MRAPs, Irregular Warfare, and Pentagon Reform

MRAPs, Irregular Warfare, and Pentagon Reform

Author: Christopher J. Lamb

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 62

ISBN-13: 1257130439

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This report asserts that mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles offer an excellent case study for investigating the current debate over the Pentagon's approach to developing and fielding irregular warfare capabilities. However it also contends improving irregular warfare capabities will require more extensive reforms.


Securing the MRAP

Securing the MRAP

Author: James Hasik

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2021-08-16

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 1623499437

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Dwight D. Eisenhower once quipped, “You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.” Military acquisition and procurement—that is, how a nation manages investments, technologies, programs, and support—is critical to wartime success or failure. When unexpected battlefield problems arise, how do the government, the military, and industry work together to ensure effective solutions? During the American counterinsurgent campaign in Iraq, the improvised explosive device emerged as a disruptive and devastating threat. As Humvees, and their occupants, were ripped apart by IEDs, it was clear that new solutions had to be found. These solutions already existed but had not been procured, highlighting the need for more effective marketing to the military by industry. The ultimate successful response—the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle, or MRAP—required years of entrepreneurial marketing by the defense industry. In Securing the MRAP: Lessons Learned in Marketing and Military Procurement, James Hasik explores how these vehicles, which the American military mostly rejected despite the great need for them, eventually came to be adopted as the Pentagon’s top procurement priority. Hasik traces the story of the MRAP from the early 1970s to the future of mine-resistant vehicles on the battlefields of tomorrow. An important contribution to the seemingly disparate fields of marketing and defense policy, Securing the MRAP is an eye-opening revelation to defense industrialists, military officers, and government officials who want to understand how to avoid another IED-Humvee debacle.


Revolution and Resistance

Revolution and Resistance

Author: David Tucker

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM

Published: 2016-09-11

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1421420708

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This exploration of the links between imperialism and insurgency is “a reliable introduction to a complex subject” (Dennis E. Showalter, coauthor of If the Allies Had Fallen). In this provocative history, David Tucker argues that “irregular warfare”—including terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and other insurgency tactics—is intimately linked to the rise and decline of Euro-American empire around the globe. Tracing the evolution of resistance warfare from the age of the conquistadors through the United States’ recent ventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, Revolution and Resistance demonstrates that contemporary conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia are simply the final stages in the unraveling of Euro-American imperialism. Tucker explores why it was so difficult for indigenous people and states to resist imperial power, which possessed superior military technology and was driven by a curious moral imperative to conquer. He also explains how native populations eventually learned to fight back by successfully combining guerrilla warfare with political warfare. By exploiting certain Euro-American weaknesses—above all, the instability created by the fading rationale for empire—insurgents were able to subvert imperialism by using its own ideologies against it. Tucker also examines how the development of free trade and world finance began to undermine the need for direct political control of foreign territory. Touching on Pontiac’s Rebellion of 1763, Abd el-Kader’s jihad in nineteenth-century Algeria, the national liberation movements in twentieth-century Palestine, Vietnam, and Ireland, and contemporary terrorist activity, this book shows how changing means have been used to wage the same struggle. Emphasizing moral rather than economic or technological explanations for the rise and fall of Euro-American imperialism, this concise, comprehensive book is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the character of contemporary conflict.


Lessons Encountered

Lessons Encountered

Author: Richard D. Hooker (Jr.)

Publisher: Government Printing Office

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 9780160937033

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It then moves on to an analysis of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq from their initiation to the onset of the U.S. Surges. The study then turns to the Surgers themselves as tests of assessment and adaptation. The next part focuses on decisionmaking, implementation, and unity of effort. The volume then turns to the all-important issue of raising and mentoring indigenous security forces, the basis for the U.S. exit strategy in both campaigns. Capping the study is a chapter on legal issues that range from detention to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. The final chapter analyzes costs and benefits, disects decisionmaking in both campaigns, and summarizes the lessons encountered. Supporting the volume are three annexes: one on the human and financial costs of the Long War and two detailed timelines for histories of Afghanistan and Iraq and the U.S. campaigns in those countries.


United States Special Operations Forces

United States Special Operations Forces

Author: Christopher J. Lamb

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-11-19

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 0231545223

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In this book, two national-security experts put the exploits of America’s special operation forces in historical and strategic context. David Tucker and Christopher J. Lamb offer an incisive overview of America’s turbulent experience with special operations. Starting with in-depth interviews with special operators, the authors illustrate the diversity of modern special operations forces and the strategic value of their unique attributes. Despite longstanding and growing public fascination with special operators, these forces and their contribution to national security are poorly understood. With this book, Tucker and Lamb dispel common misconceptions and offer a penetrating analysis of how these unique and valuable forces can be employed to even better effect in the future. The book builds toward a comprehensive assessment of the strategic utility of special operations forces, which it then considers in light of the demands of future warfare. This second edition of United States Special Operations Forces, revised throughout to account for lessons learned in the twelve years since its first publication, includes two new case studies, one on High Value Target Teams and another on Village Stability Operations, and two new appendixes charting the evolution of special operation missions and the best literature on all aspects of U.S. special operation forces.


Adaptation under Fire

Adaptation under Fire

Author: Lt. General David Barno

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-08-17

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0190672072

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A critical look into how and why the U.S. military needs to become more adaptable. Every military must prepare for future wars despite not really knowing the shape such wars will ultimately take. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once noted: "We have a perfect record in predicting the next war. We have never once gotten it right." In the face of such great uncertainty, militaries must be able to adapt rapidly in order to win. Adaptation under Fire identifies the characteristics that make militaries more adaptable, illustrated through historical examples and the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Authors David Barno and Nora Bensahel argue that militaries facing unknown future conflicts must nevertheless make choices about the type of doctrine that their units will use, the weapons and equipment they will purchase, and the kind of leaders they will select and develop to guide the force to victory. Yet after a war begins, many of these choices will prove flawed in the unpredictable crucible of the battlefield. For a U.S. military facing diverse global threats, its ability to adapt quickly and effectively to those unforeseen circumstances may spell the difference between victory and defeat. Barno and Bensahel start by providing a framework for understanding adaptation and include historical cases of success and failure. Next, they examine U.S. military adaptation during the nation's recent wars, and explain why certain forms of adaptation have proven problematic. In the final section, Barno and Bensahel conclude that the U.S. military must become much more adaptable in order to address the fast-changing security challenges of the future, and they offer recommendations on how to do so before it is too late.


The Sword's Other Edge

The Sword's Other Edge

Author: Dan Reiter

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-11-09

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1108265707

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This book is the first work to build a conceptual framework describing how the pursuit of military effectiveness can present military and political tradeoffs, such as undermining political support for the war, creating new security threats, and that seeking to improve effectiveness in one aspect can reduce effectiveness in other aspects. Here are new ideas about military effectiveness, covering topics such as military robotics, nuclear weapons, insurgency, war finance, public opinion, and others. The study applies these ideas to World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the 1973 October War, as well as ongoing conflicts and public policy debates, such as the War on Terror, drone strikes, ISIS, Russian aggression against Ukraine, US-Chinese-Russian nuclear competitions, and the Philippines insurgency, among others. Both scholarly and policy-oriented readers will gather new insights into the political dimensions of military power, and the complexities of trying to grow military power.


Defence Industries in the 21st Century

Defence Industries in the 21st Century

Author: Çağlar Kurç

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-14

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1000192008

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Defence Industries in the 21st Century explores the transformation in the global defence industrial production through examining the interaction between international and domestic factors. With the global defence industry and arms market likely continue to expand and mature, the ways in which this progression could influence international politics remain obscure. In practice, as the contents of this book show, the defence industrial bases and arms export policies of emerging states display significant variance. This variance is the result of a unique balance between domestic and international factors that has shaped the defence industrialisation behaviour and policies of the less industrialised states. One of the most important conclusions of the book is that the interplay between domestic and international factors clearly influences the variation in the emerging states’ defence industrialisation policies, as well as their success or failure. While international factors create opportunities, they also limit the options available to emerging economies. Domestic factors also play an important role by shaping the policy choices of the states’ decision makers. Exploring the balance between international and domestic factors and the ways in which they influence defence industrialisation in emerging states, Defence Industries in the 21st Century will be of great interest to scholars of Defence Industries, Arms Manufacturing, and Defence, Strategic and Security Studies more generally. The chapters were originally published in Defence Studies, Comparative Strategy and All Azimuth.