Military and Irregular (IW): The importance and the necessity of "thinking out of the box"

Firing Range at Camp Swezey
1943 All Chinese American Unit
US Army Airborne and "Flying Tigers" 14 Air Force

The military world is changing and has been on the path of movement from large ground troop invasions to highly specialized force incursions. As we are updating and changing our military into a Digital Era warfare system we must keep in mind that similar trends of adjustment will occur on low cost militaries (and large scale) that don't have access to emerging technologies (As one strategy/resource adjusts other militaries adjust to find a competitive position. Large armies have formal hierarchy with designated resources while non-traditional irregular armies {i.e. ISIS, Taliban approach, mercenaries, insurgents, amebic groups, etc.} will utilize low cost with amebic structures to their advantage.)

We created the Irregular Warfare Functional Center (IWFC) with the passage of the Mac Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act of 2021. One of the goals is to attract and develop leadership from multiple sources within the DOD and leading universities to tackle these issues. (Its a very long document so not sure anyone is really going to read it but you can see the table of contents. One of the points to be made is that fields of study begin to specialize and now we see how emerging new technology and low technology coexist as two different fields of investigation. An example is research on Higher Ed and how there are topical changes/"Islands" and gaps that leads to further investigation and specialization. HERE. Sometimes requiring exploration into related fields through a methodology of transactional clusters theory might lead to butterfly development across many fields and industries {new products and development is important. i.e. discovering something that impacts military, auto, space and outdoors as the same time}. One can do this by occasional analyzing the other potential uses for different levels of discovery by allowing industries to collaborate and explore potential. It increased research breadth and improve adaptation and economic growth from those sharing fields. Its mostly an additive process.  A sort of related topic on islands of new knowledge.) 

There is an opinion piece that I think is kind of interesting HERE. (I like Austin so whatever whatever but there are a couple of interesting points being made). I do agree that we should engage in serious study to explore the ability to fight a large scale war and multiple small scale IW campaigns at the same time (There is some discussion on whether or not we can fight two major wars and I still think that is a good goal. One could also consider multiple small scale IW designed to slow down, trip up, and thwart emerging secondary threats in their formative stages but can be be used as a supportive resource. Highly mobile secondary systems that can use the best of methods to help small nations/people defend themselves as well as form up to be substantive if a major conflict deterrent if necessary. By doing so we are hedging multiple large and smaller scale strategies through new lines of military science that can counter different forms of threats on a spectrum. As IW develops it should help prepare American units to counter the strategic positioning of others. It also offers an opportunity to develop advanced strategies for more formal training and equipment development. IW will bring different equipment needs. Likely small scale multi-tool outdoor wearable technology. ) 

You can read the job description for a IWFC Specialist as it is kind of interesting. They are not currently recruiting but if the Center gets more traction you never know!. Feel free to read the LinkedIn IWFC Specialist description. If you got those skills and abilities you might want to reach out to them anyway. Our country always needs good people with advanced skills stepping forward to make a contribution (That is everyone in the country has a stake in how our democracy turns out and our ability to maintain our democracy governmental system in a world where some actors are challenging our destiny. No restrictions on race, religion, or other protected value systems when applying. Don't let some the politicians confuse you political and self interest....we are all on the same team with different strengths and opinions. If we {or some} are not on the same team with shared long term goals it detracts from our national competitiveness.)