Sublime

SOF resource limitations may require SOF to collaborate with conventional forces in fighting insurgents and terrorists, but SOF should retain the lead in the collaborative relationship and control when and where conventional forces are used in support. This is because SOF’s intrinsic attributes—to the extent they have and safeguard them—give them a

“The SEAL Teams and the U.S. military, much like militaries throughout history, are based around building blocks of four-to-six-man teams with a leader. We call them ‘fire teams.’ That is the ideal number for a leader to lead. Beyond that, any leader can lose control as soon as even minimal pressure is applied to the team when inevitable challenges

All of these special operators made critical use of modern inventions such as the airplane and radio. But they were also inspired by the timeless lessons of history. SOE’s first leaders, the army officers J. C. F. Holland and Colin Gubbins, had fought against the IRA. In addition, Holland had served with the Arab irregulars in World War I and had

The best teams—like the three snipers on the deck of the Bainbridge—know their coach (or commander or boss) trusts them to trust each other. Those horizontal anti-MECE bonds of trust and overlapping definitions of purpose enable them to “do the right thing.”

Jacobus Hercules “Koos” de la Rey,

“Hive Minds, Mind Hives, and Biological Military Automata: The Role of Collective Intelligence in Offline Combat,”

Beyond the great captains of irregular warfare, a few key supporting characters make recurring guest appearances in the pages that follow. The most frequent is Winston Churchill, who appears on the scene at the outset of the Boer War in 1899, returns to support T. E. Lawrence’s pan-Arab policy goals after World War I, develops a friendship with

Dudley Clarke