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Lessons Learned and Unlearned: The Drivers of US Indirect-Fire Innovation

MAJ Brennan S. Deveraux

Art of War Scholars Series

191 Pages

Published: 2024

Lessons Learned and Unlearned analyzes nearly a century of US artillery innovation and adaptation, focusing on the pressures of incorporating new technology, applying combat experience, and assessing external threats. Indirect fire’s role on the battlefield has been repeatedly reshaped by new technologies on the one hand and organizational and doctrinal changes on the other. This research examines successful and unsuccessful historical indirect-fire adaptations since the birth of indirect fire—identifying innovation themes, insights into future issues, and recommendations for more effective indirect fire.

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Armies in Retreat

Chaos, Cohesion, and Consequences

Timothy G. Heck and Walker D. Mills

Published: 2023

In Armies in Retreat: Chaos, Cohesion, and Consequences, editors Timothy Heck and Walker Mills have culled together a collection of essays that fills a critical gap in publications and literature covering large-scale combat operations. Every battle has two sides: the victors and the vanquished. This book explores retreating armies—those that maintained cohesion and later succeeded and others that devolved into chaos. Ultimately, this book is about surviving defeat and designed to inform leaders about what to expect when the unexpected happens, to prevent the shock and mitigate some of the terror on every side so they can respond with resilience and cohesion. Retreat, while unpalatable, can ultimately lead to military or national survival, even victory.

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Allies of a Kind

Canadian Army-US Army Relations and the Korean War, 1950-1953

By Allen R. Millett

65 Pages

Published: 2014

American Soldiers take for granted the close personal relations we have developed with our Canadian comrades during more than a decade of side-by-side service in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other areas around the world. Canadians serve in responsible positions inside a number of US formations, and the reverse is also true. Therefore, it may surprise some in both armies to read Allan Millett’s less-than-rosy narrative of our two nations’ first attempt at interoperability. US Army Command and General Staff College Press is pleased to publish this short study not because we seek to focus on past mistakes, but because it helps to identify some of the issues to consider as the US Army focuses ever more energy on its regional alignment of forces.

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Counterattack on the Naktong, 1950

Leavenworth Papers No. 13

By Dr. William Glenn Robertson

164 Pages

Published: 1986

One characteristic of virtually all large military establishments in the twentieth century has been their creation of a body of doctrinal material that in theory regulates the conduct of their future combat operations. Two sources, past experience and theoretical concepts, account for most of the intellectual underpinnings of this mass of military doctrine. Of great importance in the development of this doctrine is the analysis of actual operations that occurred during previous conflicts. This systematic analysis of past events usually results in the identification of doctrinal principles having potential validity in future wars. Military history, therefore, represents the raw material from which much doctrine is crafted.

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Korean War Anthology—Artillery in Korea

Massing Fires and Reinventing the Wheel

D.M. Giangreco

327 Pages

Published: 2004

The first nine months of the Korean War saw U.S. Army field artillery units destroy or abandon their own guns on nearly a dozen occasions. North Korean and Chinese forces infiltrated thinly held American lines to ambush units on the move or assault battery positions from the flanks or rear with, all too often, the same disastrous results. Trained to fight a linear war in Europe against conventional Soviet forces, field artillery units were unprepared for combat in Korea, which called for all-around defense of mutually supporting battery positions, and high-angle fire. Ironically, these same lessons had been learned the hard way during recent fighting against the Japanese as the vignette above—which describes a 1944 action on Saipan, not Korea—aptly demonstrates. Pacific theater artillery tactics were discarded as an aberration after War World II, but Red Legs soon found that they “frequently [have] to fight as doughboys” and “must be able to handle the situation themselves if their gun positions are attacked.

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Korean War Anthology —Truman and MacArthur

The Winding Road to Dismissal

By Michael D. Pearlman

22 Pages

Published: 2004

Like most people, Harry Truman was subject to conflicting interests and impulses. He believed in strong executive leadership under the aegis of combative presidents, such as his life-long hero, Andrew Jackson. (He once told Dean Acheson, his secretary of state, he liked “being a nose buster and an ass kicker much better” than a statesman.) On the other hand, Truman was too nice to be the man he dreamed of being, except in those rare moments when his temper took total control. Usually, he avoided personal confrontation, being a considerate, rather modest individual. Personality aside, Truman served his Washington apprenticeship in the inner circle of Capitol Hill, where the upper house functions by compromise and conciliation. Whatever his ideals of heroic manliness, Truman enjoyed his reputation as “the nicest man in the Senate,” the place he would spend “the happiest time of my life.”

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Over the Beach

US Army Amphibious Operations in the Korean War

By Colonel (Ret) Donald W. Boose Jr.

520 Pages

Published: 2008

Since the Korean War, the Army’s amphibious role has greatly decreased in importance. The Army, however, conducted extensive riverine operations in Vietnam and continues to employ them in Iraq. Additionally, over-the-shore logistics remains an important part of Army doctrine and logistical capability today. This historical study chronicles an aspect of the US Army’s history that may seem remote from the challenges facing the Army in 2008. If history “proves” anything, however, it is that the hard-won lessons from the past tend to be relearned in the future. If this study makes that relearning process faster and more effective, it will have fulfilled its purpose.

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Scenes From an Unfinished War: Low-Intensity Conflict Korea, 1966 – 1969

Leavenworth Papers No. 19

By MAJ Daniel P. Bolger

181 Pages

Published: 1991

Most Americans associate U.S. military operations in Korea with the Korean War, 1950-53. This is understandable in that the war, although limited in scope and objectives, was fought primarily with the weapons and tactics identified with conventional warfare. The Korean War is also remembered for the civil-military crisis it precipitated between the president of the United States, Harry Truman, and the commander of United Nations forces in Korea, General Douglas MacArthur. The Truman-MacArthur controversy is still capable of generating passionate discussion, even though the president, with the backing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall, had little choice but to relieve the general of command if civilian control of the military was to be secured.

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Staff Operations:

The X Corps in Korea, December 1950

By Dr. Richard M. Stewart

80 Pages

Published: 1991

The X Corps in Korea was an unusual, one of a kind, organization. All corps are uniquely configured for their missions and thus tend to break many organizational rules, but the X Corps was unusual even by usual corps standards. The corps was activated on 26 August, barely in time for the Inchon landings it was supposedly responsible for planning. Its commanding general, Major General Edward M. (“Ned”) Almond, retained his position as General Douglas MacArthur”s chief of staff of the Far Eastern Command (FEC). This was to lead to some ill will between the X Corps” and Eighth Army’s logistics personnel.

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The United States and the British Commonwealth in Korea, 1950-1953:

A Critical Study of the Origins of Joint Publication 3-16, Multinational Operations - Art of War Papers

By Matthew D. Marfongelli, Major, US Army

164 Pages

Published: 2014

Future American military operations, be they high-intensity combat, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, counter-insurgency, or otherwise, are likely to require multinational contributions. This requirement is due to several possible considerations, to include limited American military resources or the need to demonstrate legitimacy for an operation through international participation. America’s first opportunity to lead a coalition as a superpower occurred during the 1950-1953 Korean War. Its coalition faced a war it did not want. Additionally, the coalition included multinational components that were not necessarily familiar with each other’s operational practices and tactics.

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