President Donald Trump named retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis as Defense Secretary, the highest-ranking civilian position in the Pentagon. Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly was named first to head the Homeland Security Department and then replaced Reince Priebus as White House Chief of Staff. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster replaced Air Force Gen. Mike Flynn… Keep reading →

ARMY WAR COLLEGE: If you want to know what the Army Chief of Staff is thinking, don’t just ask around the Pentagon. Drive a couple hours north through rural Pennsylvania — passing the Gettysburg battlefield on the way — to the Army War College here in quiet Carlisle. An institution whose influence has waxed and… Keep reading →

https://youtu.be/1Z8_KRMdbbs WASHINGTON: In an intriguing and potentially significant declaration, the Chinese military declares: “Regardless of what corner of the earth, so long as it is blue there we will be on guard.” The declaration comes in an impressive recruiting video for the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). “It’s beautifully done; really tugs at the heartstrings,” says Dean Cheng,… Keep reading →

….and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats…. -–  Matthew 25:32 (King James Version) The military’s personnel system does lots of stupid things, like sending Arabic speakers to Korea or forcing out skilled commanders at age 50. But of all our self-inflicted wounds, argues a forthcoming… Keep reading →

So how hard is the federal shutdown hitting the US military? “Walking around the building, I would say we’re probably at about a third of our staff right now,” said one military officer. (About half the Defense Department’s civil servants have been furloughed, but military personnel are still on duty). Of 26 people in her… Keep reading →

QUANTICO, Va: Even though the administration’s strategic guidance swears off “large-scale, prolonged stability operations” while emphasizing air and naval forces, the lessons that ground troops learned in Afghanistan and Iraq will remain vitally relevant, both because we will still do stability operations in the future and because those skills apply to other kinds of conflicts… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: Forget sequestration. Never mind fiscal 2013. The Army knows it’s in for a tough decade, not just a tough year — but it’s already thinking way ahead, past 2020. With the Iraq war over, Afghanistan (slowly) winding down, and a new strategy that emphasizes Navy and Marine Corps operations in the Pacific, the Army… Keep reading →

Are personal relationships a strategic asset? Last week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey gave a speech at the National Defense University arguing that they are. It’s a theme hammered recently by other military leaders, especially in Dempsey’s own service, the Army, which argues it is uniquely capable of building… Keep reading →