Regional Support for Afghan Insurgents: Challenges for Counterinsurgency Theory and Doctrine

After the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, several thousand Afghan Taliban forces fled across the border to Pakistan, and the area became a safe haven for Afghan insurgents. In 2014, the transnational dimension of the insurgency is still highly prominent. Although regional support for insurgents is not uncommon, how to counter this aspect is mostly ignored in counterinsurgency (COIN) theory and doctrines. In this article, a regional counterinsurgency framework is developed, using the regional counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan as an example. The framework will facilitate the systematic inclusion of regional COIN measures in theory and doctrine.     

以党在新形势下的强军目标为牵引扎实推进军队院校保密工作科学发展

习主席提出的党在新形势下的强军目标,为进一步推进军队院校保密工作科学发展提供了根本遵循。院校保密工作必须以强军目标为牵引,铸牢强军之魂,牢牢把握军队院校保密工作发展的正确方向;扭住强军之要,切实提升搞好军队院校保密工作的能力水平;夯实强军之基,积极适应军队保密工作新要求抓好落实。     

谈谈政治理论课的基地教学

当前,军队院校的政治理论课教学,以教员课堂讲授为主,重课堂理论教学、轻社会实践锻炼的现象比较严重。这种传统的教学模式不利于创新型人才培养和教育转型的需要。政治理论课必须向基地教学延伸。     

如何提升军分区系统司令机关“四种能力”

文章针对军分区（警备区）系统“四种能力”的问题,讨论了军分区（警备区）系统“四种能力”建设的基本经验,提出要突出融合指挥,提升司令机关组织指挥能力;要突出技能训练,提高司令机关能参善谋能力;要突出战法研究,提高司令机关筹划创新能力;要突出协同合成,提高司令机关指导训练能力.     

改革军事高科技培训质量评价办法的思考

文章通过梳理20年来开展军事高科技培训质量评价工作的情况,分析了取得的成绩和存在的不足,指出要将培训效果和课程体系的整体质量评价与具体课程的教学质量评价相结合,构建完善的评价体系。提出了改革军事高科技培训质量评价体系的基本原则,并结合培训工作的主要环节和特点,借鉴柯氏模型提出了一种军事高科技培训质量评价体系的主要结构。最后给出了构建质量评价体系和提高评价实效的有关思考。     

Learning ‘Under Fire’: Israel’s improvised military adaptation to Hamas tunnel warfare

What organisational attributes enhance a military’s ability to effectively adapt on the battlefield? Upon the outbreak of war in July 2014 between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) encountered an expansive network of tunnels from which Hamas was launching large-scale assaults into Israel. This article illustrates that the IDF’s ability to successfully adapt ‘under fire’ to this battlefield surprise was facilitated by several important attributes related to its organisational learning capacity: a dynamic, action-oriented organisational culture, a flexible leadership and command style, specialised commando units which acted as ‘incubators’ for learning and innovation, and a formal system to institutionalise and disseminate lessons learned.     

The military as a learning organisation: establishing the fundamentals of best-practice in lessons-learned

The post-Cold War era has witnessed the rapid expansion of organisational learning initiatives within NATO militaries, especially formal “lessons-learned” processes. The effectiveness of national lessons-learned processes in recalibrating military activity to the demands of ongoing operations has been highly-differentiated. However, the academic literature on military change and practitioner guidance has been slow to investigate the key features of best-practice in military learning. This article breaks new ground by drawing upon the literature on dynamic organisational capabilities to explore the fundamental organisational processes and activities which are necessary to implement successful lessons-learned. It examines, in particular, the organisational features which facilitate “knowledge transformation”: the effective combination of new knowledge gained from intra- and inter-organisational learning with existing organisational knowledge. The article concludes by highlighting several potential future empirical and theoretical research agendas in military learning and the importance of engagement between lessons-learned practitioners and organisational learning scholars.     

Spaghetti: systems thinking and the US Army

In the mid-2000s, the United States Army was embroiled in counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan that required deeper understanding of local social systems. The Army turned to systems thinking and design thinking to model and understand the world, define problems, and develop approaches to strategic and operational challenges. However, the Army’s approach as expressed in publications and doctrine encourages the development of complicated, unsupported, and unfalsifiable hypotheses. The risk is that the Army will act on incorrect assumptions and develop plans that are fragile.     

The market and the military profession: competition and change in the case of Sweden

The rise of private military and security companies (PMSCs) challenges our notion of military professionals. PMSCs bring new claims to professional status and legitimacy outside military institutions and represent an increasing diffusion of - and competition over - military and security expertise. In light of this development, understanding the formation of professional identities in military and private security organisations is as an important undertaking. This paper contributes to this endeavour by analysing professional self-images in the Swedish Armed Forces and how these relate to PMSCs. The study is based on data collected from official documents, semi-structured interviews and a small-scale survey among senior military officers. Focusing on military understandings of PMSCs and contractors, the analysis provides much-needed insight into relational aspects of professional identity formation outside the US context. Furthermore, it points to discrepancies in organisational and group levels in understandings of commercial security actors, and paves the way for future research.     

Whistleblowing in the Irish Military: The Cost of Exposing Bullying and Sexual Harassment

Whistleblowing has gained increasing media attention over the past 40 years, as incidents of abuse and wrongdoing associated with businesses, religious institutions, the media and politics have come to light. In this article, we investigate the consequences of a military whistleblower’s actions for both himself and the military institution that he was a part of. The case concerns former army officer Dr. Tom Clonan and his findings concerning the bullying and sexual harassment of female personnel in the Irish Defence Forces at the turn of the century. As these revelations came to light over 17 years ago we are able to examine their consequences for the military since that time.