The Big Idea

Travis P here. Last time we talked about levels of war (tactical, operational, and strategic) and mentioned a number of different types of war (siege, aerial bombing campaigns, etc). This time we’re looking at something called “Spectrum of Conflict.” In my experience working with engineers, they like diagrams and images. Travis Chapman is no exception, established by the fact he’s provided three diagrams of the concept we’re discussing! To which I’m actually adding one image I found on my own, the first one below, because I feel it gets across well why the word “spectrum” gets used for this military topic  (from Heritage.org) : Just like a spectrum of light has a variety of shades of color, warfare can come across as a spectrum of activities that nations can perform, just like the diagram I just used shows. To make sure everyone understands the concept, let me use the Cold War as an example: The United States and the Soviet Union, for approximately forty-five years...

Travis P here. We started the discussion of warfare by first looking at basic motivations for war, what essentially causes fighting. Then we followed up with a higher level of causes of war by looking at the types of calculations a nation must make in regard to other nations, especially in relation to balance of power, before deciding to enter a war. But when a nation goes to war, what exactly does that mean? It’s helpful here to define warfare itself a bit as broadly as possible, while still making it clear that armed conflict happens at different levels and includes different types of fighting. The most ancient concepts of warfare really involve two different levels of war–strategy and tactics. Tactics means how to use combat power in the best way on the battlefield in a single fight or single engagement. Tactics is heavily focused on weapons systems and how to employ them most effectively. Of course issues other than weapons feed into tactics–tactical supply is an issue. T...

Readers, the Guide to War continues! With Balance of Power this time–though the title doesn’t quite mean what it seems to mean. Note that I will be leading off these topics with commentary that fellow author Travis Chapman (who, by the way, is an instructor of Nuclear Engineering and Thermodynamics at the US Naval Academy) is going to review and tweak, to which he will add specific “case studies” or illustrations that I will review and tweak, my words at the beginning of a post that will transition into his words at the end. To get back to “balance of power,” please remember that the first post I wrote on this topic I now wish I’d called “part 1, Basic Drives” (or maybe “Basic Impulses”) because I tried to identify the root urges that cause people to organize themselves to fight. That is, what it is they are trying to achieve or obtain. With the title “Balance of Power” I’m picking out the key element of what I may call in the book “Reasons for War” (or maybe “Reasoning Lea...

Today I’m re-launching a series of posts I did for Speculative Faith onto my personal blog. A series I did not finish there, but which I plan to finish here. My goal is to make a comprehensive guide to warfare, from beginning to end, from fantasy war based in the legendary past, to futuristic science fiction conflict. And we’ll start at the beginning–reasons. Why does anybody go to war in the first place? What causes conflict? And how do you use that knowledge to write a better story? When discussing causes of human behavior in general, you’ll find that there’s much speculation and disagreement–and the subject of war is no exception to that. It’s not even universally agreed upon if war is natural to human beings. For almost all known societies over the entire world throughout all of known human history, at least on occasion wars are fought and at least a little formal training for warfare exists. Though it is also true that human beings in general show signs of having a natural...

This week’s post proposes a story involving the supernatural struggle between angels and demons in a different light. Let’s imagine a story in which an angel needs to infiltrate a group of demons and pretends to be one of them. In order to influence their decisions (or maybe spy on them). Such an angel would act as a secret agent of sorts. Or like a the kind of deep undercover detective used at times by law enforcement or intelligence agencies. This story world proposal additionally borrows from  an idea I floated back in 2012 –concerning angels having technology. But let’s return to that idea near the bottom of the post. What in the world would make me think of an angel infiltrating a group of demons? I got the inspiration from the Bible, actually. A Puzzling Bible Passage in I Kings 22 So during the divided monarchy of Israel and Judah, when Ahab was king over Israel, married to his infamous Phoenician-born wife Jezebel, Jehoshaphat shared an overlapping period d...