"Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"A boxer derives the greatest advantage from his sparring partner – and my accuser is my sparring partner. He trains me in patience, civility and even temper."

- Marcus Aurelius 

"The primary purpose of the Rolex is not as a timepiece but rather as a life insurance policy. When the situation goes pear-shaped and you've somehow made it to the airport, the Rolex buys you a seat on the last flight out of Heart of Darkness International Airport. As your aircraft circles the city, you look down at the rising columns of black smoke and imagine the scene downtown in the city square where they're chopping the few remaining Westerners up into monkey meat, you look at your wrist where your treasured timepiece used to be and you think 2 things: A) 'Well I guess the Rolex finally paid for itself,' and B) 'I can always buy another watch . . .'"

- Unknown

• The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Russian forces are conducting an operational pause to rest and reconstitute.
• Russian forces continued efforts to advance toward Slovyansk from the southeast of Izyum and may be setting conditions to advance from the southeast of Barvinkove—either toward Slovyansk or toward Kramatorsk.
• Russian forces made marginal gains to the southeast of Siversk and continued offensive operations west of the Lysychansk area.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations to the south and east of Bakhmut.
• Russian forces conducted a limited and unsuccessful attack north of Kharkiv City.
• Ukrainian partisans are likely continuing to target Russian-controlled railways around Melitopol.
• Russian oblasts are continuing to create their own ad hoc volunteer units to compensate for personnel losses in Ukraine.

• Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
• Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
• Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
• Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
• Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets continue to call immense human suffering liberation and the ruins temporarily fallen into Russian hands tokens of glorious victory. Similarly, without any hesitation, Kremlin spin-doctors turn a terror strike against a shopping mall with Soviet-era cruise missiles loaded with one-ton warheads a surgical precision attack against a justified military target. Russian mouthpieces in Egypt joined the chorus(opens in a new tab) by attempting to spread disinformation about the arms and ammunition depots having been destroyed in the strike.

• Poland uses an imaginary Russian threat to justify its militarisation. No, the ongoing modernisation of the Polish Army and purchase of advanced military equipment is the Polish response to the very real current security crisis of Russia’s making taking place in Europe.
• The war in Ukraine is about the reunification of the Russian people. Definitely not. This inherently racist “all-Russian big nation” narrative is based on an imperial Russian and Russian revanchist ideology, aimed at weakening the national identity of Ukrainians, as well as undermining Ukrainian state sovereignty.
• NATO is at war with Russia with the hands of Ukrainians. No, only in Russian propaganda. NATO as an organisation is not involved in fighting in Ukraine, nor is the West at war with Russia, or Russians. Read here(opens in a new tab) more about Russian Myths on NATO.

The West is great at generating slogans and names for economic partnerships with acronyms that will be quickly forgotten, but in the meantime, because of its failure to change the way it thinks about the opportunity the global south represents to the West and the world, it risks seeing the future pass it by.

1. Location. Maj. Gen. Donahoe’s consistent guidance when discussing MCoE’s LSCO transition has been “east of the Vistula, north of the Han.” A simple phrase providing clear direction: focus our training scenarios on East Asia and Eastern Europe – those likely places we might confront Chinese and Russian threats. After considerable work over the last year from MCCC instructors and the Army’s Combined Arms Center, the physical terrain of MCCC’s instruction is out of Western Asia and largely east of the Vistula and north of the Han. We retained some local scenarios to allow students the opportunity to walk the ground and appreciate the terrain from a tactical perspective not always gained from a map. However, all other scenarios now take place outside of the deserts of Iraq and focus on how to fight and win in terrain ranging from the dense forests of the Baltics to the mountainous terrain of East Asia.
2. Threat. In June 2021, Chief of Staff of the Army General McConville stated, “The Army must understand the threat posed by China to the same level that we understood the Soviets.” To my knowledge, MCCC (and MCoE for that matter) had never incorporated a threat based on the Chinese Army into its training and educational scenarios. This is no longer the case. To drive change and educate cadres across the MCoE, MCCC designed a foundational block of instruction derived from ATP 7-100.3 Chinese Tactics that introduces all students to the Chinese Army, its structure, and aspects of how we assess their fighting capabilities at the tactical level. In addition to relocating our scenarios to East Asian and Eastern European battlefields, MCCC rebuilt our scenario threats to reflect the modernizing armies of China and Russia while remaining decisive action training environment (DATE) compliant. Now, over 60% of MCCC’s scenarios feature DATE threat actors resembling the Chinese formations described in ATP 7-100.3 Chinese Tactics. The remaining 40% of our tactical scenarios are based on the current Russian military, and MCCC plans to design a similar foundational block on the Russian Army upon the publication of ATP 7-100.1 Russian Tactics. There is far more work to be done in educating students on Chinese and Russian tactics to a level at which we understood the Soviets, and this represents a considerable area of expansion for MCCC in 2022.
3. Employing Enablers in a Contested Environment. As a platoon leader in Iraq, I credit two Apache attack helicopters with saving my life, and I knew I could always rely on air support being close by and highly responsive. In an LSCO environment, the days of helicopters loitering over small units, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) soaking targets uncontested for 48 hours, and firing mortars and artillery without regard for their proximity to command posts, assembly areas, and logistics nodes are gone. Similarly, our expectation of complete air supremacy and not worrying about more than a small UAS dropping a 40mm grenade on top of us is unrealistic. This revised operational environment that MCCC is building into its scenarios is intended to teach students to account for a threat with accurate and even overmatched fires, air defense assets at nearly every echelon, aircraft capable of striking friendly units, near-constant observation by enemy UAS, and the capabilities to broadly disrupt our communications systems. We are trying to impart to our students that the resources they will receive are 1) more finite in terms of time allocation and quantity, 2) susceptible to many forms of enemy contact, and 3) must be employed thoughtfully to prevent easy enemy predation and enable preservation for future friendly use.

1. Scope, Size, and Intensity. MCCC’s foundational urban attack scenario was an excellent example of why we had to do more than just change locations and threats in our tactical scenarios. We had to reconsider the scope, size and intensity of our exercises to ensure they reflected the realism of combat operations within an LSCO environment. When I peeled back the layers of our urban attack scenario, I found an operation reminiscent of my days in Baghdad – a unit alone and unafraid in a city, retaking a compound (police station) seized by an insurgent group, with U.S. forces providing an outer cordon while host-nation forces entered and cleared the objective. This did not feel like LSCO in an urban environment. We needed to start over and build something more akin to Stalingrad than to Iraq 2009 or Afghanistan 2016.

1. Exposure to the Division. To be clear, the DIV as the Army’s unit of action does not mean young captains should execute DIV-level planning; I still think that is for our majors at the Command and General Staff Officers Course. However, given that nearly all our students will serve on a BCT or BN staff, it is imperative they are exposed to DIV-level operations to gain an understanding of how their BCT or BN is nested within a broader mission. In our 2019 approach, students had little to no exposure to the DIV, let alone a well-developed DIV plan. So we changed. In collaboration with the Logistics and Military Intelligence Captains Career Courses, we built a full DIV operations order and plan to govern MDMP instruction and education at MCCC. In June 2021, CAC even provided MCCC with a DIV-level Baltic scenario as part of their Combined Scenario Exercise Program. As of 2021, 100% of MCCC students now conduct the MDMP as part of a DIV as the unit of action in an LSCO environment.
2. Adjusting our Training Approach. With a full DIV order in hand, MCCC substantially changed its approach to how student staffs conduct the MDMP and interact with one another. In the past, a student BCT staff would receive a complete BCT order only to digest and reissue that order to student BN staff. The BN staff then conducted the MDMP, leveraging their BCT staff to mainly answer questions and orchestrate BCT-level rehearsals. Many students were not challenged due to a lack of friction between staffs, and no actual BCT-level MDMP occurring (a missed opportunity). Ultimately, there was no meaningful exposure to a synchronized DIV plan. So again, we changed our approach. In short, student BCT staffs now receive a DIV order and start full BCT-level MDMP (developing their own unique plan and thus taking ownership of it) two days ahead of their BN staffs. BNs then initiate the MDMP based on what the BCT staff produces and issues. BCT staffs are exposed to the realistic tensions of their BNs pressing them for information, products, and planning guidance. All staffs gain an appreciation for relationships at echelon, a battle rhythm and sticking to planning timelines, and the benefits of bottom-up refinement during planning. And while this approach is harder and more stressful, it is more realistic. This enhanced approach also produces improved student learning and enables direct exposure to the DIV as the unit of action, all while immersing students in an LSCO environment.

1. Land and Air Domains: At MCCC we prioritize teaching students foundational tactics on how to fight using the Army’s three BCT types at the company level, and progress later in the course to fighting at BN and BCT echelons. Within these echelons, we teach students to effectively synchronize and employ a host of combined arms assets and enablers in concert with their ground maneuver formation. This usually translates to mortars and artillery, fixed and rotary-wing aviation, UAS and other intelligence collection platforms, and engineer assets. While not an exhaustive list (we do touch on all warfighting functions), this captures the majority of combined arms elements our students are learning about and employing in their tactical planning.
2. Space Domain and the Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS): Most formal instruction outside of the traditional land and air domains is concentrated on space and the EMS. Students are introduced to broad concepts and planning considerations and are taught how these can influence their operations on the battlefield. As MCCC does not have the resident expertise to provide detailed instruction in these areas, we leverage experts from across the Army to help us deliver very specific topics such as the space domain.
3. MDO and CDM Growth Opportunities: There are several MDO and CDM-related areas MCCC will expand its instruction into regarding competition with China and Russia and LSCO. First, we plan to introduce the cyber domain and cyber-electromagnetic activities (CEMA) as a concept. While students do not need to be experts in cyberspace, a surface-level knowledge of the domain, how the Army thinks about it, and how cyber affects BCT-level operations and below is useful. Furthermore, as the Army fields CEMA capabilities to its BCTs, there is utility in our students’ understanding of how to effectively plan for and employ such assets on the battlefield. Second, we plan to invest more in understanding our own communications and the EMS. Understanding some of the science behind the EMS and our communications, how our competitors like China and Russia compete in the EMS, and how we should respond and operate in this contested environment are all worthy of greater study. As a third example, MCCC will deliver general instruction on air defense artillery (ADA) employment. In the Army, it has been some time since ADA was commonly seen at the BCT level and below. This branch is a feature of MCCC’s LSCO scenarios, and we must educate our maneuver officers to better understand and effectively employ ADA assets in an LSCO environment.

Posted by Clackamas County Sheriff's Office on Sunday, July 3, 2022

Where NATO is concerned, this adaptation would be win-win. Small members could employ more affordable, independently sustainable defense approaches, strategies that would enable their success even if left to fight alone. At the same time, instead of having weak, conventional tripwires along its eastern flank, NATO would have multiple layers of credible, independently capable porcupines supported by the conventional might of larger NATO states. A collective resistance-grounded defense concept would present a stronger deterrent, significantly raising the costs of aggression compared to a resurrected Cold War deterrence paradigm. Instead of forcing its small members to attempt the impossible, NATO should incentivize and support local solutions that best exploit the unique strengths of each small country, creating a wicked, costly, and multivariate mosaic of problems for a revanchist Russia. Unfortunately, NATO’s new strategic direction does not point to this outcome.

“If someone were to call a 127-echo program a proxy operation, it would be hard to argue with them.”

“There are legitimate issues with the U.S. partnering with some units of the Egyptian military.”

“DOD views this as a small, tiny program that doesn’t have foreign policy implications, so, ‘Let’s just do it. The less people get in our way, the easier.’”