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In today’s dynamic military logistics environment, the need for a Joint Logistics Support Group as a tactical headquarter is critical to support allied forces as effectively and efficiently as possible. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupted exercise plans around the world, NATO’s Joint Logistics Support Group, Naples responded to ensure that they, and subordinate commands conducted the high-end training required to prepare them to operate effectively as logistics enablers to NATO’s Response Force.

With increased usage of National Guard Troops to address civil disturbances and other threats or concerns to homeland security, scholars and policy makers have begun to reexamine the use of the military within the scope of the Posse Comitatus Act and the inherent loopholes present in the Insurrection Act. Fear of military politicization and a worry that military activities are encroaching into the realm of local law enforcement have caused legal watchdogs to raise concerns regarding violations of state sovereignty and have pushed the U.S. Congress to take legislative actions to close those loopholes. How has the Posse Comitatus Act impacted Presidential authority, and how have recent events influenced public and political perspectives of the act along with the loopholes that provide broad Presidential authority to deploy and utilize the military on American soil?

Historically, commanders (CDRs) and staff manage complex situations within an operational environment (OE) that continuously changes. Army design methodology (ADM) provides an approach to dealing with unfamiliar and complex problems. “ADM is a methodology for applying critical and creative thinking to understand, visualize, and describe problems and approaches to solving them” (Department of the Army [DA], 2019, p. 2-16). An example of a complex situation that needs a solution is Ellyatt’s (2022) report on Russian forces invading Ukraine to demilitarize the country. To make matters worse, this was not Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine. The situation is extraordinarily complex and requires unique solutions to alleviate the suffering of Ukrainian citizens and help keep their sovereignty. The success of a military solution to a problem depends on the abilities of the CDR and their staff to frame solutions through the application of key concepts and activities to produce an operational approach that allows detailed planning and the sergeant major’s (SGM) ability to facilitate ADM activities in an organization.

Author’s Note: This essay was originally prepared for submission in mid-August of 2021, during the projected withdrawal of coalition troops from Afghanistan. However, submission was ultimately pre-empted by the abrupt collapse of the Afghan government and security forces. As the international community continues to engage in an after-action review following twenty years of operations that ultimately ended in failure, this case for a partition of Afghanistan is presented with minimal edits. This essay is presented as a contribution to the ongoing discussion of how the international community could have avoided the eventual outcome, and created a state of lasting stability that continues to elude both the Afghans and their former coalition partners.

Scholars, practitioners, and policymakers continue to contemplate the definition of irregular warfare (IW) and what it means for U.S. national security and defense strategy.  Many electrons are flowing through cyberspace with debates and arguments about what constitutes irregular warfare, why it is or is not important, who should conduct it (e.g., specific forces or all forces) and how it should be taught in professional military education.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing threatens the United States’ influence in the Western Pacific. The region is host to significant American military installations and partner nations. States such as the Marshall Islands support bases or can serve as platforms for future operations. These nations rely on fishing as a source of economic development. IUU fishing harms regional partner nations’ economic development and self-sufficiency, leaving them vulnerable to the United States’ threats. Regional threats such as China can undermine and supplant the United States’ regional alliances and strategic lines of communication through economic incentives to partner nations. IUU fishing will harm the United States’ ability to project power in the Western Pacific as regional threats exploit partner nations’ economic dependence on fishing.

This article analyzes an under-examined facet of the CSRL–CJNG conflict in Guanajuato: the use of tire repair shops as fronts for criminal activity. Over the last ten years, at least 138 tire repair shops have been violently attacked in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, leaving over 200 dead. An analysis of crime data, news reports, and local security experts suggests that these attacks are related to the fight between organized crime groups.

In November, Christiane Amanpour, a CNN chief international anchor, interviewed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska. By the end of the conversation, Christiane Amanpour says she knows that the Ukrainians are not afraid of “poking the bear” while others are afraid of Russia and of what Russia might do. In his response, President Zelensky points out that Russia feeds off these fears and this is a mistake that has not been corrected for decades. Olena Zelenska adds that Ukraine has been under Russia’s pressure for so long: the centuries of the Russian Empire and then the decades of the Soviet Union—it has ceased to be scary.

As the United States Army simultaneously amalgamates new national and defense security strategies, learns relevant lessons from Russia’s War in Ukraine, and accelerates the fielding of the next generation of weapons systems, we must also prioritize our greatest competitive advantage, our people. The Army’s intellectual institutions are struggling to find clarity in a future of competition with peer nations and capable militaries. As pundits hail the successful predictions of Russia’s tactical actions in Eastern Europe, the Army’s intellectual institutions may overlook continued strategic blunders such as understanding how the intelligence community could be so wrong about the capabilities of the Russian military or how 20 years of blood and treasure achieved so little in Afghanistan. The Army’s intellectual initiatives and learning are further diluted by the allure of academic status and accolades. Choosing an identity for Army intellectual institutions at echelon (why) and then aligning core competencies (how and what) will eliminate superfluous efforts and achieve a universal purpose of winning the Nation’s wars and sustaining the Army’s greatest military advantage…adaptive leaders.

The Korean War began on 25 June 1950 when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) invaded the Republic of Korea (South Korea) with the goal of unifying the two nations as a single communist country. The war lasted slightly longer than three years, until 27 July 1953 when both countries signed a ceasefire known as the Korean Armistice Agreement, resulting in the establishment of the Korean Demilitarized Zone. During this war, the United States and 21 nations under the umbrella of the United Nations Command supported South Korea. Conversely, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) and the People’s Republic of China (China) supported the DPRK. There were several campaigns during the Korean War, all of which required the use of joint planning through operational art and design, to accomplish strategic, operational, and tactical objectives. One such battle, the Battle of Inchon, occurred from 15 September to 18 September 1950 after the Inchon landing, using the moniker Operation Chromite (Gammons, 2000). The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Battle of Inchon, specifically the Inchon landing, using the lens of operational art and operational design to describe the ends, ways, means, and the arranging of operations, which led to the halting of the North Korean People’s Army offensive.