– National Interest – So it seems remote war is easy to wage, hard to win, and carries hidden moral hazards. Beware the allure of the latest gadgetry. It cannot exorcise the ghosts of wars past—or present.

Foreign Policy – The New Rules of War

John Arquilla, the visionary who first saw the age of “netwar” coming warns that the U.S. military is getting it wrong all over again. Here’s his plan to make conflict cheaper, smaller, and smarter.

Esquire – The Awakening of Robert Gates

Thomas P.M. Barnett writes that after a career built on avoiding risk, the defense secretary is (finally) ready to get back in the game and gamble, all-in.

Armed Forces Journal – The rise of the tactical general

P.W. Singer writes that we should beware the temptation to micromanage through unmanned systems.

Washington Post – A Single-Minded Focus on Dual Wars

Greg Jaffe on Secretary of Defense Gates’ attempt to change the military.

Esquire – Inside the War Against Robert Gates

Thomas P.M. Barnett writes that if the Iraqi and Afghan insurgents — and, now, the Somali pirates — have taught us anything, it’s that the era of the “big war” is behind us. No one gets that more than our Secretary of Defense, argues a top global-security expert, and that’s why his Pentagon overhaul will beat the backlash.

Foreign Affairs – A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates writes that the Pentagon has to do more than modernize its conventional forces; it must also focus on today’s unconventional conflicts — and tomorrow’s.

The Atlantic – Robert Kaplan on how Donald Rumsfeld remade the U.S. military for a more uncertain world.
more…

BBC – A sea-going robotic glider that harvests heat energy from the ocean has been tested by US scientists.
more…

Wired – Is the emphasis on network-centric warfare the cause of the United States’ problems in Iraq?
more…

Economist – Western armies are good at destroying things. Can they be made better at building them?

more…

The Economist – An attempt to build an ethical robotic soldier.
more…

Wired – Scientists at the University of Washington have developed an autonomous underwater vehicle that can stay out to sea for up to a year and dive to depths of nearly 9,000 feet — nearly three times deeper than the deepest-diving military submarines.
more…

Wired – An interview with Tony Tether who has headed up the Pentagon’s way-out research arm, Darpa, since 2001. That makes him the longest-serving director in the agency’s nearly 50-year history.
more…

Foreign Affairs – Rumsfeld’s mishandling of the Iraqi occupation has given the “revolution in military affairs” a bad name. But as Max Boot and Frederick Kagan point out in two new books, transformation is vital to any military’s success — and more important now than ever.
more…

Foreign Affairs – The U.S. military needs more manpower, badly. And this means reordering budgets, putting troops over technology. Or does it?
more…

New Yorker – How Donald Rumsfeld reformed the Army and lost Iraq.
more…

Weekly Standard – Interesting essay by Ralph Peters on who he feels the real threats to the U.S. are.
more…

Defense and the National Interest – William Lind comments on the Quadrennial Defense Rubberstamp.
more…

Armed Forces Journal – William Arkin asks with the loss of its greatest champion, whatís to become of transformation?
more…

New York Times – Another sneek peek at the results of the Quadrennial Defense Review.
more…

Naval War College Review – The Asia-Pacific militaries are making impressive strides in modernization, but modernization and transformation are not the same thing. What is impeding their progress in fully implementing the revolution in military affairs? Do they need to do that? What will happen if they do not?

more…

New York Times – The Pentagon’s most senior planners are challenging the longstanding strategy that requires the armed forces to be prepared to fight two major wars at a time. Instead, they are weighing whether to shape the military to mount one conventional campaign while devoting more resources to defending American territory and antiterrorism efforts.
more…

Washington Post – In its first round of base closures in a decade, the Pentagon announced yesterday a sweeping plan to close or reduce forces at 62 major bases and nearly 800 minor facilities — consolidating military capabilities in large installations that are best equipped to train and quickly deploy forces in wartime.
more…

Washington Post – A new national defense strategy issued by the Pentagon calls for greater U.S. military efforts to keep foreign nations from becoming havens for terrorism or being undermined internally by such additional threats as insurgency, drugs and organized crime.
more…