Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Last week, I touched on the ongoing effort by the U.S. Army to assess the nature of Russian advances in military technology and how they might affect the nature of combat on future battlefields. In a previous post, I highlighted…
For anyone paying attention, it is no surprise that the U.S. Army is intently watching Russia’s military operations in the Ukraine. What they have seen is sobering. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker recently highlighted the preliminary findings of The Russia New…
My previous post addressed a famous 1980s U.S. policy and strategic debate in which quantitative analysis featured prominently. Such debates are ongoing, of course. The International Security Studies Forum just posted a roundtable discussion of a recent book by MIT…
Dr. Reina Pennington, a professor of history at Norwich University, recently published an analysis of the Eastern Front during World War II which made the case that the Soviet superiority in manpower over Germany was not as large as is…
Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme during the First World War. The battle, intended to relieve pressure on the French Army defending against a massive German offensive aimed at Verdun,…
In case anyone was worrying, it does not appear as if Brexit will have a negative impact on the future of NATO tank technology. Some foresee Britain’s pending (?) departure from the European Union has having a positive effect on…
Defence-in-Depth, the blog of the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, is highlighting presentations from the Second World War Research Group’s recent “1940-1942: Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century Conference.” An interesting contribution by Philip McCarty examined the creation of…
Trevor N. Dupuy developed some hypotheses about casualty rates in combat in the process of quantifying the effects of surprise and relative combat effectiveness.[1] After testing these hypotheses against historical combat data, Col. Dupuy believed them valid enough to be…
RAND’s wargame that explored a potential Russian invasion of the Baltic countries continues to feed a robust debate within the ranks of strategic analysts. Michael Kofman assessed the premises of RAND’s wargame and expressed skepticism of the call for a…
When historian and pundit James Jay Carafano called for the U.S. defense community to refocus on the classic principles of war, he did not specify whose list should be adopted. A quick check reveals several such lists, some with vastly…