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Military History
Sir Michael Howard's classic short paper on military history was delivered to an American audience more than 40 years ago but its warnings are every bit as relevant to us today.
Michael Howard: Address to the US War College
Russia
This list of 'myths' is disturbing at a time when domestic politics has been dominant in UK media for the past few weeks.
Chatham House paper on Russia n intentions and capabilities
Reform in Defence
Edward Stringer emphasizes the need for reform and reprioritization before applying more resource.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/15/defence-spending-spree-could-do-harm-good/
Whether you agree or not, this is thought-provoking:
Necessary Heresies: challenging narratives distorting contemporary UK Defence
Combined Arms Warfare
Ukraine illustrates how complicated combined arms warfare is - and our army is no longer exercising even at brigade level
Rupert Jones on Britain's need to rebuild its combined arms warfare training
A thoughtful defence of the tank on the modern battlefield, drawing from Ukraine, whether you agree or not. It does, however, leave the question open for us as to how British armour would get to the continent in the face of a peer enemy.
Naval power
Without "cats and traps", we are forced into deploying only one extremely expensive aircraft type and without the range or weapon load of its sister models. Surely we need either to fit the cats and traps, now the Americans have a non-steam variant available, or accept that aircraft carriers are a dead end.
More radically, Ben Wallace implicitly poses the question as to whether there is a long-term future for major elements of the surface fleet. More and more people asking whether we are seeing a rerun of the commitment to battleships in the 20s and 30s - and their irrelevance in the Second World War.
Drones
A repeat of the Azerbaijan/Armenian conflict as both sides use civilian as well as military drones. The former are very cheap and the number of experienced operators is rising all the time, albeit without the full skill set for military operations. A wider point is the way in which the hugely expensive and theoretically capable Russian Air force appears to be playing third fiddle to artillery and drones.
Campbell MacDiarmid in the Daily Telegraph
General
These RUSI podcasts on strategy are addictive. If you don't enjoy Episode 4, maybe you aren't interested in military history Here
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