Oceans of ink and terabytes of electronic musings have been expended on the subject of hybrid warfare. The classic formulation is a non-state actor with appurtenances of state power and, in many cases, support from traditional nation states. Of particular concern to defense planners and intelligence experts was the ability of these non-state actors to…
Category: Military History
World War I History: Australia And The Battle of Fromelles
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Interpreter, which is published by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an independent, nonpartisan think tank based in Sydney. War on the Rocks is proud to be publishing articles from The Interpreter weekly. Fromelles, fought one hundred years ago this week, is now one of the most famous battles in which…
Cold War “What If” History: The World War III Naval Battle of A U.S. Iowa Class Battleship vs Russia’s Battelcruiser
It’s 1988. World War Three has begun, with the armies of the Soviet Union and the rest of the Warsaw Pact pouring over the Inter-German Border. Their destination: the Rhine River and beyond, dealing NATO a knockout blow that will end the war. Meanwhile at sea, an equally titanic battle is about to take…
Psy-Ops Military History Files: The True Story of ‘Commando Buzz’
On Dec. 24, 1970, an odd airplane touched down at an air base in Thailand. Though it might not have looked like it, this was a top secret U.S. Air Force propaganda plane and the crew had just flown the last of a series of classified missions over neighboring Cambodia. The Pentagon sent the…
Military History In Pictures: IRA Snipers and The Troubles
See the Original at Forgotten Weapons
World War II History: How British Commandos Pulled Off The “Greatest Raid of All”
During World War II, there were many ingenious and courageous raids, but only one would come to be known as “The Greatest Raid of All” – the British raid on St. Nazaire. Since the beginning of hostilities, the German Navy had wreaked havoc on shipping in the Atlantic. With the fall of France, the Nazis…
Guerilla Warfare History: The World of Coup’s Since 1950
An attempted coup in Turkey last week shocked and surprised many across the world. But coups and attempted coups have long been an all-too-familiar occurrence around the world. How many exactly? Well, at the time of writing, there have been around 475 coup attempts since 1950. That’s according to a dataset compiled by Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne, two assistant…
World War II History: Russia Fishes Sherman Tank Out of the Sea
During the Second World War, the United States sent thousands of tanks and armored vehicles to the Soviet Union as military aid. The flow of arms and equipment was vital in keeping the Soviet Union in the fight, and ultimately 4,102 M4 Sherman medium tanks were sent to the Eastern Front—where they were known as Emchas….
World War II History: Sherman Tanks Battled Bonzai Charges at Tarawa
‘Tanks in Hell’ takes you inside a Pacific firestorm This article was sponsored by Open Road Media. “Once inside, a man quickly found that you could not be claustrophobic and serve in a tank,” Oscar Gilbert and Romain Cansiere write in Tanks in Hell: A Marine Corps Tank Company on Tarawa. “In fact many infantrymen…
Military History: Weapons of the Syrian War
From chlorine gas to Kalashnikovs, barrel bombs to cruise missiles, the Syrian conflict shows what 21st-century militaries and armed groups can bring to bear. The Assad regime’s bloody reaction to the 2011 Arab Spring ignited one of the most lethal rebellions in modern history, placing it in the crosshairs of more than 1,000 armed groups:…