United States. Army. Engineer Center and Fort Leonard Wood.
The Guidon came into being as a weekly publication in 1966 under the title Fort Leonard Wood Guidon. Between 1966 and 1987 the title was simplified to Guidon before becoming Essayons in 1988. The name reverted back to Guidon in 1999. It has been...
U.S. military, Department of State, and Iraqi officials face many challenges moving a unified Iraq forward. This paper attempts to answer a critical question: Can local Iraqi grassroots councils facilitate a strategic endstate like achieving...
The events of September 11, 2001, catapulted America’s military into two wars with others looming on the horizon. The type of warfare they are conducting is far different from what they had trained for the last quarter of a century. The enemy...
Between 1945 and 1949 a pattern of mistrust developed between the communist block and the Free Western World. To counter the threat of communism the United States and fifteen allies decided to organize a mutual security pact. With the signing of...
This thesis describes how field artillery fires should be planned and executed in a counterinsurgency fight. Based upon historical research, there are numerous missions that the field artillery community can and must be able to execute in a...
This monograph examines the requirements for a dedicated aviation unit designed to destroy enemy attack helicopters. The ability of Soviet helicopters to impede and destroy friendly ground forces has created a new problem for Army leaders....
Complexity theory has attracted considerable interest from operational artists in recent times. However, because it is still an emerging field, there are few -- if any -- historical case studies that show how complexity applies to military...
This monograph explores the American media's influence on ethical military policy and attempts to understand the complex relationship between the United States' military, the American media, and U.S. policy makers in the context of a changing...
The marked changed in the types of wars fought over the last ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated the need for commanders at echelons below the campaign level to develop and continuously refine operational approaches to guide their...
As demonstrated by the U.S. military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, achieving favorable war termination requires more than defeating the enemy on the battlefield. Across the U.S. government, agencies have recognized the requirement to...
When are a nation’s security forces deemed self-reliant? Security force assistance (SFA) is one process of building or rebuilding a nation’s security forces. If the ultimate goal of SFA is producing a self-reliant force capable of responding to...
Even though Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom have created a surging trend of research and literature connected with irregular warfare, there is still inadequate study and appreciation of the United States commitment in the Philippines at the...
From 1945-1950, the United States Army transitioned from a conventional force designed for maneuver warfare in Europe to a role, which supported the Air Force in their delivery of nuclear weapons. This secondary role emerged from strategic studies...
General Laurence S. Kuter served as both an operational planner and commander during the Second World War. As a planner, he co-authored Air War Plans Division Plan 1 (AWPD-1); the basic strategy upon which the United States Army Air Forces waged...
Current conditions in Somalia create difficult challenges for the United States. To address ungoverned spaces in the failed state of Somalia, the United States appears to seek multilateral solutions to piracy in the Gulf of Aden, and displays an...
The transition is one of the most important, but most overlooked, parts of any campaign. The United States concluded Operation New Dawn in December 2011. The U.S. is also converging towards Operation Enduring Freedom's conclusion in 2014. In both...
The United States Marine Corps developed Operational Maneuver from the Sea in the 1980s and codified it as a Marine Corps concept in 1996. In brief, Operational Maneuver from the Sea seeks to exploit the sea as maneuver space to defeat access...
Proceeding from the means and ways they use to overcome the problems within their specific domains, the Army and Air Force have developed different operational perspectives. The differences would not matter if each conducted operations...
This monograph investigates Khalid Bin Waleed's seventh century (AD 633-634) campaign against the Sassanid Persian Empire in Mesopotamia to trace the evidence that substantiates application of modern characteristics of operational art. The question...
This monograph describes the interaction and impact of the Afghan culture with the numerous instances of foreign intervention in the country. Prior to the American intervention in 2001, most recall of foreign intervention in Afghanistan focused on...