Wavell Room Audio Reads

If the war against Ukraine has highlighted any truth, it is that the defense industrial bases of the United States and Europe are woefully underequipped for the demands of high-intensity conventional warfare. The United States was and remains the only country that retained the kinds of stockpiles necessary to support Ukraine's defense and future offense, and it faces competing demands for those declining inventories.

Yet, for a country with a nearly $900 billion budget, it seems unable to get what it needs, when it needs it, and at a scale necessary for what it anticipates as future conflicts, not the least of which is with China over Taiwan.

The issue is, fundamentally, one of acquisition and procurement. The speed and urgency that drives the bureaucracy of the Department of Defense has not kept pace with the speed of innovation that drives Silicon Valley. In the age of the iPhone the Pentagon is using the Blackberry, at best (and not a late generation one, at that). There are shoots of growth through the concrete of the military's purchasing systems.

Groups like the Defense Innovation Unit (; formerly known as the Defense Innovation Unit - Experimental or DIUx) have sought to bridge the gap between Washington and Silicon Valley. Authors Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff, the former director of DIU and a driver of its creation, respectively, recount the creation of the Unit, its struggles, and its successes in the aptly titled book "".

It would seem to be a tall order, make Pentagon acquisition a thrilling read, but Shah and Kirchhoff manage to pull it off and rather well.

Filled with anecdotes of how the supposedly technologically cutting-edge services of the American armed forces operated in a surprisingly analogue manner, the authors tell the story of how DIU and others sought to match the warfighters' needs with Silicon Valley's innovations."Unit X" rightly focuses on the challenges of rapid innovation and rapid ingestion of new technologies. This is something for which the Pentagon, as the authors demonstrate, is not designed.

"Unit X" is not a story of nifty new technologies alone. It is really about the challenge of how the United States stays ahead of China, the pacing threat in strategic competition. Here, the Chinese Communist Party enjoys considerable competitive systemic advantages. A vertically integrated authoritarian-capitalist system, Beijing can better direct resources - human or capital - with rapid efficiency and arguably fewer bureaucratic hurdles.

China's aggressive corporate and military espionage campaigns have allowed it to leapfrog generations of innovation and trial and error. More alarmingly, the gap between theft and indigenous innovation is rapidly closing, with China able to develop more novel, domestic technologies at a greater rate than once anticipated.

The authors close "Unit X" by focusing on Ukraine (as is de rigueur today), which for many is seen as the standard-bearer for technological innovation, testing, and deployment. Senior military leaders on both sides of the Atlantic look to Ukraine wistfully, as a model of how they wish they could innovate and ingest new technologies - they want the war-time acquisition system without the war. That last part is key - in the absence of a clear driver of change, change is not forthcoming.

The problem is Ukraine is not the model they often think it is - that rapid adoption of new technologies is by consequence, not design. Those impressive and haunting first-person-video drones are used at such rates due to insufficient quantities of conventional artillery (which the United States and Europe are still failing to deliver). Those drone videos are also only the successful strikes.

The ratio of failure to success decidedly favors the former over the latter, especially as Russian electronic warfare improves. Ukraine's naval successes are deeply impressive, but miss key that when included make the lessons of the Black Sea unapplicable to other thea...

The 6.8mm Elephant in the Room

The United States Army has made the biggest change in a generation to its small arms fleets by replacing its standard infantry rifle (the M4) and Light Machine Gun (SAW) with a 'Next Generation Squad Weapon' (NGSW) multi-calibre system based on a new 6.8mm round with high-performance technology to be more lethal at greater range. Some NATO governments are scratching their heads about what this means for the bedrock of NATO interoperability.

This decision butts up against three important contextual factors:

1. More than two years of war in Ukraine has seen an unprecedented focus on the Russian threat and subsequent multi-lateral gifting programmes to arm Ukraine, and emergency NATO memberships for Sweden and Finland.

2. The 5.56mm 'SS109' round has been the cornerstone of NATO interoperability since 1980, when it was adopted by most NATO countries, while a few influential members have recently procured new 5.56 assault rifles including France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.

3. Since the drawdown in Afghanistan, there has been a growing movement questioning the effectiveness of 5.56 on the modern battlefield.

Putting aside the classified details of the original US Army requirement for the Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) programme, the Americans took a logical approach: start with the threat (the target) and work back to the weapon (the ammunition) and finally the delivery platform (the rifle/gun). This may sound obvious, but the reality is this approach is truly not the norm for military small arms procurement with NATO governments for a variety of reasons.

It is commonplace for the choice of ammunition nature not to be central to the requirements simply because in-service ammunition natures have a very long service life - it is hard to change them.

This article explores the major implications of the US Army's NGSW programme to future NATO small arms procurements to both dispel some myths and assist the NATO community in understanding the situation and the NGSW.

Show us the money!

In 2017, Lt Gen Mick Bednarek testified on the issue of what happens when a 5.56 round hits someone with body armour to a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on small arms (Verger, 2024):

"The US is facing adversaries with L2-3 body armour that precludes our lethality…regardless of range."

"Our capability to eliminate this threat at medium or long range is almost gone, so we must have small arms systems that can stop and can penetrate that increased enemy protection."

"I think the US Army universally realizes that the 5.56 bullet can't defeat Russian body armor."

In the same article, Col Jason Bohannan (Programme Executive Office [PEO] Soldier, US DoD) is quoted referring to the NGSW programme:

"…people get myopically focused on body armor…but there's a series of target sets in the battlefield that will exist for 10 years. And we're trying to balance all of that to put [the] US Army [and the DoD] at large, in an advantageous position."

Fast forward to 2022 when the US Army determined the old standard to be inadequate for the modern battlefield and disrupted the foundation of NATO interoperability by introducing two new squad weapons based on a new ammunition cartridge.

Before we get into the detail here is a big caveat up front - the US 6.8mm GP projectile (the XM1186) is owned by the US Department of Defence, while the hybrid case - the key component to achieving the high velocity that delivers the lethal punch for the NGSW- is owned by American producer SIG Sauer Inc.

Therefore, if NATO governments want to know specifically what this projectile does, they should dust off their bi-lateral defence sharing agreements and speak to their US counterparts; but the capability behind NGSW comes from the hybrid cartridge.

The SIG Sauer hybrid high performance cartridge is a lighter brass-steel composite that allows increased loads and delivers approximately 20-25% more barrel pressure and therefore muzzle velocit...

Introduction

The current picture

It's beneficial to acknowledge our men

Are our wellbeing offerings outdated?

How can we help our men?

How can men tell they might be unwell?

What are some barriers to help-seeking?

The 'problems' with talking

Culturally, we must do better

Feature photo by Daniel Reche via Pexels

Introduction

The Second Lebanon War - 2006

Hezbollah's Hybrid War

Hezbollah in 2024

Hezbollah and Lebanon

Conclusion

Main picture: Hezbollah drone operator during in an exercise in the Jezzine District, southern Lebanon, on Sunday, May 21, 2023. (Wikimedia Commons)

The video of a Russian soldier executing a comrade is circulating on social media. To analyse what this execution means, we'll examine another example.

On 30 January 1968 the Tet Offensive erupted. It proved a turning point in the Vietnam War. The decisive psychological blow to American public opinion was expressed in CBS anchor Walter Kronkite's famous 27 February broadcast:

'To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honourable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy and did the best they could.'

No image contributed more to the growing sense of repulsion over America's commitment to South Vietnam than the street execution of a captured Viet Cong fighter: Nguyễn Văn Lém.

The event took place on 1 February in a panic-gripped Saigon. Hanoi's hope of a popular uprising had failed spectacularly but Viet Cong gangs roamed the streets. Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams had spent a fruitless morning with an NBC journalist and Vietnamese camera crew looking for action. They were in the vicinity of the Ấn Quang Pagoda in downtown Saigon and preparing to leave when they noticed a commotion.

A captured Viet Cong in plaid shirt and shorts was being manhandled by a group of marines. His hands were cuffed behind his back. The unfortunate Lém was brought to police chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan. In Adam's words:

'When they were close - maybe five feet away - the soldiers stopped and backed away. I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture - the threat, the interrogation. But it didn't happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC's head and shot him in the temple.

I made a picture at the same time.'

Lém collapsed, a jet of blood spouting from his skull. It was all so matter-of-fact and quick.

Adams at first tried to pass off the importance of the photograph. It was just some guy shooting another guy. But it was so much more than that. Americans wanted to believe they were fighting a just cause. Loan's revolver blew away that illusion.

Loan ended his days as a one-legged pizzeria manager in Virginia, passing away at a relatively young age from cancer. President Jimmy Carter personally intervened to stop his deportation (pressed by House of Representative members on the grounds he had committed a war crime). Adams grew to lament the photograph that won him the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography: 'Two people died in that photograph.

The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera.' Today there is an Italian furniture shop near the spot where Lém was killed.

Fifty-six years later…

Fifty-six years later, three Russian soldiers were jogging on a dirt track near Robotyne in occupied Zaporizhzhia. They were spaced apart, maintaining a short distance between each other. Only the first and last soldiers were armed. Unbeknown to the trio, a Ukrainian FPV drone pilot had them in his sights. He decided to attack the unarmed soldier in the middle.

This author has viewed scores of these YouTube videos. If the drone strikes the body it splits open the torso like a carcass in a butcher's shop. Heads fly off. If the warhead detonates near the limbs, one or both legs are ripped off. Or limbs are left i...

The 2024 RUSI Land Warfare Conference's ambition was unavoidably hamstrung by the forthcoming Strategic Defence Review announced by Kier Starmer's incoming Labour Government.

Although many strategic and operational imperatives were explored, little substance was provided on how Army doctrine will evolve, how it will be re-organised and re-equipped, what this means for industry, and how these elements will together enable the future force to deter / counter the quartet of threats posed by Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. We have yet to see the Army's revised plan resulting from 2023's Integrated Review Refresh.

We will now have to wait until at least late 2025 before a more current and meaningful blueprint is released.

This is disappointing given the current geopolitical landscape. Two years ago at the same conference, General Sir Patrick Sanders refuted the idea that Russia's invasion of Ukraine would be short-term minor skirmish. Rather, he saw it as something that could foreshadow a larger and wider European conflict. Describing it as our 1937 moment, his call to arms went largely unheeded. At this year's Land Warfare Conference.

Speeches by the new Secretary of State for Defence, John Healey, and the new CGS, General Sir Roly Walker, left us in no doubt about the gathering storm. An unequivocal warning provided by retired Ukrainian General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, now Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, set the tone for the entire conference: "Evil has drawn near and it is out to kill."

Conscious that time and resources are limited, CGS made his objective clear: the British Army needs to be able to defeat a force three times its size. To do this, he aims to double its lethality by 2027 and to triple it by 2030. The most important point General Walker made was that there is no inexorable path to war. Conflict can be avoided through deterrence.

We must become the porcupine that, through an impressive array of pin-sharp quills, makes any efforts by predators to eat it so egregious that they pre-emptively decide it's not worth the effort.

The most important quill in the UK's defensive shield is its nuclear deterrent. But our conventional forces have been so hollowed-out over the last 14 years that there is a risk of nuclear weapons being our first and only response to unexpected aggression. However, the cataclysmic effect of a nuclear exchange makes it something we should avoid at all costs. This is why restoring conventional combat power across all three services is paramount.

If the British Army is to meet adversaries with devastating lethality, what must it do in practical terms is not yet clear, so this article aims to articulate the key initiatives that will most enhance the Army's combat power. This is not an unrealistic shopping list of new items that cannot be afforded or delivered in two years. It represents projects already in motion or about to start and which are funded by the Equipment Plan.

One - Replace Bowman with a software-defined C4I system.

The current Bowman BCIP 5.6 C4I system is rapidly approaching obsolescence. An ongoing project, the Land Environment Tactical Communication & Information System (LEtacCIS) programme, plans to replace it via the Morpheus sub-programme. The goal is to deliver a fully digitised, open architecture, software-defined C4I system with an upgradable ecosystem able to run a wide range of third-party apps.

A key advantage of a software-defined capability is that, like an iPhone, it can be upgraded on an ongoing basis to maintain system utility and integrity over time. New functionality, such as increased security, AI, machine learning, and algorithmic warfare applications, can be added incrementally with little effort or risk. An open architecture ensures interoperability with our allies. It allows increased technical functionality to be quickly rolled-out.

Unfortunately, Morpheus was derailed by the failure to deliver EVO, a component work stream intended to open Bowman's ...

Defence is its own worst enemy

Can-Do Culture

So what's the problem?

It isn't a matter of chance

Voting with their feet

If it's so terrible, why does it happen?

In conclusion

Image credit: MOD

Clarifying the People Problem

A thought exercise

Understanding the Why

AFCAS 24 has just been published. The data, as ever, is fascinating and provides an incredible insight into what our people think about Armed Forces life. It also critically highlights pull factors keeping people in service, and push factors which drive people to leave the Services. There are positive and negatives to service life, and AFCAS draws out how our people feel over time. It can give as an insght into which factors have always been there, and which are getting better or worse.

Here are some key extracts to think about:

AFCAS also highlights the parts of The Offer that keep people serving and are most highly valued. Over a number of years now the primary "pull" factors have been Defence medical services, dental services and job security. Are there ways we can capitalise on where we are doing well? Almost certainly, if we are willing to resource a plan to do so.

Do we need even more Data?

A Way Forward

Summary

Feature image credit: MOD

It's the Policy, Stupid.

Medical Policy

Other Policies

Lessons from America

So, What Can We Learn from the US Army?