middle East. If, at first, the country kept relying on its traditional offensive doctrines, it eventually developed missile defense programs in the early-1980s through U.S.-Israel cooperation and then in the 2000s with the building of its iconic Iron Dome. This Israeli experience in missile defense reveals crucial lessons on the military adaptation to both new threats and new remedies that have direct implications for the United States and its allies.
- Topic:
- War, History, Military Strategy, and Military Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Israel and United States of America
464. A Russian View on Landpower
- Author:
- Keir Giles and Major General Aleksandr V Rogovoy
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
- Abstract:
- Russia’s seizure of Crimea, and ongoing operations in eastern Ukraine, have refocused attention on the Russian military as a potential cause for concern in Europe. This Letort Paper, by an influential Russian general and military academic, lays out specifically Russian views on the essential nature of strong conventional land forces, and how they may be used. With an expert commentary providing essential context and interpretation, the Paper presents a valuable insight into Russian military thinking, at a potentially critical juncture for European security.
- Topic:
- Security, War, Military Strategy, and Military Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Ukraine, and Crimea
465. Breaking the Nordic Defense Deadlock
- Author:
- Stefan Forss and Col. (Ret) Pekka Holopainen
- Publication Date:
- 02-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
- Abstract:
- The Nordic states, just as other regions of Europe which neighbor Russia, are engaged in an urgent reexamination of their security and defense posture. Events in Ukraine in early-2014 threw into sharp focus a local lack of capability following decades of drawdowns and focus on crisis management operations instead of territorial defense. After an unpleasant awakening, countries in the region have turned their attention to the heightened security risks they face and their lack of preparedness for them.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, NATO, International Security, Military Strategy, and Military Affairs
- Political Geography:
- Russia
466. Always Strategic: Jointly Essential Landpower
- Author:
- Dr. Colin S. Gray
- Publication Date:
- 02-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
- Abstract:
- American Landpower is a strategic instrument of state policy and needs to be considered as such. This monograph explores and explains the nature of Landpower, both in general terms and also with particular regard to the American case. The monograph argues that: (1) Landpower is unique in the character of the quality it brings to the American joint team for national security; (2) the U.S. has a permanent need for the human quality in Landpower that this element provides inherently; (3) Landpower is always and, indeed, necessarily strategic in its meaning and implications—it is a quintessentially strategic instrument of state policy and politics; (4) strategic Landpower is unavoidably and beneficially joint in its functioning, this simply is so much the contemporary character of American strategic Landpower that we should consider jointness integral to its permanent nature; and, (5) notwithstanding the nuclear context since 1945, Landpower retained, indeed retains, most of the strategic utility it has possessed through all of history: this is a prudent judgment resting empirically on the evidence of 70 years’ experience. In short, the strategic Landpower maintained today safely can be assumed to be necessary for security long into the future. No matter how familiar the concept of strategic Landpower is when identified and expressed thus, it is a physical and psychological reality that has persisted to strategic effect through all of the strategic history to which we have access.
- Topic:
- National Security, Politics, History, Military Strategy, Military Affairs, and Landpower
- Political Geography:
- United States of America
467. An Awkward Tango: Pairing Traditional Military Planning to Design and Why It Currently Fails to Work
- Author:
- Ben Zweibelson
- Publication Date:
- 03-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Over the past decade, traditional military planning methodology and doctrine has gained an unlikely dance partner-the ambiguous, conceptual, and controversial process called ‘design.’ Although I will expand in this article on what exactly traditional military planning’ constitutes as a methodology, readers familiar with the debate over conceptual and detailed planning will recognize traditional military planning as the linear, analytic process grounded in metrics, categories, and objective scientific tenets. Many call this ‘detailed planning’ to refer synonymously to traditional military problem-solving, reflecting a military institutional practice of developing specific, sequential, and highly scientific-based plans that are quantifiable (analytical, objective) according to an accepted language, format, and professional education.4Unlike detailed planning, design as an emerging practice evokes eclectic combinations of philosophy, social sciences, complexity theory, and often improvised, unscripted approaches in a tailored or “one of a kind” practice. Ultimately, design becomes something beyond military planning entirely, thus we should avoid an “either or” sort of debate with design and detailed planning. Although this article employs the metaphor of awkward dancing partners, the metaphor is incomplete in that design may “dance” with detailed planning, while also able to depart the dance floor and do things that detailed planning is simply incapable of. However, for military professionals facing complex problems, we might continue the awkward tango metaphor for this article in that a military might employ both design and detailed planning in many conflict environments.Both design and detailed planning are elements of sensemaking, where for military applications we derive the notion of ‘planning’ and ‘knowing’ in a broad sense as an integral part of comprehending reality. Planning is subordinate to ‘knowing’ in that the detailed blueprints for constructing a tank are subordinate to the conceptual design of“how does one construct an armored vehicle to dominate specific terrain”? Planning is subordinate to design, with detailed planning further subordinate to various types of planning, with ill-structured conflict environments requiring militaries to whirl various dancing partners of design and planning across confusing and dynamic dance floors. Yet as our associated western military doctrine, military education, and practice in conflict environments demonstrates repeatedly, we are unable to get these dance partners to work together as a team, or move to the music for purposes of effectively creating and directing useful action for a military organization.5Institutionally and as a practicing community of professionals, the Western military has little trouble agreeing upon the general principles of traditional planning.6Yet we collectively remain fiercely divided, confused, and often resistant to design in any form, whether a rival methodology, complimentary, or even a subset of traditional planning.7‘Military Design’ comes in as many shades and patterns as service camouflage patterns now, and just as uniform differences symbolize organizational relevance and identity, so do the various service-centric design versions available for sensemaking and subsequent planning applications. Design has become so much of a stumbling block that the U.S. Army has devoted multiple research projects on design integration using the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and in 2011 revised Army design doctrine with a name change and “rebranding” complete with academic realignments.8While the U.S. Army has cycled through several incarnations of design in the past decade, American Joint doctrine (which strongly influences other western military doctrines) has separated design from ‘operational design’ while casting both within traditional planning, resulting in a rather befuddled operational force. The U.S. military Joint Staff’s Planner’s Handbook for Operational Design from 2011 offers the following explanation: In general, the terms [design and operational design] have been related but not identical. The focus of discussion and writing on design during the past three years has been on the critical and creative thinking and learning required to understand complex operational environments and ill-defined problems facing the commander. Such understanding should facilitate early development of a broad operational approach that can guide the more detailed planning process. Operational design is a construct that joint doctrine has used since 2002 to encompass various elements of operational design (previously called facets of operational art) that planners have applied to develop a framework for a campaign or major operation... In essence, the above explanation conveys that joint doctrine’s operational design has embraced and subsumed design’s philosophy and general methodology.” 9 Thus, United States military organizations at the Joint level apply some aspects of the service-specific “Army Design Methodology” into joint doctrine where “operational design” functions more as a reverse-engineering planning project for campaign construction.10 This confuses military professionals because our organizations are not only mixing terms and concepts, but engaging far too much in methodological discussions without getting above it all and into the challenging abstract levels this article will offer. Although “design” is intended in the various U.S. Army doctrinal incarnations to be an iterative and adaptive sensemaking process for focusing critical and creative thinking on complex military problems, the American Army struggles to make sense of why military organizations have so many problems grasping what design is, and how it integrates into traditional military decision making. 11 With all of these different interpretations of how to make sense of complex military situations with ‘design’, is it any wonder why our militaries remains unable, or perhaps at a deeper institutional level, unwilling to integrate design effectively with traditional planning? We need to explore why traditional military planning and design theory remain awkward dance partners, and where we might try to nudge the larger Western military institution towards in the future. The difference goes beyond superficial arguments on language, doctrine, or conflict environments- it has to do with how the military prefers to make sense of the world beyond methodologies entirely.
- Topic:
- Military Strategy and Military Affairs
- Political Geography:
- United States
468. Strategic Bombing if Possible, but Possibly not Strategic Bombing: an examination of ends, ways, and means and the use of strategic airpower during the Great War
- Author:
- Dr. Randall Wakelam
- Publication Date:
- 03-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper is an offshoot of research conducted in preparation for the University of Calgary History conference of 2014 focussing on new perspectives of the Great War. My primary intent in that research was to explore the notion that air services were, using the recent educational concept of the Learning Organization, in fact precursors of this concept within a military context. One of the conclusions I came to is that this learning was not just happening within the air services but took place even at the national, or grand strategic, level where decisions had to be made both about how to use this new means of warfare and about the allocation of resources while continuing to support the needs of the army and navy. The former had to do with strategic bombing of enemy targets and the balance of this paper looks at how the concepts and practice of strategic bombing evolved in France, Germany and Britain.
- Topic:
- Military Strategy, World War I, and Air Force
- Political Geography:
- Britain, Europe, France, and Germany
469. When the generation gap collides with military structure: The case of the Norwegian cyber officers
- Author:
- Hanne Eggen Roislien
- Publication Date:
- 12-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- As the military integrates cyber into its structures, gradually more nations are recruiting and educating personnel to serve as "cyber officers". Tech-savvy men and women from ‘Generation Y’ grew up in the post-modern era, recognized not only by its individualism and erosion of overarching, coherent maxims, but also by the fact that technology is taken for granted. Thus, in the situation of the cyber officer a particular generation gap occurs, one in which the characteristics of postmodernity, military command structures and the inter-disciplinarity of cyber pull in conflicting directions. This friction creates a peculiar situation as technology and cyber contribute to sharpen the generation gap that necessarily exists between the young generation of cyber officers, and their superiors in the military. I explore this quandary through an examination of cyber officers’ testimonies. In particular, I focus on the cyber officers’ conceptualization of “cyber” and how this resonates with that of their superiors’. The data is ethnographic, based on interviews with cyber officer students at the Norwegian Defence Cyber Academy.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Military Strategy, and Cybersecurity
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Norway, Northern Europe, and Scandinavia
470. Maritime Non-state Actors: A Challenge for the Royal Canadian Navy?
- Author:
- David Rudd
- Publication Date:
- 12-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
- Institution:
- Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
- Abstract:
- Global security and prosperity depends in part on good order at sea, with its attendant flow of licit maritime commerce. While challenges to that order have existed since the earliest sea-farers, new players have emerged in recent decades that inhibit the ability of nation-states to regulate domestic and international maritime activity. This paper is intended to provide a brief exploration of the nature of maritime non-state actors (MNSAs) and the challenge they pose to national and international maritime security. It will examine the types and motivations of MNSAs and identify some of the ways in which a navy may interact with them. In doing so it will help to shape decision-making on how allied navies in general and the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) in particular might theoretically align their capability-development efforts with these trends. As the paper is intended to be an overview of a complex and evolving phenomenon, it proceeds from the premise that the strategic/policy, doctrinal, and tactical questions raised herein will require more study.
- Topic:
- Military Strategy, Non State Actors, Navy, and Maritime
- Political Geography:
- Canada and North America