Ben Connable on LinkedIn: r/CombatFootage on Reddit: Ukrainian drone crawls into an open tank hatch.… (2024)

It is hard to make a meaningful and complex argument about the war in Ukraine in 750 words, but it is easy to make a shallow argument seem meaningful and complex in that same narrow space. That's what Sam Charap and Jeremy Shapiro have done here. Charap has firmly staked his claim as the voice of reason on the Ukraine War: He argues that the act of negotiating with Russia is logical and wise. He never really substantiates his position and often elides counterarguments. He does so again with Shapiro here.Charap and Shapiro use the administration's latest policy change on the Ukraine War - to allow limited use of U.S. weapons on Russian territory - to baseline their broader argument.They start out by making a series of reasonable statements and forecasts. Basically: This narrow policy change is inconsequential. I agree that it will not end the war in Ukraine's favor and that Putin will not escalate in response.What follows, though, is shoddy. Just because a narrow policy step may beinconsequential, entering into (unconditional?) negotiations with Russia is nottherefore reasonable.For an argument to be effective it must be both factual and logically constructed. Charap and Shapiro argue that the United States has no strategy in Ukraine. That is false. This is the strategy, spelled out in the U.S. Integrated Country Strategy: "Mission Goal 1: Win the War: Ukraine effectively uses security, humanitarian, economic, and diplomatic tools to prevail on the battlefield and set conditions for a just and lasting peace."Charap and Shapiro may not like that strategy, but it does exist. It also nests within a commonly understood function of negotiations: The act of negotiating is not in and of itself an unalloyed good. Entering into negotiations under unfavorable conditions, with no clear desired outcome (never offered to us by the authors), while on the back foot, and while other options remain open, is a profoundly unwise act rather than a smart and good act.Charap continually writes about Ukraine as if it were a pawn on a chessboard between great powers, suggesting the Ukrainians have no agency. This is cold logic in support of an argument intended to convey diplomatic wisdom. In this vein, citing Thomas Schelling makes sense. Charap and Shapiro use Schelling to argue that the use of force absent negotiations is illogical. So perhaps the United States should have negotiated with Hitler during WWII, and in doing so achieved a better outcome? This is a cherry-picked interpretation of Schelling's 70-year-old theories, and it does not hold up to contemporary literature or intervening experience.Ukraine can negotiate with Russia when (a) it achieves a favorable bargaining position; or (b) it is desperate and on the verge of total defeat. Let's hope we don't get to (b), but negotiating now just to negotiate is not good strategic logic. #ukrainewar #russiahttps://lnkd.in/dzQtyekA

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Volunteer support continues to play a critical role in helping Ukrainian soldiers to fend off the Russian invasion. My colleague James Sladden traveled with one of these volunteer groups from Estonia into Ukraine to help deliver trucks, drones, and other supplies. This is the story of the 27th Freedom Convoy (69th NAFO Sniffing Brigade). Since James wrote this article, the 28th convoy has already traveled; their volunteer work is ongoing.If you want to support this effort visit the 69thsniffingbrigade channels on social media (Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.) or email info@help99.co. #ukraine #ukrainewar #69thsniffingbrigadehttps://lnkd.in/gXtQSzxS

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This is the wonderfully unremarkable story of Eric Smith surviving what would normally have been a deadly aortic stenosis. It is unremarkable because exceptional people - the Commandant of the Marine Corps and a CPR instructor - persevered and did their jobs as expected. This Washington Post article still tells a great story.When General Smith suffered his heart attack I wrote briefly about my experiences with him in Anbar Province, Iraq in 2004. Then (I believe) a lieutenant colonel, Smith was shot through his calf with a big 7.62mm rifle or machinegun round. As I recall, he was ordered to the hospital with plans to evacuate him back to Germany and perhaps the United States for treatment.Smith refused and instead stayed at Camp Blue Diamond on the edge of the hot-spot city of Ramadi. He wobbled around our tiny base, which was under mortar and rocket fire most days, on crutches, and would prop his bleeding leg up on a desk to work. He never complained and had an air of calm dismissiveness when anyone asked him how he was doing (we didn't ask often).One day I walked into the shower shack and saw a pool of blood running out from under one of the stalls. There was so much blood I thought someone might have shot themselves with their service pistol. I asked, "You okay in there?" Smith replied curtly, "Yep, fine." Then I saw his crutches propped against the wall.That was Eric Smith's normal. So it is no surprise that after going face-first into the pavement with massive heart failure he survived over nine minutes of CPR, recovered in a few months, and went back to work. Smith is a Marine's Marine and an inspiring leader.It is no surprise that Timothy LaLonde, a certified CPR instructor, performed over nine minutes of CPR without complaint and in doing so saved General Smith's life. So there was nothing remarkable about Smith's physical and mental toughness or LaLonde doing his job. However, just as there is depressing banality in the evil behaviors with which we have become so accustomed, there is (to borrow an already turned phrase) banality in good, too. These days even routine goods are sufficiently inspiring. #marinecorpshttps://lnkd.in/gnyMUJ7h

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Excellent Controversy & Clarity podcast with FedEx CEO and former Marine Corps infantry officer Fred Smith. Damien O'Connell starts the discussion by jumping right into the Vietnam War. Fred then describes his post-war experience applying Marine Corps lessons to building and running one of the most successful businesses on the planet. Here's part of Fred's Silver Star citation:"...while serving as Commanding Officer of Company K,3rd Battalion, 5th Marines,1st Marine Divisionin connection with operations against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. On the morning of 27 May 1968, while conducting a search and destroy operation, Company K became heavily engaged with a North Vietnamese Army battalion occupying well-entrenched emplacements on Goi Noi Island in Quang Nam Province. As Lieutenant Smith led his men in an aggressive assault upon the enemy positions, the North Vietnamese force launched a determined counterattack, supported by mortars, on the Marines' left flank. Unhesitatingly rushing through the intense hostile fire to the position of heaviest contact, Lieutenant Smith fearlessly removed several casualties from the hazardous area and, shouting words of encouragement to his men, directed their fire upon the advancing enemy soldiers, successfully repulsing the hostile attack. Moving boldly across the fire-swept terrain to an elevated area, he calmly disregarded repeated North Vietnamese attempts to direct upon him as he skillfully adjusted artillery fire and air strikes upon the hostile positions to within fifty meters of his own location and continued to direct the movement of his unit. Accurately assessing the confusion that supporting arms was causing among the enemy soldiers, he raced across the fire-swept terrain to the right flank of his company and led an enveloping attack on the hostile unit's weakest point, routing the North Vietnamese unit and inflicting numerous casualties. His aggressive tactics and calm presence of mind under fire inspired all who observed him and were instrumental in his unit accounting for the capture of two hostile soldiers as well as numerous documents and valuable items of equipment." #marinecorps #fedex #vietnamwar #leadershiphttps://lnkd.in/e-f5iTKD

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"Everyone thinks they have already learned everything from Ukraine." Some version of this quote recurs in routine conversations I have with colleagues across both U.S. and European defense communities. While this attitude is not universal-not "everyone" thinks this way-and while aggressive learning programs are running quietly behind closed doors, discourse on the character of the Ukraine War suggests plenty of NATO military professionals have baked their thoughts and moved on. This trend has emerged for at least two observable and disappointingly predictable reasons. It should be reversed. However, reversal appears unlikely given that quite a few of our most senior military leaders appear to be some of the most confidently ossified in their opinions about modern warfare. Search for "the character of war is (or "has")..." and be prepared to receive the word from on high.Why have so many military leaders moved on? Some combination of these two factors generally applies:1. Aggressively essentialist opinions about the character of modern warfare were set in stone before February 2022. There was sufficient opportunity in the chaos that followed to cherrypick evidence (read: anecdotes) to reinforce any and all preconceived opinions. Love the RMA? Pull up compilation videos of Starlink-assisted FPV drone strikes and HIMARS kills. Hate the RMA? Pull up articles about the Russians jamming GPS to render HIMARS, Excalibur rounds, JDAMs, et al. effectively useless. Middle-ground opinions are few. Ad hominem attacks pass for professional discourse.2. Input suffocation has induced intellectual malaise. We are drowning in combat videos, social media posts, think tank reports, AI generated junk, propaganda, etc., etc. It is overwhelming even for those few with the capacity to give Ukraine their full attention. The more we receive the less we really know, and so the more frustrating learning becomes. It appears that some professionals have passively stopped trying.We in the West were never all that good with military lesson learning to begin with. In fact we were so bad at absorbing and applying lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan that the snarky phrase "lessons observed" entered our lexicon.Arrogance and malaise regarding the lessons of the Ukraine War will undermine our already dysfunctional efforts to forecast and prepare for near-future war. We will carry forward in a state of collective semi-ignorance about modern warfare: Most of us will know just enough to talk a good game but not enough to prove anything for objective analysis and effective acquisitions.Top-down leadership on this issue is essential: We must continually revisit our most cherished assumptions. Sometimes external voices are helpful to shake malaise. I found this podcast interview with Yaroslav Trofimov to be refreshing in two senses of the word. #ukraine #lessonslearned #nato #ukrainewar #characterofwar

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Iraq's Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, is visiting Washington, D.C. this week for a series of high-level engagements. Timing is fortuitous given the rapidly escalating tensions between Israel and Iran. Iraq is caught in the middle both figuratively and literally.This is a particularly good time for Western leaders who have not had time to focus on Iraq, or for those who have decided Iraq is in our collective rearview mirror, to reconsider its strategic importance in the Middle East. PM al-Sudani's article in Foreign Affairs, here, is a good place to start. Western perceptions of Iraq are generally ossified. Many will be surprised to find that despite a range of serious, ongoing challenges, Iraq is moving forward in a mostly positive direction.I am presently co-leading the Iraq Engagement Project (IEP) at the Atlantic Council with my colleague C. Anthony Pfaff, PhD, working with an esteemed group of former ambassadors from Iraq, the United States, and Europe. This effort affords us both time and access to focus on Iraq and related policy issues, engage with current and former senior policy leaders, and to hear from Iraqi government officials. What we have seen and heard is closely mirrored in PM al-Sudani's remarkably frank accounting:- Iraq is rapidly emerging from a period of dependence on the West and, to a lesser extent, Iran, and has clearly asserted its roles and rights as a sovereign state. Mutual dependencies remain, but the hat-in-hand days are effectively over. As the Prime Minister asserts, it is time to stop thinking about Iraq primarily as a place where other states compete.- While Western relations with Iraq are periodically upended by regional events and internal political reactions, and while nongovernmental armed groups hostile to the West still have a foothold on Iraqi soil, the Prime Minister and his staff recognize the need to strengthen ties with (in particular) the United States as Iraq moves towards increasing independence.Turmoil and internal tensions remain. Corruption and malign influence have not evaporated with the emergence of sovereign Iraqi power. But given:- increasingly strong Iraqi sovereignty;- continuing Iraqi government desire to build and sustain close security and economic ties with the West;- Iraq's vital geopolitical positioning in the Middle East, squarely between Iran, Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and NATO member Turkey, now is a good moment in time to refresh assumptions and to reconsider the diplomatic and economic capital Western democracies put towards supporting Iraq in its pursuit of enduring stability and positive regional leadership. #iraq #middleeast (note: 1-article free access available at FA)https://lnkd.in/eCCxQU9f

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My friend Col Lester "Ray" Gerber recently posted his concerns about our half-hearted efforts to assess the impact of information operations. He observed (1) a knee-jerk reliance on "sense of the Internet" snapshots; and (2) failure to apply a focused method to assess impact, though he noted the existence of useful methods. I'll take this a step further: I have seen no evidence of any proven, reliable, replicable method to effectively assess the impact of influence activities on actual behavioral selection at any level of operations. If I'm right, and neither we nor our adversaries have any reliable method for assessing the value of information operations, we have much to consider.I come to this conclusion as a practitioner and researcher. I supported, conducted, and assessed information operations in Iraq as part of an IO targeting board and working with our PsyOp teams (real military PsyOp, not conspiracy theory stuff) in the field. I also studied information operations at RAND, working with some of the top experts in the field including Dr. Christopher Paul, and supporting various military IO commands. In all that work I never saw anything more than interesting correlations between information operations and adversary/friendly actions. Why does this matter? Because even strong correlations prove nothing and should never be used to justify ops, programs, or investments.Despite the absence of a reliable method for assessing their real-world impact, information operations have become obsessive global fixations. For the U.S. military this is a throwback to 1990s-era revolutionary hyperbole (think Information Dominance). Today, information staffs and commands arguably are more powerful than many operational commands. For evidence of the nearly obsessive focus on IO look no further than the U.S. Marine Corps which, despite two decades of battlefield-proven intelligence operations, subsumed its entire intelligence infrastructure under an information staff, effectively relegating intelligence to a sub-supporting activity.Have information operations influenced decision making and behavior? Of course they have, and they will continue to do so. Can we prove a causative link between IO and actions? Yes, probably, in a few standout cases. Can we prove the general value of IO in the military domain? No, I do not believe we can. So:- Are we making good investments by pouring (tens of billions?) of dollars into military information operations programs?- Should the military be spending more time on preparedness than IO?Other practical concerns apply, including our seemingly increasing inability to think through hard problems and our collective willingness to shoulder-shrug at questionable investments. I return here to one of Ray's other points: Perhaps the military is best off continuously exercising global combat power to build generalizable deterrence, whether that deterrent effect can be measured or not. #io #deterrence

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General Alfred M. Gray's death drops a heavy exclamation point on the end of a Marine Corps era. Frankly, Gray probably outlived even the vestiges of his own era by more than a few decades. He will be remembered primarily for two things: (1) integrating maneuver warfare theory into the Marine Corps; and (2) forcing the Corps back towards an "every Marine a rifleman" philosophy. He also wore his cammies to Joint Staff meetings, but that messaging was more internal than perhaps his fellow flag officers perceived it to be: Gray was signaling to Marines that we were at our core a warfighting organization. In part he may have been trying to create a clean break from his predecessor, P.X. Kelley, who (fairly or unfairly) was perceived to have allowed the Corps to stagnate into barracks mode.I was lucky enough to have been a junior Marine and NCO when Gray took over as commandant. I guarded him at his home at 8th & I and was caught on the receiving end of a couple of infamous Al Gray punches. He once nailed me square in the shoulder coming around the corner from 8th Street while he was walking his dogs, spun me almost 180 degrees. I'm sure that would have been the end of his career today, but I was really excited to tell everyone the commandant had punched me.For me, Gray's influence on the Corps' intellectual development was more important than any of his perceived quirks or hallmark accomplishments. Gray initiated the Commandant's Reading List, both forcing and encouraging all Marines to read about their profession. I was a young lieutenant when the Marine Corps Research Center at Quantico, Virginia (later the Alfred M. Gray, Jr. Research Center) was upgraded to world-class status. I believe funding came in primarily through the university foundation, but Gray played an important role in elevating research about Marines and by Marines. Over the course of my career and since my retirement I have spent many hours in that center, plumbing the depths of the archives and just enjoying the surprisingly quiet, cerebral space of a U.S. Marine library.Well after retirement, Gray continued to be heavily involved in academic pursuits and the intellectual development of his Marines. I will never forget the kind, handwritten, personal note he sent me when I graduated a course he oversaw (circa 1997). I still have it in my mementos. It's funny how those small personal gestures can affect us even decades after the fact. Check the comments on all the posts about Gray's death and I'm sure you'll see plenty of these personal memories.I was to proud to have served under Al Gray. He was a truly inspiring leader to the most junior of us Marines in the late 1980s and early 1990s. What a man, what a loss. #marinecorps

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Human behavioral analysis and the strange case of the JC-HAMO: Influence operations, war fighting, and anything having to do with humans (anything in any domain) requires a sound understanding of human behavior. DoD pours billions of dollars into human behavior research but also seems to harbor a collective, top-level unwillingness to confront the most obvious gaps in our scientific understanding of the human.What appears to be a case in point: In 2016, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Paul Selva published a Joint Concept paper entitled Human Aspects of Military Operations (JC-HAMO). I was the keynote speaker at a writing workshop for this document back in ~2015. Selva's paper gets right to the heart of the major gaps in our collective understanding. This quote from the intro sums up the paper's intent:"The (JC-HAMO) describes how the Joint Force will enhance operations by impacting the will and influencing the decision making of relevant actors in the environment, shaping their behavior, both active and passive, in a manner that is consistent with U.S. objectives. Human aspects are the interactions among humans and between humans and the environment that influence decisions. To be effective at these interactions, the Joint Force must analyze and understand the social, cultural, physical, informational, and psychological elements that influence behavior."This all seems obvious, but Selva and his team did the U.S. military a valuable service by making this statement and supporting arguments clearly and in official print. The note goes on to list gaps that need to be addressed, including in our collective ability to understand the will to fight. Right about the time the JCS published the Joint Concept for Operating in the Information Environment - an important document that has correlated with enormous investments in information operations capabilities across DoD - in 2018, the JC-HAMO was removed from the DoD digital world. It is no longer listed on the JCS joint concept page, even though other, older documents are linked. The new information operations note cites the HAMO but links to a contractor website.Was there perhaps something offensive in the JC-HAMO? It certainly spoke truth to a major gap in DoD capability: As we demonstrated in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, we are broadly incapable of assessing partner, ally, or adversary will to fight. Thankfully, work on will to fight analysis is ongoing and good strides are being made. But the information operations note that ostensibly replaced the HAMO does not mention will to fight at all. JC-HAMO has been officially deleted. Why? It is still publicly available and still quoted, albeit obliquely, in official documents. What happened? JCS staff: Whether this was an admin oversight or intentional, please repost it and own the problem set. It will not go away. In the interim, here's the note. #willtofight #influence Paul Selva

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Two years on from the accelerated Russian invasion of Ukraine I'm reposting this bold-but-achievable proposal to help find rational, politically-palatable, cost-effective, mutually-beneficial ways to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia, transfer collective defense responsibility to European NATO allies, and revitalize the American defense industry. How can this be done?The United States can systematically transfer its entire inventory of Cold War-era defense stocks to Eastern European NATO allies and to Ukraine while modernizing its own forces. Transfer would include all the ~30-40-year-old M1 tanks, Bradleys, A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, F-16s, HMMWVs, anti-air, anti-tank, and older surface-to-surface missiles, and other equipment explicitly designed to provide the United States with an integrated combined-arms force capable of defeating (Soviet) Russian military forces on European soil.We can undertake this transfer in sensible waves, ensuring sustained American combat power while inventory is replaced. As European armies take control of our Cold War stocks, American industrial support would be provided to deliver parts, munitions, and other necessary sustainment. Europeans would pay for this support, effectively subsidizing the American economy while they expand their own industrial base to assume more responsibility for their own collective defense.This program would provide European NATO allies with the kind of robust capability - in a timely manner and in sufficient volume - to build a credible deterrent against prospective Russian invasion, thereby lowering the risk of a crisis that might trigger Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Ukraine would be provided with the materiel it needs to sustain at least the defense of its controlled territories over an extended period, allowing sanctions against Russia to have more biting effect. This kind of material commitment would also signal enduring NATO commitment to Ukraine in a way that might undermine Russia's own will to fight.#ukraine #ukrainewar #nato #russia #russiaukrainewar #willtofighthttps://lnkd.in/eQWicFBm

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