Sept. 1, 2015

Annex C | Iraq Timeline

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Sept. 1, 2015

Contributors

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Aug. 1, 2015

An Empirical Analysis of Claimant Tactics in the South China Sea

China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei all claim some or all of the land features and maritime territory in the South China Sea. One notable aspect of the South China Sea dispute is that its advocates argue past one another with little reference to a common set of facts. Another is the absence of comprehensive data on the actions claimants have taken to advance or protect their claims. The Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University (NDU) set out to create a comprehensive database documenting the various tactics pursued by South China Sea claimants over an 18-year timeframe (1995–2013). This paper draws upon that data to analyze what tactics South China Sea claimants are employing and to present some potential considerations for U.S. and allied policymakers.

July 1, 2015

The Arctic Domain: A Narrow Niche for Joint Special Operations Forces

Global climate change has catapulted the Arctic into the center of geopolitics, as melting Arctic ice transforms the region from one of primarily scientific interest into a maelstrom of competing commercial, national security and environmental concerns.

July 1, 2015

Executive Summary

Every so often we find ourselves in a place where we can take time to assess where we are, where we have been, and where we think we are going—and check it against where we think we should be ending up. This edition of JFQ offers two interviews that are assessments of events past, present, and future. Both are of stories not yet complete: one, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the other, the production of the F-35 fighter aircraft.

July 1, 2015

Rapid Regeneration of Irregular Warfare Capacity

There is widespread agreement among the public and in the foreign and defense communities that the United States should avoid “another Iraq” or “another Afghanistan”—that is, another large-scale, long-term, and highly costly stability operation. President Obama’s reluctance to put “boots on the ground” in Iraq is but the most recent example of this reaction against the high costs and questionable outcomes of the conflicts in those two countries.

July 1, 2015

Quo Vadis? The Education of Senior Military Officers

This article considers approaches to teaching senior military officers at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC). It reviews the results of several studies and surveys from the employers of our graduates and from recent graduates themselves on how best to them prepare for future assignments in the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous strategic environment.

July 1, 2015

Waffles or Pancakes? Operational- versus Tactical-Level Wargaming

Many planners agree that operational level ‘war gaming’ using the Joint Operation Planning Process (JOPP) is different from tactical level war gaming using the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) or the Marine Corps Decision Process (MCDP). But they struggle with understanding the differences because service and joint doctrine only describe their processes and do not compare or point out differences between the processes.

July 1, 2015

An Interview with Christopher C. Bogdan

On May 12, 2015, Dr. William T. Eliason, Editor in Chief of Joint Force Quarterly, interviewed Lieutenant General Christopher C. Bogdan, USAF, Program Executive Officer for the F-35 Lightning II Program, at Bogdan’s office in Arlington, Virginia.

July 1, 2015

Turnaround: The Untold Story of the Human Terrain System

The U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS), a program that embedded social scientists with deployed units, endured a rough start as it began deploying teams to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007. These early experiences had a lasting impact on the program. Although critics have written extensively about HTS struggles with internal mismanagement, most accounts simply cataloged problems, yielded little insight into the organization’s progress over time, and ultimately gave the impression that HTS was never able to make needed corrections.