Download or read book Into The Beehive The Somali Habr Gidr Clan As An Adaptive Enemy written by Major Mark F. Duffield USAF and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On October 3rd 1993, US efforts in Somalia culminated as the result of an overnight battle that cost eighteen American lives and effectively silenced all optimism that Somalia could be externally resurrected as a functioning state. What began as a humanitarian mission to abate starvation had evolved into the absurdity of outright combat against the very people meant to be saved. Beyond the issues of political policy, lurks a disturbing fact that remains unaddressed by the US military. Out of the anarchy that was Somalia in 1993—and is like many other places where US forces may be, committed—an untrained, ill-equipped, and undisciplined enemy quickly adapted their tactics, invalidated key US planning assumptions, and evolved into a lethal force. The Habr Gidr’s tactical adaptation outpaced the planning efforts of elite US units and achieved their tactical, operational and strategic goals at US expense. This monograph explores how this adaptation occurred. It goes beyond the common theories concerning equipment, tactics, and the inherent difficulties of combined operations to look at the very nature of adaptation itself. It provides a different view of events in Somalia in hopes of better informing military planners facing a similar opponent. At its heart, this monograph explores the possibility that what appeared to be little more than an anarchic mob may have been a functioning complex adaptive system.
Download or read book Small Wars written by Michael Gambone and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Small Wars is unique in its complexity and breadth. This book would be of great interest to both military and diplomatic historians, and those that teach Recent America.” —Nancy Gentile Ford, author of Issues of War and Peace Today, conventional fighting waged by massed, industrial armies is nearly extinct as a viable means of warfare, replaced by a broad and diverse array of conflicts that consume the modern American military. Fought in sprawling urban areas of the underdeveloped world or in desolate border regions where ethnicity and tradition reign, these “small wars” involve a vast and intricate network of operations dedicated to attacking the cultural, political, financial, and military layers that surround America’s new enemies. In this intriguing study, Michael Gambone explores America’s approach to small wars since Vietnam, providing a fascinating analysis of the basic goals, missions, conduct, and consequences of modern American conflict. Going beyond a simple comparison of Vietnam to the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gambone thoroughly tracks the continuous evolution of U.S. intervention between these events, revealing a dramatic shift in the role of the American military to covert operations that require fluidity, creativity, and ingenuity. He examines in detail the many different forms of military intervention that America has taken in the last forty years, including actions in Central America in the 1980s, the first Gulf War, airstrikes in Kosovo in the 1990s, and the war on terror, as well as the Iran-Contra affair, the drug war in Columbia, and the role of private military contractors such as Blackwater. After the Cold War, Gambone shows, American military missions served a wide variety of tasks—peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, counterterrorism—that significantly departed from conventional missions, a trend that continued and expanded after 9/11. By exploring the history and assessing the effectiveness of the small wars fought since Vietnam, Gambone reveals the importance of these smaller actions in modern military planning and operations and clearly traces the development of American warfare from the massive military machine of World War II into a complex hybrid of traditional and innovative techniques. MICHAEL GAMBONE, a professor of history at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, is the author of The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society and editor of Documents of American Diplomacy: From the American Revolution to the Present.
Download or read book Real Soldiering written by Brian McAllister Linn and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-06-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens to the US Army after the battles are over, the citizen soldiers depart, and all that remains is the Regular Army? In this pathbreaking work, Brian Linn argues that in each decade following every major conflict since the War of 1812 the postwar army has undergone a long, painful, and remarkably consistent recovery process as it struggled to build a new model force to replace the “Old Army” that entered the conflict. Departing from the Washington-centric institutional histories of the past, Linn sets his focus on soldiering in the field, distilling the lived experiences of officers and troopers who were responsible for cleaning up the messes left in the wake of war. Real Soldiering provides the first comprehensive study of the US Army’s transition from war to peace. It is both a wide-ranging history of the army’s postwar experience and a work detailing the commonalities of American soldiering over almost two centuries. Linn challenges three common historical interpretations: confusing Washington policy with implementation in the field; conflating postwar armies with prewar armies; and describing certain postwar eras as distinct and transformational. Rather, Linn examines the postwar force as a distinct entity worthy of study as a unique and important part of US Army history. He identifies the common dilemmas faced by the service in the aftermath of every war. These problems included such military priorities as defense legislation, preparing for the next war, and adapting to new missions. But they also incorporated often overlooked—but for those who lived through them more important—consistencies such as officer acquisition and career management, personnel turbulence, insufficient personnel and equipment, and many others. Real Soldiering represents over four decades of research into the US Army and is deeply informed by Linn’s experiences teaching and working with soldiers. It breaks new ground in lifting out the similarities of each postwar army while still appreciating their individual complexities. It identifies the leaders and the methods the service employed to escape the inevitable postwar drawdowns. Insightful and entertaining, provocative and empathetic, and a work of history with immediate relevance, Real Soldiering will resonate with military historians, defense analysts, and those who have proudly worn the US Army uniform.
Download or read book The Echo of Battle written by Brian McAllister Linn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-11-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Lexington and Gettysburg to Normandy and Iraq, the wars of the United States have defined the nation. But after the guns fall silent, the army searches the lessons of past conflicts in order to prepare for the next clash of arms. In the echo of battle, the army develops the strategies, weapons, doctrine, and commanders that it hopes will guarantee a future victory. In the face of radically new ways of waging war, Brian Linn surveys the past assumptions--and errors--that underlie the army's many visions of warfare up to the present day. He explores the army's forgotten heritage of deterrence, its long experience with counter-guerrilla operations, and its successive efforts to transform itself. Distinguishing three martial traditions--each with its own concept of warfare, its own strategic views, and its own excuses for failure--he locates the visionaries who prepared the army for its battlefield triumphs and the reactionaries whose mistakes contributed to its defeats. Discussing commanders as diverse as Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Colin Powell, and technologies from coastal artillery to the Abrams tank, he shows how leadership and weaponry have continually altered the army's approach to conflict. And he demonstrates the army's habit of preparing for wars that seldom occur, while ignoring those it must actually fight. Based on exhaustive research and interviews, The Echo of Battle provides an unprecedented reinterpretation of how the U.S. Army has waged war in the past and how it is meeting the new challenges of tomorrow.
Download or read book Day of the Rangers written by Leigh Neville and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A story of equipment failures, bad luck, poor planning and unbelievable courage written 25 years after the battle, this new book by Leigh Neville reveals the hard-hitting truth of what happened minute by minute in the dusty streets of Mogadishu. On October 3, 1993, Task Force Ranger was dispatched to seize two high-profile lieutenants of a Somali warlord. Special Forces troops were transported by ground vehicles and helicopters, and the mission was meant to be over within the hour. They quickly found themselves under heavy fire, and two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down. With a hastily organized relief column many hours away, the American troops faced a desperate battle for survival. Focusing on the stories of the soldiers on the ground, and in the air, Day of the Rangers reveals the experiences and recollections of the Special Forces units, including the Rangers, Delta operators and Nightstalker crews who fought in the battle of Mogadishu. Published to mark the battle's 25th anniversary and using recently declassified documents and new interviews with many of the participants, Day of the Rangers is a fascinating and revealing new history of a battle that would influence American Special Forces for decades to come.
Download or read book Operational Maneuver from the Sea written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Without Troops Tanks written by Mark R. Duffield and published by The Red Sea Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the humanitarian assistance in Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Download or read book Empire Development Colonialism written by Mark Duffield and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2013 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores the similarities, differences and overlaps between the contemporary debates on international development and humanitarian intervention and the historical artefacts and strategies of Empire. It includes views by historians and students of politics and development, drawing on a range of methodologies and approaches. The parallels between the language of nineteenth-century liberal imperialism and the humanitarian interventionism of the post-Cold War era are striking. The American military, both in Somalia in the early 1990s and in the aftermath the Iraq invasion, used ethnographic information compiled by British colonial administrators. Are these interconnections, which are capable of endless multiplication, accidental curiosities or more elemental? The contributors to this book articulate the belief that these comparisons are not just anecdotal but are analytically revealing. From the language of moral necessity and conviction, the design of specific aid packages; the devised forms of intervention and governmentality, through to the life-style, design and location of NGO encampments, the authors seek to account for the numerous and often striking parallels between contemporary international security, development and humanitarian intervention, and the logic of Empire. MARK DUFFIELD is Professor of Development Politics at the University of Bristol; VERNON HEWITT is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol Southern Africa (South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Namibia): HSRC Press
Download or read book The Last Shepard Tales of the Tenth Ornament written by Mark Duffield and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a Boston gift shop is scheduled to be demolished on Christmas Eve, and its owner is found dead, a young and cynical reporter is sent to cover the story. What he uncovers on that mystical day turns out to be much bigger than he anticipated. This is a Christmas tale of faith and faith rewarded.
Download or read book Maneuver Warfare Handbook written by William S Lind and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 1985-08-06 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops and explains the theory of maneuver warfare and offers specific tactical, operational, and organizational recommendations for improving ground combat forces.
Download or read book Post Humanitarianism written by Mark Duffield and published by Polity. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world has entered an unprecedented period of uncertainty and political instability. Faced with the challenge of knowing and acting within such a world, the spread of computers and connectivity, and the arrival of new digital sense-making tools, are widely celebrated as helpful. But is this really the case, or have we lost more than gained in the digital revolution? In Post-Humanitarianism, renowned scholar of development, security and global governance Mark Duffield offers an alternative interpretation. He contends that connectivity embodies new forms of behavioural incorporation, cognitive subordination and automated management that are themselves inseparable from the emergence of precarity as a global phenomenon. Rather than protect against disasters, we are encouraged to accept them as necessary for strengthening resilience. At a time of permanent emergency, humanitarian disasters function as sites for trialling and anticipating the modes of social automation and remote management necessary to govern the precarity that increasingly embraces us all. Post-Humanitarianism critically explores how increasing connectivity is inseparable from growing societal polarization, anger and political push-back. It will be essential reading for students of international and social critique, together with anyone concerned about our deepening alienation from the world.
Download or read book War written by Sean Duffield and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A globe-spanning anthology featuring artists from 19 countries.
Download or read book Doctrine for Amphibious Operations written by United States. Department of the Army and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Breaking the Phalanx written by Douglas A. Macgregor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1997-01-30 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work proposes the reorganization of America's ground forces on the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Central to the proposal is the simple thesis that the U.S. Army must take control of its future by exploiting the emerging revolution in military affairs. The analysis argues that a new Army warfighting organization will not only be more deployable and effective in Joint operations; reorganized information age ground forces will be significantly less expensive to operate, maintain, and modernize than the Army's current Cold War division-based organizations. And while ground forces must be equipped with the newest Institute weapons, new technology will not fulfill its promise of shaping the battlefield to American advantage if new devices are merely grafted on to old organizations that are not specifically designed to exploit them. It is not enough to rely on the infusion of new, expensive technology into the American defense establishment to preserve America's strategic dominance in the next century. The work makes it clear that planes, ships, and missiles cannot do the job of defending America's global security issues alone. The United States must opt for reform and reorganization of the nation's ground forces and avoid repeating Britain's historic mistake of always fielding an effective army just in time to avoid defeat, but too late to deter an aggressor.
Download or read book Semper Fidelis written by Allan Reed Millett and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1991 with total page 876 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of the Marine Corps from the American Revolution to the present and reveals how the force has adapted to changing times.
Download or read book The Bit and the Pendulum written by Tom Siegfried and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2008-05-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Funny, clear, deep, and right on target. [Siegfried] lets us get a handle on ideas that are essential for understanding the evolving world." -K. C. Cole, author of The Universe and the Teacup "An eager, ambitious book. A stimulating, accessible introduction to scientific theory." -Dallas Morning News An award-winning journalist surveys the horizon of a new revolution in science Everything in the universe, from the molecules in our bodies to the heart of a black hole, is made up of bits of information. This is the radical idea at the center of the new physics of information, and it is leading to exciting breakthroughs in a vast range of science, including the invention of a new kind of quantum computer, millions of times faster than any computer today. Acclaimed science writer Tom Siegfried offers a lively introduction to the leading scientists and ideas responsible for this exciting new scientific paradigm.
Download or read book CENTERS OF GRAVITY AND CRITICAL VULNERABILITIES written by JOE. STRANGE and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
