Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The New Rules Of War

COBRA FORMATION - The amphibious assault ship USS Essex, the Royal Thai navy medium landing ship HTMS Surin, the Republic of Korea navy tank landing ship Seongin Bong, the guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh, the amphibious dock landing ship USS Harpers Ferry and the amphibious transport dock ship USS Denver transit in formation during exercise Cobra Gold in the Gulf of Thailand, Feb. 10, 2010. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Taurean Alexander

From Foreign Policy:

The visionary who first saw the age of "netwar" coming warns that the U.S. military is getting it wrong all over again. Here's his plan to make conflict cheaper, smaller, and smarter.

Every day, the U.S. military spends $1.75 billion, much of it on big ships, big guns, and big battalions that are not only not needed to win the wars of the present, but are sure to be the wrong approach to waging the wars of the future.

In this, the ninth year of the first great conflict between nations and networks, America's armed forces have failed, as militaries so often do, to adapt sufficiently to changed conditions, finding out the hard way that their enemies often remain a step ahead. The U.S. military floundered for years in Iraq, then proved itself unable to grasp the point, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that old-school surges of ground troops do not offer enduring solutions to new-style conflicts with networked adversaries.

Read more ....

My Comment: A sobering view on the future of war .... and one that I agree with 90%. If there is an article/analysis that you should read this week, it is this one.

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