The Other Face of Battle
The Other Face of Battle

Author: Wayne E. Lee

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0190920645

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Taking its title from The Face of Battle, John Keegan's canonical book on the nature of warfare, The Other Face of Battle illuminates the American experience of fighting in "irregular" and "intercultural" wars over the centuries. Sometimes known as "forgotten" wars, in part because they lackedtriumphant clarity, they are the focus of the book. David Preston, David Silbey, and Anthony Carlson focus on, respectively, the Battle of Monongahela (1755), the Battle of Manila (1898), and the Battle of Makuan, Afghanistan (2020) - conflicts in which American soldiers were forced to engage in"irregular" warfare, confronting an enemy entirely alien to them. This enemy rejected the Western conventions of warfare and defined success and failure - victory and defeat - in entirely different ways. Symmetry of any kind is lost. Here was not ennobling engagement but atrocity, unanticipatedinsurgencies, and strategic stalemate.War is always hell. These wars, however, profoundly undermined any sense of purpose or proportion. Nightmarish and existentially bewildering, they nonetheless characterize how Americans have experienced combat and what its effects have been. They are therefore worth comparing for what they hold incommon as well as what they reveal about our attitude toward war itself. The Other Face of Battle reminds us that "irregular" or "asymmetrical" warfare is now not the exception but the rule. Understanding its roots seems more crucial than ever.

Operation Dragon Comeback
Operation Dragon Comeback

Author: Bruce A. Ashcroft

Publisher: Department of the Air Force

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13:

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Tells the story of the men and woman of Air Education and Training Command (AETC) who rushed to the aid of their wingmen at Kessler Air Force Base and to their countrymen in need.

Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam
Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam

Author: John Nagl

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2002-10-30

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0313077037

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Armies are invariably accused of preparing to fight the last war. Nagl examines how armies learn during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared in organization, training, and mindset. He compares the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan Emergency from 1948-1960 with that developed in the Vietnam Conflict from 1950-1975, through use of archival sources and interviews with participants in both conflicts. In examining these two events, he argues that organizational culture is the key variable in determining the success or failure of attempts to adapt to changing circumstances. Differences in organizational culture is the primary reason why the British Army learned to conduct counterinsurgency in Malaya while the American Army failed to learn in Vietnam. The American Army resisted any true attempt to learn how to fight an insurgency during the course of the Vietnam Conflict, preferring to treat the war as a conventional conflict in the tradition of the Korean War or World War II. The British Army, because of its traditional role as a colonial police force and the organizational characteristics that its history and the national culture created, was better able to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency during the course of the Malayan Emergency. This is the first study to apply organizational learning theory to cases in which armies were engaged in actual combat.

The Evolution of US Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946-76
The Evolution of US Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946-76

Author: Robert A. Doughty

Publisher:

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13:

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This paper focuses on the formulation of doctrine since World War II. In no comparable period in history have the dimensions of the battlefield been so altered by rapid technological changes. The need for the tactical doctrines of the Army to remain correspondingly abreast of these changes is thus more pressing than ever before. Future conflicts are not likely to develop in the leisurely fashions of the past where tactical doctrines could be refined on the battlefield itself. It is, therefore, imperative that we apprehend future problems with as much accuracy as possible. One means of doing so is to pay particular attention to the business of how the Army's doctrine has developed historically, with a view to improving methods of future development.

Touching the Dragon
Touching the Dragon

Author: James Hatch

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0451494695

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“Jimmy Hatch is a personal hero of mine.” —Anderson Cooper “Irresistible. . . . A wounded SEAL’s shame becomes a salvation.” —J. Ford Huffman, Military Times James Hatch is a former special ops Navy SEAL senior chief, master naval parachutist, and expert military dog trainer and handler. On his fateful final mission in Afghanistan, his SEAL team was sent to recover Bowe Bergdahl—the soldier who deserted his post and fell into the hands of Al-Qaida and the Taliban. The mission went south, and Hatch was left with a shattered femur from an AK-47 round and the SEAL dog who fought alongside him was dead. As a result of his horrific leg wound, his twenty-four-year military career came to an end—and with it the only life he’d ever known. In Touching the Dragon, we witness his long road to recovery. Getting well physically required eighteen surgeries, twelve months of recovery, and learning to walk again. But getting well mentally would prove to be much tougher, as he fought through the depths of despair, alcoholism, and the pull to end his own life. What emerges is a different kind of hero’s journey, one in which Hatch shows the courage it takes to confess, confront, and overcome his own brokenness. Through the love of family, friends, and his military dogs, Hatch learned remarkable tools and found his purpose, and now he wants to share this wisdom with the rest of us because we all have wounds.

The Dragons and the Snakes
The Dragons and the Snakes

Author: David Kilcullen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-02-04

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0190265701

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Just a few years ago, people spoke of the US as a hyperpower-a titan stalking the world stage with more relative power than any empire in history. Yet as early as 1993, newly-appointed CIA director James Woolsey pointed out that although Western powers had "slain a large dragon" by defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, they now faced a "bewildering variety of poisonous snakes." In The Dragons and the Snakes, the eminent soldier-scholar David Kilcullen asks how, and what, opponents of the West have learned during the last quarter-century of conflict. Applying a combination of evolutionary theory and detailed field observation, he explains what happened to the "snakes"-non-state threats including terrorists and guerrillas-and the "dragons"-state-based competitors such as Russia and China. He explores how enemies learn under conditions of conflict, and examines how Western dominance over a very particular, narrowly-defined form of warfare since the Cold War has created a fitness landscape that forces adversaries to adapt in ways that present serious new challenges to America and its allies. Within the world's contemporary conflict zones, Kilcullen argues, state and non-state threats have increasingly come to resemble each other, with states adopting non-state techniques and non-state actors now able to access levels of precision and lethal weapon systems once only available to governments. A counterintuitive look at this new, vastly more complex environment, The Dragons and the Snakes will not only reshape our understanding of the West's enemies' capabilities, but will also show how we can respond given the increasing limits on US power.

Chinese Lessons from Other Peoples' Wars
Chinese Lessons from Other Peoples' Wars

Author: Andrew Scobell

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9781470064532

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The annual Conference on the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) took place at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC), in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on October 22-24, 2010.1 The topic for this year's conference was the "PLA's lessons from Other People's Wars." Participants at the conference sought to discern what lessons the PLA has been learning from the strategic and operational experiences of the armed forces of other countries during the past 3 decades. Why did observers of the PLA want to study what Chinese military analysts might learned about non-Chinese wars? The answer is twofold. First, the PLA has not fought an actual war since 1979. Yet, during the last 3 decades, fundamental changes have taken place on the battlefield and in the conduct of war. Since the PLA has not fought since 1979, it had no experience in the changing face of war, and thus could not follow Mao Zedong's admonition to "learn by doing"; instead, it must look abroad for ways to discern the new pattern of warfare in the evolving information age. Studying Chinese military analysts' observations of non-Chinese wars therefore provides us a glimpse of what the PLA takes from others' experience to improve its capability and to prepare itself for dealing with China's national security issues, such as Taiwan, the South and East China Sea disputes, and internal unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang, to name the most obvious ones. Second, Chinese military analysts have noticeably more freedom in assessing and commenting on the strength and weakness as well as the success and fail¬ures of other countries' wars. Indeed, for political reasons, Chinese military analysts have to emphasize the heroics and triumphs of the PLA's war experience and downplay setbacks and failures.2 While there is certainly recognition of the daunting challenges-in Korea, for example, accounts readily acknowledge that the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) were totally unprepared logistically and devastated by airpower-there are limits to the levels of candor. To date, there is no critical analysis of the PLA's claimed success or dismissed failure in the Sino-Vietnamese Border War of 1979 by Chinese military analysts (however, there are a few studies done by scholars outside of China3). Studying Chinese military analysts' observation of other people's wars, therefore, provide us key hints as to what Chinese military analysts consider important aspects of current and future military operational success and failure.