Blog Posts

"The Army has punished two members of the Special Forces team ambushed in Niger last October for their decisions before the mission and for insufficient training alongside their Nigerien allies in advance, according to military officials. Four others in their chain of command were also disciplined."

"The attack was a nightmare scenario for American and Afghan security planners: a Taliban operation months in the making that succeeded in breaching a high-level meeting, killing a powerful Afghan general and a provincial intelligence chief, wounding an Afghan governor and an American general — and barely missing General Miller and other officials standing nearby."

“With just days to go until the U.S. midterm elections, there are growing fears that Russia's efforts to undermine U.S. democracy extend far beyond the polls on Nov. 6 or the presidential election in 2020. Defense and security officials worry that as part of Moscow's plan to sow division and discord, it is trying to conquer the U.S. military — not with bullets or missiles but with tweets and memes.”

"A prominent Pakistani Muslim spiritual leader known as the “father of the Taliban” was killed at home Friday evening in a knife attack, officials said, further roiling the country’s combustible religious tensions."

“Gangs such as MS-13 and Barrio 18 prey on their own neighborhoods in a violent, chaotic model spreading through the region.”

"Infighting between factions killed 40 Taliban fighters in October in the western province of Herat and is part of the reason a militant group is seeking peace talks, government officials said Friday."

"The Trump administration on Friday announced it is reimposing all U.S. sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal."

“The Department of Defense has not been following through on adviser training for some of its service members before deploying them to Afghanistan, going against U.S. Central Command requirements, a government watchdog reported Wednesday.”

“President Donald Trump says he told the U.S. military mobilizing at the Southwest border that if migrants try to throw rocks at them, the troops should act as though the rocks are a rifle.”

"The war has turned much of Yemen into a wasteland and has killed at least 10,000 civilians, mostly in errant airstrikes. The real number is probably much higher, but verifying casualties in Yemen’s remote areas is extremely difficult. Some 14 million people are facing starvation, in what the United Nations has said could soon become the worst famine seen in the world in 100 years."

“Turkish and U.S. troops on Thursday began jointly patrolling areas around the northern Syrian town of Manbij, part of a roadmap for easing tensions between the two NATO allies, Turkey’s defense minister announced.”

The new U.S. general leading the mission in Afghanistan gave a surprisingly candid interview this week on the situation in-country.

"In Saudi Arabia’s version of its war in neighboring Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition carefully chooses targets for its airstrikes. The rapidly rising civilian death counts reported by the United Nations and humanitarian groups are highly exaggerated. So are the accounts of an impending famine caused by war. And the coalition is in no way interfering with humanitarian aid or with assistance to Yemen’s beleaguered economy. But now that narrative is wearing thin, critics say."

U.S. Army War College - Lewis Sorely presents "Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam," as part of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center's Perspectives in Military History Lecture Series.

“The United States is ramping up pressure on the parties involved in the three-year conflict in Yemen to end the violence, with both the U.S. secretaries of defense and state calling for a rapid cease-fire.”

"Defense Secretary James N. Mattis shared the thinking behind the new National Defense Strategy during a discussion at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington yesterday. The strategy, released in January, sees Russia and China as the greatest threats with Iran and North Korea as regional threats. Violent extremism rounds out the threat matrix."

"Yesterday, SIGAR released an audit of Department of Defense (DOD)-funded advising efforts in the Afghan Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Ministry of the Interior (MOI) from January 2015 to April 2018."

"U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria said Wednesday they are temporarily suspending their campaign against the last batch of territory held by Islamic State militants in northeast Syria, accusing Turkey of jeopardizing their efforts."

“Big infrastructure is back. Long relegated to a secondary development objective by the West, China's gambit to use infrastructure as a vehicle for promoting foreign policy objectives is changing the geopolitical landscape.”

James Mattis - United States Secretary of Defense – IISS Manama Dialogue 2018 – 26-28 October 2018 – Transcript by DoD - Full Transcript of Prepared Remarks and the Q&A.

After spending the last 17 years fighting grinding counterinsurgencies in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army is shifting its gaze. This year’s National Defense Strategy charged the military with preparing for high-intensity conflict against major nation-state threats like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. The Army is falling in line.

Many of the challenges of urban warfare are not new; nor, unfortunately, are the options soldiers have to confront these challenges. The US Army has a long history of fighting in cities and its tactics, techniques, and procedures have been refined mostly from the hard lessons of World War II and the evolution of close-quarters combat that occurred following the failed 1972 rescue attempt during the Munich Olympics.

Turkey’s president said Tuesday his country has finalized plans for a “comprehensive and effective” operation that would target a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia in Syria east of the Euphrates River, a move that could further increase tension in the area where U.S.-led coalition forces are based.

The U.S. State Department Bureau of Counterterrorism recently released its annual report on terrorism. The report concludes that despite the success of efforts to dismantle ISIS, “the terrorist landscape grew more complex.” Extremist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaida, and their affiliates are proving resilient and adjusting to heightened counterterrorism pressure with new attempts to destabilize, seize, and govern territory in fragile states.

“U.S. Defense Department officials are pushing back hard against Russian claims that they were involved in a drone attack on a Russian air base in Syria earlier this year.”