Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast

Hybrid warfare Is a can of worms, a fascinating conjoining of kinetic and non-kinetic means of achieving victory or stale between warring nations.
This second episode examines an historical example of what I think is the closest modern hybrid warfare modality in the Japanese Empire in the 1930s leading to WWII; the.Imperial Japanese Army’s Tokumu Kikan – Special Service Organizations that laid the groundwork for this phenomenon in the modern west.
References:
Richard J. Samuels Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community
John Llewelyn The Imperial Japanese Army’s Tokumu Kikan – Special Service Organisations: Connections Between Wartime and Peacetime Intelligence Activities
Report to Congress on Russian Hybrid Warfare in Europe 11 August 2026
The Future of Hybrid Warfare
Hybrid Warfare: How to Escape the Conceptual Gray-Zone
The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession
Richard Feynman Cargo Cult speech at CalTech 1974
RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015.
Slaughterbots (2017)
Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021)
How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare?
Sun 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
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
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Email at cgpodcast@pm.me

Hybrid warfare Is a can of worms, a fascinating conjoining of kinetic and non-kinetic means of achieving victory or stale between warring nations. This first episode tries to lay the ground work of what it is and in the next two episodes we will examine an historical and a contemporary example of hybrid warfare in meat-space.
References:
Report to Congress on Russian Hybrid Warfare in Europe 11 August 2026
The Future of Hybrid Warfare
Hybrid Warfare: How to Escape the Conceptual Gray-Zone
The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession
Richard Feynman Cargo Cult speech at CalTech 1974
RAND wish-casting on drones in 2015.
Slaughterbots (2017)
Slaughterbots: if human: kill() (2021)
How are Drones Changing Modern Warfare?
Sun 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
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
My Substack
Email at cgpodcast@pm.me

I discuss the possibilities of America relinquishing its global ambition to reduce its footprint to a regional hegemon in the Western hemisphere. The new technologies of AI, UAVs and hypersonics rather easily challenge the spending paradigms and mission architecture of the American armed forces.
There are no near-peer competitors, every nation on Earth is now a peer to modern western war machines.
America boasts a magnificent 20th century war machine is 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 US Navy is lost at sea and in the thrall of exquisite platform that be the maritime tombs of tens of thousands of sailors in the coming wars of the 21st century.
The acquisition system is broken beyond repair, burn it down.
The aircraft carrier has been a signature component of US naval power and prestige for more than a century. The utility has continued to diminish since the end of WWII. The tremendous disadvantage of putting so much manpower and treasure into these single use leviathan systems in the modern world of distributed missile and PGM systems, emerging near-peer & peer adversaries and concentration of power in vulnerable systems is a recipe for future disaster.
The US Navy surface fleet is in tatters and shattered by readiness, maintenance and armament issues that are critical indicators of a navy totally unprepared.
More on the carrier dilemma in Chasing Ghosts Episode #034, WarNotes #10 and Dispatch #006.
Note: This post is published a little early due to my attendance at the Military Operations Research Society Annual Symposium in CO this week.
References:
The Documents Exist: Nobody Assigned Them As Mandatory Reading.
What Would Rickover Do?
Jeff Vandenengel National Policy and the Panoceanic Navy
James D, Hornfischer Who Can Hold the Sea: The U.S. Navy in the Cold War 1945-1960
Gregory Vistica Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy
Michael Junge Crimes of Command: in the United States Navy, 1945-2015
Gerry Doyle Carrier Killer: China's Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles and Theater of Operations in the early 21st Century
David Lee Russell Early U.S. Navy Carrier Raids, February-April 1942: Five Operations That Tested a New Dimension of American Air Power
Jeff Vandenengel Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. Navy
Jeff Vandenengel interview on Midrats with CDR Salamander
Ivan Gogin Fighting ships of the PEOPLE LIBERATION ARMY NAVY 1949 - 2023
Jerry Hendrix Retreat From Range: The Rise and Fall of Carrier Aviation
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Write me at cgpodcast@pm.me

I discuss the darker side of celebrating war and the moral injury of wars of choice. Memorial Day is a day of remembrance and an existential wake.
This day is about the ashes of victory and blood lakes of defeat. I show how the American way of war is far more brutal and murderous than the usual suspects let on..
***This episode is not for the squeamish or faint of heart.***
U.S. WAR CRIMES IN THE PHILIPPINES
James M. Scott Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila
Howard Jones My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness
Karl Marlantes What It Is Like to Go to War
Bill Russel Edmonds God is Not Here: A Soldier's Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of War
Clark Savage King of All Things: A Guide to Man's Martial Purpose
Dick Couch A Tactical Ethic: Moral Conduct in the Insurgent Battlespace
Andrew Bacevich Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars
Shauna Springer WARRIOR: How to Support Those Who Protect Us
Jonathan Shay Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character
Jonathan Shay Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming
Another podcast:
Martyrmade: Anything That Moves - The My Lai Massacre (w/History on Fire)
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me
My Substack