Stuart Koehl

And when he gets to heaven,

Strategist Edward Luttwak noted that the United States does not have a strategy, it has a procurement system. It takes so long to develop a new weapon, the strategic rationale has often vanished before it is fielded. Because so much time, money, and reputation are invested in the system, it cannot…

News sources reporting that a new Chinese ballistic missile, the Dongfeng-21D (DF-21), has the capability of hitting a moving aircraft carrier (up to a range of 900 miles away) heralds the demise of the aircraft carrier as the dominant force at sea, undermining the ability of the U.S. Navy to…

My recent article on the proposed repeal of the 1993 Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell law drew a considerable amount of feedback, most of it private.  One of the more significant public responses came from David Rittgers, a legal analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.   

American soldiers in battle don’t fight for what some president says on TV, they don’t fight for mom, apple pie or the American flag, they fight for one another.

John Noonan is correct in stating that NORAD will be sorely stretched by the requirement to stand alerts against incursions by Russian bombers and reconnaissance aircraft (even if these pose only a minimal objective threat, air sovereignty must be maintained). He overlooked, I think, the…

I am no great fan of the Army's M1126 Stryker infantry combat vehicle (ICV), the eight-wheeled battle taxi hastily adopted by the Army in 2001 to provide an air-transportable vehicle offering more protection and carrying capacity than a HMMWV. It's too big (at 23 feet long and 9 feet wide, it's the…

Elaine Donnelly at NRO goes overboard in castigating the Army for allowing a Sikh doctor (and potentially a Sikh dentist) to retain the beards and turbans their faith requires of them. Donnelly (whose work I usually admire) compares this dispensation to the Army's deliberately turning a blind eye…

John Noonan commented that President Obama campaigned on a promise not to "militarize" space, but that was always a specious objective. Space has been militarized almost from the moment man was able to place objects into space. Ballistic missiles traverse space on their way to their targets.…

The incomparable and irrepressible Edward N. Luttwak has a short article in the November/December issue of Foreign Policy called "Take Me Back to Constantinople: How Byzantium, not Rome, can help preserve Pax Americana." Still one of America's leading strategic minds, Luttwak literally wrote the…

Every October, the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) holds its annual convention in Washington, DC, at which the Army's leadership outlines its plans and vision for the Army, and the Army's suppliers of everything from tanks and artillery to boots and beer nuts put their latest wares on…

John Noonan recently wrote here on the Obama administration's plans to reduce the size and scope of the U.S. strategic arsenal independent of arms reduction negotiations with nuclear rivals Russia and China. John touched on one downside of the president's initiative, specifically the unilateral…

Today, September 15, is "Battle of Britain Day" in the United Kingdom, the day on which they recall what Churchill called "their finest hour". Sixty-nine years ago, the blue skies over London were marked by thin white contrails marking the path of hundreds of fighter and bomber aircraft, contesting…

Many people will write tributes today to the Apollo 11 astronauts on the fortieth anniversary of man's first steps on the moon, including a lot of "where were you?" memoirs (I was thirteen, and glued to our television set, trying to decipher the fuzzy images being transmitted over CBS to the…

North Korea and Iran both seem to behave like spoiled children competing for the attention of the adults in the room. First one makes an outlandish threat or takes a provocative action, then the other must raise the ante, lest the first one become the center of attention. Thus, we recently saw Iran…

Today marks the 65th anniversary of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy. Too often Americans tend to think of it as the American invasion of Normandy--witness the accidental oversight regarding the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II (the only current head of state who actually served…

There are a few missing from the list, like the Special Operations Command Intelligence Support Activity (ISA)--which may have another name by now. Officially, it doesn't exist, but its job is to gather intelligence in support of SOCOM operations, including the very black ones. It was formed after…

On Sunday, December 21, that paragon of strategic acumen, the New York Times editorial page, offered up its suggestions regarding how President-elect Barack Obama should shape his next defense budget. Entitled "How to Pay for a 21st Century Military," its prescription is quite simple: Cut just…

Max Boot was very happy to report that the Department of Defense is at long last going to allow the military to recruit foreigners to fill "critical need" positions such as translators and cultural affairs specialists. He notes that

I'm not a big fan of arms control agreements for the simple reason that, more often than not, their effect is mainly cosmetic and they do nothing at all to rectify the problem they are meant to address. Thus, to go back into "ancient" history, the 1896 Hague Convention banned the use of unjacketed…

One reason nobody takes Democrats seriously on matters of national security are statements like those of Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to the effect that he wants to cut the Defense budget by a mind-numbing 25 percent in order to reduce the deficit and to pay for programs he and his…

By now, everybody must know that Rolling Stone magazine has the hots for Barack Obama. One need only look at the hagiographic articles and iconographic covers of the Anointed One which have graced the pop culture rag over the past two years. No longer content at tossing up puff-piece interviews…

Over at Commentary, Abe Greenwald is incensed by a Newsweek article by Christopher Dickey, John Barry and Owen Matthews, "The Realist Resurgence", that claims "Russia is weaker than it looks, which is why NATO's soft power strategy can still work." Greenwald is particularly irked by the article's…

Over at Commentary, Abe Greenwald is incensed by a Newsweek article by Christopher Dickey, John Barry and Owen Matthews, "The Realist Resurgence", that claims "Russia is weaker than it looks, which is why NATO's soft power strategy can still work." Greenwald is particularly irked by the article's…

"Spengler" proposes a grand bargain with Russia: trade the "dubious self-determination of Ukraine" for "Russia's assistance in the Iranian nuclear issue." This is probably less provocative than his talent as a writer makes it sound, and pretty close to the conventional wisdom of America's permanent…

My brief assessment of the military options open to the West in the ongoing Georgian conflict "The Pain Game: A Military response to Russia's aggression?" provoked many comments both favorable and unfavorable. The most thoughtful criticism accused me of elevating the tactical over the strategic;…

AFTER MUCH HAGGLING, Poland has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United States to develop and deploy elements of a ballistic missile defense system on its territory, for the ostensible purpose of deterring and if necessary defeating an Iranian missile attack against European NATO…

Conventional wisdom has rapidly hardened around the proposition that there is no practical military response to the Russian invasion of Georgia. In fact, if the Georgians were inclined to fight, there is quite a lot they could do militarily, and in a way that would not directly involve U.S. or NATO…

IN WRITING ABOUT the qualifications for the chief executive of the United States, the Founding Fathers did not seem to care much about where candidates stood on the issues, or what their position papers said, or what their talking points might be. Neither did they care much about poise, posture,…

Those of us with children in their junior and senior years of high school are quite familiar by now with the wringer that is the college admissions process. At the center of that process is the dreaded Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) administered by the College Board, supposedly as a predictor of…

TWO WEEKS AGO, Admiral Eric T. Olson, former Navy SEAL and commander of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), complained in an interview that U.S. special operations forces are overcommitted and stretched too thin. "We are going to fewer countries, staying for shorter periods of time, and with…

Roggio had an interesting piece the other day on "over the horizon" strikes into Pakistan. There are some technical aspects of such strikes that raise a lot of questions. First of all, "over-the-horizon" implies non-line of sight and a lock-on after launch weapon, probably with some sort of…

Edward N. Luttwak is one of the foremost strategic thinkers of our time, a far-sighted man given to challenging conventional wisdom in a manner guaranteed both to get public attention and generate controversy. This one-time enfant terrible of strategic analysis, author of such classic works as Coup…

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THE ASSOCIATED PRESS RECENTLY reported that several congressmen and senators are looking into the renewal of Colt Defense's sole-source contract for the manufacture of the M4 Carbine, the most widely-used personal weapon in the U.S. Army. Derived from the M16 assault rife, the M4 retains the same…

The fighting in Basra might rightfully be seen as Iraq's critical and long-awaited "Altalena Moment." This refers to an incident in Israel's 1948 War of Independence, shortly after Israel proclaimed its statehood. Newly elected Prime Minister David Ben Gurion declared that all Jewish militia groups…

Michael posted this quote last night from a 2003 sermon by Reverend Wright: "Remember it was soldiers of the Third Marine Regiment of Rome who had fun with Jesus, who was mistreated as a prisoner of war, an enemy of the occupying army stationed in Jerusalem to insure the mopping up action of…

Last night from Hugh Hewitt: The EADS Tanker Can't Refuel The USMC Osprey? Boeing's Mark McGraw just told me that on air. Doesn't it strike you as a pretty significant advantage for Boeing that its proposed tanker could refuel the new Marine Corps platform while the Airbus tanker can't? If there…

AMONG THE MORE stalwart American allies throughout the Cold War and the war on terror one can number Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and . . . Sweden. Wait! Sweden? The steadfastly "non-aligned"? Home of the cradle-to-grave welfare state, of the pacifist Stockholm International Peace…

According to Military.com, the Iraqi army will be trading in its AK-47 for new M16A2 assault rifle. Says one U.S. official, "We in the U.S. know that the M-16 is superior to the AK ... it's more durable," said Army Col. Stephen Scott, who's in charge of helping the Iraqi army get all the equipment…

The captain to whom Obama was referring presumably belongs to a battalion of the 10th Mountain Division, which is stationed at Ft. Drum, and as one of the Army's few truly light infantry units, has been deployed more than almost any other formation outside of Special Operations Command. As Jake…

There is a lot about Obama's story that makes no sense. Let us start with the opening line: "You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been…

But of course it does! Almost every engineer who looked at the problem knew it was eminently possible to design an anti-ballistic missile system, once high-speed computers and miniaturized seekers were developed (not to brag, but I wrote something to that effect back in 1986). A ballistic missile…

THOUGH IT GARNERS RELATIVELY little attention, military bureaucracy poses a very serious threat to the long-term security of the United States, and its pernicious effect extends well down into the chain of command. I have a friend whose son, now back from his fourth deployment to Afghanistan with…

John Noonan is quite right about the threat that the military bureaucracy poses to the long-term security of the United States. The situation he describe with regard to the 5th SFG in 2001 still pertains today, only the problem is more pernicious and extends well down into the chain of command. I…

John Noonan makes some very interesting and important points in his recent piece, "An Irregular Challenge." The Air Force does need to evaluate its role in low intensity conflict and must make the necessary investments to support that mission. John is also right in stating that the Air Force has…

Cover at the Corner Peter Wehner takes Mark Helprin to task for a piece in the Wall Street Journal that, while dealing mainly with the manifold sins of talk radio, also includes the following bit on the conduct of the Iraq war: To begin with, American columns should have cut through Baghdad after…

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The flyaway cost of any aircraft is dependent upon the number procured in any given fiscal year, because the facilitization costs are amortized over the number of airframes. So, if DoD tells the builder to facilitize to build 40 per year, and you only build 20, all those costs are divided over half…

aafb_1.JPG Michael Yon's Dragon Skin armor.

Looking at the Air Force decision to ground a significant portion of its F-15 fleet, it's important to keep in mind that it was always part of the USAF's long-term plan to retain a "golden fleet" of about 185 F-15C/Ds that would supplement its original requirement of 380+ F-22s. These birds would…

I reviewed the tape--if we had had video this good at the Gulf of Tonkin, the world might be different today. I tend to agree with Michael's earlier post that our naval force responded correctly to the incident by capturing it all on tape and maintaining a defensive posture. However, that tactic…

In this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Bill Kristol writes: One additional point: Petraeus's counterinsurgency stands out not just for its conceptual ambition and the skill of its execution but for its humanity. There were those who argued that the U.S. military could not succeed in…

WWS pal and frequent DAILY STANDARD contributor Christian Lowe had an excellent piece on the M4 Carbine at Military.com on Wednesday. The crux of it: The primary weapon carried by most soldiers into battle in Iraq andAfghanistan performed the worst in a recent series of tests designed to see how it…

WRITING AT THE Christianity Today website, Mark Moyar of the Marine Corps University reviews Lyle J. Goldstein's Preventive Attack and Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Comparative Historical Analysis. He begins by citing from the latest iteration of the National Security Strategy of the United States…

MF1_1.jpg The Dassault Mirage F.1.

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The F-16 in the picture is painted in the classic manner of U.S. Army Air Corps pursuit (fighter) aircraft of the 1920s--blue fuselage, yellow wings and empennage, red, white, and blue stripes on the control surfaces (except, in this case, no stripes on the horizontal stabilizers, because the bird…

Austin Bay has an interesting article on UAVs at Townhall.com, but his conclusion may be a little off base: UAVs also present the United States with potential strategic problems. Since the end of World War II American military planners -- and for that matter, most of the planners in the rest of the…

I see John Noonan beat me to the punch on this one. I was going to leave aside the technology issues and focus instead on a range of institutional and social issues that make such a reform of the Russian military problematic: 1. Culture of corruption and distrust: Modern warfare requires absolute…

Now that the Reaper has, for the first time, demonstrated the ability for unmanned aerial vehicles to drop precision-guided munitions in combat, it's worth taking a step back to analyze what this means for the Air Force, and for the future of air warfare. The advent of armed UAVs represents a…

ONE OF THE MOST common complaints made against the Bush administration's war policies is it's alleged "unilateralism," an unwillingness to bring in our allies or fight as a coalition. This view overlooks the participation of many countries alongside U.S. forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.…

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THE U.S. NAVY is by far the most powerful naval force in the world, perhaps equal in combat power to all the rest of the world's navies combined. The U.S. Navy alone operates large deck, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, their air groups (each more potent than most of the world's air forces) and…

The captains writing in today's Post are projecting their own experiences from 2005 onto the situation in Iraq today. Regarding the sergeants and specialists who wrote the op-ed for the Times, I would submit that they are being absolutely frank and honest about their own experiences in the war--but…

539px-Buk-M1-2_9A310M1-2.jpg China's Buk-M1-2 SAM

539px-Buk-M1-2_9A310M1-2.jpg China's Buk-M1-2 SAM