July 7, 2023

Analyzing a Country’s Strategic Posture: Suggestions for Practitioners

Diplomats and defense attachés are expected to give a fresh assessment of a country’s strategic posture. The utility of this exercise is that, if done prudently and with an eye for nuance, it has some predictive value. Even the world’s only superpower has an interest in judging what positions other governments may take in a dispute. Beyond predictions one can identify some potentialities, that is, possible future developments that may or may not come to pass.

July 7, 2023

Special Operations Forces Institution-Building: From Strategic Approach to Security Force Assistance

SOF institution-building (SOFIB) takes on significant importance for the future because as irregular and hybrid warfare becomes more prevalent, the relevance of SOF increases. Allied and partner nation SOF can be sustainable and operationally effective in a near-peer environment only if they exist within a proper institutional framework.

July 7, 2023

The Purpose and Impact of the U.S. Military HIV Research Program

HIV has been a recognized issue since the mid-1980s when it was linked to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Prevalence of HIV varies among militaries, often exceeding civilian rates in high-prevalence areas. Military screening typically excludes HIV-positive individuals from enlistment, indicating that infections occur after enlistment, suggesting that military personnel are often at substantially increased risk for acquiring and then possibly transmitting HIV. The Military HIV Research Program (MHRP) at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) was established in 1986 to research and develop preventive and treatment measures, evaluate the impact on U.S. Servicemembers, and protect military personnel while addressing the global burden of HIV.

July 7, 2023

Improving Analytic Tradecraft: The Benefit of a Multilateral Foundational Training Model for Military Intelligence

The foundational training of our military intelligence professionals is paramount for our national security. This training could be improved by soliciting the individual military Services by means of a multilateral approach. The Services should work together multilaterally through their lead commands for intelligence, versus unilaterally or even jointly, ensuring synchronized instruction at a foundational level. Regardless of their specific roles within the profession, all Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen, and Guardians in the intelligence profession should have a solid understanding of the core analytic tradecraft standards that should apply to their daily work.

July 7, 2023

Why Military Space Matters

Over the past two-plus decades of military operations, our nation’s ability to use outer space has not been consequentially challenged or contested. An unintended byproduct of that circumstance is we have unintentionally conditioned strategists and national security professionals to assume the space advantage is our birthright. In our past wars our adversaries didn’t need to leverage space to fight and certainly had more important military objectives than attacking U.S. space capabilities. But if the next war is against a near-peer competitor, that will not be the case.

July 7, 2023

An AI-Ready Military Workforce

The military's successful integration of new technologies, such as AI, is crucial in a revolution in military affairs. The advantages of AI will be realized by the military that can best employ it. To realize the groundbreaking potential of AI, military organizations should prioritize creating an AI-enabled workforce based on the nature of AI in the military. This means moving away from solely focusing on creating costly AI experts and instead adopting an AI skills-in-depth model. Training AI experts alone is insufficient for achieving revolutionary effects on the battlefield.

July 7, 2023

Quantum Computing: A New Competitive Factor with China

The winner in the race to develop quantum-based technology will have the potential to shape the world in ways that are hard to imagine today—for better or worse. The application of quantum technologies not only has the potential to reshape the national security landscape but also to determine which nation will become the foremost superpower of the 21st century.

July 7, 2023

Cutting the Chaff: Overlooked Lessons of Military UAP Sightings for Joint Force and Interagency Coordination

The Mantell incident and other military UAP sightings make it clear that misidentification remains a common problem in complex operating environments. They demonstrate how distinguishing one’s joint force and interagency partners (or their assets) from an enemy force, from civilians and other noncombatants, or even from environmental phenomena can be a challenge in the best of circumstances. Misidentification of friendly (or nonhostile) airborne assets can lead to expensive or even fatal accidents in the field.

July 7, 2023

A Framework for Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems Deterrence

As nations around the world continue to pursue lethal autonomous platforms for use on the battlefield, the lack of a commonly understood framework for their employment increases the risk of inadvertent or accidental escalation due to miscommunication or misinterpretation of deterrent signals in competition and crisis.

July 7, 2023

Strategic Inflection Point: The Most Historically Significant and Fundamental Change in the Character of War Is Happening Now—While the Future Is Clouded in Mist and Uncertainty

Geostrategic competition and rapidly advancing technology are driving fundamental changes to the character of war. Our opportunity to ensure that we maintain an enduring competitive advantage is fleeting. We must modernize the Joint Force to deter our adversaries, defend the United States, ensure future military advantage, and, if necessary, prevail in conflict.

July 7, 2023

Letter to the Editor

The April 2023 issue of Joint Force Quarterly features a positive review of our book, "Cyber Persistence Theory: Redefining National Security in Cyberspace" by Stafford Ward, alongside an article on cyber and deterrence by James Van de Velde. Both pieces present discordant views on U.S. Cyber Command's approach to persistent engagement and how it fits with a strategy of deterrence and the more recent concept of integrated deterrence. As theorists and a practitioner in persistent engagement, we offer some clarification.

May 4, 2023

When Dragons Watch Bears: Information Warfare Trends and Implications for the Joint Force

Over the past decade, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has watched Russia’s employment of information warfare (IW) with great interest. The parallels between these two Great Powers and their associated aggression toward breakaway republics present an opportunity for the United States and the joint force to map the contours of an evolving Chinese information warfare strategy to build a more comprehensive U.S. response prior to a future conflict in the region. Thwarting Chinese information confrontation tactics during crisis and conflict will require a comprehensive approach, one that boldly marshals increased unity of effort from across the whole of government. To compete and win in the 21st-century information environment, the Department of Defense (DOD), in partnership with the interagency community, should endeavor to lead three initiatives across upcoming joint force time horizons.

May 4, 2023

Mind the Gap: Space Resiliency Advantages of High-Altitude Capabilities

This article argues that the joint force must develop high-altitude capabilities and integrate them into joint operations to improve space mission resiliency. High-altitude capabilities ensure that warfighting mission requirements are met and will enable the joint force to achieve its objectives in a conflict when adversaries attempt to heavily contest both air and space. The following section recommends a joint definition for the high-altitude region, continues with a historical review of the development and importance of high-altitude capabilities, describes how their use will improve space mission resiliency, and concludes with recommendations for ways the joint force should develop and budget for these important high-altitude capabilities as it prepares for the next conflict.

May 4, 2023

Echoes of the Past: The Burma Campaign and Future Operational Design in the Indo-Pacific Region

This article is organized into three parts. First, a historical narrative of the Burma campaign highlights the struggles of 1942–1943, then details the second Arakan operation, the second Chindit operation, the battle of Imphal-Kohima, and the final Allied operation to retake Burma. Second, inferences are drawn from the historical narrative applied to modern warfare. Finally, implications for future joint force operational design in the Indo-Pacific derive from these inferences, indicating lessons contemporary joint force commanders and staffs can learn from the Burma campaign.

May 4, 2023

Leadership Decapitation: Strategic Targeting of Terrorist Organizations

Leadership decapitation has become increasingly popular as an efficient, economical, and effective counterterrorism option for advancing U.S. interests when dealing with organizations willing to kill civilians in pursuit of political ends. But does the removal of violent nonstate leaders actually yield demonstrably favorable results beyond the obvious: execution or apprehension of a target? Does it, in fact, weaken or bring about the demise of terrorist organizations? In Leadership Decapitation: Strategic Targeting of Terrorist Organizations, Jenna Jordan addresses such questions by offering a complex and nuanced discussion of the ways that leadership decapitation affects terrorist organizations and insurgencies that kill civilians.

May 4, 2023

Resourcing the National Security Enterprise: Connecting the Ends and Means of U.S. National Security

Books on strategy are often aspirational or theoretical, considering high-level questions, first principles, and general trends without delving deeply into the mechanics of implementation. Similarly, a parallel vein of literature focuses on a narrow range of tactical platforms or concepts in the implicit hope that someone somewhere will use these clever tools to build a future force from the bottom up. Resourcing the National Security Enterprise: Connecting the Ends and Means of U.S. National Security fits squarely between these two attractive yet unsatisfying poles; it is a practitioner’s guide to programming and budgeting that aims to demystify the “invisible but very real web of processes and authorities [that] constitute the ‘rules of the game’ for the bureaucracy”—“rules which often forestall the ‘obvious solution’” to government workers’ problems.

May 4, 2023

Cyber Persistence Theory: Redefining National Security in Cyberspace

Few books have been written in the recent past whose stated intent has been to influence and shape the perceptions of foreign and defense policymakers. In the spirit of the famed Stanford University political scientist Alexander George, who wrote Bridging the Gap: Theory and Policy in Foreign Policy, the authors of Cyber Persistence Theory: Redefining National Security in Cyberspace have successfully bridged the gap with a thought-provoking, accessible academic analysis. Cyber Persistence Theory holistically examines the current cyberspace environment in a way that is sure to be useful to U.S. cyberspace policymakers and operators.

May 4, 2023

A Framework for Mission Analysis in the Space Planning Process

The U.S. Space Force (USSF) has a joint integration problem. It provides capabilities that give the military and its partners decisive advantages in combat. In this way, many USSF missions are inherently “joint.” However, the Space Force is unprepared to contribute to planning for true joint operations—operations with a significant space nexus where the main effort could easily transition between space and other domains. In such an environment, adversary space systems will be high-value targets that drive action, and friendly space systems will be critical assets that require protection. Although the Space Force has made significant progress toward establishing Service components at the combatant commands, putting Guardians in a position to support joint force commanders (JFCs), the Service has not yet armed those Guardians with a process to bring space system considerations into joint planning.

May 4, 2023

Intermediate Force Capabilities: Nonlethal Weapons and Related Military Capabilities

The U.S. military has a history of fighting wars and winning battles through the overwhelming use of force. In today’s strategic environment, the battle is often one of competition below the threshold of armed conflict. Our adversaries are gaining the advantage by exploiting the predictable joint force responses, either showing force through military presence or employing lethal force. Both of these extremes are often ineffective against adversary competition. Yet neither doctrine nor training prepares the joint force to employ force between these extremes. To protect current and future national political and military interests, the U.S. military must modify its mindset and tactics to gain the necessary tools for strategic competition, or the Nation risks losing its competitive advantage.

May 4, 2023

The New “Cyber” Space Race: Integrating the Private Sector Into U.S. Cyber Strategy

The impact of Russia’s rise as a cyberpower and the Kremlin’s use of cyber warfare as an instrument of power have not gone unnoticed by U.S. Government and military leaders. The questions remain, however: What can the United States learn from Russia, and how has the United States adapted its national strategy for cyberpower to this integrated, whole-of-society approach to international competition and conflict?

May 4, 2023

General George Washington: First in War, First in Peace, First in National Security Strategy

On July 4, 1776, American leaders at the Second Continental Congress terminated the strategy they had been executing against Great Britain for over a year. They wanted political, military, and economic independence for the 13 colonies. To achieve that end, they relied on all four instruments of national power—diplomatic, informational, military, and economic. But while many of the founders understood one or perhaps two of these instruments, General George Washington was the first American to execute a strategy using all four to achieve his ends—all while operating in a joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational (JIIM) environment, as complicated in its time as ours is today.

May 4, 2023

Cyber Deterrence Is Dead! Long Live “Integrated Deterrence”!

The demands that Congress, some strategists, and many academics make of cyberspace deterrence are unrealistic in the extreme.1 Many want the Department of Defense (DOD) to freeze adversary military or influence operations or the theft of American intellectual property (IP) entirely through the simple threat of interfering with adversary computer code, presumably imperiling the function of either adversary military systems or civilian infrastructure. Such strategic thinking is hopelessly naïve because such threats are insufficiently credible to deter malicious cyberspace activities, which generally fall below the level of armed conflict.2

May 4, 2023

A Mission Assurance Assessment of Threats to Missions and Force Protection Planning

After the Cold War, the United States enjoyed such an uncontested or dominant superiority in every domain that the Department of Defense (DOD) could deploy forces when it wanted, assemble them where it wanted, and operate them as it wanted. Perhaps because of this history, combined with the objectives in the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), DOD components have focused on the development of new offensive and lethal capabilities and concepts with the unstated assumption that, once developed, these capabilities would be available. The following scenario describes how these assumptions can adversely affect DOD force projection capabilities.

May 4, 2023

Napoleon Revisited

Since Napoleon Bonaparte’s death, in 1821, he has continued to command the fervent interest of many admirers. Military thinkers persist in the search for the secrets of his success. Countless books and articles have been written in an attempt to unlock his astonishing abilities.

May 4, 2023

Executive Summary

I offer these thoughts to stimulate your thinking on where the joint force needs to be in the years ahead. Technology is important, but it is not the answer to issues of human nature or culture. Effective leadership must be achieved through training, education, enforcement of standards, effective and appropriate promotion policies, and focusing on respect for everyone who serves. As you experience success in your own lives, be sure to lead with enough humility to help those around you share in that success.

March 10, 2023

Poland's Threat Assessment: Deepened, Not Changed

Polish-Russian relations are traditionally difficult, shaped by geostrategic locations in Europe and shared history. Russians have stereotypes about Poland that color their perception of Polish issues. This, combined with ongoing political and economic disputes, creates a situation where hopes for improvement are slim.

Jan. 18, 2023

The Joint Force Remains Ill-Prepared to Consolidate Gains

A popular policy myth remains rooted in the U.S. mindset: that the military’s mission in combat is complete when the coalition is militarily successful in large-scale combat operations (LSCO) and that once the former regime’s forces have left the battlefield, civilian agencies can immediately move in and begin leading the difficult task of stabilizing the defeated nation. A study of history demonstrates the fallacy of this myth. Yet national policy and joint doctrine enable it to endure. Until joint doctrine incorporates consolidation of gains, the joint force will remain ill-prepared to translate fleeting military successes into long-term U.S. strategic victories

Jan. 18, 2023

The Age of AI: And Our Human Future

To fully appreciate The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, one must overlook its nebulous description of a decades-old issue and suspend any expectations for a well-researched and thorough account of this vital topic. The authors, who represent major policy, industry, and academic heavyweights, stumble in their attempt to raise awareness and often fail to provide meaningful insights. The analysis and research manifested here leave so many things unanswered. Still, the book is not without merit; some may find it a good starting point for a deeper dive into the subject of AI and public policy.

Jan. 18, 2023

Is Remote Warfare Moral? Weighing Issues of Life and Death From 7,000 Miles

The lessons of Joseph O. Chapa’s Is Remote Warfare Moral? Weighing Issues of Life and Death From 7,000 Miles are applicable beyond the remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) community upon which he focuses most of his attention. For a joint force charged with fighting from a distance—competing across oceans, planning against adversaries’ antiaccess/area-denial threats, and employing artificial intelligence (AI) to make rapid sense of complex situations a world away—Chapa’s book constitutes an important advance in the professional ethics of remote warfighting.

Jan. 18, 2023

War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and Conflict

War Transformed is strongly recommended as a guide to improve one’s ability to navigate our uncertain future. Not everyone is a “surf rider,” but this book will stretch minds and force readers to reassess longstanding assumptions and dated ideas. Its strength is in its synthesis of the ideas of many others, which makes War Transformed comprehensive and an excellent foundation for a security studies course. Supplemented by key articles for greater depth on competing ideas or specific technologies, it would be a superb text for a class on the changing character of warfare at either the undergraduate or graduate level.

Jan. 18, 2023

British Successes in 19th-Century Great Power Competition: Lessons for Today’s Joint Force

It is no accident that many of our nation’s finest military minds were avid readers of history. Former Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis’s suggestion that “history lights the . . . path ahead” has proved accurate time and again. As the U.S. security establishment pivots from a focus on counterterrorism to one of countering peer adversaries in new domains of conflict, history may again serve as a guide. As this pivot is under way, the country finds it is no longer the clear global hegemon but rather is operating in a multipolar global power structure. How do we navigate this transition? In the decades after the American Revolution, Britain not only maintained its vital interests despite the loss of the American colonies, but it also successfully navigated a multipolar power structure to strengthen its position in the international community. This article explores 19th-century British strategies to maintain and expand global power that might offer helpful insight to today’s joint force.

Jan. 18, 2023

America Must Engage in the Fight for Strategic Cognitive Terrain

Combining cutting-edge communications with psychosocial science to employ psychological capitulation strategies has changed the character of modern war. Adversaries combine half-truths with psychodynamic behavioral constructs to compete for strategic cognitive terrain. The U.S. military currently lacks the authorizations and capabilities required to protect societies against gray propaganda. Peter Singer and Emerson Brooking quoted an unattributed U.S. Army officer as saying, “Today we go in with the assumption that we’ll lose the battle of the narrative.” The United States can no longer accept loss in the information fight.

Jan. 17, 2023

Army Sustainment Capabilities: Instrumental to the Joint Force in the Indo-Pacific Region

While focusing on the Middle East for over 20 years, the U.S. military has lost its competitive edge over near-peer threats such as China and Russia due to their rapid military modernization across all domains. As the Department of Defense (DOD) looks at foreseeable conflict in the Pacific, the United States will require a joint and combined force to win a joint multi-domain battle. When thinking of the Pacific, the image of water implies movement and sustainment operations conducted in that domain. However, the capabilities required to open, set, and sustain the theater occur on land and are key to enabling the joint force to compete and win in the Indo-Pacific region.

Jan. 16, 2023

Beyond a Credible Deterrent: Optimizing the Joint Force for Great Power Competition

The Department of Defense’s (DOD) current preparation for conflict centers on outdated premonitions of war, with adversaries exploiting fundamental U.S. misconstructions to their advantage. In the era of Great Power competition (GPC), there will be no neatly declared war between nation-states, and all hybrid conflicts will range from violence by proxy to the use of conventional forces. Moreover, DOD is facing fundamental changes to the character of war with technological advances in precision munitions, information technology, hypersonics, cyber warfare, robotics, and artificial intelligence. The country that masters new technology and considers ethical implications for proper legal authority will have a decisive advantage—at least initially—for all future conflicts.

Jan. 16, 2023

America’s Special Operations Problem

From modest beginnings, the U.S. special operations forces (SOF) community has become a juggernaut, operating largely independently and consuming resources disproportionate to its strategic contributions. Accordingly, national leaders should rigorously assess current investments in SOF and rationalize these decisions against other important priorities. There is an important, and indeed essential, place for SOF in the national military establishment that must be preserved. But strategic balance must ever be the goal. Today, that means a streamlined SOF, less bloated and more responsive to joint force commanders and better integrated with the entire joint force.

Jan. 16, 2023

Security Cooperation for Coastal Forces Needs U.S. Coast Guard Leadership

The third decade of the 21st century has opened with an array of potential maritime threats laid out against the United States and its allies, including near-peer-level competition with China and Russia and regional hotspots in almost every navigable waterway of the world. U.S. maritime forces must effectively and efficiently utilize the tools at hand and place the best assets in areas that they are best suited for. This confluence of events provides the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) a unique opportunity to define a specific role within the defense mission set and to fill a critical niche that is currently devoid of leadership. The USCG is the best asset to take point as the U.S. maritime leader for coastal force security cooperation.

Jan. 16, 2023

Cultural Change, Tuition-Free College, and Comprehensive Health Care: Emerging Challenges to National Defense?

Since the inception of the all-volunteer military in 1973, recruiting has been an essential task in maintaining U.S. military staffing. Although recruiting efforts have kept staffing on pace with requirements, overall interest in joining the military is decreasing. The number of applicants has decreased faster than military staffing needs, resulting in higher acceptance rates. Maintaining a robust and ready military is critical for the United States to be able to provide constant protection to its people and interests while maintaining military superiority over its rivals and navigating global threats.

Jan. 16, 2023

Choosing Your Problems

Current best practices motivate decisionmakers and planners facing complex competitive environments to focus energetically on problem elimination. Practitioners are inadvertently encouraged to frame their goal as an endstate—a set of desired conditions without problems—and to conflate endstate with vision. This problem-elimination thinking creates a situation where real outcomes are confused with idealistic vision. Shining light on cognitive bias in decisionmaking and pushing back against problem-elimination thinking may help decisionmakers avoid the costly decisions and unproductive pendulum swings famously plaguing strategic and policy decisions.

Jan. 16, 2023

The Narrative Policy Framework in Military Planning

It has been stated that in the modern operating environment, whose narrative wins is more important than whose army wins. Additionally, it is posited that now, more than in the past, and especially since the end of the Cold War, “political struggles occur over the creation and destruction of credibility.” If these claims are true, how do planners understand, analyze, and derive successful narratives and incorporate them into military plans?

Jan. 16, 2023

Havana Syndrome: Directed Attack or Cricket Noise?

Havana syndrome cases have been investigated by the CIA, the State Department Medical Branch, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and DOD, among others. There has been less than total information-sharing across the agencies involved. Until there is consensus as to the precise cause of and methods to prevent or treat Havana syndrome, it will likely remain an enigma and health concern for diplomatic, intelligence, and military personnel globally.

Jan. 16, 2023

Assessing the Trajectory of Biological Research and Development in the Russian Federation

In this troubling environment, it is important to understand the range of advanced biological research and current biotechnology investments by the Russian Federation in legitimate areas of biological research and biotechnology development in order to inform an assessment of the sophistication of Russia’s alleged biological weapons program.

Jan. 16, 2023

Executive Summary

The joint force recently lost a quiet giant who not only was one of our nation’s most decorated fighter pilots and generals but also a lifelong learner and teacher of national and international strategy. Founding Joint Advanced Warfighting School Strategy Department Chair, Lieutenant General Charles “Chuck” Cunningham, USAF (Ret.), DBA, flew west, as we aviators say, in November. I am proud to say I was one of Chuck’s wingmen as I throw a nickel on the grass in honor of him.

Oct. 26, 2022

Winners of the 2022 Essay Competitions

NDU Press hosted the final round of judging on May 12–13, 2022, during which 31 faculty judges from 18 participating professional military education (PME) institutions selected the best entries in each category. There were 97 submissions in this year’s three categories—the second most entries ever. First Place winners in each of the three categories appear in the following pages.

Oct. 25, 2022

Information Suppressing Fire: Repositioning Forces in Somalia

For most Americans, the film Black Hawk Down is the first thing that comes to mind when they think about Somalia. Images of destroyed helicopters and dead U.S. Servicemembers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu are now part of our national memory. Almost three decades later, the Battle of Mogadishu remains one of the most memorable information operations (IO) defeats of the modern U.S. military. Today, America works with the federal government of Somalia to promote stability and to prevent al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda affiliate, from conducting attacks against American interests and the homeland. When Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA) received orders in mid-November 2020 to move all forces out of Somalia by January 15, 2021, the risk of another Black Hawk Down incident was at the forefront of senior leader considerations. Therefore, the main objective of what became Operation Octave Quartz (OOQ) was to safely reposition all U.S. forces in Somalia. Deterrence was critical to mission success.

Oct. 25, 2022

The Strategic Survivability Triad: The Future of Military Medicine in Support of Combat Power

Future conflicts will be complex and will occur in multidomain environments. This problem requires a solution to protect the force. The answer is the deliberate convergence of three existing and distinct overarching medical concepts employed in the chain of survival. These three critical medical concepts combined—henceforward introduced as the Strategic Survivability Triad (SST)—are early intervention, rapid control of noncompressible hemorrhage, and early blood administration. The SST will provide the force with a sustainable capability needed in future conflicts to enable combat power projection, improve survivability, and mitigate risk. In addition, this will provide options for commanders and policymakers in the attainment of national objectives.

Oct. 25, 2022

Pivoting the Joint Force: National Security Implications of Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported Fishing

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing exploits states, weakens regimes, and presents “one of the greatest threats to marine ecosystems due to its potent ability to undermine national and regional efforts to manage fisheries sustainably.” IUU fishing in Exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and international waters is a facet of Great Power competition; it jeopardizes global security as state and nonstate actors engage in competition and confrontation over an increasingly scarce resource. The IUU fishing industry disrupts sustainable food sources, upsets the already fragile ecosystem, endangers global fishing stocks and food access, creates tensions among nation-states, and threatens geopolitical stability—all of which could lead to armed conflict.

Oct. 25, 2022

Project Convergence: A Venue for Joint All-Domain Command and Control Experimentation

What does the joint force need to do right now to succeed during future conflicts in 2030, 2040, or beyond? The answer is clear: we must experiment together. We must assess the characteristics of the future operating environment (in terms of the physical environment, the threat, and the state of technology). We must develop, test, and refine concepts for how we will operate in that environment. We must also develop and deliver joint capabilities that give our Servicemembers advantage over any adversary in that environment. None of this happens without experimentation. Together, we must learn, fail, learn again, and fail again so that we eventually succeed.

Oct. 25, 2022

The Surface Deployment and Distribution Command: Operating Within the Larger Sustainment Enterprise

The Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command is the global intermodal surface connector. It exists to move, deploy, and sustain the Armed Forces to deliver readiness on time, on target, every time. The organization executes this mission as a key member of the Joint Deployment and Distribution Enterprise, which is committed to integrating, synchronizing, and providing global deployment and distribution capabilities to deliver and sustain the U.S. military in support of the Nation’s objectives.

Oct. 25, 2022

Military Sealift Command: Joint Maritime Mobility

Military Sealift Command (MSC) provides a high-value service to the U.S. Navy and joint force and is constantly evolving to meet challenges across an increasingly contested maritime environment. Long focused on efficiency in force employment, MSC is evolving to focus on effectiveness in force development and force generation to assure readiness for strategic competition, crisis, or conflict. Key lines of effort are needed to build and reinforce the strategic advantage afforded to the United States as a maritime nation.

Oct. 25, 2022

Strategic Mobility in the Context of U.S. National Defense Strategies

U.S. mobility capabilities appear formidable but are dwindling and aging. These airlift, air refueling, and sealift capabilities separate the United States as a superpower from both our closest allies and our Great Power adversaries. That said, the mobility enterprise cannot be taken for granted and must not be further discounted. The speed and expanse of an Indo-Pacific conflict would require velocity at scale. Credible mobility capabilities—requisite capacity and necessary readiness for their employment—will continue to remain necessary and relevant to current and future defense strategies. Sustaining and recapitalizing these forces must be a DOD focus to ensure the mobility enterprise remains a national comparative advantage.