Civil war between Myanmar and Karen National Union

The world's longest ongoing war - 101 East - Al Jazeera English
One of the lesser known low-intensity conflicts happening in South-East Asia, the long running civil war between the Myanmar junta and the Karen rebels have not received sufficient limelight, in terms of efforts to move towards peace, or the tracking of human rights abuses.

Marines press the "Reset" button

Politico

"One of the main goals of the exercise is to reacquaint Marines with their basic mission as America’s expeditionary force in readiness. That means getting Marine units out of the barracks and into the field, where they live in tents and have to purify their own water, Davis noted."

The USMC's reason for existence, amphibious operations, has been watered down.

Long overseas deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have "degenerated" the Marines (and other Army units) into a pseudo-police force. This blog has previously argued that police or paramilitary forces are more suitable for conducting counterinsurgency operations.

Another thing. The Marines seem to revel in "doing more with less". This gungho attitude is great, and essential in combat, but the Pentagon should realise how much better the Marines can be with better equipment.

Combat Tactical Challenge

Centre for Army Lessons - Australian Army

"A Combat Tactical Challenge is a combat scenario where the reader is provided with a combat situation that requires them to utilise certain resources to achieve a tactical outcome. Not all considerations for the situation can be provided in this forum, so the reader is given scope to make assumptions when developing a solution."

A rather interactive method by the Australian Army to discuss lessons learned among soldiers and encourage them to put on their thinking caps. In the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), "thinking soldier" is sometimes used in a slightly negative (or perhaps ironic) manner.

Using realistic scenarios will make it more engaging for our conscripts, and allow them to feel that SAF is not so "wayang".

This type of "war games" reminds me of the book, The Defense of Jisr Al-Doreaa, which opswarfare highlighted earlier this year.

Quite a few acronyms used in the example. opswarfare may need to decode some of them before a proposed solution can be attempted.