Oct. 1, 2015

Winners of the 2015 Writing Competitions

In 2015, the 9th annual competition was intended to stimulate new approaches to coordinated civilian and military action from a broad spectrum of civilian and military students. Essays were to address U.S. Government structure, policies, capabilities, resources, and/or practices and to provide creative, feasible ideas on how best to orchestrate the core competencies of our national security institution.

Oct. 1, 2015

Improving Joint Interagency Coordination: Changing Mindsets

Despite some rare successes in interagency work between the Department of Defense (DOD) and other partners in the past 20 years, successful interagency teamwork remains elusive across the combatant commands.

Oct. 1, 2015

Transforming Defense Analysis

The Defense Intelligence Enterprise is on the precipice of tremendous change. The global environment is experiencing a mind-numbing quantity and diversity of challenging crises.

Oct. 1, 2015

Defense Intelligence Analysis in the Age of Big Data

Over the past decade, the U.S. and Australian intelligence communities have evolved rapidly to perform new missions. They have developed new capabilities and adapted their business processes, especially in support of joint and complex military operations. But in the coming decade, their greatest challenge will be to develop new capabilities to manage and exploit big data.

Oct. 1, 2015

Executive Summary

As this column is written, a number of significant events are occurring that will shape the future joint force. The barriers to women engaging in ground combat are being reassessed and, in all likelihood, most if not all will be removed.

Sept. 1, 2015

Lessons Encountered: Learning from the Long War

Lessons Encountered: Learning from the Long War began as two questions from General Martin E. Dempsey, 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: What were the costs and benefits of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what were the strategic lessons of these campaigns? The Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University was tasked to answer these questions. The editors composed a volume that assesses the war and analyzes the costs, using the Institute’s considerable in-house talent and the dedication of the NDU Press team. The audience for this volume is senior officers, their staffs, and the students in joint professional military education courses—the future leaders of the Armed Forces. Other national security professionals should find it of great value as well.

Sept. 1, 2015

Maps

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Sept. 1, 2015

Acknowledgments

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Sept. 1, 2015

Introduction

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Sept. 1, 2015

Chapter 3 | National-Level Coordination and Implementation: How System Attributes Trumped Leadership

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Sept. 1, 2015

Lessons Encountered: Learning from the Long War

Lessons Encountered: Learning from the Long War began as two questions from General Martin E. Dempsey, 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: What were the costs and benefits of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what were the strategic lessons of these campaigns? The Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University was tasked to answer these questions. The editors composed a volume that assesses the war and analyzes the costs, using the Institute’s considerable in-house talent and the dedication of the NDU Press team. The audience for this volume is senior officers, their staffs, and the students in joint professional military education courses—the future leaders of the Armed Forces. Other national security professionals should find it of great value as well.

Sept. 1, 2015

Chapter 4 | Raising and Mentoring Security Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq

Security force assistance played a leading role in both Afghanistan and Iraq, where local security forces were often spoken of as “our ticket home” or “our exit strategy.” The effort to raise, train, equip, field, and advise army and police forces eventually became the center of gravity in both theaters. Yet for some years, the effort was ad hoc, under-resourced, and complicated by internal bureaucratic struggles in Washington and by corrosive corruption and mismanagement within host-nation governments. If the United States were to undertake similar efforts in the future, the quality and effectiveness of its security force assistance programs will again play a decisive role in achieving successful outcomes.

Sept. 1, 2015

Chapter 5 | 9/11 and After: Legal Issues, Lessons, and Irregular Conflict

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Sept. 1, 2015

Chapter 6 | Reflections on Lessons Encountered

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Sept. 1, 2015

Annex A | The Human and Financial Costs of Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq

This annex provides both an assessment of the human and financial costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a baseline for assessing broader strategic gains and losses from a decade-plus of war. It reviews official U.S. Government data and private studies that attempt to capture the direct costs of U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as some of the related and projected costs associated with the operations such as healthcare and disability costs for veterans and interest on the debt. While the annex focuses specifically on U.S. costs, it also briefly reviews costs incurred by our allies, host-nation security forces, and local populations.

Sept. 1, 2015

Annex B | Afghanistan Timeline

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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.

July 1, 2015

On Military Professionalism and Civilian Control

Recently, the subject of military “professionalism” has gripped the attention of top echelons of the Department of Defense (DOD) to a degree that is perhaps unprecedented. Most notably, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Martin E. Dempsey has directed each of the Services to review and rearticulate its understanding of the profession of arms in the context of its particular missions, traditions, and practices.

July 1, 2015

Detangling the Web: A Screenshot of U.S. Government Cyber Activity

Blackouts. School testing. Electrical grids. Insurance. These all have one major thing in common: they have all been targets for cyber attacks in a period of two weeks during March 2015. The United States faces thousands of cyber assaults every day. States, state-sponsored organizations, other groups and individuals all combine to incessantly probe, spy on, and attack public and private organizations as well as denizens of the United States. These ongoing problems require a U.S. Government response, so it adopted a bureaucratic approach that has resulted in a complex system that is constantly evolving as new problems are recognized. This article provides a comprehensive look at how the United States has organized to address these challenges. Although U.S. Government efforts seem sizable, private use of the Internet dwarfs government usage.

July 1, 2015

One Size Does Not Fit All: The Multifaceted Nature of Cyber Statecraft

To better evaluate the strategic implications of cyber as a domain in which to achieve national security objectives—from antiaccess/area denial to governance, democratization, and economic growth—policymakers need a rigorous, multifaceted framework that examines cyber statecraft not only as a military tool, but also as a more holistic form of statecraft. Such a framework is long overdue to help make sense of the great technological disruption that continues to shape the international political system. While the military component is essential, cyber statecraft is often viewed only through this coercive lens, when in fact it is much broader.

July 1, 2015

Understanding the Indications and Warning Efforts of U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense

The critical mission of defending the U.S. homeland—homeland defense—requires a fully integrated capability to identify, categorize, and fuse strategic and tactical indications and warnings (I&W) by U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), and U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM). Today’s fiscally constrained environment may encourage decisionmakers to eliminate perceived I&W “redundancies” and create an I&W stovepipe for weapons release authorities (WRAs). In a mission area where time is of the essence and failure would result in grave damage to national security, such an arrangement would create an unacceptable risk to homeland defense.

July 1, 2015

Spinning the Top: American Land Power and the Ground Campaigns of a Korean Crisis

Gashed from the yellow earth and scarred by lacerating wire bound to steel posts, the moment Korea’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) comes into view, you cannot avoid the impression that you are witness to a crime. In a way, you are. The DMZ is an ominous wound from an unfinished conflict dividing the Korean Peninsula and serving as a boundary between incarceration and freedom. It carves its way between Korea’s sharp-sloped green hills only 20 short miles from the megacity of Seoul and its surrounding environs with its 25 million people who, after decades of economic development, are enjoying increasingly prosperous lives. The DMZ both signifies suffering already endured and foreshadows violence yet to come. It represents a status quo inter-bellum, which cannot endure. It is like no other place in the world. And the complex strategic and operational challenge that it poses to America’s joint force is likewise daunting.

July 1, 2015

Making Soup with Stones: JMTC Partnership and the NATO Connected Forces Initiative

First published in Europe in 1947 by Marcia Brown after World War II, many children have grown up reading a classic story titled “Stone Soup.” Most of us are probably familiar with this tale, based on French folklore, of three hungry and tired soldiers approaching a village where the peasants hid their meager rations of food upon learning of their approach. In a wily and enterprising solution, the soldiers begin boiling a large pot of water in the town square as they profess to make soup from three small stones. The people of the village, impressed by this notion, begin contributing bits and pieces of meat and vegetables to create a meal for everyone, thus highlighting the power and importance of cooperation and what small contributions by all can produce for the greater good.

July 1, 2015

The Limits of Airpower or the Limits of Strategy: The Air Wars in Vietnam and Their Legacies

For most of the world’s population, America’s air wars in Vietnam are now ancient history. The first U.S. bombing raids against North Vietnam, conducted in response to attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats on the destroyer USS Maddox in the Tonkin Gulf, occurred a half-century ago this August. Seven months later, America began its longest sustained “strategic bombing” campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, against the North. That effort, and the Linebacker campaigns that followed, dropped a million tons of bombs on North Vietnam. Three million more tons fell on Laos and Cambodia—supposedly “neutral” countries in the conflict. Four million tons fell on South Vietnam—America’s ally in the war against communist aggression. When the last raid by B-52s over Cambodia on August 15, 1973, culminated American bombing in Southeast Asia, the United States had dropped more than 8 million tons of bombs in 9 years. Less than 2 years later, Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam were communist countries.

July 1, 2015

Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War

In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois, the eminent American sociologist, scholar, and leader, wrote that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.” Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; and North Charleston, South Carolina should make us realize that, despite America’s recent racial progress, the problem of the 21st century is still the color-line. Harlem’s Rattlers lays bare the bigotry that African-American citizens faced in the early 20th century and, more importantly, details the innumerable accomplishments by black American soldiers despite the racism propagated by the President of the United States, U.S. military, and bigoted American civilians.

July 1, 2015

Book Review: The Modern Mercenary

At their peak, contractors comprised more than 50 percent of U.S. personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, despite complaints about contractor performance, the Pentagon has stated that contractors will make up half of any future U.S. force deployments. Why? Because they work. This reality requires defense professionals to seek a deeper understanding of what contractors do and the implications for future conflict—making Sean McFate’s The Modern Mercenary a very timely book. In it, he not only carefully examines contractors, but also describes the changing international environment in which they will operate.

July 1, 2015

Book Review: Meeting China Halfway

China is on the minds of many today. In fact, an informal term has been coined for the group of scholars and defense officials who spend most of their waking hours thinking, talking, and writing about China. They are so-called China Watchers. In no other foreign policy realm is a similar term used with such frequency. This alone should give everyone pause. Watching for what, exactly?

July 1, 2015

Joint Doctrine Update

Joint Publications (JPs) Under Revision (to be signed within 6 months)

July 1, 2015

Three Approaches to Center of Gravity Analysis: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

Since the establishment of the center of gravity (COG) concept as a fundamental planning factor in joint military doctrine, its proper identification has been considered crucial in successful attainment of desired objectives. Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Operation Planning, states, “This process cannot be taken lightly, since a faulty conclusion resulting from a poor or hasty analysis can have very serious consequences, such as the inability to achieve strategic and operational objectives at an acceptable cost.”

July 1, 2015

China Moves Out: Stepping Stones Toward a New Maritime Strategy

Over the last decade, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has increased the frequency, duration, complexity, and distance from the mainland of its operations. Not only does China maintain a permanent counterpiracy escort flotilla in the Indian Ocean, it also now routinely conducts naval exercises and operations beyond the first island chain throughout the year. This normalization of PLAN operations in the Western Pacific and beyond is an important step toward an emerging new maritime strategy that will incorporate far seas defense.

July 1, 2015

Understanding Putin Through a Middle Eastern Looking Glass

The resurgence of Russian influence in the Middle East has surprised Moscow as much as any other capital. Russia has done better than the Kremlin and its Middle East experts feared when the Arab Spring began. Despite Moscow’s deep involvement in the Ukrainian crisis, Russia is now in a stronger position with national leaderships across the Middle East than it was in 2011, although its stock with Sunni Arab public opinion has been sinking.

May 6, 2015

DTP 107: Shifting Human Environment: How Trends in Human Geography Will Shape Future Military Operations

In January 2014 the Center for Technology and National Security Policy was asked to examine some major trends within the domain of human geography, developments that will have important influence on the type of environments future military forces will be operating in.

April 1, 2015

Letter

In response to “Opportunities in Understanding China’s Approach to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands” by Lieutenant Colonel Bradford John Davis, USA (Joint Force Quarterly 74 (4th Quarter 2014), I must argue against his proposal for joint patrols/resource development.

April 1, 2015

From the Chairman: Defining Duty

Throughout over 40 years of service, I have maintained a list of principles to judge my actions against. Chief among these principles is duty. I have reflected and written on this topic throughout my career, and I strongly believe the concept of duty is central to the Profession of Arms.

April 1, 2015

Executive Summary

A century and a half has passed since the end of the American Civil War and reminders both physical and cultural surround us, especially here in the Nation’s capital. So let us reflect on one important idea of that time that today all Americans should consider, one that President Abraham Lincoln himself held in the front of his mind throughout the war: the value of seeking unity from diverse opinions.

April 1, 2015

Rethinking the Cyber Domain and Deterrence

As the Department of Defense (DOD) formulates strategy and doctrine for operating in cyberspace, it is vital to understand the domain and how it relates to the traditional domains of land, sea, air, and space.

April 1, 2015

Framing the Big Data Ethics Debate for the Military

Big data is everywhere these days. It shows up in many realms of contemporary life, ranging from how people are guided to potential purchases as they shop online, to how political campaigns win elections, and even to when farmers plant crops and apply fertilizer to their fields.

April 1, 2015

Activity-Based Intelligence: Revolutionizing Military Intelligence Analysis

The vast amount of information that the Intelligence Community (IC) collects demands a transformation in the way the Department of Defense (DOD) intelligence enterprise processes, organizes, and presents data.

April 1, 2015

The Defense Innovation Initiative: The Importance of Capability Prototyping

The recently unveiled Defense Innovation Initiative aims to “pursue innovative ways to sustain and advance our military superiority for the 21st Century” by finding “new and creative ways to sustain, and in some areas expand, our advantages even as we deal with more limited resources.”

April 1, 2015

The Quantum Leap into Computing and Communication: A Chinese Perspective

For a few decades, nations have been relying on encryption systems to protect a wide variety of computerized transmissions ranging from commerce to government to military communications. While today’s encryption systems are considered reasonably secure, the possibilities of quantum cryptography and quantum computing offer a whole new dimension and threat to computerized secrecy.

April 1, 2015

Writing Faculty Papers for Joint Professional Military Education

In joint professional military education (JPME), there is no tool more powerful than the written word. Whether in the form of books, journal articles, opinion pieces, or course papers, students and faculty members demand high levels of intellectual rigor and reflection in both the products they read and the ones they produce.