Professor Peter Grindrod CBE Introduction The UK MOD’s increasingly urgent pivot to develop, embed, and otherwise deploy data science and AI (hereafter DS/AI) technologies, and associated practices, is a critical play in many ways. Arguably, the priority that Russia has shown for DS/AI supremacy is one of a few major drivers. Others include the consequent… Read More On MOD AI and Data Science
ALI RUSSELL-BROOKES Ali Russell-Brookes is a Royal Air Force Officer and student on the Advanced Command and Staff Course. She is studying for a Masters by Research with King’s College London, examining the implications on leadership for the Future Force. Using failure in the pursuit of success seems a little oxymoronic when you think about… Read More Embracing failure to find winning formulas
FERNANDO GARETTO Lt Col Fernando Garetto is a Chilean Army Officer. He is a big fan of creativity and currently a student of the Advance Command and Staff Course in the Defence Academy, which includes completing a King’s College London Master by Research (MRes) in Defence Studies. Within the defence community, creativity and imagination are… Read More Imagination and creativity in the Armed Forces
DR JONATHAN BOFF Jonathan is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham. His first book, Winning and Losing on the Western Front: The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918 was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. An audio recording of a paper detailing some of his new research on… Read More When Learning Goes Bad
DR STUART GRIFFIN As Defence-in-Depth once again spends time exploring the concepts of the operational level and operational art, it seems an appropriate time to relate my previous contribution on the subject to the other research strand that I have previously blogged about: military innovation. Though the popular focus of military innovation tends to be… Read More The Operational Level as Military Innovation: Past, Present and Future
This is one in a series of occasional posts from scholars outside of the Defence Studies Department. If you would be interested to contribute to this series please contact the editors: Dr Amir Kamel and Dr David Morgan-Owen. DR MATTHEW FORD Dr Matthew Ford is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sussex. His book Weapon of… Read More Beyond Effectiveness on the Battlefield: reframing Military Innovation in terms of time, networks and power
ALEXANDER HOWLETT Throughout its long history, the Royal Navy has been both an innovator of, and adapter to, technological change. By the end of the 19th century, the sailing warship of Nelson’s day had been transformed into the all steel construction, reciprocating engine, electric powered and radio equipped, battleship. As formidable an implement of sea… Read More Keeping the Genie in the Bottle: RNAS Anti-Submarine Warfare, 1912-1916
Dr Ian Speller and Dr Christopher Tuck Next month, our multi-authored volume Understanding Modern Warfare will be published in its second edition by Cambridge University Press. Understanding Modern Warfare is a book explicitly about modern warfare. There are many excellent existing works on war generally: this volume is concerned instead with the employment of organised… Read More Understanding Modern Warfare
By DR SIMON MOODY Underpinning DCDC’s Global Strategic Trends – Out to 2045 is the idea that the future operating environment will be Congested, Cluttered, Contested, Connected, and Constrained (the so-called Five C’s). Implicit in this assumption is that military forces will be increasingly called upon to fight in the urban domain. Indeed, global trends… Read More Urban Operations in the Future Operating Environment
by Dr Huw J. Davies Today is the penultimate day of my research trip to Sydney (with Canberra and Wellington thrown in). The trip has been what I now call a harvest. I’ve photographed literally thousands of documents, unsure whether they are useful. I’m deferring the actual process of research until a later date. Still,… Read More Research Dispatch from Sydney: New Directions in War and History
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