By Ryan Blum Best Defense guest columnist As I’m scrolling through my Facebook feed during my Monday morning commute I almost overlook a post from my old Company Commander: “Taliban Fighters Overrun Kunduz City as Afghan Forces Retreat” My mouth drops. Back in March of 2010 my unit took responsibility for Kunduz Province in northern…
Category: Warfare
Crypsis and Mimesis: The Future of Camoflauge and Cloaking
“Berkeley Lab Researchers Create Ultrathin Invisibility Cloak.” So reads a news release from the US Department of Energy’s venerated lab at the University of California, Berkeley. The cloak is too small for even the tiniest of boy wizards — it can cover no more than a few human cells — but it’s a neat accomplishment. It is not, however,…
The Battle of Salamis: Themistocles and the Birth of Strategy
The dichotomy of strategy and tactics in war did not solidify as a concept until the publication of Carl von Clausewitz’ On War in 1832. Since then the relationship between the two has been hotly debated, along with the subsequent interjection of the operational level of war. What is not debated are the concepts themselves….
Engineering Humans for War
By Annie Jacobsen Inside the Pentagon’s efforts to create a super-soldier—and change the future of the battlefield. Retired four-star general Paul F. Gorman recalls first learning about the “weakling of the battlefield” from reading S.L.A. Marshall, the U.S. Army combat historian during World War II. After interviewing soldiers who participated in the Normandy beach landings,…
Buck Rogers Eat Your Heart Out! Drones Armed with High Energy Lasers Coming Soon
Predator maker looks beyond Hellfire missiles to the weapons of the future. Flying military robots armed with high-energy lasers? It’s a future that is exciting, terrifying — and perhaps just two years away. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., or GA–ASI, the San Diego-based company that makes the Predator and Reaper drones, is undertaking a privately funded…
Urban Warfare, Back in the Day
URBAN WARFARE, BACK IN THE DAY Current headlines are replete with stories of urban warfare. Be it Aleppo, Ramadi, Tripoli or some Ukrainian city you only learned of last year, there appears to be no shortage of combatants that want to fight in/over/for some piece of urban terrain. Perhaps a brief step back in to…