Oct. 22, 2024

Better in Pairs: Divide the Indo-Pacific Theater in Half

Every two years the Department of Defense (DOD) reviews the Unified Command Plan (UCP) by assessing the geographic boundaries, missions, and force structure of the unified combatant commands against the operational environment.

Oct. 22, 2024

The Need for U.S. Stability Policing

Military commanders must plan for, train, and resource an adequate number of military personnel to implement order, protect property, and maintain security to prevent lawlessness.

Oct. 22, 2024

The Profession of Arms: What Scholars, Practitioners, and Others of Note Have Had to Say

The so-called profession of arms is both a descriptive label and a normative imperative that has been with us throughout the modern and postmodern eras.

Oct. 22, 2024

Stop Talking to Yourself: Military Recruiting in the Modern Age

The decision to join the military is profoundly influenced by how individuals perceive military service. Recent evidence indicates that young people tend to have a negative view of the military, and the Department of Defense (DOD) has struggled to effectively communicate with the youth market.

Oct. 22, 2024

Considering the Utility of Modern Blockade in a Protracted Conflict With China

The January 2023 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) publication The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan is a thorough and sobering report detailing 24 hypothetical scenarios in which China takes military action to unify Taiwan with its mainland.

Oct. 22, 2024

Winners of the 2024 Essay Competitions

NDU Press hosted the final round of judging on May 16–17, 2024, during which 28 faculty judges from 17 participating professional military education (PME) institutions selected the best entries in each category.

Oct. 22, 2024

CBRN Defense Readiness Reporting

In this era of Great Power competition, the joint force faces strategic rivals that challenge its ability to perform operations across the range of military operations, including countering weapons of mass destruction and defending against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats.

Oct. 22, 2024

The Implications of the New Security Environment on the National Health Systems Enterprise

The last decade has seen a progressive breakdown in global acceptance of a rules-based international system.

Oct. 22, 2024

The Key to Arctic Dominance: Establishing an Arctic-Focused Subordinate Unified Command

As Arctic and non-Arctic nations begin to increase their activities in the region, security concerns will only increase, justifying the need for a dedicated joint command that can operate in the harsh conditions of the region.

Oct. 22, 2024

Executive Summary

We are looking for great things from her moving forward. We are also looking for your views on the joint force about the world you face, because I am still a believer that the pen is mightier than the sword.

July 30, 2024

The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI

In November 2023, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Officer of the Department of Defense (DOD), Craig Martell, stated, “Technologies evolve.

July 30, 2024

The Political Thought of Xi Jinping

Not long after Xi Jinping assumed the post of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in November 2012, a debate among China-watchers emerged over the nature of Xi’s leadership.

July 30, 2024

From Peril to Partnership: U.S. Security Assistance and the Bid to Stabilize Colombia and Mexico

Recent scrutiny from Congress on U.S. military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan has stimulated among both scholars and practitioners an increased interest in the topic of security assistance.

July 30, 2024

Five Truths for Foreign Area Officers

Colonel John Collins served in the U.S. Army through three wars and went on to be a revered military strategist and scholar.

July 30, 2024

The Marine Corps the United States Needs

The U.S. Marine Corps is in the process of a bold modernization initiative known as Force Design, and Congress has called for an independent review, assessment, and analysis of this initiative.

July 30, 2024

Balancing Nonresident Joint Professional Military Education With Military Life

Education has been a top focus in the United States since its earliest days.

July 30, 2024

In Memoriam: Douglas Michael “Dorothy” Morea Commander, U.S. Navy August 8, 1982–January 2, 2024

Commander Doug “Dorothy” Morea hailed from Port Washington, New York, and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. Doug earned his Wings of Gold in July 2006 and began training in the F/A-18 Hornet shortly thereafter.

July 30, 2024

Was 50 Years Long Enough? The All-Volunteer Force in an Era of Large-Scale Combat Operations

In an era of geopolitical competition among major powers, a large-scale war could last longer and result in more casualties than anything the United States has experienced since World War II.

July 30, 2024

Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response The Imperative of an All-Domain Approach

The Department of Defense (DOD) seeks to reduce civilian harm caused by military operations and to improve its ability to respond when civilian harm occurs.

July 30, 2024

Deviance and Innovation: Change in a “Society of Saints”

Military innovation and adaptation studies are a growth industry.

July 30, 2024

The Future of Great Power Competition: Trajectories, Transitions, and Prospects for Catastrophic War

The dominant geostrategic framework of international relations today is that of a Great Power competition (GPC) among three rivalrous, globally dominant states: the United States, Russia, and China.

July 30, 2024

Executive Summary

As I have written before in this space, change is a constant. NDU Press and Joint Force Quarterly are not immune to this fact.

July 29, 2024

Engines of Chaos: Counterlogistics in Competition

July 29, 2024

Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response: The Imperative of an All-Domain Approach

The Department of Defense (DOD) seeks to reduce civilian harm caused by military operations and to improve its ability to respond when civilian harm occurs.

July 19, 2024

Commander’s Critical Information Requirements: Crucial for Decisionmaking and Joint Synchronization

Across the competition continuum, speed of action requires timely decisions and adjustments to a joint task force (JTF) operation plan. As mission command systems improve and information-gathering tools increase in sophistication, a consistent challenge for a headquarters staff is determining the relevant information to analyze for decisionmaking. Arguably, increased mission command technology and capabilities have outpaced decisionmaking performance, leaving then U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark A. Milley to remark, “The sheer volume and speed of conflicting information can easily bring decisionmaking to a screeching halt.” However, commander’s critical information requirements (CCIRs) are designed specifically to combat these challenges and enable the commander’s decisionmaking process.

July 19, 2024

Seeking The Bomb

After nearly 80 years of scholarship on nuclear weapons, one might understandably believe that all the important issues have been addressed, if not settled. However, Vipin Narang, professor of political science at MIT, has a knack for asking and answering questions that other nuclear strategy researchers have overlooked. Whereas most academic work looks at superpowers, Narang’s book Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton University Press, 2014) examines how the strategic deterrence postures of non-superpower nuclear states differ from those of superpowers. And now, in his latest, Seeking the Bomb, he extracts insights from studying the various ways states pursue nuclear weapons, discovering that most would-be nuclear powers take different proliferation paths than Great Power states.

July 19, 2024

Beyond Ukraine

These are lively times for discus- sions about the future of war. After decades of conjecture about what war between two large nation-state militaries with modern ground, sea, and air capabilities might look like, we now have real data and experiences to draw on. Some trends now seem confirmed—such as the lethality of the modern battlefield for rotary-wing and fixed-wing aviation forward of the line of contact and, concurrently, the growing military value of unmanned autonomous systems. With other questions about the character of warfare, the debate has grown even fiercer—such as what the balance is between offense and defense, or what the significance and role of cyberwar- fare is. Questions about trends—in what Michael Howard calls the for- gotten dimensions of strategy—have also reappeared: What constitutes a sustainable defense industrial base, what is the value of professional armies versus citizen armies, and what causes a society to choose resistance instead of submission?

July 19, 2024

The New Makers of Modern Strategy

The New Makers of Modern Strategy, edited by the prolific Hal Brands, is a monumental tome of 1,100-plus pages. Its readers may recall the 1986 version edited by Clausewitz scholar Peter Paret (itself an update of the original from 1943). Brands notes in the introduction that the church of strategy is broad, and as testimony in New Makers, a profusion of ideas, events, and facts tumble out in 45 essays, loosely connected by a handful of themes. “Foundations and Founders” starts with key historical strategic thinkers and then proceeds in a chronological sequence: “Strategy in an Age of Great- Power Rivalry” (roughly 1648–1914); “Strategy in an Age of Global War” (1914–1945); “Strategy in a Bipolar Era” (1945–1991); and “Strategy in the Post–Cold War World” (1991–present).

Joint Force Quarterly 113 July 19, 2024

Defending an Achilles’ Heel Evolving Warfare in the Philippines, 1941–1945

As Alfred Thayer Mahan stated, “The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice.”1 When we consider maritime strategy today, analysis of the Pacific War offers substantial lessons. For centuries, the Pacific has proved crucial to the global economy and as a stage for Great Power competition. In the late 19th century, European powers vied for control over rubber, oil, and minerals, as well as external markets for their domestically produced consumer goods. Mimicking the foreign policy of other imperial nations, Japan sought to revise the European-dominated regional order to better serve its own national interests. The Japanese Imperial Army began conquests in China in the 1930s and then—after Japan proposed the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940—set its sights on Southeast Asia in the 1940s. Sea lines of communication between the Japanese home islands and their territorial expansions became imperative. In the geographic center of this ambitious Japanese strategy lay the U.S.-controlled Philippine Islands.

July 19, 2024

Supporting People With Policy and Platforms: The Key to Acquisition Reform

During the Korean War, U.S. Air Force fighter pilots were faced with a difficult technical challenge. Russian-built MiG-15s outmatched American-made F-86 Sabres, forcing American pilots to develop superior flying tactics to bridge the technical capability gap. After the war, the Air Force established the U.S. Air Force Weapons School (Weapons School) in 1953 to train future fighter pilots on such flying tactics as well as on leadership. Next, in Vietnam, the Air Force once again realized—after sustaining tremendous fighter aircraft losses—that its pilots lacked adequate training. As a result, the Weapons School added aircraft as part of a new Aggressor squadron—along with a whole host of new training approaches.

July 19, 2024

Mission (Command) Complete: Implications of JADC2

As one of the fundamental warfighting functions, command and control (C2) has changed little in nature over the course of American military history: Command and control encompasses the exercise of authority, responsibility, and direction by a commander over assigned and attached forces to accomplish the mission. Command at all levels is the art of motivating and directing people and organizations into action to accomplish missions. Control is inherent in command. To control is to manage and direct forces and functions consistent with a commander’s command authority. Control of forces and functions helps commanders and staffs compute requirements, allocate means, and integrate efforts.

July 19, 2024

The PPWT and Ongoing Challenges to Arms Control in Space

It was early evening in Washington, DC, on January 11, 2007, when an SC-19 ballistic missile took off from Sichuan Province in the People’s Republic of China. The missile climbed 534 miles before releasing a 600-kilogram payload that slammed into the defunct Chinese Fengyun-1C weather satellite. The test generated an estimated 35,000 pieces of orbital debris spanning 2,200 vertical miles, the largest debris-creating event to date that would threaten private, civil, and international assets in space, including the International Space Station.

July 19, 2024

The Other Arctic: Competition, Cooperation, or Coexistence?

In 1959, 12 countries signed the Antarctic Treaty to ensure scientific freedom and equal access for all nations of the world to the continent. Since then, the number of states acceding to the treaty has grown to 56 from all parts of the globe, with just over half—29 states—now granted “consultative” status to make decisions regarding the future protection and use of Antarctica through the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM). For over 60 years, the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) has provided the world with a peaceful and stable environment to conduct scientific inquiry, protect unique biodiversity, and promote regional tourism.

July 16, 2024

DOD’s Need for a Transportable Energy Solution: The Promise of Nuclear Power

In the 42 days following Hurricane Maria in September 2017, the Federal Government deployed 366 generators with a combined 122-megawatt electric (MWe) capacity to Puerto Rico. This supported one-third of critical infrastructure on the island but fell far short of the ~2,400 MWe normally needed just in San Juan. This disaster highlights a profound Department of Defense (DOD) capability gap in providing large-scale transportable electrical power generation to the Defense Support of Civil Authority (DSCA) mission. This disaster should stand as a stark warning to planners as DOD refocuses on peer competition, fields ever more energy-intensive technologies, invests in forward synthetic fuel production, transitions to an all-electric ground, and addresses climate change.

July 16, 2024

Implementing the Chairman’s Guidance on Experiential Learning in PME Classrooms

Major powers are active across all strategic domains—including space and cyberspace—and possess multiple tools of national power to realize their leadership’s core objectives. In turn, the present geopolitical competition among the United States, China, and Russia includes diplomatic, informational, military, and economic dimensions. As stated in Joint Doctrine Note 2-19, Strategy, military strategy requires employment of “the instruments of national power across a broad spectrum of competition and conflict in pursuit of objectives, in a transregional, all-domain, and multifunctional environment.” Given this present and future reality, the education of contemporary strategists should include experiential learning opportunities where participants develop multipronged national strategies within a competitive exercise environment. This type of activity could provide a stimulating, hands-on educational experience that promotes critical thinking on how to balance competing national priorities while yielding important insights into how potential adversaries seek to do the same.

July 16, 2024

Getting the Best Out of Joint Warfighter Development

Is the Department of Defense (DOD) producing the best joint warfighters possible? During strategic competition that increasingly ebbs toward conflict, joint warfighting and joint warfighter development are more important than ever. Joint warfighter development is the catalyst necessary for the U.S. military to conduct joint operations.

July 16, 2024

"Study, Not Doctrine": Prioritizing History in JPME

War is inherently unpredictable, uncertain, and unquantifiable. The insights are timeless, and Carl von Clausewitz suffuses On War with these understandings, but we struggle to come to terms with the implications of those observations. The need to make predictions is seemingly irresistible, but approaches rooted in process or in generalizing about behavior fail in practice. Generic concepts of war facilitate discussion in the abstract but face challenges in accounting for variables such as ambiguity, leadership, personalities, politics, fear, confusion, violence, and friction. The commercial and budgetary attractions of characterizing techniques, technologies, weapons, or approaches to war as seeming to guarantee results can create powerful, if perverse, incentives that frequently lead to disappointing results. Ongoing military operations are understandably closely held or even deceptive.

July 15, 2024

2040 Vision: Designing UK Defence for Advantage in a Competitive Age

Some readers will have a close affinity for Scottish whisky and heroes (rebels?) such as William Wallace. We wonder if the request for us to write an article for Joint Force Quarterly was inspired by another Scottish icon, the poet Robert Burns, who wrote, “Oh, would some Power the gift give us / To see ourselves as others see us!” We are sure that we shall fall short of the literary genius of Burns, but we hope our observations will provide some of the value he describes of being seen through the eyes of others.

July 15, 2024

Breaking the Shield: Countering Drone Defenses

Unmanned systems will help save Taiwan. At least, that is what some recent war games suggest.

July 15, 2024

Accelerating Transition of Biotechnology Products for Military Supply Chains

Biomanufacturing, a process in which organisms and their biological systems are used to produce chemicals and biomaterials, has been a part of the military industrial base since World War I.

July 12, 2024

Taking Cues From Complexity: How Complex Adaptive Systems Prepare for All-Domain Operations

Because of potential increased adversary military expenditures and technological advances, the U.S. military technological advantage that has benefited American interests since the end of World War II is dwindling. To adjust to the increasingly technical global competitive arena, the joint force continues to develop the joint all-domain operations (JADO) concept, mainly adapted from the U.S.

July 12, 2024

Executive Summary

JFQ is certainly the Chairman’s journal, but it exists solely to give voice to you and your ideas on the joint force, jointness in general, and how best to fight and win our Nation’s wars and secure the peace. For over 30 years, the best and brightest among us have sustained the dialogue within these pages, whether physical or virtual. Help us continue this great tradition by sending us your articles and adding to the growing body of knowledge that is Joint Force Quarterly.

Feb. 16, 2024

No Limits: The Inside Story of China’s War With the West

No Limits: The Inside Story of China’s War With the West is a valuable book. It is simultaneously analytical and personal. No Limits is an incisive, selective history about how the promise of China’s integration into Western economic systems and global institutions gave way to acrimony and rivalry. It also is author Andrew Small’s memoir about how his quarter-century-long iterative interactions with China evolved from hope and cautious optimism about Sino-global integration into resigned fatalism that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can never tolerate such a happy ending. The CCP must instead view itself as perpetual victim and implacable rival of the West.

Feb. 16, 2024

Airpower in the War Against ISIS

In Airpower in the War Against ISIS, Benjamin Lambeth not only weaves an account that celebrates the decisive role he insists airpower played in the defeat of the so-called Islamic State (IS) but also depicts tragically missed opportunities and almost incomprehensibly poor judgment on the part of U.S. civilian and military leaders that unnecessarily delayed that defeat.

Feb. 16, 2024

The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology

Emerging biotechnologies have captured the imagination, interest, and concerns of the world. Scenarios once relegated to science fiction movies and novels are now potentially within the grasp of bioengineering. The purposeful design of biology can enable novel ways to meet a variety of societal needs—from the biomanufacturing of commodities to gene therapies and the recreation of once-extinct organisms. This biological revolution, or “bioeconomy,” has the potential to address important issues such as climate change, sustainable energy, and food production, as well as improved medicines and quality of life for all. But with this capability comes dual use (that is, not only for commercial/military use but also by good actors/bad actors) as well as profound ethical concerns, making The Genesis Machine a timely volume.

Feb. 16, 2024

Applying Three Decisionmaking Models to the Lakota Sioux Wars

Examining the factors leading to the decisions made by Crazy Horse, Custer, and Reno through the lenses of expected utility, cybernetic, and poliheuristic decision strategies enables objectivity in analysis and hindsight. It also offers an example of how to study three different leaders, each of whom resolved uncertainty with their decisions, even if such decisions proved disastrous. Modern leaders can utilize these same tools to make sense of complexity and to apply a framework to analyze an opponent’s past decisions, compare the findings to the present situation, and then predict future courses of action.

Feb. 16, 2024

Converting a Political- to a Military-Strategic Objective

Political objectives are usually achieved by using one’s military power. Converting political objectives into achievable military-strategic objectives is the primary responsibility of military-strategic leadership. This process is largely an art rather than a science. There are many potential pitfalls because much depends on the knowledge, understanding, experience, and judgment of military-strategic leaders. Most often, mistakes made are only recognized after setbacks or defeats suffered during the hostilities. Despite its critical importance, there is no consensus on the steps and methods in converting political- into military-strategic objectives. There is scant writing on the subject in either doctrinal documents or professional journals.

Feb. 16, 2024

The “Survival Chain”: Medical Support to Military Operations on the Future Battlefield

The Department of Defense Joint Trauma System (JTS) was created to provide optimal care to the wounded on a battlefield. The current National Defense Strategy anticipates future threats of large-scale combat operations (LSCO) against peer adversaries that may limit overall freedom of maneuver for medical evacuation, increase survivability risk of medical units, and limit timeliness and robustness of critical medical logistics. Thus, the JTS must continue to evolve and embrace the concept of Medical Performance Optimization (MPO) to adapt to this new operational reality.

Feb. 16, 2024

From “Made in China” to “Created in China”: Intellectual Property Rights in the People’s Republic of China

Friction between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on technology captures the headlines regularly. While there continue to be intellectual property rights (IPR) violations in China, China analysts need to be more mindful of China’s rising influence in generating intellectual property. The reality is that China’s growing influence in patent applications and innovation is the real threat.

Feb. 15, 2024

Don’t Get Lost in the Numbers: An Analytic Framework for Nuclear Force Requirements Debates

This article proposes an approach to nuclear force sizing debates based on a framework built on four analytic dimensions: overarching risk management approaches; deterrence and assurance objectives; strategic force employment guidance; and operational constraints. The answers to key questions across these dimensions provide a structure to inform debates about the appropriate size and characteristics of U.S. nuclear forces. Only after clarifying U.S. objectives across these dimensions and focusing on key considerations therein should policymakers enter nuclear force sizing debates. The resulting analysis does not advocate for any policy position or hypothesize the “correct” number of nuclear forces. Instead, the purpose of the framework is to focus nuclear force sizing debates on more fundamental assumptions regarding the role of nuclear weapons in achieving U.S. national security objectives.