The battle of Kham Duc is one of the least known—and least understood—major battles of the Vietnam War. Kham Duc was a U.S. Army Special Forces camp near the Laotian border. From May 10–12, 1968, it and the nearby patrol base of Ngok Tavak were...
The interwar years between the Great War and World War II were a precarious period when industrialized military powers struggled to innovate with doctrine and tactics even as they incorporated emerging technologies. Though Britain, France, Italy and...
“What are we waiting for?” a Ranger student stutters to his squad leader. “The RTO is still getting comms. We’ll push forward in just a second,” the squad leader responds. Their radio telephone operator has been trying to gain communication, or...
U.S. Army Col. Daniel Rice, the command inspector general of the Georgia National Guard, summed up his team’s success in assisting the former Soviet republic of Georgia in building its own inspector general capabilities. “This is how we train an IG...
In the private sector, companies sponsor data science competitions to solve stagnating problems, outsource difficult work and advertise to the labor market. Netflix announced the first major data challenge in 2006 in hopes of improving its...
Collection Gives Close-up View of the Services Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics. Nathan K. Finney and Tyrell O. Mayfield. Naval Institute Press. 264 pages. $29.95 By Lt. Col. Robert L. Bateman, U.S. Army...
Maj. John W. Spencer, U.S. Army retiredCol. Liam Collins
Over 100 years ago, during the summer of 1919, dozens of members of that year’s West Point graduating class were sent to Europe to tour World War I battlefields. They walked on ground left deeply scarred by the conflict that had ended just months...
Authors and editors for six new Association of the U.S. Army Book Program titles were available at the association’s 2019 Annual Meeting and Exposition to greet attendees, answer questions and auto-graph copies of their books. They also presented...
It began as a cheap, off-the-shelf tactic. Buy a commercially available drone, strap a bomb to it and let it fly. It didn’t take long for the tactic to catch on, spreading across the battlefields of Iraq and Syria as the Islamic State group tried to...
The U.S. faces a complex strategic environment: ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the global war against al-Qaida and its ilk; a seething war in Syria; unrest in Libya and other parts of Africa; Russia-induced instability in Eastern...
From Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, Army medical evacuation crews have gone above and beyond for wounded soldiers on the battlefield for decades. They’ve faced the dangers of combat, pushed limits and pioneered advances in combat...
Brig. Gen. Pete Palmer, U.S. Army retiredMaj. Thane Keller
Twenty-first-century warfare will force America’s soldiers into complex environments spanning bustling megacities to the freezing Arctic. They will operate in jungles too thick to penetrate with satellites, and on desert plains too open to hide...
The ability to deploy, fight and win requires a ready force. Improving today’s Army to accomplish these tasks does not end with modernizing platforms. It continues with improving the skills and decision-making abilities of soldiers. So soldiers can...
Daring Secret Mission Reaps Soviet Gold Betrayal in Berlin: The True Story of the Cold War’s Most Audacious Espionage Operation. Steve Vogel. Custom House. 530 pages. $36.99 By Rick Maze , Editor in Chief Presented as a true-life spy story...
Ryan D. McCarthy, the former Ranger and Afghanistan War veteran called on for the fourth time to be the civilian leader of the U.S. Army, is both optimistic and concerned about the future of America’s foundational force. Confirmed by the Senate on...
