WarNotes: A Conflict Podcast

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition and missiles will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way the US Navy is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if Western forces go toe toe with regional hegemons in the East or West.Let’s anticipate the disasters now that are the Spanish in the English Channel in 1588, the British Royal Navy at Jutland in 1916, and the discovery in WWII all these battleships were not really capital ships, or had adequate armaments, yet their political dimensions compel not only their continuous construction but are the most devastating when lost.The aircraft carrier has been a signature component of US naval power and prestige for more than a century. The utility has continued to diminish since the end of WWII. The tremendous disadvantage of putting so much manpower and treasure into these single use leviathan systems in the modern world of distributed missile and PGM systems, emerging near-peer & peer adversaries and concentration of power in vulnerable systems is a recipe for future disaster.The US Navy surface fleet is in tatters and shattered by readiness, maintenance and armament issues that are critical indicators of a navy totally unprepared.More on the carrier dilemma in Chasing Ghosts Episode #034 and Dispatch #006.References:Gregory Vistica Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. NavyMichael Junge Crimes of Command: in the United States Navy, 1945-2015Gerry Doyle Carrier Killer: China's Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles and Theater of Operations in the early 21st CenturyDavid Lee Russell Early U.S. Navy Carrier Raids, February-April 1942: Five Operations That Tested a New Dimension of American Air PowerJeff Vandenengel Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. NavyJeff Vandenengel interview on Midrats with CDR SalamanderIvan Gogin Fighting ships of the PEOPLE LIBERATION ARMY NAVY 1949 - 2023Jerry Hendrix Retreat From Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier AviationMy SubstackWrite me at cgpodcast@pm.me

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.I take the time to discuss some of the conventional ramifications of modern warfare and book & article recommendations that have given me a deeper and more nuanced understanding of why wars begin and end as they do.Robotics, autonomous targeting and hyper-velocity munitions are democratizing the battle field in a way heretofore unimagined. Drones are the new "low tech" answer to the First World's exquisite military platform that are over priced and have the same provenance of battleships planet-wide in January 1942.The electronic emissions environment in future conflicts will be a two-way street that will put any active acquisition sensors and attached effectors in the hazard if they emit and remain in one place.Autonomous targeting will become more and more relevant as the speed of munitions increases and the salvo competition costs are driven down.Hyper-velocity munitions are here to stay.The US Army and all land forces in the allied nations in the first world are in for a dramatic wake-up call.The life of the light infantryman will change significantly since for the first time in human history, the cost of hunting individual soldiers and small groups of soldiers in an effective fashion has reached a cost in concert with technology."Quantity has a quality all of its own." - Thomas A. Callaghan Jr.** I cover these issues in detail on my Chasing Ghosts podcast in Episodes 19, 24, 33-34, 47-48 and 53-54. **References:The 2024 Army Force Structure Transformation Initiative (CRS)A Retrospective on RMA, 2000-2020.The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeArmy Futures Command Concept for Fires 2028Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareLester Grau & Charles K. Bartles The Russian Way of War: Force Structure, Tactics, and Modernization of the Russian Ground ForcesGeorgii Samoilovich Isserson G.S. Isserson and the War of the Future: Key Writings of a Soviet Military TheoristSun Tzu The Art of WarH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to WarfareQiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy AmericaMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the way the West is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if Western forces go toe to toe with regional hegemons in the East or West.The US is NOT prepared for the war of leakers in which the inadequate missile defense systems and strategy now deployed will be overwhelmed if it enters a war of choice with China or Russia.It isn't simply the peer competitors but the smaller players like North Korea and Yemen are demonstrating that the US and its allies can't cash the checks they boast about.Once again, the US should stand down, reassess, re-calibrate and stop thinking defense is a four letter word.References:Winning The Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air And Missile DefensesThe Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeSpace Based Interceptor Sizing MethodologyBulletin of the Atomic ScientistsBooks:Garrett Graff Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of Us DiePaul Ozorak Underground Structures of the Cold War: The World BelowDaniel Ellsberg The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War PlannerNassim Taleb Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the GameMark Gunzinger & Bryan Clark Winning the Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile DefenseChristian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.In this episode, I will examine what intelligence looks like from a professional perspective and why America and the West consistently engage in existential chaos avalanches that make the world a worse place.The bureaucratic impulse in the West has been a significant factor in making the intelligence community (IC), like the military community, a paper tiger that is a far greater danger to the inhabitants of the west than an ally.It's time to restructure and realign the IC if America is to succeed as a free and peaceful member of nations. It will consume roughly 100 billion a year to produce shoddy analysis, inform bad policy and a Keystone Kops foreign covert/clandestine operations history that is a national shame.Time to level the entire national IC in a controlled demolition and don't replace cancer if found, kill it.If you leveled the FBI, NSA and CIA tomorrow morning, made each of their budgets one dollar and fired all their employees, you would still be safe as a country.References:Randolph H. Pherson and Richards J. Heuer Jr Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis 3 EdRichard J. Heuer Jr The Psychology of Intelligence AnalysisDavid Talbot The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret GovernmentRoger Z. George (Ed, et al) Analyzing Intelligence: National Security Practitioners' PerspectivesTim Weiner Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIAJohn Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of DarknessJohn Prado Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIAMortimer Adler How to Read a BookMy Substack.Contact me at cgpodcast@pm.me

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.It is time for the most expensive military in the world to seek a reset, this episode will continue to suggest that a strategic and grand strategic reframing has to take place to facilitate a wholesale re-imagining of the martial enterprises of America.References:Sun Tzu The Art of WarCarl von Clausewitz On WarMiyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to StrategyH. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to WarfareChristian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareQiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy AmericaMartin van CreveldThe Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since ClausewitzFighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945Colin GrayStrategy and History: Essays on Theory and PracticeFighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and StrategyWilliam Lind Maneuver Warfare HandbookJohn Boyd Patterns of ConflictMichael Weiner Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIAJohn Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of DarknessMy SubstackEmail at cgpodcast@pm.me.