Military Affairs

David Kilcullen at the Pritzker Military Library

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I saw Dr. David Kilcullen speak last night at the Pritzker Military Library in Chicago.

The full presentation is available as a video, here.

He talked about his new book, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. I think it is the best book I have read so far about the current wars the USA is engaged in, why they went wrong, and what to do about it. The phrase “must read” is over-used. I try not to over-use it. “Accidental Guerilla” is a must read.

It is very much worth listening to, and I won’t summarize the talk here, which is itself a summary of the book.

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A Strategic Clarion Call: Part I

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Looking at my own intellectual journey, I find that creativity usually comes in short bursts that punctuate long periods of reading, reflection, and hard work. About two weeks ago the National Security Blogosphere saw a great burst of creativity by the mind of Zenpundit. In this post (read every word!), Zenpundit identified several issues that the last couple of years of operations in Iraq have brought to the fore:

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Happy Birthday to the United States Army

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Gen. Odierno remembers the day in Iraq.

Those of us in safer places — safe because of our Army over more than two centuries — recall the work and sacrifice and victories of our soldiers with gratitude.

Making the Military Look Irrational, Part 7,456

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Gosh, scientists are  mystified  as to why the military would suddenly classify data they have made public for years. [h/t Instapundit] Well, I have an idea and if the scientists and the journalists had bothered to think about it from the  perspective  of military  intelligence, they could have figured it out as well.

The public data lets a potential enemy figure out the sensitivity of the satellites and how to create countermeasures.  

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HMS Belfast

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When I was in London recently I went to the top of the monument to the Great London Fire of 1666 (the site is cool; it has history information as well as a view from the top of the monument, updated every 60 seconds). From the top of this tower I saw what I was looking for – a great place to get a photo of the HMS Belfast, a British cruiser from WW2. The wikipedia site for HMS Belfast is a good place to start for information about this hard-working vessel – I was going to classify her as a “light” cruiser (due to the fact that she carried 6 inch main guns, while heavy cruisers carried 8 inch guns) but I read that after repairs from 1939-42 (after she hit a mine) she had been rebuilt and was the heaviest cruiser by tonnage in the British navy at the time, so I will just call her a cruiser.

While I have been to many museums in the United States that feature large WW2 and Korean era warships, such as the carrier Midway in South Carolina and the carrier Intrepid in New York, among others, there are comparatively few large ships that have been preserved in Europe and Asia. I believe (and semi-confirmed from this site, which is interesting) that the HMS Belfast is the only big-gun ship that has been preserved from the world wars in all of Europe. I heard a rumor (can’t find the link) that there even have been calls from Germany to bring back the Prinz Eugen (currently upside down at Bikini atoll, where she was blasted after WW2 in atomic bomb tests) back to Germany as a museum (very highly unlikely, of course).

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