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Scientific Innovation, Institutionalization, And Moral Dilemmas: From Chemical Warfare In World War I To Ai In Modern Conflict, Kylie Kiefer

Holster Scholar Projects

This research examines the different American perspectives surrounding the morality and future of chemical warfare during and after World War I. Using primary sources collected at the National Archives at College Park, it argues that the Chemical Warfare Service survived not because Americans agreed that poison gas was morally acceptable, but because wartime mobilization created scientific expertise, military facilities, and relationships that made dismantling the service after the war difficult. While opponents emphasized moral and humanitarian concerns, advocates defended chemical warfare through arguments about preparedness, military necessity, and claims that gas was more humane than conventional weapons. The paper also …

War And Power: Who Wins Wars—And Why, Frank Hoffman

Joint Force Quarterly

Frank Hoffman reviews Phillips Payson O’Brien’s War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why, which proposes a multidimensional framework for assessing national power and explaining military outcomes. O’Brien argues that success in war depends on more than the size of a state’s armed forces or inventories of weapons. His concept of “Full Spectrum Powers” evaluates five interacting elements: economic and technological strength, political leadership, social and governmental structures, military effectiveness, and alliances. Drawing on conflicts including the world wars, the Cold War, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Russo-Ukraine War, the book examines how states generate, adapt, and sustain military power. …

Training For Victory: U.S. Special Forces Advisory Operations From El Salvador To Afghanistan, Tobias Bernard Switzer

Joint Force Quarterly

Tobias Bernard Switzer reviews Frank K. Sobchak’s Training for Victory: U.S. Special Forces Advisory Operations from El Salvador to Afghanistan, a comparative study of efforts to build host-nation special operations forces in El Salvador, Colombia, the Philippines, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Sobchak evaluates five factors that may influence advisory outcomes: consistency in advisor pairing, language proficiency, partner-to-advisor ratios, authority to organize host-nation units, and combat advising. He finds that advisors’ ability to organize partner forces is most strongly associated with combat effectiveness, while language proficiency is less decisive than commonly assumed. Switzer interprets these factors as measures of two broader …

“Creating The Point Of The Spear”: The Deployment Of Kitty Hawk (Cv-63) As An Afloat Forward Staging Base During Operation Enduring Freedom, Justin B. Blanton

Joint Force Quarterly

On 27 September 2001, Kitty Hawk (CV-63) received orders to deploy to the northern Arabian Sea to serve as an afloat forward staging base for joint special operations forces (SOF) tasked with conducting raids into Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), the U.S. military response to the terrorist attacks of 11 September. In order to accommodate the SOF, the aging, large-deck carrier reconfigured to deploy with fewer than 20 aircraft: Eight F/A-18Cs, three S-3Bs, two C-2As, and two SH-60F/HH-60H Seahawks. On 1 October Kitty Hawk departed Yokosuka, Japan, transited to Masirah Island, Oman, and embarked Task Force Sword, …

Disjointed Command And Air Domain Challenges In Alaska: The Case For A Single U.S. Combined/Joint Force Air Component Commander, Jeffrey W. Kempff

Joint Force Quarterly

The current command and control (C2) organizational structure over the air domain in Alaska is fragmented and doctrinally inconsistent, undermining homeland defense and reducing wartime lethality. Disjointed roles between the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)—particularly in the Alaska Theater of Operations (AKTO) and Alaska NORAD Region Area of Operations (ANR AO)—create gaps in unity of command and effort, especially within the air component. This article examines Alaska's fractured air domain organization and command relationships, illustrating operational ambiguity, duplicative efforts, and inconsistencies that delay decision-making. It proposes a focused, near-term solution: unify the …

Mission Over Bureaucracy: Special Operations Command’S Warrior-Driven Model For Defense Innovation, Robert D. Seader

Joint Force Quarterly

In an era of accelerating technological change, military organizations must rapidly develop and field new capabilities to maintain battlefield superiority. Traditional defense acquisition processes, optimized for peacetime oversight and risk avoidance, now take four times longer than in the 1950s, threatening to undermine military effectiveness against rapidly modernizing adversaries. This paper examines how the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has pioneered a fundamentally different acquisition approach that delivers new capabilities in months rather than the decades typical of conventional programs.

Through extensive interviews with senior acquisition leaders, this analysis identifies three core elements of USSOCOM’s success: a mission-centric culture …

Determining Operational Objectives, Milan Vego

Joint Force Quarterly

Full knowledge and understanding of the true meaning of operational objectives are the main prerequisites for sound planning and execution of major operations A major operations (on land, at sea, in the air) is aimed at accomplishing a single operational objective. They can be conducted predominantly by a single service or two or more services. A campaign in a high-intensity conventional war consists of a series of related major/joint operations (on land, in the air, at sea) plus numerous tactical actions aimed to achieve a single military- or theater-strategic objective. Yet despite their importance, relatively little attention is …

From Data To Victory: The Race For Analytic Superiority In Warfare, Robert Grossman, Emily Goldman

Joint Force Quarterly

Artificial intelligence technologies have reached a tipping point after decades of development. They are diffusing widely across defense and national security applications. Twenty-first century warfighters rely on analytic models in all systems, at all echelons, and in all domains. As more powerful models built on ever larger data sets become ubiquitous, militaries are in a new competition to deploy artificial intelligence. Operational art must embrace “analytic superiority.” This is the operational advantage from collecting and ingesting data, building robust models and computing infrastructure, deploying the models into operational systems, and denying adversaries' ability to do the same

This article explains …

Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 120, 3rd Quarter 2026, National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly

Joint Force Quarterly 120, 3rd Quarter 2026, focuses on contemporary defense strategy, joint warfighting, professional military education, operational innovation, and military sustainment. The issue opens with Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge A. Colby’s discussion of the logic underlying the 2026 National Defense Strategy and an executive summary reflecting on the 40th anniversary of the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the future of jointness. Forum articles address analytic superiority in warfare, the development of operational objectives, and new evidence concerning the Lavelle Affair. Contributions on joint professional military education explore defensive cognitive warfare, strategist development, and cyberspace collaboration for homeland defense. …

"A Yankee Patient At Pope's Tavern", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The article relates the story of Private Oglvie E. Hamblin, a union soldier and one of the last patients to be treated at Pope's Tavern when it served as a Civil War hospital.

"The Worst Of War", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Writings

The article recounts a specific instance of Civil War violence exacted near Cypress Creek and Parsonage Chapel Cemetery in Lauderdale County, Alabama.

Parameters Autumn 2026, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Review Of "British Experiences In The French Foreign Legion During The Interwar Period: Myths And Realities" By Frédéric Barthet, Matthew Barrett

Canadian Military History

Review of British Experiences in the French Foreign Legion during the Interwar Period: Myths and Realities by Frédéric Barthet

Beyond Just Reconnaissance: The 12th Manitoba Dragoons In The Netherlands, 1945, Cameron Meikle

Canadian Military History

This article explores the historical significance of the 12th Manitoba Dragoons in facilitating the rapid movement and success of II Canadian Corps during the liberation of the Netherlands in the spring of 1945. While Canadian historiography of the Second World War has rarely offered more than a passing reference to the Dragoons, the regiment played crucial roles in reconnaissance, security and economy of force operations. During the Netherlands campaign, the Dragoons made pivotal contributions to II Corps’ success by providing timely information, preventing gaps in the frontline and conducting offensive actions to disrupt enemy positions, all at significant risk to …

History Of The College Of The Holy Cross Naval Rotc Unit, O'Callahan Society, College Of The Holy Cross

85th Anniversary of NROTC at Holy Cross

The Holy Cross Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) Unit reached its 85th anniversary in July 2026 and, to commemorate this event, the Holy Cross O’Callahan Society has updated the history of the Unit that was prepared for the Unit’s 75th anniversary and now revised twice. The O’Callahan Society grew out of the vision of Reverend John E. Brooks, S. J., President of the College of the Holy Cross 1970-94, who invited several graduates of the NROTC Unit to meet in the early 1990s and discuss how NROTC alumni could support the NROTC Unit. From these discussions, the O’Callahan Committee …

Labour Migrancy And Ethnic Stereotypes: Experiences From Mufindi Tea Plantation, Ca. 1920s To 2000s, Hezron R. Kangalawe

Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies

While tea plantations brought good fortunes to some parts of Southern Highlands in Tanzania such as Mufindi and Rungwe during the British mandate, its production sites became centres of ethnic contestations in relation to work discipline. The colonial and post-colonial enterprises labelled some ethnic groups as “reliable labourers” and others “unreliable”. This article, uses the tea plantations in Mufindi district, Iringa, to debate the labour question and ethnic identity in tea plantations between 1920s and 2000s. It argues that tea plantations were practical point of colonial stereotyping whose architects were anthropologists. Interviews in Mufindi tea plantations and factories, archival and …

Legends, Lies, & Rewritten Lives: After The Little Bighorn: Forgotten Struggles Of Those Who Walked Away, 2nd Edition, Thomas B. Davidson

DU Textbooks

This Story surrounds an event that occurred one summer on June 25, 1876, along the banks of the Little Bighorn River in what is now the state of Montana. Seen from a 21st century perch, it is a story of a collision between two very different civilizations or empires. Both empire’s military fought in the manner of their society. This narrative will attempt to balance the believable truth of what happened in that contest between the military representatives of both societies while also trying to tell an engaging story, without drifting into naked partisanship, purple prose, or sensationalism. The narrative …

The Us Marine Corps And The Battle Of Belleau Wood, William Maass

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The central question of this research is how the United States Marine Corps shifted from an auxiliary naval force to an elite, mobile fighting force, and the role that the Battle of Belleau Wood played in that transformation. The Battle of Belleau Wood, fought from June 1-26, 1918, in France during the First World War, was a pivotal engagement where untested American forces were able to stop and drive back the German advance in the Chateau-Thierry sector. While there were both Marines and Army soldiers present at the battle, newspapers disproportionally showed the Marines’ actions, which created a public image …

Washington’S War: The Evolution Of Strategy In America’S Fight For Independence, Connor S. Haines

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The American Revolution presented George Washington with an immense challenge as the commander of the Continental Army. Facing the most powerful empire in the world, Washington had to mold a loosely organized, often undisciplined force into an army capable of sustaining the revolutionary cause. His early campaigns, particularly the disastrous New York campaign of 1776, nearly destroyed the Continental Army and exposed the weakness of conventional European-style tactics when applied to America’s military situation. From these defeats, however, Washington began to reshape his approach, adopting a Fabian strategy of endurance that emphasized survival over decisive engagement. This transformation not only …

Shepherds In The Great War: The Evolution Of The U.S. Army Chaplaincy And The Service Of Malcolm Taylor In World War I, Sydney Gilbert

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

From its beginnings in 1775, the U.S. military chaplaincy has been a vital but often overlooked component of the American military experience. Though the specific duties, expectations, and regulations for U.S. chaplains have evolved over time, the heart of the chaplaincy is rooted in sacrificial service, a ministry of presence, spiritual leadership, and moral guidance. The American entrance into the Great War in 1917 marked a period of exponential growth for the military chaplaincy as it faced unprecedented demand and growing professionalization. To meet the needs of the modern era warfare, a major shift occurred within the chaplaincy as it …

Faith In Service: The Evolving Role Of Military Chaplains In Humanitarian Relief During Twentieth Century Conflicts, Hannah Dugan

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Since America's founding the Chaplaincy has been an important part of the nation's military. The U.S. Army Chaplain Corps, one of the oldest branches of the military, has served as a spiritual foundation for American soldiers. Established July 29, 1775, at the request of General George Washington, Congress authorized chaplains for each regiment of the Army.During the Revolutionary War, 218 chaplains served, offering spiritual guidance, moral counsel, and religious services to the troops.Over time, the chaplaincy has evolved, expanding to represent other denominations and faiths. During the Mexican American War, Catholic chaplains were added to the Corps, followed by Jewish …

A Gentleman’S Agreement: Prisoners Of War During The American Revolution, Delynn Burrell

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The topic of prisoners of war in any war is often controversial and convoluted. The American Revolution is no different. The problem surrounding prisoners of war during this era is the lack of official policies regarding care and exchange. For centuries, armies had relied on a gentleman’s agreement, often made on the battlefield or in the immediate days following, by commanders, most often Washington and Gage or Burgoyne and Lee. Washington frequently deferred to the Continental Congress, which had no issue expressing its opinions on matters such as provisions and the locations where prisoners were held. The British, for their …

Foundations Of Power: The Early Continental Navy, Dawson Baber

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Before there was the United States Navy, there existed a small, comparatively ramshackle force that faced off against the most powerful fighting force of its time. This force was known as the Continental Navy, and it played an important but often overlooked role in our nation’s founding. Authorized by the Continental Congress in 1775, the navy emerged not from a coherent maritime doctrine but from immediate strategic necessity. The Royal Navy was the largest and most powerful fleet in the world while the thirteen colonies had no warships to speak of. As a maritime trade nation, access to the seas …

Old World Ranks On A New Frontier: Noncommissioned Officer Command In The United States Military, Robert K. Whillock

History Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the development of the United States Noncommissioned Officer (NCO) Corps and the regulatory limits placed on its authority. The early American military adopted European traditions that reserved command for commissioned officers and confined NCOs to supervisory and disciplinary roles. Regulations reinforced this hierarchy by preventing NCOs from exercising autonomous command and limiting opportunities for advancement into the officer corps through merit. Over time, however, egalitarian reformers began to question whether these rigid distinctions served the needs of the evolving American military.

The paper argues that foreign military examples and operational necessity gradually challenged the established roles of …

Aggression And Mobility: The Power Of A Cavalry Pursuit During The Civil War, Leland G. Smith

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Decades after the Napoleonic Wars ended, military theorists in western countries began to write books and other manuals on how to successfully use cavalry on the battlefield. One such writer; Barron Jomini, mentions in his book The Art of War that cavalry should be used for reconnaissance, guarding flanks and looting, but its most important use was “opening the door for victory” by exploitation and pursuing the enemy for total victory. Jomini’s book was influential for the generals fighting the Civil War. In the early days of the war the Confederates would greatly use cavalry to conduct reconnaissance, while the …

Free In The Forest: Montagnards And U.S. Special Forces In Vietnam’S Central Highlands, Jake L. Brooks

Madison Historical Review

When America began to send U.S Army Special Forces to South Vietnam as advisors in the late 1950s, they needed allies that were familiar with the lush jungles of Indochina. In the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the Montagnard people partnered with the U.S. Army Special Forces in an attempt to keep their homelands safe from the Communists. As an ethnic minority, the Montagnards had been through years of abuse and cultural suppression by their ruling government; kept down by a Vietnamese dominated regime which viewed them as backwards and rebellious tribesmen. For the Green Berets that worked alongside them, the …

From The Editor In Chief, C. Anthony Pfaff

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Welcome to the Summer 2026 issue of Parameters, which consists of two In Focus special commentaries, three forums (Indo-Pacific, Strategy, and Historical Studies) and the Strategic Competition Corner.

Turning Tactical Victories Into Strategic Success: Counterinsurgency In The Irish Civil War, 1922–23, Gareth Prendergast, John A. Nagl

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The fundamentals the Irish National Army used in the Irish Civil War (1922–23) are a model for the successful application of a classic counterinsurgency which, if understood earlier, could have made a difference in the United States’ most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Irish Civil War has not been examined in-depth through the lens of modern counterinsurgency doctrine. This article draws on military history and recent counterinsurgency doctrines to provide US policymakers and military practitioners practical guidance for how counterinsurgent forces can foster trust and use appropriate tactics that lead to strategic success.

Parameters, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Power: E. H. Carr’S Enduring Lessons For Modern Strategists, Brian J. Hasse

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article argues E. H. Carr’s classic conception of power provides enduring lessons for national security, but these lessons are easily lost in application. Unlike much of the existing literature, this article emphasizes how modern conceptions of power convey an illusion of balance, while the national security bureaucracy constrains the effective synchronization of power. The analysis leverages both historical and contemporary case studies to identify what a balanced conception of power looks like in practice, with the hope of informing US national security strategy and policy in today’s complex security environment.