Tag U.S. Army

U.S. Army Moving Forward With Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) Program

Steven Miller of Shephard Media reports that the U.S. Army is moving forward with its assault gun light tank Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) program. He quotes Colonel William Nuckols, director of the Mounted Requirements Division at the U.S. Army Maneuver Center if Excellence, “As of today, [MPF] is not an ‘interim’ solution. BOIP [fielding numbers] have been determined and set. Again, as of today, every [Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT)] will get a company of MPF.” Miller writes “This would see a production requirement of around 500 if the Army National Guard IBCTs, war reserves, prepositioned stocks and training needs are included.”

What has not been determined, however, is exactly which vehicle this will be, nor the specific capabilities it will have. The MPF program is part of the Army’s Combat Vehicle Modernization Strategy to remedy shortfalls in IBCT lethality and mobility in the short-term with off-the-shelf solutions. The Army is exploring trade-offs with potential manufacturers between rapid fielding, reduced price and reduced risk, and the potential for future upgrades in capabilities. It intends to finalize the program’s Capability Development Document (CDD) for approval in May 2017.

Since the MPF is intended to provide direct fire support, lethality is the prime desired capability, according to Nuckols, This is manifested in the requirement for the MPF vehicle to mount a 120mm gun, although the Army is willing to accept a 105mm gun initially. Since the Army also wants to be able to deploy two MPF vehicles by C-17 air transport, this will limit the vehicle to approximately 40 tons, or medium-weight. The Army would like the vehicle to be capable of insertion via air-drop, but since the need for direct fire support for all IBCTs is deemed more important, this likely won’t be a demand.

Nuckols suggested to Miller that the MPF “would have 15% inherent growth capacity in the platform to accept new capabilities down the road.” This would include the addition of an active protection system (APS), which has become de rigueur for modern armored vehicles. In fact, it is a bit of a surprise that the Army is even willing to field the MPF initially without it.

Off-The-Shelf Options

The Army wants the MPF sooner rather than later, so it is pursuing acquisition of off-the-shelf technology. So far, the likely candidates are General Dynamics Land System’s Griffin Technology Demonstrator and British Aerospace Engineering (BAE) Systems’ M8 Armored Gun System.

The M8 was originally designed in the 1990s as a replacement for the Army’s M551 Sheridan light tank used by airborne forces. It has a crew of three and an automatic gun-loading system. Modular armor gives it a weight of between 19 and 24 tons depending on options, which would make it air-dropable and up to three could fit in a C-17. It only mounts a 105mm gun, however, and BAE Systems plans on upgrading its infrared sight, turret electronics, and powertrain.

The Griffin mates a new lightweight, aluminum-constructed turret mounting a 120mm smoothbore gun on an Ajax Scout Specialist Vehicle chassis, originally designed for the British Army. This configuration weighs in at 28 tons, but the addition of reactive armor and APS would increase the weight. The vehicle is a “conversation starter” and would be modified based on Army feedback.

MPF and Multi-Domain Battle

As I have discussed before, the MPF concept is something of a throwback, as the U.S. Army long ago phased out dedicated direct fire support for its light infantry. The desire to move forward quickly with procurement suggests a serious concern that Army light infantry maneuver units might be left without sufficient on-call firepower in anti-access/area denial combat environments. A new article by two U.S. Marine Corps officers expresses a similar concern.

This suggests there might be some doctrinal dissonance at work as the Army and Marine Corps press forward with their Multi-Domain Battle concept. It is not entirely clear whether the Army intends for MPF to be just dedicated mobile firepower support, or if it is actually adding organic light/medium-weight tank companies to its IBCTs, or maybe both. Historically, anything that looks like a tank, even if not designed for tank combat, invariably gets pressed into that role, usually with less than happy results.

It is also interesting that the Army does not appear to be seeking a cross-domain fire solution to the problem. This could be because of the newness of the Multi-Domain Battle concept, or it might be due to some ambiguity of the role of light infantry on future battlefields. With the trend clearly shifting toward greater jointness and cross-domain targeting, it would seem odd for light infantry to be going in another direction.

A New-Style Army Brigade For Multi-Domain Battle

Schematic depiction of Douglas Macgregor’s proposed Reconnaissance Strike Group (RSG). Douglas Macgregor, PhD, “Information Briefing on the Reconnaissance Strike Group (RSG) as presented in the FY 17 National Defense Authorization Bill,” 31 October 2016

As the U.S. Army and Marine Corps work together to define multi-domain battle, their joint concept for waging warfare in the near future, will they redesign their force structures? This seems possible for the Army at least; Congress has already ordered it to evaluate proposed changes. In the context of the ongoing debate over U.S. Army readiness, Daniel L. Davis, a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities at The National Interest, highlights one idea whose time may have come: the Reconnaissance Strike Group (RSG).

The RSG concept is the brainchild of Douglas Macgregor (LTC, U.S. Army, retired), a Gulf War combat veteran, military thinker, and author who has acquired a reputation as a gadfly for his forceful critiques of U.S. land warfare doctrine and recent combat operations. Macgregor has been an outspoken advocate since the 1990s for reorganizing the Army to fully exploit the advantages promised by the Revolution in Military Affairs and maneuver warfare.

Congress Gets Involved

Macgregor’s arguments have received renewed attention following sobering assessments of the implications of Russia’s successful military operations in the Ukraine. He gained a powerful patron after briefing Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in January 2015. McCain subsequently arranged for Macgregor to brief other senators and Congressional staff on his assessments of relative U.S. and Russian military capabilities as well as the RSG concept.

In January 2016, the National Commission on the Future of the Army, created by the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act, recommended that Congress mandate that the Army assess alternative combat force design and operational concepts, including the RSG. Section 1091 of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Barack Obama in October 2016, directed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of Staff of the Army to separately report on “alternative Army operational concepts and organizational designs, known as the Reconnaissance Strike Group.” (It is not clear from this wording if this applies only to the RSG or to other concepts and designs as well.)

In consultation with the United States European Command commander, the JCS Chairman and Army Chief of Staff are each to appraise operational merits, feasible force mix under programmed end-strength, estimated costs for assessed potential force structure changes, and strategic force sufficiency and risks. Their findings are then to be each independently reviewed and evaluated by a Federally Funded Research and Development Center of their choice. The final reports, independent reviews, and JCS Chairman and Army Chief of Staff recommendations are to be submitted to the Senate and House armed services committees no later than October 2017.

The RSG and Multi-Domain Battle

Since the passage of the 2017 NDAA, the Army has publicly unveiled its multi-domain battle operational concept and committed to developing it in conjunction with the Marine Corps. What impact this may have on the RSG concept evaluation is not clear. On the face of it, the RSG appears tailor-made for multi-domain battle. However, while Macgregor was lobbying on its behalf in 2015, LTG H. R. McMaster, then commander of the U.S. Army’s Capabilities Integration Center (now currently the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs) was reported to be a skeptic. McMaster appeared to disagree with Macgregor’s assertions that the current Army Brigade Combat Team structures were too heavy and ponderous to fight effectively in hybrid warfare environments. He suggested that Macgregor’s proposed RSGs were insufficiently manned to conduct vitally important stabilization operations and were too lightly supported logistically.

These disagreements were likely more apparent than real. McMaster’s subsequent emphasis on cross-domain fires as one solution to the challenges of Russian military capabilities and anti-access/area denial environments sound strikingly similar to Macgregor’s “all arms/all effects” RSG concepts. The capabilities Macgregor advocates and claims for the RSG comport very closely to the current conceptualization of multi-domain battle. If the Army does not adopt the RSG, it will probably develop come up with very similar.

That is not to say that multi-domain battle and the RSG do not face some serious opposition within the Army. The changes they portend will have serious repercussions on the armor and airborne branches and more traditional warfighting concepts. I will take a closer look at the RSG concept and its possible implications in my next post.

New U.S. Boots On The Ground In Syria

U.S. Stryker combat vehicle alleged to belong to the U.S. Army 3/75th Rangers spotted near Manbij, Syria [Photo via Qalaat Al Mudiq/Twitter]

Following recent reports on social media that combat vehicles associated with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment were spotted moving from Iraqi Kurdistan toward the Syrian village of Manbij last weekend, The Washington Post is saying that U.S. Marine forces have now been deployed to Syria. The Marines are reportedly establishing a firebase from which they can support U.S.-sponsored Syrian Kurdish forces poised to attack the Daesh-held city of Raqaa.

Bloomberg is reporting that the U.S. forces deployed to Manbij are part of a coordinated effort with Russia to thwart a possible offensive by Turkish forces to take the town, which is held by Syrian Kurds. The Russians brokered a deal with the Syrian forces to establish a buffer zone around Manbij, which U.S. Army Rangers will help man. Turkish forces launched an attack in conjunction with the Free Syrian Army on Daesh fighters in northern Syria last August. The U.S.-Russian move is perceived as an attempt to prevent the Turks from attacking the Syrian Kurds, who the Turks believe are aligned with Turkish Kurdish groups waging an insurgency against the Turkish government.

U.S. Special Operations Forces elements have been operating on the ground in support of Syrian rebels since October 2015; these have been quietly supplemented by conventional U.S. Army and Marine detachments, according to previous reports The new U.S. ground force deployments have come with no public debate or forewarning by the Trump administration.

Army Creates Security Force Assistance Brigades and Training Academy

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Brandon Blanton, center, a trainer with Company A, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, Task Force Strike, assists Iraqi army ranger students during a room-clearing drill at Camp Taji, Iraq, July 18, 2016. The new Security Force Assistance Brigades will assume these types of missions in the future. (Photo Credit: 1st Lt. Daniel Johnson)

With much of the focus of the defense and national security communities shifting to peer and near-peer challenges, the Department of the Army’s recent announcement that the first Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) will begin standing up in October 2017 comes as an interesting bit of news. The Army will also establish a new Military Advisor Training Academy at Ft. Benning, Georgia to train officers and non-commissioned officers to staff what are projected to a total of six SFABs with 500 personnel each.

The Strategic Role of Security Force Assistance

Security Force Assistance (SFA) is the umbrella term for U.S. whole-of-government support provided to develop the capability and capacity of foreign security forces and institutions. SFA is intended to help defend host nations from external and internal threats, and encompasses foreign internal defense (FID), counterterrorism (CT), counterinsurgency (COIN), and stability operations.

The use of military aid to bolster allies is a time-old strategic expedient; it was one of the primary weapons with which the U.S.waged the Cold War. SFA has assumed a similar role in U.S. policy for countering global terrorism, as a cost-effective alternative to direct involvement in destroying or deterring the development of terrorist sanctuaries. The efficacy of this approach is a hot topic for debate in foreign policy and national security circles these days.

Organizing, training, equipping, building, advising, and assisting foreign security forces is a time and resource-intensive task and the best way of doing it has been long debated. One of the Army’s justifications for creating the SFAB’s was the need to free line units from SFA taskings to focus on preparing for combat operations. The Army is also highlighting the SFABs dual capability as cadres upon which combat-ready U.S. Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) can be quickly created in a national emergency with the addition of junior personnel.

Advise and Assist: SOF vs. General Purpose Forces?

The Army believes that dedicated SFABs will be more effective at providing SFA than has been the case with recent efforts. This is an important consideration in light of the decidedly mixed combat performance of U.S.-trained and equipped Afghan and Iraqi security forces. The dramatic collapse of Iraqi Army units defending Mosul in 2014 that had been trained by conventional U.S. forces contrasts with the current dependence on U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF)-trained Iraqi Counterrorism Service (CTS) forces to lead the effort to retake the city.

This apparent disparity in success between the SOF advise and assist model and the more generic conventional force SFA template is causing some angst in the U.S. Army Special Forces (ARSOF) community, some of whom see training foreign security forces as its traditional institutional role. Part of the reason conventional forces are assigned SFA tasks is because there will never be enough ARSOF to meet the massive demand, and ARSOF units are needed for other specialized taskings as well. But the ultimate success of the SFABs will likely be gauged against the historical accomplishments of their SOF colleagues.

Multi-Domain Battle And The Maneuver Warfare Debate

The recent commitment by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to developing the concept of multi-domain battle led me to wonder: is this going to re-ignite the currently-dormant-but-unresolved debate over maneuver vs. attrition in American land warfare thinking? Will long-range precision fires and cross-domain targeting change the relationship between fire and maneuver in modern combat tactics? With an emphasis on fires of the kinetic and non-kinetic variety as the remedy to the challenge of anti-access/area denial capabilities and strategies, are multi-domain warfare theorists swinging the pendulum to the side of attrition?

What Is The Role of Maneuver In Multi-Domain Battle?

Consider this description of the Army’s conception of multi-domain battle offered by General David G. Perkins, Commander, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command:

[F]uture multifunctional Army fires units will provide the joint task force with a single unit combining surface-to-surface (land and maritime), surface-to-air, electromagnetic, and cyberspace cross-domain fires. These fires formations integrate with emerging Navy, Air Force, Marine and special operations forces capabilities to provide the commander multiple resilient options for striking the enemy and covering joint force maneuver.

At the same time, ground forces with improved maneuver and close combat capabilities allow the joint force to overwhelm or infiltrate dispersed enemy formations concealed from joint targeting and fires. A joint force containing effective ground forces requires the enemy to expose their dispersed forces to defeat in ground combat, face destruction from joint fires if they concentrate, or the loss of key terrain if they displace.

Future Army and Marine tactical ground maneuver units will combine sufficient cross-domain fires capability to enable decentralized ground maneuver and the creation of durable domain windows for the joint force with the mobility, lethality and protection to close with and destroy enemy ground forces in close combat. With combined arms pushed to the lowest practical level, these units will be flexible and resilient with the ability to operate in degraded conditions and with sufficient endurance to sustain losses and continue operations for extended periods and across wide areas.

The Army clearly sees maneuver to be an integral part of multi-domain battle, with an emphasis on closing with enemy forces to engage in close combat. However, it seems to me that the same technological changes that are prompting consideration of the new concept raise some questions:

  • What does close combat mean when ground maneuver elements can be brought under devastating surprise long-range precision fire barrages enabled by drone reconnaissance and cyber and information operations long before they close with enemy combat forces?
  • If even infantry squads are equipped with stand-off weapons, what is the future of close quarters combat?
  • Is the ability to take and hold ground an anachronism in anti-access/area-denial environments?
  • Will the purpose of maneuver be to force enemy ground maneuver elements to expose themselves to targeting by long-range precision fires? Or will maneuver mean movement to advantageous long-range precision firing positions, particularly if targeting across domains?
  • Is an emphasis on technological determinism reducing the capabilities of land combat units to just what they shoot?

The Maneuver Warfare Debate

Such questions seem sure to renew debates regarding the relationship between fire and maneuver in U.S. land warfare doctrine. The contemporary concept of maneuver warfare emerged in the early 1980s, as military and civilian practitioners and thinkers in the U.S. and the NATO countries came to grips with the challenges posed by Soviet military power in Europe. Inspired by the tactical and operational successes of the German Army during World War II, William Lind, John Boyd, Robert Leonhard, and Richard Simpkin, among others, drew upon a variety of American, British, German, and even Soviet sources to fashion a concept that established maneuver and attrition as distinct forms of warfare. In this telling, the First World War had been dominated by an overemphasis on the attritional effects of firepower, which yielded only bloody positional stalemate. In response, the Germans innovated new tactics to restore maneuver to the battlefield, which when combined with tanks and aircraft, led to their spectacular “blitzkrieg” victories in World War II. Their adversaries learned and adapted in turn, and developed maneuver doctrines of their own that helped defeat the Germans.

Maneuver warfare theories informed development of the U.S. Army’s AirLand Battle concept and operational doctrine of the late 1980s. The U.S. Marine Corps also integrated maneuver warfare into its doctrine in the 1997 edition of its capstone manual, MCDP-1 Warfighting. The idea of a maneuver style of warfare had plenty of critics, however. By the early 1990s, the Army had settled for a balance between maneuver and firepower in its combat doctrine. Debates and discussions about deep operations persisted into the late 1990s, but were preempted in large measure by the shift to irregular warfare and counterinsurgency after September 11, 2001. U.S. land warfare doctrine did get a brief test during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but the woefully outclassed Iraq Army was quickly and decisively overwhelmed by American combat power, yielding few insights into future warfare against peer or near-peer opponents.

The last notable public exchange on this topic occurred in 2008 in Small Wars Journal. British defense writer and analyst William F. Owen, argued that a distinction between maneuver and attrition “styles” of warfare was artificial and lacked intellectual rigor and historical support. Eric Walter, a contributor to U.S. Marine Corps doctrinal publications, conceded that existing maneuver warfare theorizing was “fuzzy” in some respects, but countered that the intellectual thinking behind it nevertheless stimulated the U.S. military to sharpen its conception and conduct of warfare. The ensuing discussion thread fleshed out the respective perspectives and the debate continues.

Despite the official enthusiasm of the Army and Marine Corps, there are many aspects of the concept of multi-domain warfare that will need to be worked out if it is to become a viable combat doctrine and not simply justification for development of new weapons. One task will be to overcome the suspicions of the sister services that it is merely a gambit in the ongoing interservice budget battles. (Similar skepticism dogs the associated Third Offset Strategy.) Developing a better sense of exactly how long-range precision fires, cyber and information operations, and other innovative technologies might affect ground combat would be a good place to start.

Army And Marine Corps Join Forces To Define Multi-Domain Battle Concept

U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley and U.S. Marine General Robert Neller recently signed a joint white paper to be sent for review by Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr.,outlining the collective views of their services on what has been termed “multi-domain battle.” The Army and Marine Corps have also established a joint task force to develop tactics applicable to the concept.

Multi-domain battle is a concept that has evolved as a response to challenges posed by anti-access/area-denial capabilities fielded by potential U.S. military rivals, such as Russia, China, and Iran. Its proponents argue that in it’s broadest application, the concept seeks to expand the principles of combined arms tactics beyond the traditional air/sea/land service boundaries and apply them to joint operations and newly emerging domains such as cyber warfare and information operations. Trevor Dupuy postulated that the employment of combined arms on the battlefield was one solution armies have historically adopted to adapt to increases in weapon lethality over time.

When the Army officially introduced the concept last year, General Milley said “This is pretty much the beginning of a new way of thinking.” General Neller echoed Milley’s comments. “We’ve been shoulder-and-shoulder on multi-domain battle and land concepts. We can’t afford to waste any resources on duplication when it’s not necessary. We see the problem the same way; we have the same conclusions.” U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) commander, U.S. Navy Admiral Harry B. Harris commented last fall that

We need a degree of jointness, in my opinion, in which no one military service dominates and no domain has a fixed boundary. A combatant commander must be able to create effects from any single domain to target in every domain in order to fight tonight and win. [I need] a true land-based cross-domain capability [that] offers us an integrated joint force capable of deterring rising powers by denying them the domains in which they seek to operate.

U.S. Army, Pacific (USARPC) is currently working with USPACOM to finalize exercises scheduled for this spring to test multi-domain battle warfighting concepts. Similar exercises are being planned for Europe in 2018.

There is a sense of urgency regarding multi-domain battle in the Pacific, given ongoing tensions with North Korea and recent comments by Trump Administration officials regarding the South China Sea. USARPC commander General Robert Brown recently stated “This isn’t something 10 years from now. If Kim Jong-un goes south tomorrow, I will need some of this tomorrow.'”

Even as the Army and Marine Corps move forward with integrating multi-domain battle into their combat doctrines, the concept is not without its discontents. Aside from Admiral Harris, the Navy has had little to say about multi-domain battle. The U.S. Air Force has also expressed skepticism that U.S. land combat forces will reduce their dependence on air power anytime soon. When the Army raised concerns last year about capabilities Russian forces had demonstrated in the Ukraine, some in its sisters services and the national security community accused it of alarmism in support of its lobbying for an increased share of the defense budget.

Whether mutli-domain battle survives as an organic concept, it seems to be spurring useful thinking about warfare in the near future. In addition to stimulating new technological research and development (Third Offset Strategy), it is leading to new ways at looking at command and control, planning, and notions of “jointness.”

An Additional Comment on the Link Between Operations, Strategy, and Policy In Russian Hybrid Warfare

A conclusion that Fox alluded to in his article, but did not state explicitly, is that in a sense, the Russians “held back” in the design of their operations against the Ukrainians. It appears quite clear that the force multipliers derived from the battalion tactical groups, drone-enabled recon-strike model, and cyber and information operations capabilities generated more than enough combat power for the Russians to decisively defeat the Ukrainian Army in a larger “blitzkrieg”-style invasion and occupy most, if not all, of the country, if they had chosen to do so.

This clearly is not the desired political goal of the Russian government, however. Instead, the Russian General Staff carefully crafted a military strategy to fulfill more limited political goals, and creatively designed their operations to make full use of their tactical capabilities in support of that strategy.

This successful Clausewitizan calibration of policy, strategy, operations, and tactics by the Russians in Ukraine and Syria should give the U.S. real concern, since itself does not currently seem capable of a similar level of coordination or finesse. Now, the Russian achievements against the relatively hapless Ukrainians, or in Syria, where the ultimate outcome remains very much indeterminate, are no guarantee of future success against more capable and well-resourced opponents. However, it does demonstrate what can be achieved with a relatively weak strategic hand to play through a clear unity of political purpose and military means. This has not been the U.S.’s strong suit historically, and it is unclear at this juncture whether that will change under the incoming Trump administration.

Linking Operations, Strategy, and Policy In Russian Hybrid Warfare

Map depicting the encirclement and withdrawal of Ukrainian forces in the Debaltseve area, 14 January – 20 February 2015 [Map by Goran tek-en (Wikipedia)]

U.S. Army Major Amos Fox, who is quickly establishing himself as one of the brighter sparks analyzing the contemporary Russian way of land warfare, has a new article, “The Russian–Ukrainian War: Understanding the Dust Clouds on the Battlefield,” published by West Point’s Modern War Institute. In it he assesses the linkage between Russian land warfare operations, strategy, and policy.

In Fox’s analysis, despite the decisive advantages afforded to the Russian Army and their Ukrainian Separatist proxies through “the employment of the semi-autonomous battalion tactical group, and a reconnaissance-strike model that tightly couples drones to strike assets, hastening the speed at which overwhelming firepower is available to support tactical commanders,” the actual operations executed by these forces should be characterized as classic sieges, as opposed to decisive operational maneuver.

Fox details three operations employing this approach – tactical combat overmatch enabling envelopment and the subsequent application of steady pressure – that produced military success leading directly to political results advantageous to the Russian government.

According to Fox, the military strategy of siege operations effectively enabled the limited political goals of the Russian government.

What explains Russia’s evident preference for the siege? Would it not make more sense to quickly annihilate the Ukrainians? Perhaps. However, the siege’s benefit is its ability to transfer military power into political progress, while obfuscating the associated costs. A rapid, violent, decisive victory in which hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers are killed in a matter of days is counterproductive to Russia’s political goals, whereas the incremental use of violence over time accomplishes the same objectives with less disturbance to the international community.

Fox believes that this same operational concept was applied by the Syrian Army and its Russian enablers to capture the city of Aleppo last month, albeit with somewhat different tactics, such as substituting airstrikes for long-range artillery and rockets.

He advises that the U.S. would be prudent to plan for and prepare to face the new Russian land warfare capabilities.

These new features of Russian warfare—and an understanding of them in the context of that warfare’s very conventional character—should inform US planning. The contemporary Russian army is combat-experienced in combined arms maneuver at all echelons of command, a skill that the US Army is still working to recover after well over a decade of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This fact could prove troublesome if Russia elects to push further in Europe, infringing upon NATO partners, or if US and Russian interests continue to collide in areas like Syria. Preparing to combat Russian cyber threats or hybrid tactics is important. But the lesson from Ukraine is clear: It is equally vital to train and equip US forces to counter the type of conventional capabilities Russia has demonstrated in Ukraine.

UPDATE: An Additional Comment on the Link Between Operations, Strategy, and Policy In Russian Hybrid Warfare

War Stories-The Podcast for Military History Nerds

Angry Staff Officer says, "Safety is paramount in all things. Terrorists fear safety glasses that are also reflective."
The Angry Staff Officer says, “Safety is paramount in all things. Terrorists fear safety glasses that are also reflective.”

If you like military history and podcasts, then I would like to recommend that you give War Stories a listen. It is a new production from two members of the Military Writers Guild, Adin Dobkin and a serving Army National Guardsman who posts publicly under the nom de guerre, Angry Staff Officer. Seeking to bridge the gap between military history that focuses on engagements or battles, and broad sweeping analysis, Dobkin and ASO tell stories that link specific instances with a broader narrative arc. In doing so, they hope to “engage the human interest angle while also tracing broader trends in warfare, through balancing narrative and dialogue.”

The first season of the podcast is tracing the development of modern tank warfare from its dawn on the battlefields of France in the First World War, through the present day. The result is Basil Liddell Hart meets This American Life. Dobkin and ASO both have engaging personalities and military history nerd-wit in abundance. They bring a youthful perspective leavened by recent military experience and the perceptive eye of today’s well-trained and highly educated military officer corps.

The first four episodes begin with doomed British cavalry charges on the Somme battlefield in 1916, to George Patton’s first combat experiences at the St. Mihiel salient in 1917, to the clash of Russian and German inter-war tanks in the Spanish Civil War, to the baptism of fire of the American tank destroyer corps in Tunisia in 1943.

The results are both informative and quite entertaining. My only (minor) quibble is that it would help to have some maps and photographs to go with the narrative to help pin down places, faces, and tank silhouettes. If you appreciate the fact — as Dobkin and ASO do — that the Soviet T-34 tank owes its existence to the American engineer  J. Walter Christie, this is the podcast for which you have been searching.