S2 Actual reading list

Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945

David E. Johnson

The U.S. Army entered World War II unprepared. In addition, lacking Germany's blitzkrieg approach of coordinated armor and air power, the army was organized to fight two wars: one on the ground and one in the air. Previous commentators have blamed Congressional funding and public apathy for the army's unprepared state. David E. Johnson believes instead that the principal causes were internal: army culture and bureaucracy, and their combined impact on the development of weapons and doctrine. Johnson examines the U.S. Army's innovations for both armor and aviation between the world wars, arguing that the tank became a captive of the conservative infantry and cavalry branches, while the airplane's development was channeled by air power insurgents bent on creating an independent air force. He maintains that as a consequence, the tank's potential was hindered by the traditional arms, while air power advocates focused mainly on proving the decisiveness of strategic bombing, neglecting the mission of tactical support for ground troops. Minimal interaction between ground and air officers resulted in insufficient cooperation between armored forces and air forces. Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers makes a major contribution to a new understanding of both the creation of the modern U.S. Army and the Army's performance in World War II. The book also provides important insights for future military innovation.

Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present

Williamson Murray

Cambridge University Press · 2012

Hybrid warfare has been an integral part of the historical landscape since the ancient world, but only recently have analysts incorrectly categorized these conflicts as unique. Great powers throughout history have confronted opponents who used a combination of regular and irregular forces to negate the advantage of the great powers' superior conventional military strength. As this study shows, hybrid wars are labor-intensive and long-term affairs; they are difficult struggles that defy the domestic logic of opinion polls and election cycles. Hybrid wars are also the most likely conflicts of the twenty-first century, as competitors use hybrid forces to wear down America's military capabilities in extended campaigns of exhaustion. Nine historical examples of hybrid warfare, from ancient Rome to the modern world, provide readers with context by clarifying the various aspects of conflicts and examining how great powers have dealt with them in the past.

Tactics of the Crescent Moon: Militant Muslim Combat Methods

H. John Poole

Posterity Press · November 2004

This book focuses on how Iran and its various proxies fight. It is on the most prestigious pre-deployment reading lists for both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps, because it fully details the Islamists' yet-to-be-defeated 4GW method. That method is best countered by "truly light" infantry tactics, but America has had only "line" infantry since 1943. Its members travel mostly by truck and fight mostly with supporting arms. That's because the Pentagon is still practicing a "higher-tech" version of 2GW (killing as many enemy as possible). How to operate the latest equipment takes up so much of the young infantryman's day that he never learns how to sneak up on an expert defender. He and his buddies don't become any less visible by donning advanced electronics, so their traditional small-unit maneuvers remain as predictable as before. All Posterity Press books should be viewed as instruments of long-overdue change.

The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939-1945

Max Hastings

William Collins · Sep 10, 2015

Examining the espionage and intelligence stories in World War II, on a global basis, bringing together the British, American, German, Russian and Japanese histories. There were two Second World Wars: one fought on the battlefields, and another conducted by men and women few of whom ever fired a weapon in anger, but whose efforts vastly influenced the conflict. ‘The Secret War 1939-45’ examines that other war waged by British, American, German, Russian and Japanese intelligence-gathering personnel. Moving chronologically through the conflict, Max Hastings charts the successes and failures of allied and axis forces, espionage and counterespionage. Observing how the evolution of electronic communications dramatically increased the possibilities and significance of these secret battles, this is the story of intelligence beyond Bletchley to the FBI, Russia and the spies of axis dictatorships. For the first time since his best-selling ‘All Hell Let Loose’, Max Hastings returns to the Second World War, this time to chronicle its second, untold story.

The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century

Thomas X. Hammes

Zenith Press · February 17, 2006

4GW (Fourth Generation Warfare) is the only kind of war America has ever lost. And we have done so three times - in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. This form of warfare has also defeated the French in Vietnam and Algeria, and the USSR in Afghanistan.As the only Goliath left in the world, we should be worried that the world's Davids have found a sling and stone that work." - Chapter 1, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century. The War in Iraq. The War on Terror. These types of "asymmetrical" warfare are the conflicts of the 21st century - and show how difficult it is for the world's remaining superpower to battle insurgents and terrorists who will fight unconventionally in the face of superior military power. This change in military conflict may seem sudden.

Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975

Max Hastings

Harper · 2018

An absorbing and definitive modern history of the Vietnam War from the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Secret War. Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the 1968 Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and also much less familiar miniatures such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed two million people. Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings, and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls, and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, and Huey pilots from Arkansas. No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the twenty-first century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.

Weaving the Tangled Web: Military Deception in Large-Scale Combat Operations (Large-Scale Combat Operations Series Book 1)

Christopher M. Rein

This book is from Army University Press and is Volume 1 in it's Large-Scale Combat Operations Series. It has footnotes, maps, and pictures, and was originally published in 2018. “Since the Soviet Union’s fall in 1989, the specter of large-scale ground combat against a peer adversary was remote. During the years following, the US Army found itself increasingly called upon to lead multinational operations in the lower to middle tiers of the range of military operations and conflict continuum. The events of 11 September 2001 led to more than 15 years of intense focus on counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. An entire generation of Army leaders and Soldiers were culturally imprinted by this experience. We emerged as an Army more capable in limited contingency operations than at any time in our nation’s history, but the geopolitical landscape continues to shift and the risk of great power conflict is no longer a remote possibility. “While our Army focused on limited contingency operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, other regional and peer adversaries scrutinized US military processes and methods and adapted their own accordingly. As technology has proliferated and become accessible in even the most remote corners of the world, the US military’s competitive advantage is being challenged across all of the warfighting domains. In the last decade, we have witnessed an emergent China, a revanchist and aggressive Russia, a menacing North Korea, and a cavalier Iranian regime. Each of these adversaries seeks to change the world order in their favor and contest US strategic interests abroad. The chance for war against a peer or regional near-peer adversary has increased exponentially, and we must rapidly shift our focus to successfully compete in all domains and across the full range of military operations." Includes: Introduction: Multi-Domain Deception (Christopher M. Rein, General Editor); Chapter 1: The Belfort Ruse the American Deception plan for the battle of st. Mihiel, 1918 (Mark E. Grotelueschen); Chapter 2: From Beersheba To Megiddo British Deception Operations During The Palestine Campaign, 1917-1918; (Major Brian J. Drohan); Chapter 3: Operation Bertram British Deception At El Alamein (Gary W. Linhart); Chapter 4: Operations Barclay, Cascade, And Mincemeat Allied Deception In The Mediterranean, 1943 (Gregory S. Hospodor); Chapter 5: Operation Kreml German Strategic Deception On The Eastern Front In 1942 (Alan P. Donohue); Chapter 6: Red Star Resurgent Soviet Deception Operations At Stalingrad, 1942-1943 (First Lieutenant Kyle B. Vautrinot); Chapter 7: Operation Bagration Maskirovka At Its Height, Summer 1944 (Curtis S. King); Chapter 8: Deceive, Divert, And Delay Operation Fortitude In Support Of D-Day (Scott C. Farquhar); Chapter 9: Chinese Deception And The 1950 Intervention In The Korean War (Joseph G.D. Babb); Chapter 10: From Maneuvers To War The Egyptian Deception Plan On The Eve Of The Yom-Kippur War (Tal Tovy); Chapter 11: Target San Carlos British Deception During The Repossession Of The Falkland Islands (Steven Paget); Chapter 12: Deception In The Desert Deceiving Iraq In Operation Desert Storm (Donald P. Wright); Conclusion: The Future Of Military Deception Operations (Conrad C. Crane)

Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics)

Thomas Barfield

Princeton University Press · 2010

Afghanistan traces the historic struggles and the changing nature of political authority in this volatile region of the world, from the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth century to the Taliban resurgence today. Thomas Barfield introduces readers to the bewildering diversity of tribal and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, explaining what unites them as Afghans despite the regional, cultural, and political differences that divide them. He shows how governing these peoples was relatively easy when power was concentrated in a small dynastic elite, but how this delicate political order broke down in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Afghanistan's rulers mobilized rural militias to expel first the British and later the Soviets. Armed insurgency proved remarkably successful against the foreign occupiers, but it also undermined the Afghan government's authority and rendered the country ever more difficult to govern as time passed. Barfield vividly describes how Afghanistan's armed factions plunged the country into a civil war, giving rise to clerical rule by the Taliban and Afghanistan's isolation from the world. He examines why the American invasion in the wake of September 11 toppled the Taliban so quickly, and how this easy victory lulled the United States into falsely believing that a viable state could be built just as easily. Afghanistan is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how a land conquered and ruled by foreign dynasties for more than a thousand years became the graveyard of empires for the British and Soviets, and what the United States must do to avoid a similar fate.

War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla in History

Robert B. Asprey

Backinprint.com · May 2002

Ranging from Alexander the Great's battles with Asiatic Scythians, through the Russian Revolution, and on up to the turmoil in the Middle East and the battle in Northern Ireland, War in the Shadows is a book of monumental sweep and singular perspective. It also contains a comprehensive and hard-hitting strategic evaluation of the Vietnam War-one of the most significant analyses of "the war that won't go away." War in the Shadows tells the story of the countries currently torn by armed insurgencies and clarifies the causes of each conflict. It provides the broad viewpoint necessary for understanding them in the historical terms of guerilla warfare. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and a highly unstable "new world order," this brand of rebellion has never been more powerful and potentially disruptive. As the author states in his Foreword, "For a number of reasons guerilla warfare has evolved into an ideal instrument for the realization of social-political-economic aspirations of underprivileged peoples. This is so patently true as to allow one to suggest that we may be witnessing a transition to a new era in warfare, an era as radically different as those of which followed the writings of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, and Mahan." War in the Shadows is crucial to understanding the complex challenges of our new and dangerous era.

Air Force Advising and Assistance: Developing Airpower in Client States (Modern Military History)

Donald Stoker

Helion and Company · Sep 20, 2018

The increased focus on counterinsurgency warfare and US nation building efforts after the attacks of 11 September 2001 reignited interest in military advising within military and other government organizations, private think tanks, and defense related contractors. Most studies on the subject, based on the chronological scope and numerical preponderance of ground advising missions, has quite naturally focused on these past efforts. Less attention has been given to air or naval advisory missions. This work seeks in part to help redress this current imbalance by examining a number of historical case studies dealing with air advisory efforts. By examining a number of historical case studies, this volume analyzes the challenges and opportunities inherent in aerial advisory efforts and offers insights into the methods by which such missions succeed or fail. Air advisory missions date almost to the first days of powered flight. Air advisory efforts have a number of unique elements based on the fundamental role of advanced technology and the extensive resource requirements associated with aviation operations. For example, air advisory efforts are profoundly influenced by the types of aircraft involved and the types of mission flown. Likewise, the issues of maintenance support and the infrastructure needed for these missions plays a key role in determining capabilities available to the host nation. In the case of infrastructure, airfields, fuelling depots, maintenance and repair facilities, and radar and communications equipment offer a few of the most obvious requirements to support flight operations. The early history of advisory efforts reveal issues that remain relevant today, including questions related to the nature of aerial technology to be shared, the type of training to be provided, and the potential economic benefits that might accrue to the donor nation as a result of the sale of aviation technology to the host country. In many respects, air advisory efforts raise a number of profound strategic questions for the donor nation. Among others, these questions relate to the type of technology to be shared, the nature of training to be given, the role of foreign advisors in operations, the issue of infrastructure development and auxiliary training programs, the preparation of foreign advisors for their duties, and perhaps most significantly the development of the type of capabilities required to address the host nation’s security environment. Via a series of historical case studies, this volume explores these questions and others.

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Joby Warrick

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick reveals how the strain of militant Islam now raising its banner across Iraq and Syria spread from a remote Jordanian prison with the unwitting aid of American military intervention.      When he succeeded his father in 1999, King Abdullah of Jordan released a batch of political prisoners in the hopes of smoothing his transition to power. Little did he know that among those released was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a man who would go on to become a terrorist mastermind too dangerous even for al-Qaeda and give rise to an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East.      Zarqawi began by directing hotel bombings and assassinations in Jordan from a base in northern Iraq, but it was the American invasion of that country in 2003 that catapulted him to the head of a vast insurgency. By identifying him as the link between Saddam and bin Laden, the CIA inadvertently created a monster. Like-minded radicals saw him as a hero resisting the infidel occupiers and rallied to his cause. Their wave of brutal beheadings and suicide bombings continued for years until Jordanian intelligence provided the Americans with the crucial intelligence needed to eliminate Zarqawi in a 2006 airstrike.      But his movement endured, first called al-Qaeda in Iraq, then renamed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, seeking refuge in unstable, ungoverned pockets on the Iraq-Syria border. And as the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, ISIS seized its chance to pursue Zarqawi's dream of a sweeping, ultra-conservative Islamic caliphate.       Drawing on unique access to CIA and Jordanian sources, Joby Warrick weaves together heart-pounding, moment-by-moment operational details with overarching historical perspectives to reveal the long trajectory of today's most dangerous Islamic extremist threat. From the Hardcover edition.

Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex

Yasha Levine

PublicAffairs · 2018

The internet is the most effective weapon the government has ever built. In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project. A visionary intelligence officer, William Godel, realized that the key to winning the war in Vietnam was not outgunning the enemy, but using new information technology to understand their motives and anticipate their movements. This idea--using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad--drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology. But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden. With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news--and the device on which you read it.

Rhodesian SAS Combat Manual

Rhodesian Forces

Independently Published · 2020

The "Rhodesian SAS Combat Manual" is a significant historical look of the small unit tactics employed by the elite unit during the Rhodesian Bush War. Not only is it a glimpse back at how this unit operated, but a lot of the material is still relevant today fighting counter-insurgencies. This book covers tactical follow-ups, ambush tactics, infiltration methods and combat tracking and more!

Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present

Max Boot

Liveright Pub. Corporation · 2012

As fitting for the twenty-first century as von Clausewitz’s On War was in its own time, Invisible Armies is a complete global history of guerrilla uprisings through the ages. Beginning with the first insurgencies in the ancient world―when Alexander the Great discovered that fleet nomads were harder to defeat than massive conventional armies―Max Boot, best-selling author and military advisor in Iraq and Afghanistan, masterfully guides us from the Jewish rebellion against the Roman Empire up through the horrors of the French-Indochina War and the shadowy, post-9/11 battlefields of today. Relying on a diverse cast of unforgettable characters―not only Mao and Che but also the legendary Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, the archaeologist-turned–military commander T. E. Lawrence, and the “Quiet American” Edward Lansdale, among others―Boot explodes everything we thought we knew about unconventional combat. The result is both an enthralling read and our most important work on nontraditional warfare. 70 illustrations; 8 maps

Night Letters: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Afghan Islamists Who Changed the World

Chris Sands

C. Hurst and Company (Publishers) Limited · 2019

In 1969, several young men met on a rainy night in Kabul to form an Islamist student group. Their aim was laid out in a simple typewritten statement: to halt the spread of Soviet and American influence in Afghanistan. They went on to change the world. 'Night Letters' tells the extraordinary story of the group’s most notorious member, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the guerrilla organisation he came to lead, Hizb-e Islami. By the late 1980s, tens of thousands were drawn to Hekmatyar’s vision of a radical Islamic state that would sow unrest from Kashmir to Jerusalem. His doctrine of violent global jihad culminated in 9/11 and the birth of ISIS, yet he never achieved his dream of ruling Afghanistan. The peace deal he signed with Kabul in 2016 was yet another controversial twist in an astonishing life. Sands and Qazizai delve into the secret history of Hekmatyar and Hizb-e Islami: their wars against Russian and American troops, and their bloody and bitter feuds with domestic enemies. Based on hundreds of exclusive interviews carried out across the region and beyond, this is the definitive account of the most important, yet poorly understood, international Islamist movement of the last fifty years.

Paths to Victory: Lessons from Modern Insurgencies

Christopher Paul

RAND CORPORATION · 2013

Building on a 2010 RAND study of the 30 insurgencies begun and completed between 1978 and 2008, this study added 41 new cases to the data set, allowing comparisons across all 71 insurgencies begun and completed worldwide since World War II to distill the paths to victory. With many more cases to compare, the study was able to more rigorously test the previous findings and address several critical questions that the earlier study could not.

The Special Operations Executive in Burma: Jungle Warfare and Intelligence Gathering in World War II

Richard Duckett

I. B. Tauris & Company, Limited · 2017

In the mountains of occupied Burma during World War II, British special forces launched a series of secret operations, assisted by the native 'Karen' people. The men of the SOE, trained in sabotage and 'guerrilla' techniques, worked in the jungle, deep behind enemy lines, to obstruct the puppet Burmese government run by Ba Maw at the behest of Emperor Hirohito's Japan. Here, Richard Duckett uses newly declassified documents from the National Archives to reveal for the first time the extent of British special forces' involvement - from the 1941 operation until well beyond Burma's independence from the British Empire in 1948. Duckett argues convincingly that 'Operation Harlington' - the guerrilla campaign to liberate Burma - ranks amongst the most important of the SOE's secret missions. Featuring a wealth of photographs and accompanying material never before published, including direct testimony recorded by veterans of the campaign, detailed maps of covert operations and photographs of the officers involved, The SOE in Burma tells a compelling story of courage and of struggle in the last years of the Second World War.