About the Initiative

Christopher R. Bolton and Matthew R. Prescott

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.

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Tobias Bernard Switzer

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.

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Dwight “Buzz” Phillips

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?

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Walter M. Hudson

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).

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Robert S. Burrell

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.

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Matthew B. Cook

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.

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Joseph M. McGiffin

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.

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Brian Britt

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.

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John B. Kelley, Christopher J. Sarton, Scott A. Curtice, and Charles C. York III

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.

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Aaron Horwood, Juan Vitali, Andrew Thueme, Ruddie Ibanez, and Travis W. Knight

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.

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