"Russia continues to produce T-90M tanks, the best tank in the world — according to Putin anyway – at a slow, steady rate. As soon as these tanks appear on the front, they are spotted by the omnipresent surveillance drones which watch every inch of the front, and targeted."

"Valley Forge, Custer's ranks, San Juan Hill and Patton's tanks, And the Army went rolling along Minutemen, from the start, Always fighting from the heart, And the Army keeps rolling along."

"Those heralding the demise of the tank are premature. The tank – the tracked, armoured and heavily-armed fighting vehicle that has dominated land warfare for a century – is wounded, not dead. Drones are responsible for the wounding, of course. But it’s not a fatal injury."

"When Russia widened its war on Ukraine two years back, tanks led the attack – and led the defense, too. The Russian army that rolled farther into Ukraine included as many as 2,000 tanks including some of the latest T-72 and T-90 models. Each had three crew and a 125-millimeter stabilized main gun and weighed more than 40 tons. Ukrainian tanks, around a thousand of them including locally-made T-64s – also with three crew and a stabilized 125-millimeter gun – met the Russian force and first battled it to a standstill before counterattacking and, over the next nine months, driving the Russians back to the current front line in southern and eastern Ukraine. The fighting was brutal, and it didn’t spare the tanks despite the vehicles’ hundreds of millimeters of steel and composite armor. From the start of the wider war until the culmination of Ukraine’s fall 2022 counteroffensive, when the front line froze around their present positions, the Russians lost around a thousand tanks – and the Ukrainians a couple of hundred. The weapons that killed those tanks were, for the most part, the weapons everyone expected from decades of warfare: mines, artillery, anti-tank missiles and – yes – other tanks. But then, as the war ground on, something changed. Both sides, and the Ukrainians in particular, began weaponizing small drones. The kind you can buy online for a few hundred dollars."

"Ukraine now builds and deploys more than 50,000 single-use drones a month; Russia seemingly builds and deploys slightly fewer. In any event, the tiny robots are wreaking havoc on tanks on both sides. The Russians losses now exceed 2,600 tanks. That’s more than 10 times as many tanks as are in the entire British Army. Ukrainian tank losses exceed 600. The Russians in particular have lost so many tanks that their factories can’t produce enough new tanks to make good their losses; instead, they are pulling thousands of old tanks leftover from the Cold War out of long-term storage and giving them a quick overhaul before shipping them off to the front."

"Nobody in the White House could claim not to know the horrors that had been visited upon East Pakistan. In a major report in September, the CIA guessed that “some 200,000 or more residents of the area have been killed,” and noted that East Pakistan had experienced “one of the largest and most rapid population transfers in modern times.”"

"Unlike many who have a finger in the world of national security, I've never found Iran to be strategically threatening. Iran's army is designed to oppress its own population, not march on its neighbors. Its air force hasn't been updated since the fall of the shah in 1979, and the Iranians are running out of jets to fall out of the sky. It's navy…well, it doesn't have a navy. It has a bunch of speedboats."

"Iran has little capability to project conventional forces across the Gulf beyond firing missiles and sending drones. But if U.S. air and naval forces were ever withdrawn and the Iranians were able to put a large land force on the southern side of the Gulf, that would pose a major challenge..."

"We have been so consumed with seemingly objective discussions of politics, tactics, weapons, dollars and casualties. This is the language of sterility. [...] We are missing stories of women who are literally keeping life going in the midst of wars. Do you know -- do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life going? And the ones who are keeping that life are women."

"The assumption that it is the men who should be warriors seems to be almost universal through time and across cultures and, while there are examples of women warriors, the overwhelming majority of those who have fought are men. And when rules of war have developed in different societies, women, along with old people, children and, sometimes, priests have been classified as non-combatants. The reasons why men have largely done the fighting and women have not are as much debated as the origins of war itself, and again the explanations range from the biological to the cultural. If gender differences are averaged, men come out higher on the scale of strength and size and possibly aggression, but there are many big strong women who can match and surpass men. The fact that men have more testosterone than women may make them more prone to being aggressive – although scientists are far from reaching a consensus – but there are many men who are gentle by nature and do not want to fight. Militaristic societies such as Sparta or the military through the ages would not have spent so much time on training which inculcates the ‘right’ attitudes if the great majority of men were natural-born killers. Women, when they choose or are obliged to fight, can be as fierce as men."

"And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts, You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb Of your dear mother England, blush for shame! For your own ladies and pale-visag’d maids Like Amazons come tripping after drums, Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change, Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts To fierce and bloody inclination."

"The Prophet passed by me at a place called Al-Abwa or Waddan, and was asked whether it was permissible to attack the pagan warriors at night with the probability of exposing their women and children to danger. The Prophet replied, "They (i.e. women and children) are from them (i.e. pagans)." I also heard the Prophet saying, "The institution of Hima is invalid except for Allah and His Apostle.""

"There are two sides of war. There is a side that fights, and there is a side that keeps the schools and the factories and the hospitals open. There is a side that is focused on winning battles, and there is a side that is focused on winning life. There is a side that leads the front-line discussion, and there is a side that leads the back-line discussion. There is a side that thinks that peace is the end of fighting, and there is a side that thinks that peace is the arrival of schools and jobs. There is a side that is led by men, and there is a side that is led by women. And in order for us to understand how do we build lasting peace, we must understand war and peace from both sides. We must have a full picture of what that means."

"Perhaps the existence in different cultures of war-making goddesses – Astarte, Athena, Kali, the Valkyrie – or the legends surrounding warrior queens such as Zenobia of Palmyra is a recognition of women’s potential. It is also a way of limiting it to divine or perhaps unnatural women. From Boudicca, the British queen of the first century ad, who is often portrayed in her war chariot, to the Rani of Jhansi, who led her troops against the British in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, many cultures have stories, some legend and some based on fact, of individual women warriors. Some have fought as women but many disguised themselves as men, including Deborah Sampson, who was in the American War of Independence, and Lizzie Compton and Frances Hook in the American Civil War, who kept reenlisting when their identities were discovered. Just like the women warriors in films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Wonder Woman and Kill Bill, however, they are exceptions, seen as outside the normal order of things where war is the male sphere."

"They are women who are standing on their feet in spite of their circumstances, not because of it. Think of how the world can be a much better place if, for a change, we have a better equality, we have equality, we have a representation and we understand war, both from the front-line and the back-line discussion."

"We know that conflict is gendered: that men and women have different experiences and play different roles. We also know that although women are often politically, economically and socially marginalised, they still play a significant role in peace and stability."

"The link between power and gender, as expressed through the gender hierarchy of men/masculinity over women/feminity, becomes especially pronounced in times of war. War fighting and masculinity are both 'symbolically and practically linked'. The masculinity that is promoted and privileged is a militarized masculinity: 'how masculinities and men become militarized, [and] about the ways in which masculinity and the military become linked'. Men, as citizen-warriors, go to war to protect innocent civilians, namely women and children. Women, of course, also matter for the state in times of war as daughters, mothers and wives of soldiers. thereby reinforcing their domestic identity."

"Out of the blood of a conflict fraternal, ⁠Out of the dust and the dimness of death, Burst into blossoms of glory eternal ⁠Flowers that sweeten the world with their breath. Flowers of charity, peace, and devotion ⁠Bloom in the hearts that are empty of strife; Love that is boundless and broad as the ocean ⁠Leaps into beauty and fulness of life. So, with the singing of pæans and chorals, ⁠And with the flag flashing high in the sun, Place on the graves of our heroes the laurels ⁠Which their unfaltering valor has won!"

"Memorial Day has the tendency to conjure up old arguments about the Civil War. That’s understandable; it was created to mourn the dead of a war in which the Union was nearly destroyed, when half the country rose up in rebellion in defense of slavery."

"The bugle echoes shrill and sweet, But not of war it sings to-day. The road is rhythmic with the feet ⁠Of men-at-arms who come to pray. The roses blossom white and red ⁠On tombs where weary soldiers lie; Flags wave above the honored dead ⁠And martial music cleaves the sky. Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel, ⁠They kept the faith and fought the fight. Through flying lead and crimson steel ⁠They plunged for Freedom and the Righteousness. May we, their grateful children, learn ⁠Their strength, who lie beneath this sod, Who went through fire and death to earn ⁠At last the accolade of God.In shining rank on rank arrayed They march, the legions of the Lord; He is their Captain unafraid, The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a sword."

"If and when America and American freedom are really threatened, I have no doubt that American men and women will rise to the occasion and show the kind of nobility and heroism that was evident in the Revolution and the Civil War. But in the meantime, we need to stop glorifying all these wars that were criminal, or that could have been avoided. Memorial Day should be a day to demand peace, a day to demand an end to a military-industrial complex that claims nearly half of the nation’s general funds, a day to focus on the real threats to American’s “cherished ideals,” most of which are purely domestic, and a day to celebrate what those ideals are: , freedom of speech and assembly, freedom from government intrusion in our lives, the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty by a jury of our peers, and the right to stand up and say that our political leaders are, for the most part, crooks, charlatans and even war criminals."

"The US now has training camps featuring imitation “Arab” urban districts, and has picked up the Israeli practice of entering a dense neighbourhood not via the street, but by crossing through homes – a parallel pathway to the street, running from one interior room to another by carving holes in contiguous walls, and dealing with the inhabitants as they come across them. They have learned, above all, that the city itself has become an obstacle. And while it is true that they can simply bomb a city to pieces – as we’ve seen with the bombing of Aleppo and other cities by Syria’s government and its allies – we have not recently seen the total destruction of the Hiroshima nuclear attack or the fire-bombing of Dresden."

"A single pipe broken by a high-impact explosive weapon can deprive 100,000 people of water. That same weapon may also destroy the neighbourhood’s sewage system, causing thousands to fall ill and placing further strain on already overstretched hospitals. Local economies collapse and populations flee, leaving fewer doctors and engineers, and no money to pay the salaries of those who remain. The acute pain caused by one attack triggers a ripple effect of long-term suffering that leaves no part of life unscathed."

"Urban warfare remains characterized by slow, massive destruction. Yet 50 years ago, there were no computers, no internet, no GPS, no UAVs, no digital communications, no night-vision devices, and no precision strikes. Two facts account for the lack of change in tactics. First, cities are constructed of steel and concrete, with streets providing the open spaces, which are usually linear. Any fighter in the open is quickly cut down. No technology can accurately detect and count humans inside buildings and tunnels. So the attacker must advance by blasting through the sides of buildings and slowly, slowly search every room. Second, tens to hundreds of thousands of civilians can be trapped in the cities. The terrorists in Mosul have prevented the civilians from leaving in order to use them as shields."

"As previous work has pointed out, the nuking of a sufficiently large city would be enough to generate a global-scale nuclear autumn. Take Los Angeles, for example, a city that extends for 500 square miles. The explosion and resulting fires would send an estimated 5.5 million tons of ash and soot into the stratosphere, causing sunlight, temperatures, and rainfall to temporarily decrease around the world. Globally, this would result in diminished growing seasons for the next half-decade, and temperatures would be the lowest in a thousand years. In some parts of the world, rainfall would be down by as much as 80 percent."

"City fighting also places enormous challenges on ground forces. Fighting in urban terrain generally favors the defenders, who can place snipers in windows and hide down narrow alleys. Even with precision munitions, it is difficult to use air and artillery power in a dense urban battle. Much of the fighting falls on the shoulders of the individual soldiers, who have to clear the city block by block."

"I’ll be so bold to take what they have left. The cry of “Talbot” serves me for a sword; For I have loaden me with many spoils, Using no other weapon but his name."

"Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage, And purchase friends, and give to courtesans, Still revelling like lords till all be gone."

"We may as bootless spend our vain command Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil As send precepts to the leviathan To come ashore."

"Our greedy seamen rummage every hold, Smile on the booty of each wealthier chest; And, as the priests who with their gods make bold, Take what they like, and sacrifice the rest."

"We believe this because we examined dozens of empirical studies, both published and unpublished, of team cohesion and performance in military units, industrial and sports teams and other groups. We also analyzed the political and organizational process by which African Americans were integrated into the military in the 1940s and 1950s, despite tenacious racial animosities among service personnel and vigorous opposition by military leadership. Further, we investigated how nondiscrimination policies for gays and lesbians are working in practice in U.S. police and fire departments and in Israeli and European military forces. Too often, this evidence is dismissed as irrelevant, without serious consideration or refutation. Indeed, a wealth of evidence, including the military's own research, debunks the claim that gays would irreparably damage "task cohesion." Liking all the members of one's group on an interpersonal level--"social cohesion"--either has no measurable influence on performance or, at very high levels, actually may have a detrimental impact. In short, the military learned long ago that professionalism does not require you to like someone to work effectively with him or her."

"An official policy statement issued in 1940 by the War Department (predecessor of the Defense Department) said that intermingling the races would "produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparation for national defense.""

"Elsewhere, Moskos, as cited in Marlowe (1979), referred to this social compact as “instrumental and self-serving.” But a less cynical framing is provided by the growing literature on the importance of “swift trust” in high-stakes settings (Kramer, 1999; Majchrzak, Jarvenpaa, and Hollingshead, 2007; Meyerson, Weick, and Kramer, 1996). Trust that is based on strong interpersonal bonds can take a long time to develop (McAllister, 1995; Webber, 2008). But Meyerson, Weick, and Kramer (1996) note that professional teams often “have a finite life span, form around a shared and relatively clear goal or purpose, and their success depends on a tight and coordinated coupling of activity.” Majchrzak, Jarvenpaa, and Hollingshead (2007) examined various case studies in the development of swift trust among complete strangers in response to natural disasters. Kramer (1999) reviewed evidence for several different ways in which this kind of swift trust develops, including category-based trust (based on knowledge of the other person’s membership in trusted groups), role-based trust (e.g., using high rank as a measure of one’s past experience and performance), and rule-based trust (based on “shared understandings regarding the system of rules regarding appropriate behavior,” p. 579). These mechanisms may work through either task cohesion or social cohesion, depending on the setting. Thus, when people rely on someone’s professional certification (e.g., as a surgeon, engineer, or musician), there may be a rapidly established task cohesion. If, however, one were to rely on credentials from a fraternal organization, the swift trust might rapidly create social cohesion. Similarly, rule-based trust might promote task cohesion in professional settings but social cohesion in social organizations.Of course, these routes are not mutually exclusive; professional conferences organize social outings, and fraternal groups organize charitable works."

"In the theater of operations . . . the presence of the enemy, and his capacity to injure and kill, give the dominant emotional tone to the combat outfit. . . . The impersonal threat of injury from the enemy, affecting all alike, produces a high degree of cohesion so that personal attachments throughout the unit become intensified. Friendships are easily made by those who might never have been compatible at home, and are cemented under fire. Out of the mutually shared hardships and dangers are born an altruism and generosity that transcend ordinary individual selfish interests. So sweeping is this trend that the usual prejudices and divergences of background and outlook, which produce social distinction and dissension in civil life, have little meaning to the group in combat. Religious, racial, class, schooling or sectional differences lose their power to divide the men. What effect they have is rather to lend spice to a relationship which is now based principally on the need for mutual aid in the presence of enemy action. Such powerful forces as antisemitism, anticatholicism or differences between Northerners and Southerners are not likely to disturb interpersonal relationships in a combat crew. . . . Their association is not limited to working hours but includes their social activities. . . . The most vital relationship is not the purely social. It is the feeling that the men have for each other as members of combat teams and toward the leaders of those teams, that constitutes the essence of their relationship."

"Several recent studies have examined the effects of race, ethnicity, and gender on military cohesion. Siebold and Lindsay (2000) noted that “a central tenet of current personnel policy is that the Army can recruit 17- to 21-year-old men [sic] . . . from different demographic backgrounds, train them, and assign them to groups with leaders, who also have different demographic backgrounds, to form cohesive, motivated, and competent combat units.” They report on an Army Research Institute study of 60 light infantry platoons (955 soldiers) at the U.S. Army Joint Readiness Training Center and NTC. Soldiers completed a detailed questionnaire assessing squad cohesion and related attitudes. The average self-reported cohesion rating was around 3.4 on a 5-point scale (5=high cohesion), with no differences in self-reported cohesion ratings for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian soldiers. The researchers noted that “[t]his pattern of little differentiation based on racial or ethnic (demographic) group membership is typical. The unit’s internal conditions, including leadership quality, appear to be the dominant influences on soldier cohesion and motivation.”"

"Siebold (2007) describes the “standard model” of cohesion as involving peer (horizontal), leader (vertical), organizational, and institutional bonding, each having an affective component and an instrumental component. He focuses on the role of trust and teamwork, as well as self-interest, in building cohesion: The essence of strong primary group cohesion, which I believe to be generally agreed on, is trust among group members (e.g., to watch each other’s back) together with the capacity for teamwork (e.g., pulling together to get the task or job done). [p. 288] . . . Combat group members try to develop strong bonding as a collective good, at least in part, because it is in their own self-interest for survival to do so. [p. 289] . . . While it is true that a few researchers have focused on intimate personal bonds and informal rituals, I submit that the majority of researchers . . . have used some form or part of the standard model in their approach, especially during the past twenty years, which does not dwell on intimate relations or masculine rituals but rather emphasizes interpersonal trust and teamwork built through many experiences including arduous training and drills. [p. 291] . . . [M]ere friendship or comradeship is not the essence of cohesion. [p. 292]"

"The post-Vietnam–era military scholars began articulating a view of cohesion that emphasizes the importance of task cohesion. For example, an influential definition of military cohesion was offered by Wm. Darryl Henderson in his 1985 book, Cohesion: The Human Element in Combat. His vision is clearly more in accord with task cohesion than social cohesion: Cohesion exists in a unit when the day-to-day goals of the individual soldier, of the small group with which he identifies, and of unit leaders, are congruent— with each giving his primary loyalty to the group so that it trains and fights as a unit with all members willing to risk death and achieve a common objective. (Henderson, 1985, p. 4)"

"'White soldiers will not shower or sleep in the same barracks as African-Americans. Mixing African-American troops with whites will weaken a unit's cohesion. ' These are arguments that opponents of integration were making 50 years ago," said David M. Smith, spokesman for the Campaign for Military Service, a coalition of gay and civil rights groups battling the Pentagon's ban on gays. "Substitute 'gay' and 'lesbian' and it's the same arguments being heard today. The common denominator is prejudice."

"In their interviews with members of the Army, Navy, and Marines regarding the integration of women in units, Harrell and Miller (1997) argue that their respondents seemed to recognize the distinction between task and social cohesion: Only when both social and task cohesion were low did people rate overall cohesion as low. The negative effects of too much social bonding were mentioned as well. . . . even those who longed for the “good old days” of high social cohesion admitted that some now-abandoned types of social bonding between men were actually unprofessional and detracted from the work environment. [pp. 58–59] . . . That task cohesion was strong and took precedence over social cohesion was expressed in a number of different ways: . . . “We all have our own thing going but when we need to get together for a goal the ship works together well.” “When an actual casualty occurs everyone joins together for the common good.” . . . “Although we don’t get along we are all ready for a fight.” [p. 60]"

"Joshi and Roh note that their analysis helps to pinpoint “the specific conditions under which diversity can have beneficial or detrimental effects on performance outcomes” (p. 618)—specifically, sociodemographic diversity is most likely to be deleterious when it is unbalanced (large majority, small minority) in highly task-interdependent teams. But it is important to bear in mind that these negative effects are quite small.14 Thus, Joshi and Roh note that “our findings challenge the assumption, born from social categorization theory, that some aspects of diversity necessarily have detrimental effects on team performance.” Similarly, King, Hebl, and Beal (2009) suggest that “although social categorization theory (the primary model that would apply to cooperative behaviors) would typically suggest that similarity fosters cooperation, there is substantial evidence that this is not always the case.”"

"When I was bleeding to death in my Black Hawk helicopter after I was shot down, I didn't care if the American troops risking their lives to help save me were gay, straight, transgender, black, white or brown."

"Only when both social and task cohesion were low did people rate overall cohesion as low. The negative effects of too much social bonding were mentioned as well. . . . even those who longed for the “good old days” of high social cohesion admitted that some now-abandoned types of social bonding between men were actually unprofessional and detracted from the work environment. [pp. 58–59] . . . That task cohesion was strong and took precedence over social cohesion was expressed in a number of different ways: . . . “We all have our own thing going but when we need to get together for a goal the ship works together well.” “When an actual casualty occurs everyone joins together for the common good.” . . . “Although we don’t get along we are all ready for a fight.” [p. 60]"

"In the years immediately after World War II, several scholars argued, based on information collected from German and American soldiers, that unit cohesion is essential to military effectiveness. Their conclusions gained considerable influence within the military. As we discuss below, our understanding of the concept of cohesion and its relationship to military performance has evolved in the years since, but the importance of the general concept of cohesion remains widely appreciated in the military."

"In the years immediately after World War II, Marshall (1947), Shils and Janowitz (1948), and Stouffer et al. (1949) argued that social cohesion within the soldier’s primary group is essential to military effectiveness. Shils and Janowitz offered the following (1948, p. 281): It appears that a soldier’s ability to resist is a function of the capacity of his immediate primary group (his squad or section) to avoid social disintegration. When the individual’s immediate group, and its supporting formations, met his basic organic needs, offered him affection and esteem from both officers and comrades, supplied him with a sense of power and adequately regulated his relations with authority, the element of self-concern in battle, which would lead to disruption of the effective functioning of his primary group, was minimized. Nevertheless, it is not clear that social cohesion was the driving force behind combat motivation, even during World War II. Stouffer et al. (1949) reported that when soldiers were asked, “What was most important to you in making you want to keep going and do as well as you could?” only 14 percent cited “solidarity with the group”; the most popular response (cited by 39 percent) was “ending the task.”"

"Lutherans and Catholics began to say that they have a right to equal protection before the law for their ethical teachings. They argued: "If a Quaker says, 'I cannot go to any war,' he is doing what his church tells him to do. If a Catholic says, 'I could go to a good war but not a bad one,' he is doing what his Church tells him to do. Why does the government make provision for the Mennonite who follows his church's teaching but not for the Catholic who does?” Logically, that is a valid argument, but it is not valid in American law."

"The courts properly decided that if government says that one religious tradition—Amish, Quaker, or Mennonites—is a valid religious basis for being a conscientious objector, but that some other religion is not a valid religion for being a conscientious objector, that decision constitutes backhandedly an establishment of religion, which the U. S. Constitution prohibits."

"[T]he nation’s history of military draft laws shows an ongoing effort to find ways to accommodate at least some individuals who object to being forced to kill. That protection has never been complete or absolute. But the overall arc of this history shows a longstanding effort to protect conscientious objectors to military service, with steadily broader protections being introduced over time."

"“Religious Training and/or belief: Belief in an external power or ‘being’ or deeply held moral or ethical belief, to which all else is subordinate or upon which all else is ultimately dependent, and which has the power or force to affect moral well-being. The external power or ‘being’ need not be one that has found expression in either religious or societal traditions. However, it should sincerely occupy a place of equal or greater value in the life of its possessor. Deeply held moral or ethical beliefs should be valued with the strength and devotion of traditional religious conviction. The term ‘religious training and/or belief’ may include solely moral or ethical beliefs even though the applicant may not characterize these beliefs as ‘religious’ in the traditional sense, or may expressly characterize them as not religious. The term ‘religious training and/or belief’ does not include a belief that rests solely upon considerations of policy, pragmatism, expediency, or political views.”"