American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict   by Elbridge A. Colby Yale University Press , 2021. pp 384 Hardcover ISBN: 0300256434 Paperback ISBN: 0300268025 Reviewed By : Courtney Stewart   Since its 2021 release, Elbridge Colby’s The Strategy of Denial remains a critical contribution to defence strategists grappling with the evolving complexities of China’s growing assertiveness, great power competition in the Indo-Pacific and the role of allies within these dynamics. The Strategy of Denial argues …

The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine   by David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts Harper Collins, London, 2023, 444 pp ISBN 9780008567972 Reviewed By:  Adriaan van Staden   Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine is an expansive analysis of the evolution of global warfare since the end of World War Two. It delves into how conflicts, both large and small, have been transformed due to political, technological, and societal shifts, moving from state-on-state battles to asymmetric and hybrid …

2(AS) Division PME Program 'The Defence Strategic Review and National Defence Strategy: Implications and Outcomes for the Australian Army'   Magic weapons, political influence and resistance The  National Defence Strategy (NDS) and Integrated Investment Program (IIP) recognises strategic urgency and Australia’s challenging strategic circumstances. [i] Those circumstances, described in the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) [ii] and the NDS itself explicitly call out Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as …

Lessons Learnt from the War in Ukraine Introduction Many may not realise that the origin of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, dates back almost a century, while modern UAV technology has been rapidly developing in civilian and military contexts over the past four decades. Drones represent the intersection of two important trends in military technology – the precise nature of weapons and the rise of robotics which, when combined, are flown remotely at no risk to a pilot and capable …

2(AS) Division PME Program   What the Australian Army can learn from the 7 October 2023 HAMAS attack and the Israeli response On 7 October 2023, HAMAS terrorists launched a surprise attack on Israel. By its very nature this was a terrorist attack by the militia, intended to invoke fear by murdering and mutilating civilians, delivering – as Bruce Hoffman has argued – a statement of intent comparable to those of ISIS and the Einsatzgruppen. [1] Over the course of hours and days, militants abducted an …

Australia has experienced major power competition in the Indo-Pacific before. When we last experienced this environment, we deployed forces into south-western China under the little-known Mission 204 in 1941. This mission was expressly intended to deter Japan from aggression; a purpose that still resonates today in the context of the 2023 Defence Strategic Review which establishes a need for ‘asymmetry’ against a more powerful competitor, to affect ‘a strategy of denial.’ [i] Mission 204 thus highlights …

The use of Special Operations Forces (SOF) in recent conflicts has entrenched the perception of these elements as a direct-action tool capable of providing decisive effects. Concomitantly, there has been an increasing reliance on technological solutions to generate asymmetry against existing threats. This Occasional Paper suggests that as the war-peace paradigm is replaced by a more fluid competition-conflict spectrum, SOF must adjust to a campaign approach that seeks to leverage the poles of low and high …

Tactical Observations on the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine This Spotlight Brief examines Russia’s combined-arms approach during its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. To provide context, it discusses the primary Russian tactical unit of action, the Battalion Tactical Group. It subsequently explores a range of observations on the application of combined-arms at the tactical level during the initial phases of the invasion. It concludes by offering a number of deductions pertinent to the Australian Army’s own …

Transcript of a speech delivered by Major General Chris Smith to the U.S. Army Maneuver War Fighter Conference on 17 February 2022 Fort Benning Maneuver Center of Excellence Watch MAJGEN Chris Smith delivering the speech on YouTube Now, I have to admit to being a little bit anxious. Pat has unfairly stuck me between General Flynn and General Abrams – two hard acts to follow and, I get the sense from this week, which is supposed to be about the Indo-Pacific, that the Russian and European flavour of the week …

An Operational Overview of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine February Abstract This Spotlight Brief describes the events of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, part of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. This analysis is in three parts: first, it examines the broad composition of the Russian and Ukrainian Armed Forces; second, it discusses the first phase of the invasion from February-April outlining the major operational level actions; and third, it discusses the invasion’s second phase covering the …