Just a quick recommendation this week to read Stephen Biddle’s latest at Foreign Affairs. This raises the question of how different this war truly is. How can such cutting-edge technology coexist with such echoes of the distant past? The answer is that although the tools in Ukraine are sometimes new, the results they produce are mostly not. Armies adapt to new threats, and the countermeasures that both sides have adopted in Ukraine have dramatically reduced the net effects of new weapons and equipment, resulting in a war that in many ways looks more like a conflict from the past than one from an imagined high-tech future. U.S. defense planners should understand that the war in Ukraine does not portend a “revolution in military affairs” of the kind that has often been predicted but somehow never quite arrives. Policymakers and analysts should closely study what is happening on the ground in Ukraine, but they should not expect their findings to produce transformational change in U.S. military strategy. Instead, as has often been the case in the past, the best path forward will involve incremental adaptations, not tectonic shifts.
A shroud of myth and legend surrounds Russian strategy. As far back as the 1980s, the U.S. began looking at the widespread use of precision-guided munitions and other associated technology because the Russians had an allegedly more advanced conception of their potential. In 1982, the operational lev
The Marine Littoral Regiments, of which only one exists (3rd Marine Littoral Regiment) so far, are the centerpiece of Force Design 2030. Their final shape has yet to be determined and in fact they may end up looking different than 3rd MLR looks now. 3rd MLR is aligned to the Philippines. The forthcoming 12th MLR is aligned to Japan. The former was created out of 3rd Marines, an infantry regiment. The latter will be created out of 12th Marines, a field artillery regiment. These different origins and different operating areas may well produce two very different units.
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J.M. Berger