john_boyd_on_clausewitz_dont_fall_in_love_with_your_mental_model_113236.html

I agree with Boyd that strategy and tactics are not scientific and the notion of there being absolutes that apply everywhere, all the time is wrong. It seems, though, that some of these same ideas work well as _considerations_ to employ in thinking things out.

As far who is the next person to end up in the history books as a great thinker - no idea, but while I hate to give any praise to the wicked, Vladimir Putin seems to do pretty well stirring things up and framing the situation so that it is difficult for the West to directly oppose him militarily (in which case he would lose, and lose in front of a population that would not tolerate that, politically). He is very good at manipulating not only his own people, but those of other countries, very good at understanding how to achieve limited ends without much risk. Ukraine and Georgia are examples.

The next "revolution in military affairs" will be in the field of robotics, by which I mean to include what will be simply fancy extrapolations of precision guided weapons, but able to produce more specific effects, including in complex terrain. I don't mean self-driving 5-ton trucks or rucksack-carrying robot dogs. (That's okay for a science project, but I don't think it will achieve much on the battlefield.) Rather, I mean systems that would perhaps use swarming attacks of relatively small, relatively simple machines (think submunitions that can fly, swim, walk) that perform tasks cooperatively (I mean, literally, a "swarm"). With such technologies (and there's more than just designing and implementing a system like I describe from imagination, there's also the technologies to support it and also to defeat it - ECM, ECCM, cyber, etc), there is also the doctrine for employing such systems once developed - and how a prepared military organizes and deploys on such a battlefield so that they can bring their own such systems to bear against the enemy without leaving themselves unnecessarily exposed the systems employed by the enemy. It will be similar to 1939-1940, with the Germans understanding how to make use of radios and mechanization, understanding the importance of having the most resources at the critical time and place, even when they found themselves outnumbered and out-equipped overall (invasion of France, 1940). The French and perhaps the British expeditionary force didn't seem to have the same grasp, and that played well for the Germans. Something like that might happen, but don't know who will get it and who won't.

I would tend to agree. As the world changes and interests shift, the lens through which we assess strategic issues will undoubtedly evolve. However, the thinkers of the past have given us strong foundations to built upon. Those theories shouldn’t be totally abandoned.

http://www.mors.org

I saw the site, I perceive your interest, look at that group, they're state of the art, it'd give you a completely different perspective I'm hoping you might've never seen before, I'll try to send more, OK? I'm just curious, what prompted your interest in it? Also, read Nicolo Machiavelli, everyone quotes Sun Tzu, rarely Machiavelli, also, get the classics by Julius Caesar, e.g., the Punic Wars, and also Thucidydes History of the Peloponnesian War, I think you'll perceive instantly why I suggest all those, promise, elaborate, I'd be epmost eager to hear more. OK?