This is the fourth in a series of posts connected to a King’s College First World War Research Group and Corbett Centre Event to mark the centenary of the Battle of Jutland. JAMES GOLDRICK Rear Admiral James Goldrick AO, CSC RAN (Retired) commanded HMA Ships Cessnock and Sydney (twice), the multinational maritime interception force in… Read More Beating Away From the Lee Shore of Jutland
DURAID JALILI At the end of last year, the King’s Centre for Military Education Outreach (CMEO) put together its first ever Professional Military Education (PME) Working Group. This took place over the course of two days on the 10 – 11th December 2015, at the Joint Services Command and Staff College (Shrivenham, UK). The event… Read More Future Strategic Priorities for Professional Military Education: A Practitioner Perspective
DR GERAINT HUGHES Military manuals do not often attract readers from outside of the profession of arms, and the publication of the US Army/US Marine Corps’ manual on counter-insurgency (FM3/24) by the University of Chicago Press ten years ago was one of those rare occasions where military doctrine gained an audience beyond the armed forces. FM3/24… Read More Uncertain COINage
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
by Dr ROBERT T. FOLEY In the summer of 1916, in the midst of one of the First World War’s most cataclysmic battles, the German army did a remarkable thing. During the course of the battle of the Somme, it created a new defensive doctrine. What is most remarkable about this is that it did… Read More Horizontal Military Innovation and Lessons Reports
by Dr ROBERT T. FOLEY After many leaks, the full report of the National Security Strategy and Strategy and Defence Security Review 2015 (NSS/SDSR 2015) has been launched and released by the Government. In many ways, NSS/SDSR 2015 is a marked improvement on the NSS and SDSR of 2010 and is a demonstration of a… Read More NSS/SDSR 2015: The Missing Link
by DR HUW J. DAVIES “Events, dear boy, events.” So said Harold MacMillan when asked what the single biggest impediment to the development of a coherent strategy. Unexpected events have derailed many defence reviews in recent years. The Nott Review was rendered almost immediately irrelevant by the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands. Options for… Read More NSS/SDSR 2015: Rapid Strike Response to Rapid Strike Brigades – A Historian’s Initial Thoughts
by DR HUW J. DAVIES Research on how militaries learn, adapt, innovate and transform has been gathering pace in recent years. The primary motivation for this emerging interest has been the need to understand the means and methods by which the US Army innovated or transformed during its campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Further studies… Read More Conference Report: Military Education and Empire.
DR CHRIS TRIPODI I recently had the privilege of accompanying the Commander Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (COMARRC) and his senior HQ staff to Sicily. The purpose of my presence, and that of my esteemed colleague Dr Niall Barr, was to act as an historical advisor on the annual COMARRC staff ride. This five day exercise… Read More Holidays in the Sun
By DR HUW J. DAVIES In the early 1740s, Henry Lloyd, a young Welshman aspiring to join the British Army, was defrauded of his inheritance by his unscrupulous step-father. This propelled Lloyd into an unconventional path to a military career. Bereft of the money required to purchase a commission in the British Army, Lloyd fled… Read More Henry Lloyd, National Character and the Study of Military History in the Eighteenth Century
Defence-In-Depth 