This week’s list of links is an odds-and-ends assortment.
David Vergun has an interview with General Stephen J. Townshend, commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) on the Army website about the need for smaller, lighter, and faster equipment for future warfare.
Defense News’s apparently inexhaustible Jen Judson details the Army’s newest forthcoming organization, “US Army’s Futures Command sets groundwork for battlefield transformation.”
At West Point’s Modern War Institute, Army Lionel Beehner, Liam Collins, Steve Ferenzi, Robert Person and Aaron Brantly have a very interesting analysis of the contemporary Russian approach to warfare, “Analyzing the Russian Way of War: Evidence from the 2008 Conflict with Georgia.”
Also at the Modern War Institute, Ethan Olberding examines ways to improve the planning skills of the U.S. Army’s junior leaders, “You Can Lead, But Can You Plan? Time to Change the Way We Develop Junior Leaders.”
Kyle Mizokami at Popular Mechanics takes a look at the state of the art in drone defenses, “Watch Microwave and Laser Weapons Knock Drones Out of the Sky.”
Jared Keller at Task & Purpose looks into the Army’s interest in upgunning its medium-weight armored vehicles, “The Army Is Eyeing This Beastly 40mm Cannon For Its Ground Combat Vehicles.”
And finally, MeritTalk, a site focused on U.S. government information technology, has posted a piece, “Pentagon Wants An Early Warning System For Hybrid Warfare,” looking at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) ambitious Collection and Monitoring via Planning for Active Situational Scenarios (COMPASS) program, which will incorporate AI, game theory, modeling, and estimation technologies to attempt to decipher the often subtle signs that precede a full-scale attack.