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.