Our elite close combat forces are outnumbered. As a national priority we must increase the numbers of those capable of doing these hazardous jobs by transferring the skills of JSOC warriors to Army and Marine conventional infantrymen.
By Bob ScalesFor too long, the CAS program “was falling on deaf ears, because it didn’t quite fit exactly in somebody’s nice little picture of a program, and it wasn’t funded” within a traditional acquisition program.
By Paul McLearyThis is the second of James Kitfield’s in-depth analysis of the continuing challenges posed by America’s so-called “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the height of its powers several years ago, ISIS was attracting an estimated one thousand new foreign fighters each month. While U.S. officials always believed that the U.S.-led coalition would take…
By James KitfieldThis is one of two pieces by our contributor James Kitfield, who’s won more Gerald Ford Defense Reporting awards than anyone else (3), on the challenges and mistakes America has made in grappling with the complex threat of global terrorism. As James puts it in his summary sentence: U.S. counterterrorism forces continue to learn and adapt…
By James KitfieldSOMEWHERE IN WASHINGTON: Spy movie makers love retinal scans and ever-more inventive ways to steal or modify fingerprints. Former CIA Director David Petraeus and the Joint Special Operations Command relied heavily on retinal scans, DNA sampling, fingerprints, facial and body recognition — all cross referenced with other intelligence — to build enormous cross-linked databases that helped track and…
By Colin Clark
History never repeats, but it often rhymes, and a wise man listens to the echoes. Today, the Army is exploring a new concept of future combat called Multi Domain Battle, which calls for small, agile units designed to overwhelm the enemy with coordinated actions not only on the land, but in the air, on the sea,…
By Bob Scales