Necessary Reading and Discussion for US Armchair Generals

I think we should have a thread where we can post links to things that people can read to improve their knowledge about military affairs. Also I'd like to have place where we can discuss general military theory and history.

Let me tell you all, I've been posting here for quite sometime and I've been interested in military things my whole life, and there's no better way to understand war than learning the history of war. Your understanding of any situation you can think of will be improved vastly if you really know about military history. So read it all you can. History and theoretical knowledge are way more important than knowing about hardware specs.

So let's start it up with the writings of the War Nerd. He's the best military theorist writing today that I know. These columns are meant as entertainment as well as being informative in a news-background sort of way. But there is serious weight behind the ideas he presents. They're short pieces so there's a lot of things omitted sometimes and I don't always agree with things he has to say, and it's definitely not PC. But then neither is war. The War Nerd has an extremely good record of predicting events too. That's one of the reasons why understanding history and theory is so important; it gives you predictive power.

More recent pieces:


All the way back to 2002:


I'll update this with other writings as I think of them.

Finn McCool said:

I think we should have a thread where we can post links to things that people can read to improve their knowledge about military affairs. Also I'd like to have place where we can discuss general military theory and history.

Let me tell you all, I've been posting here for quite sometime and I've been interested in military things my whole life, and there's no better way to understand war than learning the history of war. Your understanding of any situation you can think of will be improved vastly if you really know about military history. So read it all you can. History and theoretical knowledge are way more important than knowing about hardware specs.

So let's start it up with the writings of the War Nerd. He's the best military theorist writing today that I know. These columns are meant as entertainment as well as being informative in a news-background sort of way. But there is serious weight behind the ideas he presents. They're short pieces so there's a lot of things omitted sometimes and I don't always agree with things he has to say, and it's definitely not PC. But then neither is war. The War Nerd has an extremely good record of predicting events too. That's one of the reasons why understanding history and theory is so important; it gives you predictive power.

More recent pieces:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

All the way back to 2002:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

I'll update this with other writings as I think of them.

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I have not followed your links, but I'm familiar with this guy and he's funny and fun to read. Of course it's hard to agree with all his stuff, but he does make good points. If you look at the website, exile.ru, which hosts his stuff, its not for children! It used to be a whole internet publication and the War Nerd just had a column in it. I think he was actually part of them, rather than just being tacked on the the website. That site was totally hilarious, and of course, mostly not "politically correct" from any angle. My impression was that they were mostly Americans living in Moscow, perhaps ex left-wingers more or less stranded by the end of the cold war. They tended to satirize both American politics and Russian ones, as well as the more degenerate aspects of post-Soviet collapse Russian social and cultural life. From the non- War Nerd stuff still there, you can see what kind of stuff it was.

One of the more recent things I read from him, and that was already in 2008 or so, was his account o British wars in Tibet. It was interesting, and told in a very funny way.

excellent website, thnx for making this available to us...saving it in my favourites now

Red Moon said:

I have not followed your links, but I'm familiar with this guy and he's funny and fun to read. Of course it's hard to agree with all his stuff, but he does make good points. If you look at the website, exile.ru, which hosts his stuff, its not for children! It used to be a whole internet publication and the War Nerd just had a column in it. I think he was actually part of them, rather than just being tacked on the the website. That site was totally hilarious, and of course, mostly not "politically correct" from any angle. My impression was that they were mostly Americans living in Moscow, perhaps ex left-wingers more or less stranded by the end of the cold war. They tended to satirize both American politics and Russian ones, as well as the more degenerate aspects of post-Soviet collapse Russian social and cultural life. From the non- War Nerd stuff still there, you can see what kind of stuff it was.

One of the more recent things I read from him, and that was already in 2008 or so, was his account o British wars in Tibet. It was interesting, and told in a very funny way.

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Oh yeah, the Exile was legendary. They were the true badasses of journalism. I've been reading their stuff for quite a while and know a dude that lived amongst American ex-pats in the 90s in Moscow, and knew Mark Ames and the other Exile guys, and he said that they did indeed party as hard and flout the law as much as their reputation would lead one to believe. They pretty much revel in being nihilistic curmudgeons and hate on all parts of the political spectrum equally. It's unfortunate that the Russian government finally shut them down but its also very surprising they survived as long as they did. There's so much built up euphemistic BS amongst most journalism, and it seems like they try to make all events fit neatly into the conventional wisdom. The Exile and especially War Nerd totally rejected conventional wisdom and that's where they're at their best.

And you're welcome pla101prc, hopefully I can keep up the caliber of informative links.

So if there's one point I'm trying to make today it's that leadership, intelligence, political context, and morale are the truly important things in war. And that the hardware-driven conventional warfare discussions that are SDF's bread and butter are all actually pretty pointless. Conventional warfare will be almost non-existent in the 21st century.

actually now that i read a couple of his articles i'll have to say i disagree with some of the stuff as well...but i'll continue to read them because i think the level of knowledge presented in his works warrants my attention...and this guy is hella funny LMFAO

Well it looks pretty ignorant to me. I don't like this sort of dribble at all. I see no redeeming value at all. None. I'm 57 years old and have no time to waste on this sort of BS.

Oh yea...feel free to discuss this site/subject within the parameters of the rules of this forum.

Finn McCool said:

So if there's one point I'm trying to make today it's that leadership, intelligence, political context, and morale are the truly important things in war. And that the hardware-driven conventional warfare discussions that are SDF's bread and butter are all actually pretty pointless.

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Well you're about 80 years behind Chairman Mao on that one.

Roger604 said:

Well you're about 80 years behind Chairman Mao on that one.

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And Mao is a couple thousand years behind Sun Tzu, a couple hundred behind Saladin, or Clausewitz.

Here's a question I would like to put up for discussion:

Lately I've been wondering how the professional militaries of the world's great powers can handle the problem of the irregular/guerrilla warfare that predominates today. I've decided that having dedicated counterinsurgency divisions is one possible solution.

All soldiers in these divisions would be trained differently from conventional warfare divisions. They'd learn from day one how to do things like manning traffic checkpoints, riot control, searching houses and cars, law enforcement techniques like how to spot someone lying, as well as rules of engagement/sensitivity to civilians. As far as combat goes, extra emphasis would be given to ambush (both planning and escaping), urban warfare, and IEDs of all kinds.

A counterinsurgency division would be comprised of (roughly):

• 3x Mech Infantry brigades. These brigades would be made up of your basic rifle companies and squads. They're the grunts manning checkpoints, patrolling neighborhoods, etc. However each brigade would have dedicated companies trained for intelligence/prisoner interrogation etc. and psyop/propaganda/liasion with local civilians and security forces type work.
• An elite airmobile commando unit of indeterminate size. I don't feel like this needs to be the size of a whole brigade but a company is far too small. Somewhere in between. Basically this unit would be the "kinetic" part of the equation. They're the ones making offensive raids or whatever against insurgent/guerilla targets or leaders. Most offensive, firepower driven work is left up to them. Think US Army Rangers.
• A dedicated rotary-wing and UAV unit. Comprised of the helis necessary for general unit function, transportation of the commando unit and attack helis for fire support, as well as UAVs for intelligence/strike.

The idea is to have a unit that can be rapidly deployed and which can bring enough firepower to dominate your average guerrilla force but which can also play their game and root them out of the civilian population. Total strength would probably be 15-20,000.

I think that's an interesting topic you bring up.
At first, I'd say that except for large militaries like the US maybe, a dedicated division of COIN troops is perhaps a little much to support. If you still want have a regular warfare army beside that.
In an earlier force structure for the Bundeswehr, about five+ years old by now and still assuming a 250.000 strong force, there was the idea of having three categories of forces. 35.000 fast reaction forces for mid-high intensity stuff like peace enforcement, 70.000 stabilizing forces for low-med intensity peace keeping ops, and 147.000 supporting troops.
That might have been a way to breake it down, but with the new design aim of around 180.000 troops, that's an idea of the past. Biggest problem here is still the deployability of a usefull amount of troops, compared to the overall size of the force.
Yet this new training concept to include the stuff like checkpoints, foot patrols, interacting with local population etc has come a pretty good way so far, here at least. The basics are tought pretty much tought throughout the forces and then more indepth in pre deployment training.
We also do have units specially trained in gaining info from the locals through talking and in questioning caught hostiles, although in small numbers only.

I do think that you don't need seperate, dedicated forces for these jobs, regulars can do that pretty good as well, if they are well prepared, and if the strategic-political idea behind it is sound.
Look at southern A-stan, we finally seem to be making some progress. Why did it take nine years? I think because someone finally realized, nation building is not done by networking drones and satellites and a few next gen soldiers that rush through an area and then leave again. But by securing an area and then holding it to allow the local population to prosper. Again, a troop surge may have turned the tide. I'm reading that sometimes commanders wanted 300.000troops for a country the size of A-stan. In these missions, numbers do matter, a lot.

I also storngly advocate sophisticated, highly mobile COIN / CT "hunter/killer" forces with good firepower. That means UAVs for good survaillance, modern helos etc. It seems in prolonged, high tempo ops, they can put a real strain on hostile force structures. And we need the regular combat troops that secure an area from the foot guerillas and then stay to prevent these from trickling back.

That is if you choose to rather build a nation to a certain degree.
Then there's the other way, the shadow method, like what we see much more often recently. With a big deployment you get tied down, everybody watches etc. But you could also just dispatch small strike forces that harm an enemies infrastructure / network like we start seeing in Yemen or Somalia. These could be specialized branches somewhere inside SOCOM with support from outside as needed.

Finn McCool said:

And Mao is a couple thousand years behind Sun Tzu, a couple hundred behind Saladin, or Clausewitz.

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Really? Can you provide a reference that Sun Tzu, Saladin or Clausewitz specifically emphasized that war is ultimately fought by people not machines and the spirit of the soldiers is more important than technological advantage?

I'm particularly skeptical about cold weapons area references to this.