Of history, warfare, leadership, and alcohol
One of my mentors dropped this quote on me a few years back: "The United States military is obsessed with tactical solutions to strategic problems." After I picked my jaw off the floor because it was such an apt description of the last 20 years, I began to chew on the meaning of what they'd …
Continue reading "What Barbie Teaches Us About Tactics versus Strategy"
Science fiction has seen its fair share of questionable military commanders and strategists. There’s Star Wars' Emperor, and his love of doubling or even tripling down on the whole "floating orb of death" strategy, of course. Darth Vader’s fixation on his wayward son to the exclusion of pretty much anything else springs to mind. And …
Continue reading "How the Baron Harkonnen Failed at Grand Strategy"
“He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.” - Sun Tzu In war, timing and will are two of the intangibles that are hard to train for. A battle can be all but won when suddenly the unforeseen takes place: Jackson arrives at Antietam; Sheridan rides back to Cedar Creek; the …
Continue reading "Warfighter: Battle of Endor"
Full warning: I've got spoilers in here. A heap of them. No, not the plot spoilers you fear so much: the spoilers on how no one in the Star Wars universe learns a damn thing. A while back I wrote about how the Empire could've bounced back from the loss of Death Star II, Darth …
Continue reading "Galactic Lessons Never Learned"
This past weekend, I spent some time re-watching Star Wars episodes IV, V, and VI, or as I call them, Star Wars. Watching them with a critical eye towards leader development, tactics, and strategy, I was struck by a number of critical flaws on both sides that could have been fixed with some basic organizational …
Continue reading "Center for Galactic Lessons Learned"
This post first appeared on the blog Point of Decision. It is no secret that the U.S. Army is in a time of change and disruption. It is desperately seeking to emerge from an era unprecedented in Army history: fourteen uninterrupted years of direct conflict in a counter-insurgency (COIN) environment in two theaters, with mobilizations …
Continue reading "All Things Old are New Again The U.S. Army and the Changing Operating Environment"
The Angry Staff Officer 
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