The Forgotten Story of How America Forged a Powerful Army Before Pearl Harbor by Paul Dickson   Grove Atlantic, 2020, 416 pp Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8021-5869-7 Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8021-4767-7 E-Book ISBN: 978-0-8021-4768-4 Reviewed by: McLeod Wood  Paul Dickson has been a freelance writer since 1968 and has written historical works on American interwar slang ( War Slang: American Fighting Words and Phrases Since the Civil War ) and the Cold War ( Sputnik: The Shock of the Century ), to list a few. His …

Unsung Hero of the Pacific War   by Kevin C Holzimmer University Press of Kansas , 2007 (paperback reprint 2022), 330 pages Paperback ISBN: 978070064040 Reviewed By: Dayton McCarthy, CSC   Hailing from the University Press of Kansas – a long-standing publisher of high-quality military history – Kevin C Holzimmer’s book on General Walter Krueger book joins a growing body of work that (re)examines the role of the United States Army in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) during the Second World War. These …

2(AS) Division PME Program SPEAKER : Major General David Thomae, AM Reflections on Command Reflections on Command Major General David Thomae assumed command of the 2nd (Australian) Division on 17 July 2021 and as commander of the standing Joint Task Force (JTF) 629 on 10 December of the same year. In that role, he has had responsibilities that have shifted the purpose, meaning and narrative of 2(AS)DIV from fulfilling a predominantly domestic support role to becoming a platform for domestic security and …

2(AS) Division PME Program Small Uncrewed Air Systems, The Threats They Pose and How To Counter Them SPEAKER :  Dr Carl Rhodes   In the 2024 National Defence Strategy  (NDS) and Integrated Investment Program  (IIP), un-crewed or robotic and autonomous systems are mentioned a total of 57 times. [1] Clearly this is an area of significant interest and concern for the Australian Government. But why are these systems without humans useful and what need do they fill? Additionally, if our adversaries are using …

The German Army and Operational Command in 1917   by Tony Cowan Cambridge University Press, 2023, 326 pp, 7 maps, 13 figures, 17 tables Hard cover ISBN: 971108830232 Reviewed By: Roger Lee Anyone interested in World War I is only too aware of the vast volume of relevant literature available: most of it is good, some of it is exceptional for its insight, explanations and analysis but, regrettably, some of it is indulgent, self-serving and, worst of all, wrong. Further, the tyranny of language has inevitably …

  Foreword The Australian soldier has a well-earned reputation for expertise in counter-insurgency. Perhaps this reputation is born from Australia’s experience of the Malayan Emergency, the Borneo Confrontation or the Vietnam War; and it was probably sustained through United Nations deployments as peacekeepers within generally fractured societies. A Framework for Irregular Warfare (the Irregular Warfare Essay Collection), published by the Australian Army Research Centre, responds to this tradition. By …

The Transformative Effects of Military Intervention on Grand Strategy   by Rebecca Lissner Oxford University Press, 2021, 240 pp Paperback ISBN: 0197583199 Reviewed By : William Westerman   According to US political scientist Barry Posen, a state’s grand strategy is its theory of how it will achieve security and stability for itself in both times of peace and times of war. [1] Once established, grand strategies usually change in two ways: when they are completely overhauled in response to shifts in the …

Context Australia’s strategic geography will continue to present new challenges and opportunities into the future. The nation will remain an enormous landmass with a small population at the bottom of Asia. Yet, no longer is our region a strategic backwater with geographic depth. Our historic geographic advantage is being eroded by grey zone actions, the reach and lethality of modern weapons, the potency of anti-access and area-denial (A2AD) systems, and the broader modernisation of other nations’ military …

Executing What Has Been Started Eighteen months ago, Army released its capstone narrative, ‘Army’s Contribution to Defence Strategy’ , which defined the current and future operating environment as well as its vision, frameworks and culture. These documents and Army’s modernisation design principles of Connected, Protected, Lethal and Enabled seek to balance the current and expected readiness demands of being both ‘Ready Now’ and ‘ Future Ready’ . Strategic Environment The Defence White Paper states the …

The acute difficulties of urban operations epitomised by the struggle in Stalingrad recurred in Mosul, Raqqa and Marawi, exhibiting that the fundamental requirement for slow, systematic and deliberate clearing building-by-building is no easier 70 years later. In fact, the shift is in the other direction—things are now more difficult.  The enduring complications imposed by physical structures are now compounded by the presence of populations and informational factors, rendering the modern urban fight truly …