Effective June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.

The banal and humble generator set is a secret to destroying US combat power.

I wanted to flesh out a thought experiment on the vulnerabilities of the US war machine in its expeditionary mode in future wars of choice if a critical node of its operations for US efficacy were specifically targeted, in this case, generator sets;. these range from small portable units to large, trailer-mounted systems, including the Tactical Quiet Generator (TQG) and the Advanced Medium Mobile Power Source (AMMPS).

In the future near-peer and peer fight, salvo competition will be the preeminent means by which one country will kinetically overwhelm the other in a fight. I discuss the ways in which the West is in an existential hazard of being woefully under-prepared to meet the threat if Western forces go toe to toe with regional hegemons in the East or West.

The US is NOT prepared for the war of leakers in which the inadequate missile defense systems and strategy now deployed will be overwhelmed if it enters a war of choice with China or Russia.

It isn't simply the peer competitors but the smaller players like North Korea and Yemen are demonstrating that the US and its allies can't cash the checks they boast about.

Once again, the US should stand down, reassess, re-calibrate and stop thinking defense is a four letter word.

References:

Millennium Challenge: The Real Story of a Corrupted Military Exercise and its Legacy

STP 9-91D13-SM-TG: TACTICAL POWER GENERATION SPECIALIST MOS 91D (2018)

Skill Levels 1/2/3

Winning The Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air And Missile Defenses

The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of Age

Space Based Interceptor Sizing Methodology

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Books:

Nassim Taleb Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game

Mark Gunzinger & Bryan Clark Winning the Salvo Competition: Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile Defense

Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

My Substack

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me

I discuss the thumbnail sketches of US military failure since the end of WWI and try to elucidate some of the reasons for the failure and the existential threat this cavalcade of calamities is to 21st century America if the ship of state doesn't reverse course.

This a a dangerous time for America to continue its bad habits of wars of choice and allowing its intelligence organizations and their cutout mischief-makers to poke the bear and create black swan events out of whole cloth.

America boasts a magnificent 20th century war machine not fit for purpose for 21st century peer warfare.

The crossroads is chock-full of landmines.

References:

Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America

Martin van Creveld

The Transformation of War: The Most Radical Reinterpretation of Armed Conflict Since Clausewitz

Fighting Power: German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945

Colin Gray

Strategy and History: Essays on Theory and Practice

Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy

William Lind Maneuver Warfare Handbook

John Boyd Patterns of Conflict

Michael Weiner Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIA

John Prado The Ghosts of Langley: Into the CIA's Heart of DarknessSun Tzu The Art of War

Carl von Clausewitz On War

Miyamoto Musashi A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

H. John Poole The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare

My Substack

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me

"The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation."

Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Effective 20 June 2025, I did a major improved revision on the sound quality for all my WarNotes episodes retroactively thanks to the technology at Podsworth.

I think the military science fiction milieu provides a great tool for forecasting and predicting possible conflict futures.

It may be yet another tool to take this magnificent US 20th century fighting machine and make it a peer combat competitor in the 21st century.

Speculative fiction provides a means to extrapolate what possible war futures are peering over the horizon.

Books:

Military Fiction

Eric Frank Russell The Wasp

Karl Marlantes Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War

James Jones From Here to Eternity

James Gould Cozzens Guard of Honor

Anton Myrer Once an Eagle

Paul Avallone Tattoo Zoo

Military Science Fiction

Michael Z. Williamson The Weapon (Freehold Series)

Joe Haldeman The Forever War (The Forever War Series)

Robert A. Heinlein Starship Troopers

Kali Altsoba Invasion!: The Orion War

Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven Legacy of Beowulf

Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven Footfall

Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling West of Honor (CoDominium Future History Book 1)

Craig Dilouie Tooth and Nail

My Substack

Email at cgpodcast@pm.me