Sublime

John Boyd was probably the greatest fighter pilot to ever live. He revolutionized his field more than anyone before or since. A manual he wrote, Aerial Attack Study, incorporated as much math into the science of fighting maneuvers as engineers used in building the planes.

Another supporting character who comes close to Churchill’s half-century-plus of involvement in irregular matters is Jan Smuts, who started out as a Boer insurgent but later ran the British East African campaign against von Lettow-Vorbeck during World War I. He reappears again during World War II as a bureaucratic thorn in the side of Britain’s

Barack Obama came to see it as an alternative to the messy, costly wars that topple governments and require years of American occupation. In the words of John Brennan, one of President Obama’s closest advisers whom Obama eventually tapped to run the CIA, instead of the “hammer” America now relies on the “scalpel.”

into a remote area to attack an enemy compound, or silent warriors moving room to room with night-vision goggles as they clear a building in order to capture or kill an enemy commander. It’s certainly the stuff favored by the media in their coverage of war. If the Army Special Forces mission to mobilize the northern Afghan tribes that swept the

To compound the problem, Gerow disregarded the lessons of North Africa, Sicily, and Salerno, and launched his attack frontally at German strong points rather than assaulting them from the flank or rear. That was the head-on doctrine preferred by General Marshall and which was taught in the Army’s advanced schools. Gallantry, it was believed, would

Richard Marcinko’s Rogue Warrior is most notable for its controversial author, who helped pioneer SOF special mission units and then was one of the first to also write about them (Marcinko 1992).

Marquis, Susan L. Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding U.S. Special Operations Forces. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1997.

Douglas Waller’s account of U.S. SOF after the Cold War, The Commandos (Waller 1994),

Lawrence’s second element, the “biological,” concerned the components of war, “sensitive and illogical” human beings. Because of unknown human factors, commanders are forced to hold a body of men in reserve as a safeguard, thus stretching thin their other human resources. Lawrence worked to magnify his enemy’s ignorance: “We were to contain the