Irregular Warfare Initiative

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...

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 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...

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....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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)...

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...

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...

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...

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...