Foreign military training has become one of the most popular tools in the US foreign policy tool kit. Between 1999 and 2016, the United States spent almost $15 billion to train over 2.3 million...

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Foreign military training has become one of the most popular tools in the US foreign policy tool kit. Between 1999 and 2016, the United States spent almost $15 billion to train over 2.3 million...
Javelins and NLAWs kill tanks. But while these NATO-supplied weapons destroy Russian vehicles, Ukrainians are also disrupting armored advances with their own bodies in bold acts of nonviolent...
Since 2006 Mexico has waged a so-called war on drugs, supported financially and militarily by the United States. At the heart of this drug war has been the “kingpin strategy,” a policy of targeting...
US special operations forces train, advise, and assist in at least sixty countries every day, preparing allies and partners for conflict. The SOF Truths guide these special operations units; every...
In Episode 54 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, we examine Plan Colombia, a United States initiative to assist the Colombian government in its fight against drug cartels and insurgents. Plan...
One of the most controversial US tools of irregular warfare over the last twenty years has been targeted strikes by remotely piloted aircraft, or drones, against terrorist threats in areas outside...
In the understandable rush to equip Ukraine to defend its sovereignty, the West has flooded the region with all manner of highly destructive and portable weapons. Powerful antitank guided missiles...
After years of committing vast resources to missions that have met with strategic frustration and disappointing outcomes, Western nations have become considerably more hesitant to deploy large...
Twisted metal, still smoldering; the eviscerated hull of a vehicle, its top half ripped off—this is what the Turkish Bayraktar TB-2 leaves in its wake. There were two such drones involved in this...
In Episode 53 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, we consider how cyber tools and weapons are used at the tactical level within irregular warfare. Our guests begin by highlighting the limitations of...
In the early weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a forty-mile-long Russian military convoy set out toward Kyiv from the north. But the convoy soon ground to a halt—in large part because of the...
On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of a “special military operation” on the sovereign territory of Ukraine. While claiming that Russian military actions would...
The August 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was not just bad news for the West: for the local chapter of the Islamic State, known as the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), it was the worst...
Since completing its terraforming and island reclamation projects in the Spratly Islands in 2016, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has shifted its emphasis to asserting dominance over the South...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is arguably the first war to be documented and fought on social media. At the beginning of the war, Ukraine seized the initiative in the information environment, which...
In December 2021, a truck carrying coal miners on their way back from work was mistakenly ambushed by Indian security forces in Nagaland state, in northeastern India, along the border with Burma....
In Episode 51 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, we consider how extremists of all types have exploited maneuver space online, and what this means for efforts to counter violent extremism today. Our...
Over the opening phase of their invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces have struggled to achieve their most ambitious objectives. In the face of spirited Ukrainian resistance, the Russian advance has...
Last week, Christopher Maier, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and General Richard Clarke, the commander of US Special Operations Command...
Kharkiv, a largely Russian-speaking city of over one million people, is known for poetry and the arts. But over the past few weeks, as the northeastern Ukrainian city has faced the brunt of the...
From dynamite in the early twentieth century to drones, bioweapons, and private-sector satellite constellations today, lethal technologies are increasingly available to nonstate actors and...
On August 3, 1972, President Richard Nixon sat down with Henry Kissinger to discuss the ongoing conflict in Vietnam. Having initially doubled down on his predecessor’s commitment of blood and...
For all its talk of great power competition, the US military—and the Army in particular—remains poorly structured to help the United States maintain a decisive advantage in contemporary strategic...
It has become axiomatic that cultural intelligence is key to success in counterinsurgency operations. But is it? This episode examines this assumption—is the cultural training we receive in the...
The Russian invasion of Ukraine grinds on. So far, Ukrainian conventional forces and resistance groups have mounted a stiff defense against Russia’s numerically superior forces. The Ukrainian...
In March 2021, roughly a dozen US Army Green Berets arrived in Mozambique to help train the Mozambican armed forces. In October, the USS Hershel “Woody” Williams made a port call to the capital...
In the classic Saturday Night Live sketch “More Cowbell,” legendary music producer Bruce Dickinson (played by Christopher Walken) takes on production of the classic rock band Blue Öyster Cult. In...
In Episode 48 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, we discuss the historical motivations and modern methods behind Russia’s use of hybrid warfare on the international stage. Our guests begin today's...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has gone slower than many Western analysts anticipated. In some areas, Russian forces advanced up to 120 miles in the first two days before coming to a halt. In other...
As Russian forces lay siege to Kyiv, the West appears impotent to take action beyond economic sanctions. Despite the explicit understanding in NATO that Ukraine falls outside its mandate, there...
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has proven to be a turning point in European security. As Ukrainians mount a stiff defense against a more heavily armed Russian invasion force, analysts and observers...
Even as open warfare has returned to Europe, states will continue to compete aggressively below the threshold of hot war. Campaigns that are persistent, fall short of warfare, and involve a panoply...
Russia, China, and Iran have all been learning how to conduct irregular warfare from the United States. They model their current irregular warfare approaches based on perceived lessons from...
As Western policymakers and researchers reflect upon the lessons of two decades of the Global War on Terrorism, they should assess the ways in which the terminology used to frame and analyze...
On October 8, 2019, the New York Times published a sensational piece on its front page, detailing the decidedly mixed operational history of Unit 29155 of Russia’s military intelligence directorate,...
Vladimir Putin has all the cards in his favor. Even if Russian forces do not attack Ukraine in the coming days, he is poised to gain another strategic victory at comparatively low cost. If he gains...
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan inflicted widespread physical devastation across the Caribbean. In the storm’s aftermath, China quietly began to establish a foothold in the region, making offers that some...
At precisely 2:30 a.m., a combined team of hackers from the United States and one of its partner nations launched a denial-of-service attack against the adversary’s cellular provider. For more than...
In Episode 46 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, we discuss a fundamental change that has occurred in the nature of war—and what this means for the United States and its allies. Our guests explain...
In the past two decades, armed unmanned aerial vehicles—or drones—have emerged as a principal tool for US counterterrorism efforts across the globe. The Bush administration initially adopted drones...
The US raid that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi came hard on the heels of the Hasakah prison break—the largest US combat involvement with the Islamic State...
In 1863, a Confederate agent named Thomas Courtenay devised a new weapon designed to sabotage Union steamships. Covered in pitch and rolled in coal dust, the explosive device was designed to look...
In February 2018, the cybersecurity firm FireEye published a report detailing the activities of a hacker group called APT37 (also known as Reaper, TEMP.Reaper, ScarCruft, or Group123), which had...
What is the role of security force assistance in achieving national security objectives? Where did security force assistance work well in the post-9/11 era, and where was it...
In 2021, researchers revealed hundreds of new missile silos in the deserts of western China. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) also tested a new hypersonic glide missile that encircled the globe...
The prospect of cyberwarfare continues to haunt defense planners, policymakers, and the public. Earlier visions of cyberwar, in which opponents hurled cyber weapons and logic bombs at each other at...
During an exercise in the California desert in October 2021 a special operations forces team hit the jackpot. Beneath the team’s observation post were almost a hundred enemy vehicles rolling through...
Right now, the unmanned aerial system is the IED of the next ten to twenty years. — General James McConville, Chief Staff of the Army, July 31, 2021, on the Irregular Warfare Podcast America’s...
Irregular warfare is executed across all domains and when operations require air support, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) stands ready to provide specialized skill sets to IW...
Since the 2017 US National Security Strategy reoriented the US military to strategic competition, many scholars and practitioners have argued that the future of special operations forces (SOF)...
In Episode 43 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, we discuss success in counterinsurgency warfare—more broadly, whether great powers can suppress destabilizing insurgencies and reform corrupt or...
Amid the chaos of the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the world received a stark reminder that terrorist and insurgent groups may compete with one another, even when they nominally fight on...
Why do suicide bombers sign up for their deadly missions? Beyond promises of paradise, there seems to be little in it for those who die carrying out attacks, while the organization that sent them...
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan ended a coalition of some forty nations, all with their own national goals and internal political dynamics but brought together by a shared interest in that war....
As US competition with China intensifies, conflicts in developing nations may again constitute a battleground for influence. Some observers have argued that the United States and China...
Irregular warfare and those who operate in that space face a time of uncertainty and shifting priorities. Throughout history, IW organizations have undergone dramatic changes at all levels to...
On November 9, 2021, a panel of scholars and practitioners brought together by the Irregular Warfare Initiative and the West Point Department of Social Sciences International Affairs Forum sought to...
What is the intersection between cyber and irregular warfare? Should the United States consider cyberspace a typical or exquisite domain? How did the counterterrorism fight serve as a proving ground...
In February 2020, the United States and the Afghan Taliban negotiated a seven-day reduction in violence levels. As part of the deal, the two sides agreed to a series of rules and exceptions that...
Over the past two decades, the United States has increasingly turned to security assistance as a solution to a wide range of problems in weak and conflict-affected states. It has provided security...