Guerrilla Warfare Begin In Spain During The Napoleonic Wars

Paolo Palumbo, Newsrep: Spain 1808: The birth of guerrilla warfare

The recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan forced most modern and technologically advanced armies to revise their strategies by adapting to the new contingencies of asymmetric warfare. The U.S. military occupation of Iraq was an excellent example of how a top-level military force could crumble in the face of an uncontrollable popular uprising. After a triumphant march to Baghdad, the U.S. military’s total lack of a strategic plan quickly embroiled it in a long and stressful confrontation against small groups of insurgents whose actions made Iraq ungovernable.

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WNU editor: And I thought it was the partisans on the eastern front during the Second World War who gave birth to guerrilla warfare.

This Is The Future Of Amphibious Warfare

Patrick Tucker, Defense One: When Robots Storm the Beach

The future of amphibious warfare looks like a constellation of bots large and small. The main challenge now is getting them to talk to each other.

OCEANSIDE, California — The beach assault began not with a bang but the whirring of drone propellers overhead, a grumble of gears, and the low sweep of the ocean. Frisbee-sized quadcopters raced ahead of enormous, self-driving amphibious assault vehicles. Satellites peered down as robotic submarines probed outward and up. With gigabytes of data flowing between these interconnected machines, it seemed — misleadingly — like a war that did not need humans at all.

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WNU Editor: Will robots successfully replace marines? For some reason I have my doubts.

A Former Special Forces Officer Explains Why You Only Need To Be 70% Certain Before You Act In Battle

("60 Minutes"/CBS News)

Former Delta Force commander Dalton Fury, a pseudonym, appeared on "60 Minutes" wearing prosthetics and colored contact lenses in 2008.

Richard Feloni, Business Insider: Former Delta Force officer says the elite military unit taught him you only have to be 70% certain before you act — here's why

Over more than 20 years in United States Army special operations, first as a Ranger and then a Delta Force operator, Dalton Fury learned that effective leaders never wait for perfect certainty to act.

Fury is the pseudonym he uses for both his nonfiction and fiction writing, since his time in the highly secretive Delta Force has required him to conceal his true identity.

In an emailed list of leadership lessons sent to Business Insider, Fury posited a hypothetical question before giving a surprising answer: "How much information or intelligence does a special operations unit need before they launch a high-risk kill or capture mission? I argue that very rarely will the intelligence picture be better than a 70% solution, and at that point action should be taken."

Waiting for that extra 5-10% closer to 100% clarity only further closed the window of opportunity.

Fury argued that only after the American special forces and their elite allies adopted this 70% mentality were they able to finally take the steps that led to eliminating Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

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WNU Editor: One of the things that I learned from my father is the importance of instinct in battle. Instinct is not 100% .... but ask any soldier, and they would all credit instinct for saving their lives and/or succeeding in a mission. And while mistakes do happen, being 100% certain usually ends up in a "too late and too little" outcome.