Author Archives: Daniel Gouré, Ph.D.
Without A Robust Sealift Capability, The U.S. Is No Superpower (From 1945)
What are the measures of a superpower? For the U.S. it is not just the number and diversity of its nuclear weapons, the size of its Army or the number of ships in its fleet. Being an oceanic power, a [Read More...]
Pink Flamingo: The U.S. Military Will Pay for Its Munition Shortage (From The National Interest)
The Biden administration’s effort to assist Ukraine shines a light on two serious national security problems: the Department of Defense’s inadequate stockpiles of munitions and the difficulties facing the defense industrial base to respond to quickly increase production of critical [Read More...]
AbramsX: Why This Powerful Tank Could Be A “Revolution On Tracks” (From 1945)
In 2016, the U.S. Army began the most comprehensive modernization of its major platforms and weapons systems since the so-called Big Five of the 1980s. Part of the current modernization effort is focusing on defining the characteristics of and requirements [Read More...]
Hypersonic Weapons: Using Statistical Analysis To Understand Capability And Intent
The Falls Church-based company Kingfisher has recently published an interesting paper on hypersonic weapons. This is the kind of work that the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment used to do. In the 2000s, Andy Marshall funded research into areas of [Read More...]
U.S. Marine Corps Could Be Left With No Effective Amphibious Warfare Fleet (From 1945)
The Department of Defense may be creating a “perfect storm,” a situation in which LSD decommissioning and LPD 17 Flight II production terminations, coupled with increasing costs for the LAW, could leave the Sea Services with inadequate numbers of both [Read More...]
As DoD Continues To Send Equipment to Ukraine, It Needs To Buy Back Better At Home (From RealClearDefense)
The U.S. military assistance effort for Ukraine is one of the largest and most rapid transfers of weapons from this country to another since the end of World War II. It includes tens of thousands of anti-aircraft and anti-armor munitions, [Read More...]
4 Lessons The U.S. Army Should Have Already Learned From Ukraine (From 1945)
The conflict in Ukraine has only been waged for seven months and the situation is still in flux. As as the largest high-intensity conflict in Europe in more than three-quarters of a century, the war in Ukraine is providing an [Read More...]
If Putin Nukes Ukraine, Russia Could Win The War (From The National Interest)
Having failed in his initial effort to achieve a coup de main against Ukraine and his subsequent campaign to occupy territory in the east and south of that country, Russian president Vladimir Putin has figured out a way of winning [Read More...]
The Army Needs To Extend Active Protection To Bradley Fighting Vehicles (From 1945)
The Russian invasion of Ukraine shows that the world is not finished with industrial-age warfare. It also underscores the critical role of heavy armor in at least some future high-end conflicts. The large losses in armored fighting vehicles suffered by [Read More...]
The New War In The Air Littorals: Implications For Future Integrated Air And Missile Defenses (From 1945)
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has caused many defense experts and military leaders to posit the existence of a new “mini-domain:” the air littorals. This is the region from the ground to approximately 1,000 ft. As the current conflict demonstrates, this new [Read More...]