WASHINGTON: The enemy of my enemy is….who exactly? That is the question U.S. Central Command planners confronted recently when they targeted the Khorasan Group, a hardcore Al Qaeda cell in Syria suspected of planning terrorist attacks against the United States and Europe. Not surprisingly, the U.S. strikes also killed fighters from the Al-Nusra Front,… Keep reading →

AUSA: A new generation of generals is rising in the Army. It’s a generation forced to get creative by more than a decade of ugly unconventional conflicts. It’s a generation disillusioned by the mistakes of superiors, military and civilian alike. It’s a generation willing to take on the Army’s bureaucratic culture of top-down management, which… Keep reading →

Robbin Laird, a member of our Board of Contributors, and Ed Timperlake conducted what looks like it will be the last interview with Gen. Mike Hostage, the head of Air Combat Command, before he retires in early November. Hostage has overseen the Air Force’s transition to fifth generation aircraft with the introduction of the F-22 and preparations… Keep reading →

SOMEWHERE IN WASHINGTON: Spy movie makers love retinal scans and ever-more inventive ways to steal or modify fingerprints. Former CIA Director David Petraeus and the Joint Special Operations Command relied heavily on retinal scans, DNA sampling, fingerprints, facial and body recognition — all cross referenced with other intelligence — to build enormous cross-linked databases that helped track and… Keep reading →

Howard Bloom is, for lack of a better term, an original thinker. He penned “The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History,” “Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century,” and most recently, “The Mohammed Code.” Bloom wrote this op-ed for us in response to the question… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: The services’ draft budgets delivered to the Office of Secretary of Defense early this month are probably being shredded in light of the campaign in Iraq and Syria against the terrorist group known as ISIL. “If you’re asking me, are we going to have budget problems, the answer is yes,” the president’s top military advisor told reporters this… Keep reading →

PENTAGON; The outlines of the campaign against ISIL are beginning to come into focus. The bombings and missile attacks against ISIL in Iraq are largely tactical, designed to provide the Iraqi military with some breathing room until they and the Kurdish peshmerga can mount effective counterattacks to drive ISIL out of their territory. But the bombings and missile strikes in… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Even as the latest Mideast war sucks in more US attention and resources — as well as wannabe jihadis from around the world — the outgoing chief of Pacific Command emphasized the much-derided “rebalance to the Asia-Pacific” is still going strong. Despite sequestration budget cuts the US is still strong enough to handle both theaters at… Keep reading →

Russia casts a long shadow nowadays, especially if you’re a neighbor. Armed with heavy tanks, jet fighters, long-range missiles, and the world’s slickest state-sponsored cyber-criminals, Russia is a very different threat from the so-called Islamic State, the Taliban, or even China. So how must the US and its NATO allies change gears, mindset and tactics to cope?… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: While the talkerati focused intently on the fairly narrow issue of the presidential strategy to degrade and destroy ISIL, they may have missed the larger message President Obama sent: America is preeminent economically and militarily and has not backed away from the world stage. For almost two years — from the time he declared a… Keep reading →