Feb. 15, 2024

Accelerating Cyber Leader Development: A Call to Action for Service War Colleges

Cyber leaders find their organizations under constant cyber attack from millions of daily intrusions disrupting everything from our electoral system to our social media feeds. Today, cyberspace provides both technological opportunity and vulnerability. The frightening reality is that the Nation is adrift in a dangerous cyberspace domain, a warfighting domain that stores, processes, and analyzes data under the uncertain eye of ill-prepared senior cyber leaders. This article is squarely focused on a recommendation to deliberately develop senior cyber leaders within the Department of Defense (DOD) to win in this dangerous battlespace.

Feb. 15, 2024

A New Form of Accountability in JPME: The Shift to Outcomes-Based Military Education

The programs responsible for teaching joint professional military education (JPME) Phases I and II are undergoing a significant transformation in demonstrating their mission fulfillment. Governed by the Officer Professional Military Education Policy (OPMEP), particularly OPMEP-F, implemented on May 15, 2020, these institutions are moving towards outcomes-based military education (OBME). Unlike previous versions, OPMEP-F requires programs to prove achievement on defined learning outcomes, marking a departure from merely demonstrating coverage of mandated content. This shift reflects a comprehensive change in validating JPME program success and ensuring graduates reach specified levels of achievement on defined learning outcomes.

Feb. 15, 2024

Microgrids for the 21st Century: The Case for a Defense Energy Architecture

The Department of Defense (DOD) needs a new approach to electrical grid infrastructure to maintain security and access to operational energy. Recent natural disasters and cyber attacks have exposed the vulnerability of the current system, posing threats to military operational readiness. Strategic military facilities currently acquire most of their electric power directly from the national grid, which is increasingly vulnerable to failures. The problems experienced to date could be exponentially worse if targeted by a sophisticated adversary.

Feb. 15, 2024

Position, Navigation, and Timing Weaponization in the Maritime Domain: Orientation in the Era of Great Systems Conflict

The jamming and spoofing of Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Automatic Identification System (AIS) information has escalated in the last half-dozen years from simple demonstrations of capability to truly dangerous situations where misperceptions could ignite a major conflict. Because of the grave danger that GPS and AIS weaponization entails, it is essential that policymakers and maritime operators understand not only the risks and implications of these threats, but also the mitigation techniques and countermeasures that add resilience to the warfighter.

Feb. 15, 2024

When Does Gray Zone Confrontation End? A Conceptual Analysis

The gray zone remains one of the most fashionable strategic concepts of the past few years in the United States, it encapsulates a particular subset of international relations, in the process affecting the ideational distinction between war and peace. While the gray zone concept may have negligible strategic-analytical merit, its high social utility persists and should be recognized.

Feb. 15, 2024

Executive Summary

And as you work through some of the pressing issues facing the joint force, we are here to help your ideas get a complete and full airing out. The only way we can change is to help each other to see the need to do so and then suggest a proper path to that new future. We need you to help be a good wingman and show us how to succeed. 

Oct. 30, 2023

Friction Points in the Sino-Russian Arctic Partnership

This article is an overview of Sino-Russian friction and points of vulnerability in their Arctic relationship. In this article, we highlight three main areas of friction—navigation, resource exploitation, and infrastructure—that we see as exploitable gaps in the relationship. Western observers and commentators should not be neutral in observing this relationship; rather, we might benefit from shining a light on these issues that Beijing and Moscow have so assiduously sought to sidestep.

Oct. 30, 2023

Risky Business: Using the Joint Force’s Framework for Managing Risk

This article provides the analytical basis for the Joint Risk Analysis Methodology (JRAM), the framework for appraising and managing risk. It explains how risk informs national security decisionmaking. The JRAM is useful and flexible, within limits, to facilitate commanders’ decisionmaking regardless of level. Beyond education, the purpose is to illustrate key risk considerations, including impacts of mitigation measures to other regions and across time in a multipolar environment.

Oct. 30, 2023

Absent From the Front: What the Case of the Missing World War II Black Combat Soldier Can Teach Us About Diversity and Inclusion

This article highlights the systematic discrimination against Blacks in World War II and shows through three vignettes how the perception of Black Servicemen changed as White men began to associate with them and gradually include them in their combat space. The lesson this article offers for diversity, equity, and inclusion suggests that the assumptions a majority makes about a minority are often wrong, and when they are placed together and required to interact, attitudes can and will change.

Oct. 30, 2023

Training With Industry: Integrating the Commercial Defense Industrial Base

This article examines Training With Industry (TWI)’s impact on the joint force, and it assesses and reviews the perspective of the World War II–era historical TWI program and contrasts it with today’s version. Recommendations are made to incorporate TWI training objectives into the Joint Learning Continuum, ensure individual TWI lessons are captured in the Joint Lessons Learned Program, and modernize the TWI program as a fellowship to address strategic level gaps.