The following is an excerpt from The Invisible Front, Foreign Policy managing editor Yochi Dreazen's newly released book about one army general's efforts to change the military's approach to the mental health of its personnel during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this section, second lieutenant Jeffrey Graham arrives in Iraq for a combat deployment eight months after the US invasion of the country, at a time when the anti-US insurgency was intensifying.

Graham was killed in an improvised explosive device (IED) attack in Khalidiyah, Iraq, on February 19th, 2004, and was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

Reprinted from The Invisible Front Copyright© 2014 by Yochi Dreazen. Published by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC.  

“Hey, LT, where are your stilts?”

It was 4:30 AM on November 24, 2003, and a young sergeant from the 1st Battalion, 34th Armor, was giving Jeff an unofficial welcome to Iraq.

Jeff’s Chinook had just landed at the Al Taqaddum air base, or TQ, a bustling facility directly across the road from Camp Manhattan that served as a staging area for the units moving toward Fallujah and Ramadi.

Jeff was barely five foot six, and his height quickly became an endless source of amusement to the men around him. He wasn’t put off by the gentle mockery. In his letters and e-mails home, Jeff proudly referred to himself as an Oompa Loompa.

Jeff’s first day in Iraq flew by in a disorienting rush. A newly arriving officer would normally be given a week or two to get to know his men, adjust to the unfamiliar terrain, and learn the ins and outs of his com­mander’s overall strategy for fighting the insurgency.

Jeff wasn’t given time for any of that. Matt Homa’s unit — 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company — had been rudderless since the young officer’s injury, and Swisher needed to get it back into the fight. Jeff led his first mission, a foot patrol through a cemetery in the nearby town of Khaldiyah, just hours after landing at TQ.

Insurgents had been sneaking into the cemetery at night to fire rocket-propelled grenades and crude mortar shells at Camp Manhattan, which was just a few hundred yards away. Jeff didn’t find any of the mili­tants, and he thought that slowly making his way around the piles of dirt that marked each individual grave was “scary as hell.” Khaldiyah itself was almost entirely deserted. It looked, Jeff thought, “like a Hollywood set of a ghost town.”

Jeff had his first meeting with Swisher on November 25, Thanksgiv­ing Day. The battalion commander wasted little time with small talk when they sat down in Swisher’s tidy office. He told Jeff that the Centuri­ons were getting hit multiple times per day and had just lost two popular lieutenants, including Jeff’s predecessor.

The unit was fighting in one of the most dangerous parts of Iraq, and Swisher wanted Jeff to know ex­actly what was waiting for him each time he left the fortified walls of Combat Outpost Killeen, the tiny base that housed his platoon.

“This is what you’re stepping into,” Swisher told him. “The enemy is aggressive right now. Get your head screwed on straight if it’s not on straight already.”

Jeff spent his first days trying to get to know Crane, his unit’s top en­listed man, and the other soldiers of his platoon. He was deeply shaken by what he found.

The men were struggling to recover from the shock of Homa’s injury and were openly fearful of getting blown up by an invis­ible IED or shot by an unseen sniper. “You’re not human if you don’t get scared, and we had reason to be scared,” Chavez, one of Jeff’s soldiers, said later.

As time went on, Chavez added, many of the men from his platoon began to question why they were in Iraq and how they could possibly win a war with no front lines or clear objectives. Soldiers were being killed and wounded virtually every day, and many of the Centurions concluded that further losses were inevitable.

“The morale here is low,” Jeff wrote on Thanksgiving Day. “Guys try, but they all think they’re going to die.”

Jeff quickly got a sense of why his men were so afraid. On Decem­ber 1, his platoon was designated as the battalion’s quick response force, or QRF, which meant they would be the first troops called in if other Cen­turions came under attack. Just after 11 a.m., Jeff’s radio suddenly crack­led to life.

A convoy of US Humvees had been surrounded by insurgents armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades while the ve­hicles were passing through the rough, tense town of Habbaniyah. The Humvees were coming under fire from multiple directions, and one sol­dier, Sergeant Uday Singh, had already been seriously wounded. Take your men, Jeff was told, and get out there as fast as you can.

Jeff’s platoon jumped into their trucks and roared out of Camp Manhattan. They reached the ambush site ten minutes later, just as an army medical evacuation helicopter was setting down to pick up Singh’s motionless body. Jeff ordered his gunners to lay down covering fire for the chopper by pounding away at the unseen militants with the powerful .50-caliber machine guns mounted to the roof of each Hum­vee.

He and Mike Crane ran out to link up with some of the other men from Singh’s unit, firing their M4s as they ran. The news was grim. A bullet had ripped through the young soldier’s helmet, passing through his forehead and then out the other side. Singh never regained con­sciousness and was declared dead during the short flight to a military hospital in Fallujah.

The death hit Jeff hard. He had gone on three patrols with Singh and remembered that the young soldier always seemed to be smiling. Singh, twenty-one, had been born in India to a family with a long history of mil­itary service. His grandfather joined the nascent Indian air force in the 1930s and fought Japanese forces in Burma during World War II. Singh’s father, Preet, spent twenty-five years in the Indian army as a tank com­mander and took part in the war against Pakistan in 1971.

Uday had been accepted into the University of Illinois but chose to enlist in the army in the summer of 2000 instead of beginning college. He died just days after receiving his US citizenship.

“Tough day, tough day,” Jeff wrote in his journal that night, describ­ing a raid that ended with his soldiers arresting four Iraqis. “I thought my guys were going to kill ’em.”

The violence continued. On December 14, the day after US forces captured Saddam Hussein, an enormous car bomb demolished an Iraqi police station in Khalidiya, killing twenty Iraqi cops. Jeff had been in the station more than half a dozen times and knew some of the dead men.

Two days later he was getting ready to go to Camp Manhattan when his radio squawked. “Cobra X-ray, Apache,” a panicked voice said. “We’ve been hit.” Jeff escorted the unit medics out to the site of the blast. An IED had blown up a US Humvee, severely wounding two of the Centuri­ons inside.

Jeff watched, horrified, as one of the soldiers readjusted the blood-soaked bandages covering his head and sent half the skin on his face sloughing off, exposing the bone below.

“I finally have seen combat. War. Hell,” Jeff wrote. “It’s not pretty. I wish I wouldn’t have to see it again.”

Jeff woke up and fell asleep to the sound of distant explosions. He began to have vivid, unsettling nightmares.

In one dream Kevin [Graham's brother, a promising Reserve Officer Training Corps cadet who committed suicide earlier that year] walked up to him at a party, visibly drunk, and began choking so badly that Jeff could see the veins of his face turn blue. In another, Kevin told his brother that he was still alive and had simply taken a nap. Jeff woke up with a start after each nightmare and couldn’t fall back asleep.

US troops continued to die, seemingly by the day.

On January 9, in­surgents shot down a Black Hawk helicopter near Fallujah, killing all nine of the soldiers aboard. On January 24 a suicide bomber in a Toyota Land Cruiser detonated his explosives outside the gates of a small American outpost, killing two soldiers instantly. A third died while he was being flown out to a military hospital.

Jeff and Mike Taylor spent the follow­ing day at the blast site, picking body parts and scraps of blackened flesh out of the crater gouged by the bomb. They wanted the families of the fallen soldiers to have something to bury, no matter how small, and they were determined not to leave the remains of a pair of American soldiers to rot in the sun.

Three days later an IED went off less than six hundred meters from Combat Outpost Killeen, killing three of the four soldiers in a passing Humvee, including a company commander and a senior non­commissioned officer (the fourth soldier soon died from his wounds).

Jeff and his men began to feel an overpowering sense of bloodlust and fury. They imposed a midnight curfew in K-Town and talked about killing any Iraqi they saw on the streets. Jeff seemed almost excited by the prospect of retribution.

“This job is tough, but losing 6 guys in 4 days . . . ,” he wrote in his journal. “It’s time for payback and all the guys are ready.”

Not all of Jeff’s time in Iraq was so grim. He retained his obsession with Kentucky basketball, unfurled a large University of Kentucky ban­ner near his bed, and was happy to talk trash with fans of other schools. He played football and video games with the soldiers from his platoon to build unit cohesion and try to keep morale as high as possible. He was quick with a joke and never seemed to take himself too seriously.

On Christmas, Colonel Swisher walked over to Jeff’s table and handed him a plastic toy that had been mailed in from a McDonald’s back home. “Here,” he told Jeff. “You forgot the toy from your Happy Meal.” Jeff was sitting with his platoon, and there was a moment of nervous silence as the soldiers waited to see how their commander would react to so public a joke about his height. There was an audible gasp of relief when Jeff took the toy, proudly placed it on the edge of his tray of food, and then burst out laughing.

Still, Iraq was changing him. It hardened and conditioned him to withstand exposure to carnage that he would have found unimaginable just months earlier.

He began sprinkling his letters home with repeated references to “hojies,” a racial epithet of sorts about Iraqis. He made ca­sual reference to letting his men rough up Iraqis, run them off the road, or even shoot them.

Like veterans of other conflicts, Jeff felt transformed by his exposure to war. The world, in a fundamental way, was beginning to feel different to him.

“Most of the time it’s like being in a dream,” he wrote in a letter to Melanie. “Neither good nor bad. Just a dream.”

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The US military is trying to reduce its size and spending as it winds down its mission in Afghanistan and attempts to pivot away from the Middle East. But there's one multi-billion dollar factor standing in the way, for one branch of the military at least: the troubled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

From 2012 to 2013, the only American military branch not to see a 20 percent fall in contract spending obligations, which constitute about half of the total defense budget, was the Navy. Its $94 billion in obligations for the most recent fiscal year represents a dip of only 2 percent, compared to a 22% decline for the Army and a 21% drop for the Air Force.

The F-35, the often-delayed and astronomically expensive fifth-generation fighter jet, is a huge part of the reason why.

As a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies explains, the Navy is "[shifting] toward buying more products, principally the [F-35] Joint Strike Fighter."

"Navy products contract obligations increased by 8 percent, several times the rate of growth from 2009–2012," the report states. "Notable sources of growth included the Joint Strike Fighter program ($7.4 billion), nuclear reactors ($1.1 billion), the H-1 Upgrade program ($800 million), CVN-68 ($800 million), DDG-51 ($750 million), 6 and the E-2C Advanced Hawkeye ($500 million)." 

So the F-35 represents a majority of the Navy's major new product obligations. It's a big reason that spending in this area is still going up, while contract spending is falling across the rest of the military.

Lockheed Martin is the top recipient of Department of Defense contracting for fiscal year 2014 as well, and its F-35 is the single most expensive project in military history.

A slew of problems and delays make the plane a potential liability for many of the US allies contributing to its design and manufacture.

In contrast, the Army has seen huge cuts in its contract obligations, which at $87 billion are smaller than the Navy's for the first time in over ten years. The Army's contract spending in 2008 was nearly double what it is today, perhaps a result of the surge that sent around 30,000 additional US troops to Iraq. 

Despite the overall decline in this form of spending, the US military's contract obligations in 2013 were still over $100 billion greater than in 2000 or 2001. The bump in contract spending that followed the post-9/11 "war on terror" appears to be a permanent shift even if it's declined more recently.

Contractors cover a broad category of responsibilities ranging from research and development to hardware procurement and private security work.

Contract obligations represent roughly half of "total gross defense outlays," according to the CSIS report. The share fell to 49 percent in 2013, the lowest total in the post-9/11 era. 

SEE ALSO: This map explains why the F-35 has turned into a trillion-dollar fiasco

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SEE ALSO: How the military can cope with the mental health impact of a decade at war

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The U.S. Army has found a steal of a deal–or at least what said is a deal–on a group of World War I paintings. They have already been approved to spend $600,000 on the paintings, which will be a part of its large collection of art, Defense News reported.

On October 16, the Army filed an “unusual and compelling urgency” notice to pull funds to purchase 23 paintings by Samuel J. Woolf, an artist that was embedded with American forces in Europe during World War I. The service said its collection of World War I art is small. Paul McLeary of Defense News reports:

Almost all of the Army’s WWI artwork was sent to the Smithsonian Institution upon conclusion of the conflict, stripping the service of the majority of the original artwork it once owned depicting the US combat actions which claimed 116,000 American lives.

Most of the American-produced art that we have been handed down from the war come from the brushes of a group of artists who were commissioned as captains in the Corps of Engineers, and subsequently sent to Europe to record the fighting.

Woolf remains a rather obscure figure, even if his paintings have floated around between various collections over the decades.

But the last time Woolf paintings were available for sale was in 1992, making this opportunity to buy 23 of them one that the Army doesn’t want to miss. After researching auction records from Sotheby’s and Christie’s auction houses, the service claims in its justification document that only nine WWI paintings have been sold worldwide over the past 20 years.

The Army calls the paintings “one-of-a-kind historic documents” that are “the only known collection of this kind available at this time.”

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The spectacle is mesmerizing: A squadron of 13 small rubber boats moving in perfect synchronicity, turning right or left in unison, maneuvering in a perfect circular formation around a small US Navy vessel.

The throttle handles and steering controls move by themselves, like a ghost pilot was at the controls.

Normally a speedboat with a .50 caliber machine gun would not be the most intimidating of vessels, especially compared to the billion-dollar ships of the line that constitute what most people consider warships.

But combine sheer numbers with cutting-edge artificial intelligence, and suddenly small rubber boats can seem far more menacing.

The Office of Naval Research’s swarm program, which uses modular kits of sensors, communications, and sophisticated algorithms to convert existing small boats into autonomous drones, seeks to make networks of small craft a key part of fleet security.

The general parameters of the drones' mission are set by human operators. But the drone network makes many decisions for itself and its capable of automatically intercepting targets approaching the area it is set to guard.

The technology will not fire on a target without operator approval, so a human presence is always required in the mix. But one person is capable of directing the entire network, greatly reducing the number of personnel needed for security.

Drone technology has come to the fore over the last 20 years, but in some regards the technology is only now growing out of its infancy.

“We’re doing things we never thought possible previously. You look at the stuff on Mars. It’s remarkable,” ONR’s Acting Director of Research Dr. Lawrence Schuette tells Task & Purpose.

“What you saw at that demonstration was the culmination of a lot of research, pulling together to show senior leadership in the Navy what the art of the possible really is today. Do I think in 10 to 20 years every fleet will have autonomous systems that have that swarming ability? Absolutely.”

The concept of using swarms of small boats as security rose partly out of fear of a similar threat.

On Oct. 12, 2000, Al Qaeda terrorists rammed the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, with a small boat filled with explosives, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 others.

But beyond terrorist attacks, the threat of small boat tactics by potential enemies such as Iran and China have long concerned the Navy.

Iran used a large number of Swedish-built Boghammar patrol boats during the Tanker War episode of the Iran-Iraq War, and US forces sank many of the small craft during escort operations of oil tankers.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy has invested in large numbers of small attack craft for coastal operations in the South China Sea, which could pose a significant threat to larger surface groups the US Navy usually operates in.

The use of fishing boats as proxy units in territorial disputes is another concern considering the potential numbers involved.

Naval doctrine dating back to World War II has been primarily concerned with fleet actions against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and the rapidly modernizing navy of China. But unconventional operations by both state and non-state actors are threats that traditional anti-ship missiles and torpedoes are ill-equipped to deal with.

The successful demonstration of the swarm project demonstrates a cost-effective way of dealing with those threats. In a stark comparison to the usual billion-dollar weapons programs the Pentagon is known for, swarm conversion kits for existing small boats run as little as $2,000 apiece.

This is not the only system of autonomous drones the Navy has been working on. The MK18 Kingfish is a torpedo-shaped underwater drone that scans for mines, and the Navy has been testing its first unmanned, autonomous combat jet off of aircraft carriers, a demonstration platform that is viewed by some as the future of naval aviation.

“For all the right reasons, the same reason there is an EOD robot instead of a man in the loop, you’re going to want to put an unmanned system out there. If we can get the quantity up, we can put them out there more affordably, we take the warfighter out of the threat zone. It’s just a great way to operate,” Schuette says.

Besides the reductions in risk, there are also the reductions in manpower needs, keeping with the Navy’s trend of using automation to replace living crewmen. An Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has a standard complement of 323. The new Zumwalt class has a crew of less than half that at 158.

If autonomous robot swarms conjure up uncomfortable images of Skynet-like dystopian scenarios, Schuette concedes that drone swarms prosecuting targets independently is prevented only by the organization that deploys them.

“I think it’s just a question of what decade. On the science side of this, what we’re getting to is rules of warfare and culture, if you will, a reluctance to have a Terminator. That is not in our culture, but there is nothing on the science side that would prevent you from doing it.”

Schuette sees this technology being applied to every facet of the military, and points out that networks of underwater research drones are already used for oceanographic studies, often staying out for hundreds of days at a time.

He credits the advances to the ONR system of decentralizing research across military, academia, and industry scientists. But despite the speed of the advances, the wheels of military procurement grind slowly. It could be years before the swarm system becomes standard issue in the Navy.

“We are well before something would actually be fielded to the Navy. Ten years from now, the Navy would introduce something like that in production quantity. We feed into that pipeline. That whole frustrating military acquisition system, we are at the beginning of that chain,” Schuette says.

But within 30 years, Schuette is convinced that autonomous drone swarms are going to be the standard, replacing more and more traditional systems like manned tanks, aircraft, and submarines. The military of the future is going to be primarily a robotic one, with living personnel increasingly operating behind a shield of drones.

According to Schuette, “It is the future of our Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Army.”

Stephen Carlson is Task & Purpose’s Washington-based correspondent. He served two tours in Afghanistan as an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division. He lives in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter @swcarlson1.

SEE ALSO: Mind-controlled drones are already a reality

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A key figure in a struggling Army intelligence program has for years allowed himself to be portrayed as a Ph.D. in engineering, even though he does not hold a doctoral degree, according to records and interviews.

Russell Richardson, who earned a master's degree from Ohio State University in 1984, says he never sought to misrepresent his credentials. Yet from 2003 to as recently as September, Richardson consistently has been characterized in news stories, company websites and his own internal Army resume as having a doctorate.

"Somebody put it on a document," Richardson said. "People have always thought it. I haven't tried to actively go out and correct it. ... I agree I should have fixed the public record better."

Richardson made millions as an Army intelligence contractor before taking a six-figure federal job in 2012 as science adviser to the Army's intelligence and security command, or INSCOM. Before he left the government in July, he was the architect of a failed effort to fix the Army's Distributed Common Ground System, a troubled intelligence program.

Army spokesman MyRon Young said Richardson did not claim a Ph.D. in his formal application for the job of science adviser. However, once in the job, Richardson introduced himself as "Dr. Richardson" and passed out documents listing himself as "Dr.," according to three Army officials who were not authorized to discuss a personnel matter by name and requested anonymity. All said it was commonly believed at INSCOM that Richardson was a Ph.D.

Richardson responded, "I never introduce myself as `Dr.' Never, ever. ... I never represented that I had a Ph.D."

A body of evidence raises questions about that assertion.

The Associated Press obtained an undated biography with his picture and detailed resume, which was used over the last two years while he worked as the Army's INSCOM science adviser.

The resume says he earned a Ph.D. from Ohio State University and refers to him as "Dr. Russell D. Richardson." Richardson said he did not include that and can't explain who did.

While he was employed by the Army, Richardson was referred to as "Dr. Russell Richardson" in several news articles in which he was quoted, agendas for conferences at which he spoke, and an Army slide presentation he authored - all of which were posted on the Internet.

Richardson said he can't explain why his educational background was incorrectly characterized and why he failed to correct it.

In fact, in detailed minutes of an Army INSCOM meeting Richardson attended in January 2014, also obtained by the AP, a correction was proposed in red to change "Mr." Richardson to "Dr." Richardson said he didn't propose that change.

Before he joined the Army, Richardson was listed as holding a Ph.D. on the website of the company he most recently co-owned, Potomac Fusion, an Army intelligence contractor.

Richard said that was a mistake and that it was corrected, but there is no evidence of any correction in Internet archives.

Long before that, in 2003, he was listed as "Dr. Russell Richardson" in the credit line of a Defense Intelligence Journal article he co-authored with then-Army intelligence official Keith Alexander, who later became National Security Agency director, and others.

Richardson now works for a cybersecurity company founded by Alexander, who did not respond to questions sent via email asking what he knew about Richardson's educational background.

In a story published Monday that examined Richardson's role, the AP initially reported that he held a Ph.D., based on an erroneous statement from university spokeswoman Amy Murray.

After a tip, the AP asked Ohio State to check again, and Murray reported that Richardson was not awarded a Ph.D. The reference was removed from the story.

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The US-led mission in Afghanistan is coming to an end this year, with allied forces withdrawing from the country's fractious Helmand Province earlier this week.

With coalition troops leaving Afghanistan to meet their withdrawal deadline this calendar year, there's no better time to watch Ben Anderson's 2013 documentary: "This Is What Winning Looks Like".

The British producer spent six years in the country, capturing a damning picture of both the Afghan National Army and the US-led coalition's efforts to train it.

Rampant corruption, illiteracy, technical incompetence, and a Taliban threat indistinguishable from provincial civilians are only a few of the problems stacked against the prospect of the Afghan state's meeting success by western standards. It's a reminder of the uncertainty that lies ahead for the country, and the failure of the US to fulfill many of its major goals.

The documentary takes its title from the words of American General John Allen in February 2013, on his last day as head of NATO forces in Afghanistan. Allen's words were meant to inspire. The documentary adopts them with dark irony.

At a patrol base, US soldiers discover that Afghan troops have been detaining four men in a makeshift prison of stacked sandbags. An interpreter translates their version of the facts ...

... but confronted about the illegal detention, an Afghan soldier puts his foot down, and the Americans see little choice but to back off in response. A US soldier later tells one of his comrades: "Just wait, I don't want to piss them off. It's their show." The whole episode is just one example of a lack of communication and differing standards between the Afghan and US militaries.

A recent video from the YouTube channel Vickers Tactical shows Green Berets firing heavy weaponry in super slow-motion. 

The Green Berets, otherwise known as the US Army Special Forces, are a special operations force tasked with reconnaissance, counter-terror, and unconventional warfare-related missions. The video was filmed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US Army airborne forces and Special Forces, as well as US Army Forces Command and US Army Reserve Command. 

We have highlighted some of the most hypnotic segments of the video through a series of GIFs below. They show what heavy projectiles look like in flight, and give an idea of just how much firepower these weapons can pack.

The Javelin missile launcher is a "fire-and-forget" system in which the missile can lock onto its target for improved accuracy. The weapon is routinely used against armored targets, such as tanks.

The RPG-7 is an anti-tank weapon originally created by the Russians.

The force of the launch from an M3 Carl Gustav 84 mm recoilless rifle creates a huge plume of dust rising from the ground.

The M3 is used for engaging bunkers and vehicles.

Green Berets also train on MK32s, a handheld grenade launcher that can fire all six of its rounds in 3 seconds.

For engaging enemies behind cover, Green Berets make use of the MK47 40mm grenade launcher which features a ballistic computer and a laser rangefinder. 

 Now here's everything at full speed.

You can watch the entire Vickers Tactical video below. 

SEE ALSO: Putin's elite counter-terror troops have an insane training regimen

SEE ALSO: The craziest small arms maneuvers by South Korean SWAT, in 9 GIFs

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The US space program was one of the most impressive feats of human ingenuity in history — a series of events that captured the hearts and minds of everyone who witnessed them. The amount of research, creativity, and manpower that went into the space program was staggering, even when we look back on it decades later.

But as space technology moves further away from governmental oversight and towards commercialization, what happens to the history and relics of our nation's revered past in space exploration?

Many once-important facilities now sit dormant, decommissioned years ago, now rusting in the sun. Others have been demolished and lost forever.

They've almost all been forgotten, but photographer Roland Miller is trying to do something about that. For the past 25 years, Miller has traveled all across the US, photographing decommissioned NASA, Air Force, Army and commercial space launch and test sites.

These photographs will be released in a book titled "Abandoned in Place," which features a diverse selection of Miller's work, spanning more than two decades. You can see more of Miller's work here or contribute to his Kickstarter campaign for the project.

"In the end, my main purpose is to preserve the remains of these historic sites in the only way possible, through photography," Miller said.

Miller was mesmerized by space at an early age "like most kids growing up in the 1960s," he says. It seemed magical to him at the time. "I can clearly remember the night Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon," he says.

Miller began shooting this project in the early 1990s. He was teaching photography in Brevard County, Florida, about a 30 minute drive from Cape Canaveral. A friend of his was cleaning out an office building on the grounds and had discovered an old photo studio. He asked Miller to help him dispose of the old photo processing chemicals safely.

During that time, "I visited Launch Complex 19, the Gemini launch complex, and I knew immediately I wanted to photograph it," Miller says.

Twenty-eight-year-old Jordan Matson was working odd jobs in small-town Wisconsin when Islamic State (IS) gunmen overran Iraq's Mosul in June.

The U.S. Army veteran says that reports of IS militants' brutal assaults on Christians and minorities in the Iraqi town proved to be the turning point that prompted him to go to Syria and fight the extremist group.

"For over a year, people were being slaughtered by ISIS," the 28-year-old Sturtevant, Wisconsin native tells Radio Free Iraq (RFI), using another acronym for IS.

"Anyone who didn't conform to their way of life could either convert, be killed, or get driven off their land. So when Mosul fell and IS drove all the Christians and minorities from the town or killed them, I thought that enough was enough and I decided to come here to fight," Matson says via Skype.

For two months, Matson has fought in northeastern Syria alongside the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG). He says he decided to join the Kurdish militia after searching the Internet for a way to fight IS.

"I found that the YPG was the only force in the area that would let Christians and Muslims live in peace together so I decided to join them," he says.

Matson, one of only four Americans known to be fighting alongside Kurdish militia forces in northeastern Syria, says the YPG received him with open arms.

"I've been getting nothing but love here, they have treated me like a member of their own family since the day I got here," he says.

Not long after his arrival in Syria via Turkey, Matson was hit by shrapnel from a mortar round during a battle in Rojava, taking injuries to his eye and arm.

He relates how Kurdish locals took care of him while he was recovering in the hospital. Kurdish families would visit him there, bringing food to share with him and other wounded fighters, he says.

"There's a lot of love in the community. It's something you can't really find in the United States; it's very different and I love it," Matson adds.

Matson, who has recovered from his injuries, is now in Kobani.

He says he and his fellow YPG fighters are "extremely thankful" to the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces who have recently come to the northern Syrian town to help in the battle against IS.

The YPG and Peshmerga are fighting closely together, he says.

"It's a welcome relief during the fighting, we are fighting for the same cause," Matson adds.

While the reinforcements from the Iraqi Peshmerga have helped combat IS in Kobani, Matson believes more is needed from the United States and its international allies.

"To put an end to IS, we are going to need boots on the ground," he says.

"If we increase the bombing campaign and put boots on the ground to help give support to the YPG fighters, it would help push IS back to the Syrian borders. Troops could save many lives here," Matson tells RFI.

Although U.S. law-enforcement officials say that it is illegal for Americans to join a Syrian militia like the YPG, CNN reports that Matson has been attempting to recruit more foreign fighters to the Kurdish militia via social media.

Kandal Amed from the YPG tells RFI correspondent Simira Balay that other foreign fighters have already joined the Kurdish militia to fight against IS.

"Foreign fighters are in all fronts with the People's Protection Units (YPG). Germans and Russians, others, wanted to be part of the new spirit that was created for the peoples of the Middle East. Among our ranks, you will find Americans, Germans, and others, all men, but we expect the arrival of foreign women, too," Amed tells RFE/RL by phone from the Al-Ya'rubiya (Tal Kojar) checkpoint on the border between Iraq and Syria.

Amed also talks of YPG cooperation with Iraqi Peshmerga forces, including to rescue stranded Yazidis from Iraq's Sinjar Mountain.

"Now in the Sinjar Mountain there are families, civilians, and our comrades living in difficult humanitarian conditions. We talked to them by phone today," he says on November 5, "They suffer from the extreme cold, where during the last week about seven to eight children died because of the cold and hunger. We are now working with the Peshmerga forces to open a corridor to save these families."

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The U.S. Army has issued an apology and will no longer use the term "Negro" in a document on policies and procedures as an acceptable alternative to African American.

The Army Command Policy, known as AR 600-20, said "terms such as 'Haitian' or 'Negro' could be used in addition to 'Black' or 'African American.'"

The issue was first reported by CNN on Thursday. The Army dropped the term the same day and issued the apology.

"The U.S. Army fully recognized, and promptly acted, to remove outdated language in Army Regulation 600-20 as soon as it was brought to our attention," Army spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Alayne Conway said in a statement.

"We apologize to anyone we offended," she said.

The U.S. Census Bureau stopped using the term last year after critics complained it was outdated and offensive and should be removed from the 2014 American Community Survey. 

(This story was refiled to fix case of first letter in word 'Negro' in the headline.)

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Iraq’s Oil Ministry has said that the country is losing as much as $1.2 billion a month in oil revenues as a result of Islamic State militants seizing oil refineries and pipelines in the areas it controls. As a result of Islamic State, Iraq has lost the export of 400,000 barrels per day of oil, the ministry estimated.

Assem Jihad, a spokesman for the Oil Ministry, told RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq on November 11 that these losses are having an adverse affect on the overall state budget.

Islamic State militants had also inflicted heavy damage on oil installations in areas under their control, the spokesman said.

Islamic State militants in Iraq have replicated the strategy they have used to disrupt and appropriate Syrian oil production. Patrick Osgood of IraqOilReport told Vocativ in September that IS was “lifting oil from stricken pipelines, smaller oil fields…and then they sell it through the very established Iraqi oil smuggling industry.”

Islamic State militants are handling around 25,000 barrels a day of oil in the north and midwest, according to a report by CNN. This is only a small fraction of the country’s overall oil production, however. (In June 2014, Iraq produced 3.17 million barrels per day.)

Still, experts have warned that any severe disruption caused to Iraqi oil production by Islamic State could have significant consequences.

In an attempt to mitigate these losses, Iraq’s Oil Ministry is seeking to increase oil production from its middle and southern oil fields. The ministry said that it hoped the exports from the West Qurna-2 field would rise to over 400,000 barrels per day by early 2015.

At a closer glance, however, this figure is no higher than that already set for West Qurna-2 back in March.

One of Iraq’s largest oil fields, West Qurna-2 is located in southern Iraq, 65 kilometers northwest of the port city of Basrah. Previously closed to Western firms due to sanctions, West Qurna-2 began production March, when Russia’s LUKoil — which owns a 75 percent stake in the oil field — began producing crude at a rate of 120,000 barrels per day.

LUKoil Operations Manager Gennady Budarin said that the Russian oil company expected West Qurna-2 to produce at a rate of 400,000 barrels per day by the end of 2014, the same rate specified by Iraq’s Oil Ministry spokesman.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Army on November 11 reported a critical victory against IS militants in Baiji, north of Baghdad.

The town is home to the country’s largest oil refinery. The fate of the refinery remains unclear, however.

SEE ALSO: The most isolated US military base could get a lot more important

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It's not every day you get a chance to learn from a four-star general.

So when I received an email from the MBA registrar at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management about an upcoming class taught by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., former chief of staff of the US Army, I jumped at the chance. 

Casey's class focused on leadership skills for a "VUCA world"— that is, one that's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.

He has earned his stripes on the subject: As leader of the US Army from 2007 to 2011 under two US presidents, Casey oversaw 1.1 million soldiers during some of the most complex military operations in history.

As a first-year MBA student seeking a transformative learning experience, I was fascinated with his stories and advice. Here are my takeaways:

A leader finds the opportunity in every challenge.

There was a particularly sensitive time in Iraq when Casey was tasked with forming a partnership with local leadership. Just as discussions were beginning, a soldier who had recently arrived in Iraq mistakenly drove down a street that was specifically supposed to be avoided. A full-blown battle broke out across the southern part of the country.

In Casey's words: "We used this tense situation as an opportunity to accomplish the objective. Instead of the partnership unraveling, we actually turned it to our benefit and used it as an example of how we could strengthen our relations. When a challenge is presented, it can be a gift."

A leader simplifies their message before communicating.

"One of the most difficult challenges of any leader is to cut out complexity, especially before presenting an idea," Casey said. "Clarity and simplicity are the antidotes to complexity and uncertainty." He talked about soldiers who tried to explain complex military issues to members of Congress without understanding their audience. The soldiers often used military-specific jargon in their explanations, leaving the lawmakers confused.

Casey explained: "It's essential to distill a message into a few key points and hone its delivery. After trying and failing to communicate our strategy, we went back to the drawing board and came up with 'Clear. Hold. Build.' and re-communicated it. It was much better understood. Clear communication is like sharpening a pencil: You slowly remove the unnecessary until you are left with a pointed, useful message."

He suggested presenting your message to a spouse or friend first to check its cogency.

A leader is first a great follower.

As a 21-year old student, Casey had an opportunity to work for famed NFL coach Vince Lombardi over the summer. Casey told a story in which Lombardi asked him to block the locker room door while the coach talked to the team after a loss. Instead of diligently blocking the door, Casey drifted to listen to the speech. Several people burst in and interrupted the coach, prompting Lombardi to rip into Casey for failing to do his job.

Full of remorse, Casey remembers sitting on the team plane when Lombardi walked up to him and said, "I really came down on you hard back there, son," then patted his back and kept walking. Casey never forgot that moment or the lesson he learned: that a great leader knows how to garner loyalty from followers.

A leader is bi-focal.

"Success lives in the future. Therefore you must block time on your calendar to deal with the future," Casey said. "At the same time, a leader must not be far removed from the day-to-day affairs of his or her team." The general talked about once meeting with the president and secretary of defense to discuss overall strategy, then within hours meeting with soldiers to understand conditions on the ground. "The most successful leaders are bi-focal: One eye is on the present and details of execution; one eye is on the future and our strategy."

A leader sets the culture.

One of Casey's biggest initiatives as chief of staff was to drastically improve the military's struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder. He recalled a survey from which he learned that 90% of soldiers with PTSD said they would not seek assistance because they felt it would hurt their careers. He set a goal to change this culture.

"When you seek to change the culture, you have to start with education," he said. "You have to change the dialogue. You have to get buy-in from key leaders. We adopted a slogan of 'Mental fitness is as important as physical fitness' as we sought to de-stigmatize the conversation around PTSD.

"By the end of five years," he continued, "the number of soldiers who wouldn't seek help was reduced to 30%. But I'll tell you this: In my four years overseeing the Army, I only took on one major cultural change. That's how hard it is. But we were successful, and that's something I'm very proud of."

SEE ALSO: 9 Powerful Leadership Lessons From The US Military

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The US Army is seeking to reinvent itself in the face of a host of unprecedented challenges. Between tightening budgets, a shrinking military force, and a world of smaller and asymmetrical threats, the Army has released a new global strategy. 

The new strategy, encapsulated in the US Army Operating Concept manual "Win in a Complex World," describes how the Army of the future will shape the world's security situation through conflict prevention and the ability to conduct expeditionary maneuvers and combined arms operations. 

A significant part of this new strategy comes down to investing in new technology that should aid the Army in the number of new uncertain roles it may play in the future. 

“The world is changing all around us, so we have to adapt and change,” General Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, told The Wall Street Journal. “We are facing one threat in Korea, we are facing another threat with Russia, and another with ISIS. So we have to mold our response.”

Below are the main technologies that the Army indicated will become a central focus of their new operating strategy. 

"Mobile Protected Precision Firepower" 

In order to better protect its soldiers, the US Army is investing in lighter weight and lower volume vehicular platforms. These platforms would offer increased protection to soldiers on deployment, while being easier to maneuver and maintain. 

In addition to new vehicular platforms, the Army is researching the development of sensors that would locate and identify threats to provide better protection for troops in the field. 

"Lethality And Effects" 

The Army hopes to develop technology that would improve the lethality and accuracy of future weaponry. This would include the creation of next generation command systems for attack launches, weapons systems that are interoperable with allies, and precision guidance systems that would significantly decrease the chance of civilian casualties. 

"Logistics Optimization" 

Recognizing the difficulties inherent with extended supply lines, the Army envisions a host of new technologies that would radically change the face of logistics. These methods include water generation on demand, 3d printing, increasingly efficient power saving and generation technologies, and improved power storage. 

Each of these technologies would allow the Army to reduce sustainment and lift requirements of operating bases. This would lead to significant cost cutting and an increase in efficiency. 

"Army Aviation" 

The Army's wish list for future aviation technologies centers around improved vertical take-off and landing technologies and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The general aim is to increase the overall effectiveness and ease with which supplies can be airlifted to soldiers in deployment at any time, including through the deployment of supplies by UAS. 

The Army will also pursue technologies that allow for UAS to better survive electronic attacks while having greater enhanced situation understanding and lethality. 

"Medical Sciences"

The Army is pursuing advances in medical sciences that would both offer a qualitative improvement in life for veterans and life saving technologies. Qualitative improvements include the development of more responsive prosthetic technologies, while life saving technologies include current research into treating traumatic brain injuries. 

"Information To Decision"

As the Army seeks to streamline its entire order of operations, there is also an increasing focus on the development of analytical tools that will aid in mission command decisions. These tools will be based around simple and resilient technologies, such as cloud-enabled networks, that would allow operators to take advantage of the new systems in austere environments.

In relation to these advances, the Army will spend significantly more resources combating cyber attacks while increasing its own offensive cyberspace capabilities.

"Human Performance Optimization" 

Human performance optimization hopes to cut down on required training times, while increasing the aptitude of soldiers, through a variety of tools. New blended virtual reality tools hold promise for increasing competence among soldiers and commanders, while better screening tools can more accurately match an enlistee with the best possible military occupation. 

"Autonomy-Enabled Systems"

Ultimately, the US Army is seeking to develop learning autonomous and semi-autonomous unmanned ground systems (UGS). UGS will function as a force multiplier for the Army in a multitude of ways. Firstly, UGS will be able to operate in areas that are potentially lethal for humans, such as after a nuclear disaster like Fukushima. 

Secondly, UGS systems will be able to play increasingly larger expeditionary roles for routine maintenance, re-supply operations, and persistent surveillance and reconnaissance. This would limit the potential human cost, and would increase Army efficiency. 

SEE ALSO: 15 astounding technologies DARPA is creating right now

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The U.S. military is the largest, most powerful force in the world. After two wars over the last ten years, it's clear that the U.S. has had plenty of time and practice to keep our forces battle-tested.

Combat troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan in 2014, effectively marking the end of the war. President Obama has pledged that all US troops will be out of the country by 2016. However, Marines, Army, and Navy continue to train and stay battle ready. 

The following night photos, drawn from the U.S. Marines, Army, Air Force, and Navy show just how cutting-edge our military has become.

Inspired by similar images posted by Foreign Policy, we have prepared our own gallery including a few more exclusively from military photographers.

A Marine Special Operations Team member fires a M240B machine gun during night fire sustainment training in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

U.S. Marines with Lima Battery, 3rd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, fire M777A2 Lightweight Howitzers during exercise Steel Knight in California.

Marines participate in an external load lifting exercise with a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter.

Russia, China, Iran, and Islamists are waging unconventional warfare around the world, and the United States currently lacks a clear strategy to counter the threat, according to a recent report by the Army Special Operations Command.

“This challenge is hybrid warfare combining conventional, irregular, and asymmetric means, to include the persistent manipulation of political and ideological conflict,” states the Army white paper, “Countering Unconventional Warfare.”

“Foreshadowed by Iranian actions throughout the Middle East, and by Chinese ‘unrestricted warfare’ strategists in the 1990s, hybrid warfare has now reached its most brazen form in Russia’s support for separatist insurgents in Ukraine.”

The 48-page white paper, published Sept. 26 by the Fort Bragg, North Carolina command, urges building new, non-kinetic warfare tools into a comprehensive US and allied strategy.

The tools should include covert and clandestine special operations commando activities combined with political, intelligence, diplomatic, and financial warfare methods to counter the activities of states like Russia, China and Iran, and insurgent activities by terrorist groups such as the Islamic State.

Countering unconventional warfare also should be made “central to US/NATO security policy and practice over the next several decades,” the report states.

The Army study said the US government “lacks a cohesive [information warfare] strategy to counter adversary [unconventional warfare] campaigns conducted by state and non-state actors, and this has hindered the US/NATO response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.”

“The US government must develop a comprehensive framework to plan and execute regional and global IW strategies and operations that counter adversary UW campaigns as part of a whole-of-government approach,” the report said.

Moscow's Unconventional Threat

The report says that while Islamists in Iraq and Syria are “cascadingly disruptive,” the threat posed by Russia is more significant.

“Russian unconventional warfare is thus the central, most game-changing component of a hybrid warfare effort involving conventional forces, economic intimidation of regional countries, influence operations, force-posturing all along NATO borders, and diplomatic intervention,” the report said.

“The brazen audacity of unconventional warfare within Russian hybrid warfare has produced urgent concern among America’s NATO and non-NATO partners that Russia may apply similar approaches to other regional countries in the region with dissenting Russophile populations, such as the Baltic States, Moldova, and Georgia,” the report adds.

According to the report, Russia is using special operations forces, intelligence agents, political provocateurs, and news media reporters, as well as transnational criminal elements in eastern and southern Ukraine.

“Funded by the Kremlin and operating with differing degrees of deniability or even acknowledgement, the Russian government uses ‘little green men’ for classic [unconventional warfare] objectives,” the report says.

The objectives of Russian covert warfare include “causing chaos and disrupting civil order” and provoking an excessive reaction from Ukrainian security organs that Moscow hopes will delegitimize the Kiev government.

The Russians have engaged in a successful unconventional warfare campaign against Ukraine by organizing pro-Russian separatists and dispatching advisers and fighters from Russian special forces and intelligence units to assist them. Activities include funding and arming, tactical coordination, and fire support for separatist military operations.

The report identified retired Col. David S. Maxwell, a former Army special operations officer, as a “chief advocate” for a new counter unconventional warfare strategy and methods.

“Our enemies are conducting unconventional warfare and political warfare: Russia and its new Generation Warfare, Iran and its Iranian Action Network, and the Chinese Three Warfares,” Maxwell said in an email to the Washington Free Beacon.

“Non-state actors such as al Qaeda are conducting unconventional and political warfare,” he added. “We need to understand their strategies and we need to be able to counter their strategies. Counter unconventional warfare provides a foundation for strategic thinking about the threat strategies we face.”

Maxwell told a US Special Operations Command briefing in July that counter unconventional warfare, or U-CW in Army parlance, can prevent states and groups from achieving their strategic aims.

Counter programs against unconventional war are likely to be “protracted and psychological-centric in nature,” Maxwell told SOCOM and added that the United States should “comprehensively employ political, economic, military, and psychological pressure” to degrade both the will and capability of enemies to use the new form of warfare.

Should The US Get Back Into Political Warfare?

The report quotes the late George Kennan, architect of Cold War containment policies against the Soviet Union, as urging the use of “political warfare,” which he defined as peacetime efforts using all means short of conflict to achieve national objectives.

The future geopolitical environment will feature ideological battles among states, the report said, noting that “Russia, China, and Iran currently conduct political warfare activities to further their individual goals.”

The United States, by contrast, ceased using political warfare at the end of the Cold War and instead is focused on “public diplomacy” that seeks to “tell America’s story” rather than influencing events in support of US and allied interests.

The United States should renew political warfare efforts as part of a new strategy to influence local struggles, the report said. Additionally, “policies should be developed assigning political warfare as a core mission of government agencies responsible for C-UW doctrines and capabilities,” the report said.

Among the tools are increased intelligence to understand foreign unconventional threats and applying diplomatic, informational, economic, financial, and legal power along with military forces to wage hybrid and irregular counter-war.

Key elements of a new strategy will be using special operations “special strike” capabilities, like the use of Seal Team Six, and “surgical strike capabilities” a reference to precision attacks, such as covert drone strikes that have been highly effective against terrorist leaders.

Ken McGraw, a spokesman for the US Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., said the Army report is a doctrinal think piece. Countering unconventional warfare currently is “neither a recognized special operations mission or activity in either Army or joint special operations doctrine” but could be in the future, McGraw said.

Several aspects of the new strategy appear to be part of the Obama administration’s current campaign against the Islamic State. The administration has sought to apply financial and diplomatic pressure on IS and announced plans to attack the Islamist ideology motivating the group. So far, however, the non-military results have had a limited impact on the group currently holding territory in Syria and Iraq.

China’s ‘Unrestricted Warfare’

China’s use of unconventional warfare was described in the Army report as based on the 1999 book by two Chinese colonels called Unrestricted Warfare that calls for using all means to defeat enemies, including cyber attacks, ecological warfare, financial warfare, and terrorism.

“China will use a host of methods, many of which lie out of the realm of conventional warfare,” the report said. “These methods include trade warfare, financial warfare, ecological warfare, psychological warfare, smuggling warfare, media warfare, drug warfare, network warfare, technological warfare, fabrication warfare, resources warfare, economic aid warfare, cultural warfare, and international law warfare.”

Examples include China’s threat several years ago to sell off large US debt holdings to protest US arms sales to Taiwan, and cutting off sales of rare earth minerals to Japan in a dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

Chinese news outlets also are used in media warfare, including at the White House. “The Chinese state-controlled television station network CCTV has a White House pool reporter that could influence US media reporting on China issues,” the report said.

Cyber attacks also are a key Chinese unconventional warfare tool and the report said Chinese hackers are suspected of causing power outages in the northeastern United States and Florida, the report said.

“China’s cyber-attacks clearly show the vulnerabilities to the US public and private sectors information and infrastructure security,” the report said. “States like Russia and China will continue to exploit weaknesses in cyberspace to gather information and influence others.”

Iran’s Qods Force

Iran’s main use of unconventional warfare is its support for terrorism and subversion through surrogates, like the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Qods Force.

“Through the Qods force, Iran provides ‘material support to terrorist or militant groups such as HAMAS, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, and Iraqi Shia groups,’ the report said. “Hezbollah is the primary terrorists’ proxy for Iran working together with a campaign of terror against Israel, the United States, and other western nations.”

Qods operatives are working in Iraq with Shia militias to “counter US objectives and diminish the presence and influence of Sunni groups,” the report said.

Iranian special operations commandos in Iraq are trained to attack critical infrastructure such as dams, power plant, and pipelines.

Iran also is developing cyber warfare capabilities as one of its key unconventional warfare tools.

“Iran seeks a sophisticated offensive cyber capability to weaken adversaries to gain military superiority and to counter external actions and activities,” the report said

“An effective cyber capability allows Iran the ability to have effects on an adversary with plausible deniability, and those cyber actions may not reach the level of retaliatory reactions.”

Iranian hackers were blamed in 2012 by US intelligence for cyber attacks on US banks that produced “debilitating” effects, the report said, adding that Iranian hackers also infiltrated Navy and Marine Corps computer networks.

Iran also is backing the Syrian Electronic Army cyber group.

“Adversaries are using and growing capabilities, which avoid current western overmatching combat strengths,” the report concludes. “Adversaries will continue using asymmetrical approaches such as applications derived from technological proliferation, cyber operations, terrorist activities, information, and media operations to diminish western advantages.”

Like conventional military strategy, the report says a counter unconventional warfare approach should rely on intelligence about enemy activities that can be used in counter attacks against enemies.

Additionally, US special operations forces can apply similar methods used in unconventional warfare as part of their operations, the report says.

Irregular Warfare As A Main Form Of Conflict

Sebastian Gorka, the Horner professor of military theory at the Marine Corps University and an adviser to Army Special Operations Command, notes that 80 percent of all war since Napoleon has been irregular or unconventional. “So only a fool would believe that ‘Big War’—​​​tanks versus tanks, fighter jets versus fighter jets—will define the threat to America,” he said.

“US Army Special Forces — or Green Berets — were created to understand and function in this irregular threat environment,” Gorka said. “The truth is that the current global situation is defined by non-state actors using irregular warfare​, such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), or nations such as China, Iran, and Russia using unconventional means, be it cyber warfare, proxies, or balaclava-wearing special forces without rank tabs or units insignia in Crimea.”

The biggest challenge for the US policymakers in Washington is to treat US Special Forces and irregular warfare as tactical assets and a tactical domain. They also fail to understand that the Green Berets are a strategic asset, and that China, Iran, Russia, and the jihadis are all at war with us right now,” Gorka said.

Bill Cowan, a former Army Special operations officer, said the need for a strategy to counter unconventional warfare is obvious but the recommended “whole of government approach” is a problem.

“No matter how well thought out and put forward, any implementation of a strategy that requires ‘a whole government’ approach to implement becomes problematic from the outset,” Cowan said.

“The notion of ‘coordinated synergy’ undermines the very basis of implementation unless driven decisively from the highest levels of the US government,” he said. “We don’t have the leadership to make this concept/doctrine the core doctrine of our fight against our enemies.”

The Army report was first reported by The Epoch Times newspaper last week in an article on Chinese intelligence activities.

SEE ALSO: China's nuclear weapons are getting bigger and more destructive

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Mapmaking graphic artist Martin Vargic's has made an amazing graphic tracking the size of the world's largest armies at different points in time. 

The graphic gives an understanding of the just how mobilized the human race was during World War II — and shows how the size of the wold's largest armies has shunk over time as interstate warfare becomes less common and technology surpasses sheer manpower in military importance. 

It also gives us a chance to compare the size of some of the largest armies at different points in history with one another: the US had about as many troops in 1950, for instance, as China's Ming Dynasty had in 1400.

One loaded choice Vargic made is splitting the world between East and West. The graphic doesn't depict the world's single biggest army at any given time, but the biggest armies in two halves of a divided and sometimes antagonistic world.

In his research, Vargic drew from Encyclopedia Britannica, British think tank IISS, and Wikipedia. The first project listed on his website is a humorous map showing the Internet's biggest traffic drivers as countries drawn to scale.

Another project of his shows what would be left of the world should sea levels rise by 250 to 300 feet, which the Slovakian artist said is realistic should the polar ice caps melt completely.

SEE ALSO: This mythical map of the Internet is brilliant

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The new Army commander in Europe plans to bolster the US armored presence in Poland and the Baltic states and keep rotations of US troops there through next year and possibly beyond to counter Russia.

Lt. Gen. Frederick "Ben" Hodges, who replaced Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell  earlier this month as commander of US Army Europe, said the Army was looking to add about 100 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the forces in Eastern Europe.

"We are looking at courses of action for how we could pre-position equipment that we would definitely want to put inside a facility where it would be better maintained, that rotational units could then come and draw on it and use it to train, or for contingency purposes," Hodges said in a briefing from Vilnius, Lithuania.

Hodges visited a training site in Lithuania that could be used to store armor and said he would look at similar sites in Estonia and Poland.

"Certainly, I don't see a need to build infrastructure — a FOB [Forward Operating Base] if you will — or anything like that, that would be used for US forces," Hodges said.

Since taking command, Hodges has made clear his concerns about Russia, which annexed Crimea last March and has supported the separatists in eastern Ukraine. US Army Europe, which had 280,000 troops at the height of the Cold War, now has 31,000.

The rotations of U.S. troops on training missions in Eastern Europe would provide "deterrence against Russian aggression," Hodges said.

"I don't think that Russia has any intention of some sort of a conventional attack into NATO territory because they know that would generate an Article 5 response."

He referred to the NATO treaty article calling on all member states to respond to an attack on any member of the alliance. Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are all members of the 28-member NATO alliance.

"I think that what they [the Russians] do want to do is to create that ambiguity, plant the seeds of uncertainty so that the alliance members lose confidence that the rest of the alliance would come to their aid if they were, in fact, attacked," Hodges said.

Two days after Hodges spoke, Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, the NATO commander, visited Ukraine to discuss US and NATO assistance in shoring up defenses against the separatists.

Moscow has repeatedly denied sending troops into eastern Ukraine and providing advanced arms and equipment to the separatists, but Breedlove said that Russian troops definitely were present in eastern Ukraine and were "giving backbone" to the rebels.

Breedlove said Russian forces were also training the rebels to "understand the advanced weaponry that is being brought across."

The central government in Kiev led by President Petro Poroshenko has been pleading with the US for advanced weaponry to counter the Russian troops and rebels, but the US has limited assistance to non-lethal aid.

Speaking on background, a senior administration official traveling with Vice President Joe Biden on his trip to Ukraine last week said the US has provided more than $100 million in non-lethal assistance "to help the Ukrainians defend themselves."

The aid included night-vision goggles; protective vests; counter-mortar radars; blankets; vehicles; and Meals, Ready to Eat, the official said. The official said the US had concluded that arming Ukraine would be counter-productive since "no matter how many weapons we provided to Ukraine, they were going to get outgunned by the Russians."

Since the pro-Russian rebels seized border regions last April, more than 4,300 combatants and civilians have been killed in eastern Ukraine and nearly a million people have fled the region, according to the United Nations.

SEE ALSO: Pro-Moscow militants in Ukraine are decimating Kiev's air force

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Young Americans are increasingly unfit for Army service due to obesity, academic failings, and various other shortcomings.

Maj. Gen. Allen Batschelet, the US Army Recruiting Command commanding general, told a US Army Bloggers roundtable Thursday that the Army is facing significant challenges in recruiting. Part of this is due to an improving economy offering more young people career options outside of the military. 

More significantly, an increasing number of Americans are simply ineligible for Army service. As of now, Batschelet said, only three in ten Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 meet the Army's standards for service. By 2020, according to the general, "that eligibility number could be down to two in ten." 

"Obesity forms a big part of it, the disqualification. That's the growing trend,"Batschelet said. However, moral disqualifications over an increasing range of criminalized behaviors have barred many young men and women from enlisting.

Similarly, an "erosion in academic qualification of the young people we are engaging with" has left the Army grasping for eligible recruits. The problem is "reflected in declining high school graduation rates,"Batschelet, alongside the failure of an increasing number of Americans to achieve high school equivalency certificates. 

For Batschelet, the slipping educational standards of Americans is the most worrying trend for the future of the US Army. Although obesity is the leading disqualifier for people looking to enlist, tht challenge is one that "we as a society, and even as the Army, can deal with." 

In contrast, deficiencies in education will take "significantly more time to address … that's the more worrisome one for me," Batschelet said.

Reflected in the problem of education, recruits have routinely scored worse on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test, Batschelet said.

According to the Military Times, the Department of Defense has strict quotas on what percentage of enlisted can score on the ASVAB. At most only 4% of enlistees can score in the 10th to 30th percentile of the test, and no more than 40% 0f enlistees can score lower than the 50th percentile. 

SEE ALSO: These 22 charts reveal who serves in America's mlitary

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For the first time, a laser weapon system (LaWS) was successfully operated aboard a US Navy ship.

A demonstration of LaWS took place in November aboard the USS Ponce while it was deployed to the Arabian Gulf. It struck targets aboard a small speeding boat, shot down an unmanned drone and destroyed other moving targets.

Produced by Alex Kuzoian. Video courtesy of the Associated Press. 

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