After nearly twelve hours of a blistering and unapologetic critique of the American military, I wanted to post a conclusion where I can tie a bow on the jeremiad and offer some cogent and abbreviated recommendations on the road forward.

In this new venture, I wanted to expand my portfolio of investigation and elucidation on war in the broader scope. I wanted to leave the more arcane and less well-known milieu of the other warfare to examine conventional war and the emerging tableau of near-peer and peer fighting that I am dead certain will raise its bloody hand in this century because humans simply can't help themselves.

I think theWarNotes series has been a comprehensive survey of how to fix the broken, shattered and most expensive paper tiger in the history of the world, the US military complex.

I have purposely not done an episode on either Space Force or the special operations forces complex in the US and allied armories that is near and dear to my heart; there is plenty of other larger items to attend to for now.

I have painted a dim and shabby picture of the state of American and western arms in this series and taken a deep dive in the succeeding episodes of what America can do to create a more effective military in the remainder o the 21st century; maybe the defense intellectuals and personnel at the Pentagon and the halls of western military power can pause to reassess, re-frame and find a more realistic means to exercise martial power.

Despite what you may think, the US conventional forces are in terminal collapse and completely unprepared for 21st century peer conflict.

I'll offer some more recommendations and a path forward.

References:

Sun Tzu The Art of War

Carl von Clausewitz On War

Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare

Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America

My Substack

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me

The US Air Force is at a turning point in 21st century warfare and in danger of whistling past the graveyard if they fail to take notice and action on the emerging Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA).

The era of manned combat aircraft is coming to a close.

The era of manned bombers with gravity bombs is over.

The era of fixed site nuclear missiles is in great peril.

The era of hyper-velocity missiles whether high parabola of IRBM/ICBM or Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) glide vehicles.

If the pilot mafia doesn't do something about what is coming, the result will be cataclysmic.

The Pentagon will not do the right thing, regretfully.

References:

A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force

Jeffrey J. Smith Tomorrow's Air Force: Tracing the Past, Shaping the Future

David Hambling Swarm Troopers: How Small Drones Will Conquer the World

Garrett Graff Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us Die

Paul Ozorak Underground Structures of the Cold War: The World Below

Daniel Ellsberg The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner

Nassim Taleb Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game

Mark Gunzinger & Bryan Clark Winning the Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile Defense

Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

My Substack

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me

In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition and missiles will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way the US Navy is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if Western forces go toe toe with regional hegemons in the East or West.

Let’s anticipate the disasters now that are the Spanish in the English Channel in 1588, the British Royal Navy at Jutland in 1916, and the discovery in WWII all these battleships were not really capital ships, or had adequate armaments, yet their political dimensions compel not only their continuous construction but are the most devastating when lost.

The aircraft carrier has been a signature component of US naval power and prestige for more than a century. The utility has continued to diminish since the end of WWII. The tremendous disadvantage of putting so much manpower and treasure into these single use leviathan systems in the modern world of distributed missile and PGM systems, emerging near-peer & peer adversaries and concentration of power in vulnerable systems is a recipe for future disaster.

The US Navy surface fleet is in tatters and shattered by readiness, maintenance and armament issues that are critical indicators of a navy totally unprepared.

More on the carrier dilemma in Chasing Ghosts Episode #034 and Dispatch #006.

References:

Gregory Vistica Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy

Michael Junge Crimes of Command: in the United States Navy, 1945-2015

Gerry Doyle Carrier Killer: China's Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles and Theater of Operations in the early 21st Century

David Lee Russell Early U.S. Navy Carrier Raids, February-April 1942: Five Operations That Tested a New Dimension of American Air Power

Jeff Vandenengel Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. Navy

Jeff Vandenengel interview on Midrats with CDR Salamander

Ivan Gogin Fighting ships of the PEOPLE LIBERATION ARMY NAVY 1949 - 2023

Jerry Hendrix Retreat From Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation

My Substack

Write me at cgpodcast@pm.me