Visual images have been a central component of propaganda for as long as propaganda has been produced. But recent developments in communication and information technologies have given terrorist and extremist groups options and abilities they never would have been able to come close to even 5 or 10 years ago. There are terrorist groups who, with very little initial investment, are making videos that are coming so close to the quality of BBC or CNN broadcasts that the difference is meaningless, and with access to the web they have instantaneous access to a global audience. Given the broad...

The challenge that is defense planning includes: "educated futurology" and the humanities as methodological approaches; futurists and scenarios, trend spotting and defense analysis; the impossibility of science in studying the future; the impossibility of verification by empirical testing of hypotheses; the value of the humanities which are politics, strategy, and history for defense planning; the use and misuse of analogy; learning from history; why and how strategic history works; and recommendations for the Army. What can be learned from history and what cannot are discussed in this...

The Armys Office of Economic and Manpower Analysis published a series of monographs during 2009 and 2010 intended to provide a theoretical and conceptual framework for an Army Officer Corps Strategy. The present volume supplements that effort, providing an overview of some key developments and assumptions that have guided and shaped the officer corps and the way it has been managed over the last century.

The United States increasingly relies on unmanned aerial vehicles-better known as drones-to target insurgent and terrorist groups around the world. Drones have been used in armed conflicts in which the United States is a recognized participant, including the conflicts against insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Iraq, and against government forces in Libya. The United States has also used drones to strike at terrorist and insurgent groups outside of theaters of armed conflict. These include drone strikes that target militants in Pakistan who support al-Qaeda and insurgents operating in...

Since 1993 at the latest, when Andrew W. Marshall and his Office of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) introduced into public debate the concept of a Revolution in Military affairs (RMA), the idea of revolutionary change in warfare has gripped the official U.S. strategic imagination. All such master notions, or meta narratives, have lengthy antecedents. The provenance of RMA can be traced in the use of laser-guided bombs in Vietnam; in the 1970s "Assault Breaker" project to develop rocket delivered smart bomb lets to target Soviet armor far behind the front; in...

This book provides an integrated view and a comprehensive framework of the various issues relating to cyber infrastructure protection. It provides the foundation for long-term policy development, a road map for cyber security, and an analysis of technology challenges that impede cyber infrastructure protection. The book is divided into three main parts. Part I deals with strategy and policy issues related to cyber security. It provides a theory of cyberpower, a discussion of Internet survivability as well as large scale data breaches and the role of cyberpower in humanitarian assistance. Part...

As the Iraq and Afghanistan wars wind down, the U.S. military, like most other Western militaries, is enveloped in campaigns of reappraisal about what its role should be for the next few decades. The U.S. Navy and Air Force are developing the concepts of the Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control, which are aimed essentially at countering the anti-access capabilities of nonstate, but especially state, adversaries. Since the unspoken focus of these concepts is on countries such as China or Iran, these are traditional military concerns and, to the extent that they facilitate the con-duct of...