WarNotes: A Conflict Podcast

The podcast dives into America's military failures since World War I, questioning the effectiveness of past engagements and the risks they pose today. It highlights the evolution of U.S. military strategies and challenges, from the Cold War to modern conflicts. The discussion critiques the implications of imperial ambitions and military interventions, especially in the Middle East. It further examines the impacts of legislative changes on military operations and emphasizes the need for innovative approaches to adapt to contemporary warfare.

"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 TroopersEffective 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 FictionEric Frank Russell The WaspKarl Marlantes Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam WarJames Jones From Here to EternityJames Gould Cozzens Guard of HonorAnton Myrer Once an EaglePaul Avallone Tattoo ZooMilitary Science FictionMichael Z. Williamson The Weapon (Freehold Series)Joe Haldeman The Forever War (The Forever War Series)Robert A. Heinlein Starship TroopersKali Altsoba Invasion!: The Orion WarJerry Pournelle and Larry Niven Legacy of BeowulfJerry Pournelle and Larry Niven FootfallJerry Pournelle and SM Stirling West of Honor (CoDominium Future History Book 1)Craig Dilouie Tooth and NailMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me

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 DefensesThe Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeNyet 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 UNIFICATIONBooks:Edward Bernays PropagandaSevim Dagdelen NATO: A Reckoning with the Atlantic AllianceMatt Kennard The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American EmpireDaniel Ellsberg The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War PlannerScott Horton Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in UkraineNassim Taleb Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the GameMark Gunzinger & Bryan Clark Winning the Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile DefenseChristian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me

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 TodayThe mercenary boom: How private military contractors are redefining modern warfareInternational Stability Operations AssociationEeben Barlow Executive Outcomes: Against all OddsAl J. Venter War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars***HR Kedward In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France, 1942-1944George Millar Maquis: An Englishman in the French ResistanceIan Wellsted SAS with the Maquis: In Action with the French Resistance, June–September 1944Stephen Biddle Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and MilitiasAnyone attending the Special Operations Forces Week festivities in Tampa on 5-8 May 2025?If so, we should arrange a rendezvous.My SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me

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 WarCarl von Clausewitz On WarMiyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to StrategyH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to WarfareChristian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareQiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy AmericaMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me

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 2007Ranger Handbook: TC 3-21.76, April 2017 EditionErwin Rommel Infantry AttackSiegfried Sassoon Memoirs of an Infantry OfficerPaul Avallone Tattoo Zoo: A Novel of the Afghan WarKarl Marlantes Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam WarCarl von Clausewitz On WarMiyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to StrategyH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to WarfareChristian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me

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 WarCarl von Clausewitz On WarMiyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to StrategyH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to WarfareChristian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareQiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy AmericaMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me

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 US Air Force is at a turning point in 21st century warfare and in danger of whistling past the graveyard if they fail to take notice and action on the emerging Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA).The era of manned combat aircraft is coming to a close.The era of manned bombers with gravity bombs is over.The era of fixed site nuclear missiles is in great peril.The era of hyper-velocity missiles whether high parabola of IRBM/ICBM or Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) glide vehicles.If the pilot mafia doesn't do something about what is coming, the result will be cataclysmic.The Pentagon will not do the right thing, regretfully.References:A Concise History of the U.S. Air ForceJeffrey J. Smith Tomorrow's Air Force: Tracing the Past, Shaping the FutureDavid Hambling Swarm Troopers: How Small Drones Will Conquer the WorldGarrett Graff Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us DiePaul Ozorak Underground Structures of the Cold War: The World BelowDaniel Ellsberg The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War PlannerNassim Taleb Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the GameMark Gunzinger & Bryan Clark Winning the Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile DefenseChristian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me

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.In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition and missiles will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way the US Navy is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if Western forces go toe toe with regional hegemons in the East or West.Let’s anticipate the disasters now that are the Spanish in the English Channel in 1588, the British Royal Navy at Jutland in 1916, and the discovery in WWII all these battleships were not really capital ships, or had adequate armaments, yet their political dimensions compel not only their continuous construction but are the most devastating when lost.The aircraft carrier has been a signature component of US naval power and prestige for more than a century. The utility has continued to diminish since the end of WWII. The tremendous disadvantage of putting so much manpower and treasure into these single use leviathan systems in the modern world of distributed missile and PGM systems, emerging near-peer & peer adversaries and concentration of power in vulnerable systems is a recipe for future disaster.The US Navy surface fleet is in tatters and shattered by readiness, maintenance and armament issues that are critical indicators of a navy totally unprepared.More on the carrier dilemma in Chasing Ghosts Episode #034 and Dispatch #006.References:Gregory Vistica Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. NavyMichael Junge Crimes of Command: in the United States Navy, 1945-2015Gerry Doyle Carrier Killer: China's Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles and Theater of Operations in the early 21st CenturyDavid Lee Russell Early U.S. Navy Carrier Raids, February-April 1942: Five Operations That Tested a New Dimension of American Air PowerJeff Vandenengel Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. NavyJeff Vandenengel interview on Midrats with CDR SalamanderIvan Gogin Fighting ships of the PEOPLE LIBERATION ARMY NAVY 1949 - 2023Jerry Hendrix Retreat From Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier AviationMy SubstackWrite me at cgpodcast@pm.me

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.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.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.References:Winning The Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air And Missile DefensesThe Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeNyet 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 UNIFICATIONNavy Matters Get the US Out of NATOBooks:Sevim Dagdelen NATO: A Reckoning with the Atlantic AllianceMatt Kennard The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American EmpireDaniel Ellsberg The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War PlannerScott Horton Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in UkraineNassim Taleb Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the GameMark Gunzinger & Bryan Clark Winning the Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile DefenseChristian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me