Belgian investigators have taken a beating since failing to disrupt the Brussels bombings last week. They took more than four months to locate Salah Abdeslam in the very neighborhood he grew up in. Belgian investigators also missed the network’s talented bomb maker, Najim Laachraoui, who escaped arrest on Friday only to resurface the following Tuesday…
Category: Strategy
Examining Terrorist Tactics: Soft Targets of Terror
ISIS has “upgraded”the Al Qaeda playbook and determined that several teams of shooters and bombers or suicide bombers working together and attacking multiple SOFT targets simultaneously is much more effective than one big operation against a hard target. Tactically, attacking multiple targets in unison let’s the terrorist take advantage of the mass confusion and the…
Military Defense News: “Train and Equip” Program in Syria = Full Metal Retard, Part Deux
When you start reading this, you will begin shaking your head in disbelief. When you have finished reading this, you will be looking for a bottle of advil because your head will be pounding.-SF It would be difficult to find a program that better exemplifies the word “failure” than the Pentagon’s “train and equip” effort…
Examining Terrorist Tactics: The Changing Logic Behind Suicide Bombings
(Note from Hammerhead: It was just announced that yet another ISIS suicide bomber killed 29 people in a Football Stadium in Baghdad). What was once purely a strategic action has become a tactical move meant to help hold territory. In October 2015, two suicide bombers killed more than 100 people outside a railway station in the Turkish capital…
Military Defense News: Increase, Don’t Decrease Marine Lethality
On February 2, the Senate Armed Services Committee heard conflicting testimonyfrom the Army and Marines about integrating women into the infantry. The Marine Corps had opposed the change, drawing the ire of Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. So he took gender integration a giant step farther, ordering the Marines toabolish their separate male and female boot…
Military History: Spain’s Siren Song
17th Century Spain and The Allure of Idealized History in Grand Strategy Many readers may be familiar with Paul Kennedy’s classic The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. It is often recommended to those who have an interest in grand strategy. However, readers might be less familiar with a collection of essays edited by Kennedy, Grand…
This Forgotten 1950s Flying Trick Could Be the Secret of Future Drone Warfare
The “bucket drop”, invented by a missionary trying to airdrop gifts to natives in Ecuador, would let warplanes release a swarm of drones and lasso them back. The warplane of the future is a drone mothership, able to dispatch swarms of small air-launched UAVs for close-up reconnaissance, to act as jammers or decoys, or…
The Long History of “Little Green Men” Tactics and How They Were Defeated
In both Crimea and the subsequent fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine, Russia’s signature tactic has been the use of so-called “Green Men,” soldiers without identifying insignia whose identity as Russian soldiers the Kremlin denied. Ukraine, Georgia, and even NATO members like Estonia now fear that they could be the next target for Russia’s…
Israel Watch: Israel is Building a New Tunnel-Busting Weapon
As Hamas expands its tunnel network in Gaza, Israel, and the United States are collaborating on a clandestine project to thwart the Islamist group’s subterranean advantage. AN YOUNIS, Gaza — Bassem al-Najar has been homeless since August 2014, when Israeli warplanes demolished his house during the 50-day conflict that killed more than 2,000 Gazans and…
Military History: The Long Shadow of the Falklands War
Why did Argentina pick a fight with a country that had nuclear weapons? The Falklands War ended with a decisive British victory over 30 years ago. Nevertheless, the war remains alive in the imagination of analysts and historians. Although the conflict happened outside of the normal “zones of crisis,” it has long held the attention of students…