16.02.2023. SEASON 2 / EPISODE 6.
Conventional versus Irregular Warfare – challenges for military force design
Meeting the challenges of both conventional and irregular warfare requires mutually exclusive forces specialised in acting against each one. Peter talks to Dr Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at RUSI in London, about why a military force designed for conventional warfare is ineffective at irregular warfare; the verso also applies. There are a myriad of reasons – from embedded culture to training requirements – why this is the case, from formations and skills of Special Forces but also for signals, communication, command, aviation, and logistics. People and their approaches, as well as their networks, is the key factor however. Given that future adversaries are likely to employ both means (unconventional and conventional) to challenge the status quo, nations will need to either construct forces for each strategic approach they face, or specialise in one. Alternatively, states can try to do both with a single force structure and probably – judging on historical evidence, and some contemporary examples too – fail. In times increasing global tensions when autocracies are leaning towards the use of military force as a key lever of power, the decision facing political leaders is whether to fund their militaries or rely on the doctrine of hopeless optimism.
OTHER EPISODES IN SERIES
VIEW ALL
SEASON 1 / EP.Trailer
An introduction to the podcast
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has stimulated a considerable outpouring of emotion, passion and commentary – not to...
SEASON 1 / EP.1
Analysing wars for lessons: Context is everything
Peter talks to Ewan Lawson, a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI, about the context of wars and why this is important in...
SEASON 1 / EP.2
A Turning Point in Ukraine?
Dr Jack Watling talks to Peter as he returns from his most recent trip to Ukraine. As both Ukrainian and Russian forces...
SEASON 1 / EP.3
Fighting in Urban Ukraine
Peter talks to Prof John Spencer, doyen of Urban Warfare at West Point, after his recent trip to Ukraine. They cover...
SEASON 1 / EP.4
Facing A Callous Adversary
As the Iranian proxy in Yemen, the Houthi’s have evolved from a guerrilla organisation to one capable of facing down...
SEASON 1 / EP.5
Ammo, railroads, tyres and logistics are driving military operations in Ukraine
Even though Western militaries systemically underinvest in their own logistics and engineering capabilities, it is...
SEASON 1 / EP.6
Fear and Loathing in Tbilisi
A now frozen but forgotten conflict in Georgia dating from 2008 was the result of a Russian invasion and occupation of...
SEASON 1 / EP.7
Learning to fight again – realigning Special Forces
Between 2004 and 2014, NATO armies coerced the militaries and special forces of Georgia and Ukraine into a doctrine and...
SEASON 1 / EP.8
Relishing Duality – flexibility in Russian National Security calculations
If you look at Russian actions in different regions of the world, their strategies differ considerably. This covers...
SEASON 1 / EP.9
Strategic objectives, tough choices, and risk in Ukraine
Supporting a war conducted by others shouldn’t be measured on financial aid committed. A better metric would actually...
SEASON 1 / EP.10
Sniping, land mines and trench warfare
Nick Reynolds has just returned from Ukraine again and talks to Peter about his experiences and insights after 6 months...
SEASON 1 / EP.11
The Ukrainian Counter Offensive with Prof Mike Clarke
Professor Michael Clarke joins Peter to talk about the 10 day old Ukrainian counter offensives against Russia. In...
SEASON 1 / EP.12
Working the OSINT opportunity
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) has matured considerably since the early 2000s. More data sources, better data bases,...
SEASON 1 / EP.13
War and modern politics with Rory Stewart
Deciding to go to war, to support a war, or even which war to engage with should not be an easy decision. It should be...
SEASON 1 / EP.14
What’s happening in Afghanistan?
It has only taken one year from the Western withdrawal out of Afghanistan for that country to descend once more into a...
SEASON 1 / EP.15
A China Primer – Fear, Honour and Self-Interest
Is China preparing to invade Taiwan? It is certainly a matter of CCP policy that Taiwan will be reintegrated into...
SEASON 1 / EP.16
Global disaster in the wings: the vulnerabilities of the West at sea
Ships being sunk by sea mines, undersea pipelines blown up, and a fragile maritime infrastructure are all underplayed...
SEASON 1 / EP.17
We know who wears the trousers – The China Russia No Limits relationship.
Despite a shared ideology loosely based around communism, and perhaps a similarly hopeful interpretation of...
SEASON 1 / EP.18
Operational Art, Russia and Ukraine with Mick Ryan
Whilst the battles in Ukraine have evidenced the tenacity and stamina of Ukrainian forces, their success in defence and...
SEASON 1 / EP.19
Future War in 2035 and Deterrence
According to the report of a conference of great strategic brains during October 2022, the world will look pretty ugly...
SEASON 1 / EP.20
Fire ships, maritime economics and balanced fleets
Peter talks to Professor Alessio Patalano about whether the naval aspects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine offer...
SEASON 1 / EP.21
China’s dark coercion in the Indo-Pacific
Peter is joined by Dr John Hemmings, a Senior Director at the Pacific Forum in Hawaii, to talk about what might have...
SEASON 1 / EP.22
Missile Wars with Tom Karako
The use of missiles – of every variety – around the world has been increasing over the past 5 years. Whether...
SEASON 1 / EP.22
The Operational Level of War Does Not Exist
When Svechen and Hamley were writing about the operational level of war, it is doubtful they envisaged the number of...
SEASON 1 / EP.24
War in a Fishbowl
A really capable combined arms force can have a disproportionate impact on a small war. It can have much less effect in...
SEASON 1 / EP.25
The future of air power
Big contracts are being let for new aviation systems. From the B21 and FLAA in the US, to FCAS and Tempest in Europe,...
SEASON 1 / EP.26
The Russia-China military relationship
The Chinese military has come a long way since 2008. In size, professionalism, deployability, operational experience,...
SEASON 1 / EP.27
Defence Policy watersheds – again?
The shock and surprise expressed by Western politicians after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine heralded...
SEASON 2 / EP.1
Ukrainian observations on combat and command
What did the Ukrainian forces learned from their experiences fighting the Russian military during 2022? Peter talks to...
SEASON 2 / EP.2
The First Commercial Space War
Since 1991 space has become an intrinsic part of warfare: from the liberation of Kuwait to Allied experiences in Iraq...
SEASON 2 / EP.3
Turkey, Erdogan and 2023
This year Turkey celebrates its 100th anniversary; 2023 will also bring a summer with elections that could see...
SEASON 2 / EP.4
We Live in Radical Times
According to some we are living in both a Post Islamist Age, as well as a Post Liberalist one. And if you read the...
SEASON 2 / EP.5
North Korea in the driving seat?
Peter talks to Ankit Panda from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about all things North Korea, but...
SEASON 2 / EP.7
Cyber battles in Ukraine
How have cyber conflicts played out between Russia and Ukraine? Over the last decade the idea of cyber war had been...
SEASON 2 / EP.8
Info Ops in Ukraine
Peter talks to the inimitable Whit Mason, a strategic communications guru, about why the Ukrainian information...
SEASON 2 / EP.9
Why military AI development is a necessity not a choice for Russia’s military
Peter talks to Professor Katarzyna Zysk from IFS in Oslo about Russian military AI development, from the core reasons...
SEASON 2 / EP.10
How to Fight A War
Why is winning a war so hard? According to Dr Mike Martin, realism seems to be missing in the formation of strategy to...
SEASON 2 / EP.11
The strategy of attrition
All wars have elements of attrition in them – like it or not. Battles of attrition are not linear either, they depend...
SEASON 2 / EP.12
By, With and Thru on contemporary battlefields
Special Forces in contemporary warfare will be expected to conduct operations ‘By, with and through’: enabling...
SEASON 2 / EP.12
The 51%
Western political and military leaders seem to be doing a lot of hard talking about military capability these days, yet...
SEASON 2 / EP.14
The lifeblood of warfare
When you read the words ‘inventory management’ most military people turn the page. Don’t. This conversation about...
SEASON 2 / EP.15
Another Afghan Civil War approaches
China’s agreements on strip mining and rare earth mineral extraction opened the door to significant engagement...
SEASON 2 / EP.16
Evacuation Operations, Decisions, and Compression
Even planning a non-combatant evacuation operation is politically and diplomatically fraught – the signals it sends...
SEASON 2 / EP.17
The Credibility of NATO depends on DEAD
Even as Russia rebuilds its way of fighting and combat power over the next 3-5 years, those forces should be easily...
SEASON 2 / EP.18
What’s not being covered, defence reviews, and the future
One year on from starting the podcast, the production team persuaded me to answer some of the most popular questions...
SEASON 2 / EP.19
The new European military heavyweight
Poland is an outlier in Europe: a state that has been willing to resource the national security statements of political...
SEASON 2 / EP.23
A Middle East without America?
For decades, politics, security and economics in the Middle East has been inextricably linked to the USA. Today,...
SEASON 2 / EP.24
Japan’s Security Dilemmas
Surrounded by three potential adversaries, hampered by a history that prevents deep alliances with neighbours, and a...
SEASON 2 / EP.25
NATO structural issues unresolved
Going into the NATO summit at Vilnius, NATO had a three tier membership structure and lacked the political leadership...
SEASON 3 / EP.1
Is Manoeuvre a Myth?
There is a disturbing undercurrent in Western PME – demonising anything not termed ‘manoeuvre’ or...
SEASON 3 / EP.2
Manoeuvre Is In A Coma
The opportunities to use manoeuvrist theory on contemporary battlefields are scarce, if they exist at all. Professor...
SEASON 3 / EP.3
What if the deep battle doesn’t matter?
The modern interpretation of manoeuvre theory for warfare holds the deep battle as a central avenue to success. Indeed,...
SEASON 3 / EP.4
Ending Wars – a primer
Bringing conflict to a conclusion usually comes about because of annihilation of one party or the exhaustion of both....
SEASON 3 / EP.5
Investing in a War Zone
How do companies, businesses, and industry make investment decisions in a war zone? There is no shortage of...
SEASON 3 / EP.6
On Taiwan – Strategic ambiguity, operational clarity?
Beijing seems to have an insatiable appetite for increasing the scale and pace of military operations around Taiwan:...
SEASON 3 / EP.7
DPRK in an era of Great Power realignment
Most people will not have missed the visit North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, to Russia last month. What went without...
SEASON 3 / EP.9
Balancing and regional actors
States face complex calculations in balancing their reactions to wars. Many (perhaps most?) governments of the day are...
SEASON 3 / EP.10
Future War, Technology and Strategy
In October 2023, an expert group of national security experts from around the world came together at Wilton Park in...
SEASON 3 / EP.11
AUKUS – a reality check
Peter is joined by John Hemmings from the US and Malcolm Davies from Australia to talk about AUKUS. Since the security...
SEASON 3 / EP.12
Norms and Forms of Warfare
It seems useful to frame some of the discussion about warfare around norms and forms rather than the character and...
SEASON 3 / EP.13
A Cautionary Tale from 1973
Intelligence failures, strategic surprise, heavy attrition, mass casualties, reversals, internal rivalries, personality...
SEASON 4 / EP.1
NATO isn’t perfect (but it isn’t going badly either)
Professors Peter Roberts and Julian Lindley French try and put the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty in...
SEASON 2 / EP.4
NATO’s Successes and Unsuccesses
NATO is often trumpeted as the most successful military Alliance in human history: a grand claim indeed. The reality is...