WarNotes: A Conflict Podcast

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 take the time to discuss some of the conventional ramifications of modern warfare and book & article recommendations that have given me a deeper and more nuanced understanding of why wars begin and end as they do.Robotics, autonomous targeting and hyper-velocity munitions are democratizing the battle field in a way heretofore unimagined. Drones are the new "low tech" answer to the First World's exquisite military platform that are over priced and have the same provenance of battleships planet-wide in January 1942.The electronic emissions environment in future conflicts will be a two-way street that will put any active acquisition sensors and attached effectors in the hazard if they emit and remain in one place.Autonomous targeting will become more and more relevant as the speed of munitions increases and the salvo competition costs are driven down.Hyper-velocity munitions are here to stay.The US Army and all land forces in the allied nations in the first world are in for a dramatic wake-up call.The life of the light infantryman will change significantly since for the first time in human history, the cost of hunting individual soldiers and small groups of soldiers in an effective fashion has reached a cost in concert with technology."Quantity has a quality all of its own." - Thomas A. Callaghan Jr.** I cover these issues in detail on my Chasing Ghosts podcast in Episodes 19, 24, 33-34, 47-48 and 53-54. **References:The 2024 Army Force Structure Transformation Initiative (CRS)A Retrospective on RMA, 2000-2020.The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeArmy Futures Command Concept for Fires 2028Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareLester Grau & Charles K. Bartles The Russian Way of War: Force Structure, Tactics, and Modernization of the Russian Ground ForcesGeorgii Samoilovich Isserson G.S. Isserson and the War of the Future: Key Writings of a Soviet Military TheoristSun Tzu The Art of WarH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to 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 Marine Corps has seen its time and it is now the opportunity to sunset it and wish it well in memorium. Two historical moments have destroyed the efficacy and primacy of the USMC: missiles and the sad Commandant tenure of GEN David H. Berger who will be remembered as the man who murdered the Corps.The US has not made a contested beach landing since Inchon in 1-19 September 1950 and the era of missiles has made the contested beach landing by maritime connectors and vertical envelopment a murderously expensive undertaking. The non-naval Houthis in Yemen have proven that US and allied naval surface power is a questionable enterprise peripheral to littorals.It is time to lay the wreaths, acknowledge the contributions, stand to for the swansong and decommission the Corps.References:USMC Small Wars ManualFMFM-1 WarfightingRonald O'Rourke Navy Medium Landing Ship (LSM) (Previously Light Amphibious Warship [LAW]) Program: Background and Issues for Congress (R46374)Smedley D. Butler War is a RacketPatrick Van Horne Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your LifeHeather Venable How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874-1918David J. Ulbrich Preparing for Victory: Thomas Holcomb and the Making of the Modern Marine Corps, 1936-1943Brett A. Friedman 21st Century Ellis: Operational Art and Strategic Prophecy for the Modern EraBing WestNo True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for FallujahInto the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan WarEmail 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 will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way 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:Winning The Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air And Missile DefensesThe Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeSpace Based Interceptor Sizing MethodologyBulletin of the Atomic ScientistsBooks:Garrett 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.A complete reassessment of American nuclear weapons has to be done.In the future near-peer and peer fight, nuclear weapons will be an option in the 21st century and no one can predict how they will used.In concert with the emerging Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) such as robotics, autonomous targeting and hyper-velocity weapons systems that are earth shattering and millennial bending, it is time to calibrate and reassess expectations and the dust off the war-gaming illusions that created the system of planetary suicide hovering over the world today.What happens with the advancement of space weapons which is now in the near future; what about the impact of these weapons dilemmas on a multi-planetary human evolution?Stop the madness.References:The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeSpace Based Interceptor Sizing MethodologyBulletin of the Atomic ScientistsGarrett 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 this episode, I will examine what intelligence looks like from a professional perspective and why America and the West consistently engage in existential chaos avalanches that make the world a worse place.The bureaucratic impulse in the West has been a significant factor in making the intelligence community (IC), like the military community, a paper tiger that is a far greater danger to the inhabitants of the west than an ally.It's time to restructure and realign the IC if America is to succeed as a free and peaceful member of nations. It will consume roughly 100 billion a year to produce shoddy analysis, inform bad policy and a Keystone Kops foreign covert/clandestine operations history that is a national shame.Time to level the entire national IC in a controlled demolition and don't replace cancer if found, kill it.If you leveled the FBI, NSA and CIA tomorrow morning, made each of their budgets one dollar and fired all their employees, you would still be safe as a country.References:Randolph H. Pherson and Richards J. Heuer Jr Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis 3 EdRichard J. Heuer Jr The Psychology of Intelligence AnalysisDavid Talbot The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret GovernmentRoger Z. George (Ed, et al) Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners' PerspectivesTim Weiner Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIAJohn Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of DarknessJohn Prado Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIAMortimer Adler How to Read a BookMy Substack.Contact 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.The joint concept is the synchronization function for individual services and by extension, allied and coalition forces in multinational war-fighting. The US has the parts and components committed on paper but nothing works in reality.References:The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeArmy Futures Command Concept for Fires 2028Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareLester Grau & Charles K. Bartles The Russian Way of War: Force Structure, Tactics, and Modernization of the Russian Ground ForcesDavid Glantz Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945 (Soviet (Russian) Study of War)David Glantz Soviet Military Operational Art: In Pursuit of Deep Battle (Soviet (Russian) Military Theory and Practice)Georgii Samoilovich Isserson G.S. Isserson and the War of the Future: Key Writings of a Soviet Military TheoristMartin van Creveld The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since ClausewitzCOL Douglas Macgregor:Navigating the Fiscal Storm: A New Course for U.S. National DefenseMy 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.It is time for the most expensive military in the world to seek a reset, this episode will continue to suggest that a strategic and grand strategic reframing has to take place to facilitate a wholesale re-imagining of the martial enterprises of America.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 AmericaMartin van CreveldThe Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since ClausewitzFighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945Colin GrayStrategy and History: Essays on Theory and PracticeFighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and StrategyWilliam Lind Maneuver Warfare HandbookJohn Boyd Patterns of ConflictMichael Weiner Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIAJohn Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of DarknessMy 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.Here's the premier episode of my new podcast, WarNotes: A Conflict Podcast and I am introducing the first series of 'casts I will do on base-lining problems and offering solutions to the immense military incompetence, malfeasance and rank stupidity that informs so much of contemporary Western military history.In the companion Chasing Ghosts podcast I produce, I am often scolded on being so overwhelmingly negative in my portrait of America and the west fighting the other conflicts, irregular warfare, historically and contemporaneously so bloody badly. So while I will seek to lighten the mood a tad there (especially with holidays approaching).In this new venture, I want to expand my portfolio of investigation and elucidation on war in the broader scope. I want 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.My first WarNotes series will be 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.The Fixing Fight Club series will be weekly until I finish the survey.I will paint a dim and shabby picture of the state of American and western arms in this chapter but I want to take 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.I'll offer some recommendations.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