Author Archives: Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D
Will Iraq Derail Military Modernization? Issue BriefThe war in Iraq is proving far more costly and protracted than the Bush Administration predicted. Nearly a year after President Bush declared victory, U.S. forces are facing a Sunni insurgency, a Shiite uprising, a terrorist bombing campaign, [Read More...]
Military Transformation Falters in Mesopotamia Issue BriefDefense News reports this week that defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has set new “speed goals” for winning America’s wars. According to staff writer Jason Sherman, “Rumsfeld is challenging the military services to structure themselves to deploy to a [Read More...]
Lessons Learned Issue BriefLast summer, the U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) prepared a quick look at the military lessons to be learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom. It stressed the battlefield synergies made possible by greater jointness, adaptive planning and integration of [Read More...]
Tankers: “McCain Mutiny” Looks Misguided Issue BriefEver since Senator John McCain was wrongly accused of aiding a corrupt savings and loan official in the 1980s, he has been on a crusade to improve ethical standards in the federal government. Much of what he has [Read More...]
Space-Based Reconnaissance: Great Leaps On The Ground Issue BriefIn the age of network-centric warfare, almost no one fully understands new military technologies. “Network-centric” is the term academics use to describe the integration of diverse military forces in a resilient web of wireless links. It’s sort of [Read More...]
Weapons: Bush Budget Contradictions Begin To Bite Issue BriefPentagon executives told Congress last week that they can’t put a pricetag on their supplemental spending request for Iraq until later in the year, when costs are better understood. Actually, that’s only half of the story: they are [Read More...]
Transformation Cult Targets Texas and Georgia Issue BriefThousands of aerospace workers in Texas and Georgia who thought that six positive reviews of the Air Force’s next-generation Raptor fighter would be sufficient to secure their future employment are in for a shock. Proponents of radical transformation [Read More...]
Military Transformation: Who’s Up? Who’s Down? Issue BriefShortly after Donald Rumsfeld arrived at the Pentagon in 2001 with a mandate to remake the military, the Army and Navy began to sense they had a problem. A “strategic review” conducted by Rumsfeld’s closest advisors embraced the [Read More...]
The Achilles Heel Of Military Issue BriefIn Greek mythology, Achilles was the bravest and handsomest soldier of the Trojan War, a warrior rendered nearly invincible because his mother Thetis dipped him in the River Styx during childhood. Unfortunately, the heel by which she held [Read More...]
Tanker Lease: The Consequences of Bad Decisions Issue BriefThere’s a saying among psychotherapists that when every other approach fails to help a troubled patient, the mere passage of time sometimes can work wonders. The same is true of the Air Force’s abortive efforts to jump-start modernization [Read More...]