WarNotes: A Conflict Podcast

I further examine the strategic deficit disorder that absolutely dominates the US and western military establishments.

America has a singular inability to execute large and complex wars without failing in a spectacular fashion.

I speak to the tools and critical thinking modalities that could spark and encourage competent martial imagination. Moral courage is necessary to tell the flag officer dullards and their Senior Executive Service (SES) necromancers that the emperor has no clothes.

Recommended Listening:

On Strategic Empathy

Recommended Reading:

Michael Mazarr Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy

Williamson Murray The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War

Frans Osinga Science, Strategy and War (Strategy and History)

Stephen Robinson The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War

Christian Madsbjerg Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm

Johnson and Abbe Developing Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in Military

Zachary Shore A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind

Dave Snowden Cynefin - Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World

US Army Center of Military History

My Substack

Email at [email protected]

The Greenland debacle is bringing the NATO relationship into better focus on just how bad the EU/SSR has become.

America should take a non-interventionist pause and get its internal house in order before standing astride the world again and lighting fires that never go away and continuously make things worse.

Stop the madness.

Funny how the "logic" of decolonization never gets applied to Greenland by the Europeans.

Recent episodes on NATO.

First part here: Ep 009 "Fixing Fight Club: Just Say No to NATO: Part One"

Second part here: Ep 016 "Fixing Fight Club: Just Say No to NATO: Part Two"

I now have a Signal Group Chat for my CG Paid Subscribers.

I sent out a post to all of you.

References:

Defense of Greenland: Agreement Between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark, April 27, 1951

Winning The Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air And Missile Defenses

The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of Age

Nyet Means Nyet (William Burns 2008)

Pat Buchanan Where Does NATO Enlargement End?

DoS Cable: NATO ENLARGEMENT: RUSSIAN ASSERTIONS REGARDING THE TWO-PLUS-FOUR AGREEMENT ON GERMAN UNIFICATION

Books:

Edward Bernays Propaganda

Sevim Dagdelen NATO: A Reckoning with the Atlantic Alliance

Matt Kennard The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire

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

Scott Horton Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine

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

My Substack

Email at [email protected]

Effective June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.

The banal and humble generator set is a secret to destroying US combat power.

I wanted to flesh out a thought experiment on the vulnerabilities of the US war machine in its expeditionary mode in future wars of choice if a critical node of its operations for US efficacy were specifically targeted, in this case, generator sets;. these range from small portable units to large, trailer-mounted systems, including the Tactical Quiet Generator (TQG) and the Advanced Medium Mobile Power Source (AMMPS).

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

The US is NOT prepared for the war of leakers in which the inadequate missile defense systems and strategy now deployed will be overwhelmed if it enters a war of choice with China or Russia.

It isn't simply the peer competitors but the smaller players like North Korea and Yemen are demonstrating that the US and its allies can't cash the checks they boast about.

Once again, the US should stand down, reassess, re-calibrate and stop thinking defense is a four letter word.

References:

Millennium Challenge: The Real Story of a Corrupted Military Exercise and its Legacy

STP 9-91D13-SM-TG: TACTICAL POWER GENERATION SPECIALIST MOS 91D (2018)

Skill Levels 1/2/3

Winning The Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air And Missile Defenses

The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of Age

Space Based Interceptor Sizing Methodology

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Books:

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 [email protected]

I discuss the thumbnail sketches of US military failure since the end of WWI and try to elucidate some of the reasons for the failure and the existential threat this cavalcade of calamities is to 21st century America if the ship of state doesn't reverse course.

This a a dangerous time for America to continue its bad habits of wars of choice and allowing its intelligence organizations and their cutout mischief-makers to poke the bear and create black swan events out of whole cloth.

America boasts a magnificent 20th century war machine not fit for purpose for 21st century peer warfare.

The crossroads is chock-full of landmines.

References:

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

Martin van Creveld

The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz

Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945

Colin Gray

Strategy and History: Essays on Theory and Practice

Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy

William Lind Maneuver Warfare Handbook

John Boyd Patterns of Conflict

Michael Weiner Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIA

John Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of DarknessSun 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

My Substack

Email at [email protected]

"The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation."

Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.

I think the military science fiction milieu provides a great tool for forecasting and predicting possible conflict futures.

It may be yet another tool to take this magnificent US 20th century fighting machine and make it a peer combat competitor in the 21st century.

Speculative fiction provides a means to extrapolate what possible war futures are peering over the horizon.

Books:

Military Fiction

Eric Frank Russell The Wasp

Karl Marlantes Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War

James Jones From Here to Eternity

James Gould Cozzens Guard of Honor

Anton Myrer Once an Eagle

Paul Avallone Tattoo Zoo

Military Science Fiction

Michael Z. Williamson The Weapon (Freehold Series)

Joe Haldeman The Forever War (The Forever War Series)

Robert A. Heinlein Starship Troopers

Kali Altsoba Invasion!: The Orion War

Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven Legacy of Beowulf

Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven Footfall

Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling West of Honor (CoDominium Future History Book 1)

Craig Dilouie Tooth and Nail

My Substack

Email at [email protected]

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.

A continued discussion of the NATO debacle.

It is time for America to completely reassess alliances and partnership around the world starting with NATO and then working its way down the list of useless and toxic relationships and promises to commit American blood and treasure to flashpoints planet-wide. The sheer insanity of EU/SSR behavior and the total inadequacy of NATO as a military organization across the entire martial spectrum.

NATO insisted after the wall 1989-91 fell that the NATO blob would NOT expand eastward.

It did.

America should take a non-interventionist pause and get its internal house in order before standing astride the world again and lighting fires that never go away and continuously make things worse.

Stop the madness.

First part here: Ep 009 "Fixing Fight Club: Just Say No to NATO: Part One"

References:

Winning The Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air And Missile Defenses

The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of Age

Nyet Means Nyet (William Burns 2008)

Pat Buchanan Where Does NATO Enlargement End?

DoS Cable: NATO ENLARGEMENT: RUSSIAN ASSERTIONS REGARDING THE TWO-PLUS-FOUR AGREEMENT ON GERMAN UNIFICATION

Books:

Edward Bernays Propaganda

Sevim Dagdelen NATO: A Reckoning with the Atlantic Alliance

Matt Kennard The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire

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

Scott Horton Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine

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 [email protected]

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.

This episode examines what private military companies and campaigns look like.

I discuss traditional and emerging trends in private military warfare which tends to still take place in nation-state warfare. While combat support and combat service support billets have been filled with private military entities for all know history, the emergence of larger and larger forces of private kinetic and trigger puller entities has gotten larger over time.

References:

'The last supper': How a 1993 Pentagon dinner reshaped the defense industry...

Erik Prince at Hillsdale: "The Future of Dynamic Warfare"

Sean McFate Mercenaries and War: Understanding Private Armies Today

The mercenary boom: How private military contractors are redefining modern warfare

International Stability Operations Association

Eeben Barlow Executive Outcomes: Against all Odds

Al J. Venter War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars

***

HR Kedward In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942-1944

George Millar Maquis: An Englishman in the French Resistance

Ian Wellsted SAS with the Maquis: In Action with the French Resistance, June–September 1944

Stephen Biddle Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and Militias

Anyone attending the Special Operations Forces Week festivities in Tampa on 5-8 May 2025?

If so, we should arrange a rendezvous.

My Substack

Email at [email protected]

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.

I am taking a brief pause to reassess and re-calibrate the direction of my two podcasts.

Take the time to do the same.

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

Keep reading, taking care of your family and friends and always question both authority and obedience.

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 [email protected]

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.

The age of the infantry is over after a thousands-year long reign in human warfare and conflict.

The next 75 years in the 21st century will put paid to an august and enduring institution in human conflict.

The combination of salvo competition, reduced costs of combat UAS munitions, targeting of exquisite platforms, intelligence/reconnaissance/surveillance (ISR) ubiquity, and anti-fragility/fragility are some of the factors informing this demise.

There is no longer near peer competition and there is only peer competition, you will never hear me utter the former phase again. A hybrid of technology and the nature of sensor & effector synchronization has driven cost and opportunity so far down, it is now a rational calculation to destroy individual infantrymen and small units in detail.

For the first time in conflict history, the infantry on the battlefield will be targeted in a cost-effective fashion that will annihilate them on any field they step on in any climate at any time on the planet. The difference now is that wholesale elimination of infantry forces is nearly available to every combatant force on Earth.

And it will simply become more refined and deadly with time.

It's time for some severe self-reflection and reassessment to question the efficacy and utility of the infantry mode of combat. This Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) needs to be faced immediately.

This is an existential crisis for combat arms in the West.

Tick tock.

***

Please take the time to listen to my twelve-part series, Fixing Fight Club, here at WarNotes.

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

References:

The Infantry Rifle and Platoon Squad: The Official U.S. Army Field Manual FM 3-21.8 (FM 7-8), 28 March 2007

Ranger Handbook: TC 3-21.76, April 2017 Edition

Erwin Rommel Infantry Attack

Siegfried Sassoon Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

Paul Avallone Tattoo Zoo: A Novel of the Afghan War

Karl Marlantes Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam 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

My Substack

Email at [email protected]

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.

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 [email protected]