This month’s original Task & Purpose comic is in the spirit of the season. During the Christmas Truce of 1914, German and British soldiers laid down their arms and met in no man’s land to play a spirited game of soccer. An incredible story that’s hard to imagine ever occurring. Read the Remainder of the…
Category: Military History
Russia Using the 4th Dimension of Warfare (Space) to Gain the Upper Hand in the Syrian War
While Space has been called the final frontier, it is also an untapped resource in regards to warfare. Why is America always last to know in these matters while China and Russia are first in line? The answer is quite simple: BHO. -SF Russia is employing a significant portion of its space assets to gather…
Thinking About War Underground
No one has done better than the great British comic illustrator Heath Robinson to illustrate the intrinsically reciprocal dynamic of military engineering in general and mining and countermining in particular. This cartoon is from a collection Heath Robinson at War I found in a rummage sale years ago–no doubt there are abundant reprints. I would guess,…
Peering into the Past and Future of Urban Warfare in Israel
I traveled recently to Israel to visit a state-of-the-art military training facility in the southern Negev Desert opened by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) last year. The facility, at the Tze’elim army base, is meant to simulate urban operations of the kind the Israelis have so often faced in their conflicts with Palestinian and Lebanese…
Military History: History’s Last Left Hook?
Military Envelopments with Strategic Implications “Left hook” is a boxing term for a short, sideways, inside punch which often lands on an opponent’s jaw. Left hooks generally come as a surprise because for most people it is much harder to punch with their left arm. So, while boxers may continuously jab, cross, and uppercut, the…
Military History: WW2-era 914mm Mortar “Little David”
Whoa!!
Quirky Diplomacy: 9 Wars that were technically “Ongoing”
Throughout history, a number of conflicts, due to the quirky nature of international diplomacy, never officially ended. Of course, these “extended wars” have never actually had any bearing on international relations. Instead, the ongoing de facto peace overrode any technicalities on the world stage. However, the patching up of these diplomatic irregularities has been used…
74 Years Ago Today: Attack on Pearl Harbor Remembered
At five minutes to eight o’clock, on a Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, in Hawaii, Japanese planes attacked the United States military base at Pearl Harbor. An hour later, a second wave of Japanese planes continued the attack. By 9:45 a.m. (local Hawaii time), the attack was finished, with all but 29 Japanese planes…
Crusader Corner #9: Understanding ISIS’ “De-Centralized” Organizational Structure
Decentralization: The Future of ISIS by Nicholas B. Pace With the United States increasingly involved in counter-terror operations across the world, terrorist organizations have had to become more flexible and adaptive to their environment. Centralized, top-down terrorist organizations with ambitions to target the United States and its interests are no longer feasible. The United…
In 2015, Why Do We Still Fight?
Why fight wars at all? We lose lives and treasure even if we win. Those who survive are haunted by the violence and the price they paid; whether they were drafted or volunteered every one of them offered up their lives for an ideal. War is a bloody, terrible business. Military personnel are trained to…