Alessandra Nisch
Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of ...

President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

Future War

How to Describe the Future? Large-Language Models and the Future of Military Decision Making

How to Describe the Future? Large-Language Models and the Future of Military Decision Making

Today, leaders across the world are seeing the early effects of another transformational technology: widely available large-language models. Viewed as the first step in true artificial general intelligence, large-language models incorporate massive amounts of data from books and articles into training sets that allow them to recognize patterns between words and images. Large-language models will likely have a larger impact on the battlefield than autonomous drones due to their ability to automate the many aspects of staff work that prevent military leaders from focusing on tactics and strategy.

Historical Guideposts: Illuminating the Future of Warfare

Historical Guideposts: Illuminating the Future of Warfare

A nation’s political and military leaders must objectively seek out and use history's lessons as guideposts, capturing and applying lessons learned from the most repeated, catastrophic missteps of others to remain adaptable to future warfare's most probable scenarios. History matters more in avoiding past catastrophes than predicting specific events years into the future.

Conflict Realism: A New School of Thought for Examining the Future of Armed Conflict

Conflict Realism: A New School of Thought for Examining the Future of Armed Conflict

Not formalized in existing literature, four basic schools of thought exist in the conflict and defense studies fields. These camps include the Futurist, Traditionalist, Institutionalist, and Conflict Realism. Each of these camps provides value to the study of armed conflict. Yet, the over-reliance on one camp over others creates unhelpful distortions and implications that can impede the student and practitioner of war’s ability to think clearly about war and warfare. A holistic view of armed conflict, which takes into consideration all four camps, is needed to help overcome unhelpful distortions and find the essence of the problems in armed conflict.

When Predicting the Future, Remember, You’re Probably Wrong

When Predicting the Future, Remember, You’re Probably Wrong

History remains the best guide to predicting the future — but such predictions are still more likely than not to be wrong. Those who postulate and prognosticate on the future of warfare, and those consuming their output, would be well served by keeping this in mind. Such is the nature of predicting the future writ large, and this applies in the realm of warfare.

#Reviewing War Transformed

#Reviewing War Transformed

The character of war is rapidly changing. The increasing availability of evolving technology confounds previous frameworks for military operations. Socioeconomic factors and demographic shifts complicate manpower and force generation models for national defense. Ubiquitous connectivity links individuals to global audiences, expanding the reach of influence activities. And a renewed emphasis on strategic competition enhances the scope of military action below the threshold of violence. This is the world that Mick Ryan explores in War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and Conflict.

#Reviewing Bitskrieg

#Reviewing Bitskrieg

In Bitskrieg, John Arquilla distills much from his three decades of advocacy about networked warfare into a compact volume accessible to a wide audience. He displays a continuing ability to produce provocative arguments and engaging books. The tenets of Bitskrieg are consistent with many of Arquilla’s previous writings. These include the point that networked warfare or netwar encompasses cyber conflict but extends beyond it.

#Reviewing The Kill Chain

#Reviewing The Kill Chain

Christian Brose’s The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare is a book about death. It is a book about Senator John McCain’s legacy after pursuing defense reform as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It is a book that makes a case for the death of the current tradition of American power projection. Correspondingly it is a book about the desired death of a defense acquisitions ecosystem that has, according to Brose, contributed to building a military ill-equipped for the 21st century.

#Reviewing Future War

#Reviewing Future War

Civilian and military leaders have sought the ability to anticipate the nature of future conflicts and prepare for them for millennia. Robert H. Latiff gives us his vision of future war in his recent book Future War: Preparing for the New Global Battlefield. In a concise volume, he presents his assessment of where the U.S. military is now, the challenges ahead, and the way forward.

Emergent Technology, Military Advantage, and the Character of Future War

Emergent Technology, Military Advantage, and the Character of Future War

Absent a clear understanding of which military problems emergent technologies are required to solve, there is, perhaps, too much confidence in their ability to reshape the character of the next war by enabling decisive battlefield advantage. More troublingly, predictions about machine-dominated warfare risk obscuring the human cost implicit in the use of violence to achieve a political objective. This article examines the integration challenge that continues to limit the military potential of available technology. It will then look specifically at why militaries should be cautious about the role artificial intelligence and autonomous systems are expected to play in future warfare.

Warbot Ethics: A Framework for Autonomy and Accountability

Warbot Ethics: A Framework for Autonomy and Accountability

While the rapid advance of artificial intelligence and warbots has the potential to disrupt U.S. military force structures and employment methods, they offer great promise and are worth the risk. This is especially true as the conceptual mechanisms for providing variable autonomy and direct accountability are already in place. Commanders will retain their central role in determining the level of variable autonomy given to subordinates, whether human or warbot, and will continue to be held accountable when things inevitably go wrong for either.

Preparing for 2035: The Navy’s Role in Shaping the Future

Preparing for 2035: The Navy’s Role in Shaping the Future

On 15 October 2036, the USS ZUMWALT (DDG-1000) glides through the Philippines Sea on the twentieth anniversary of its commissioning. Nearby, the USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-80) launches both the F-35C and the unmanned F-47C to jointly conduct bombing raids on the Navy’s Western Pacific bombing range. Both ships, along with the entire ENTERPRISE Carrier Strike Group, are headed toward the South China Sea to participate in the annual US-India-Singapore naval exercise called DRAGON FURY. Below the surface, the USS MONTANA (SSN-794) deploys the unmanned underwater vehicle called SEA-EYE to assist in trailing a Russian Dolgorukiy class SSBN as it leaves port headed to its strategic patrol areas.

Blitzkrieg Redux: The Coming Warbot Revolution

Blitzkrieg Redux: The Coming Warbot Revolution

German doctrine successfully integrated current technologies in aircraft, radios, and tanks into a coherent and integrated way of fighting and then applied it to great effect. The result was amplified because the Germans fought an enemy that in many cases failed to account for the possibilities enabled by the new combination of these technologies. We are now on the cusp of a similar revolution in warfare.

#Reviewing Ghost Fleet: Go back! It's a trap!

#Reviewing Ghost Fleet: Go back! It's a trap!

Let it be said, I am a fan of Singer’s work in general. Rather than spending your time in the narrative nightmare that is the Ghost Fleet, however, I recommend reading his other work (Corporate Warriors, Wired for War, and Cybersecurity and Cyberwar are excellent) and foregoing this foray into fiction. You’ll trade the human power of narrative — even poor narrative has power — for the difficulties of nonfiction, but you’ll also see nearly every idea Singer and Cole offer in this disastrous novel … and I promise you’ll be better for having spent your time more wisely than I did.

#Reviewing Ghost Fleet: The Successes (and Shortcomings) of Informed Fiction and Strategy

#Reviewing Ghost Fleet: The Successes (and Shortcomings) of Informed Fiction and Strategy

Ghost Fleet is an enjoyable book. It is a fun book. What’s more, it is an insightful and prescient book, without forcing the reader to ever acknowledge that fact. Sure, it suffers, as many popular works do, with things that literary critics will nitpick over. But if there’s one thing that’s been made abundantly clear to me over the course of reading the work and discussing it with colleagues, it’s that Cole and Singer have accomplished the difficult feat of merging knowledge with storytelling, insight with invention.