The Big Five - 19 May edition

A weekly guide to new readings on modern war and adapting to win

As I wrote in my post earlier this week, I have been attending the Land Forces in the Pacific Conference in Honolulu this week. It was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with many old friends in the U.S. and Australian Army, and to have some in depth discussions about the challenges of military operations, particularly land force operations, in the Pacific ocean areas.

There has also been a lot going on elsewhere.

Russian President Putin travelled to China to bend the knee to Chinese President Xi and thank him for all the financial and dual-technology support that China has provided to Russia over the past two years.

In Ukraine, the Russians continued their series of offensives on multiple axes across the north east and eastern regions of Ukraine. It has meant that Ukraine has had to make some tough calls on where to use its reserves of firepower and combat units. The worst may not yet be over. As the Ukrainian Commander in Chief, General Syrskyy noted in a Telegram post late last week, “we understand that there will be heavy battles ahead and the enemy is preparing for this.”

And in the western Pacific, the Chinese campaign of normalising increasingly larger scale military operations around Taiwan continued. This week, the Chinese Phase 0 campaign for Taiwan included having two large civilian ferries move off their normal routes in the vicinity of Taiwan’s Kinmen Island on 16 May. I visited Kinmen Island last year - it is very close to the Chinese mainland, and vulnerable to a PLA surprise attack.

My readings this week, as always, cover a variety of technological, political and strategic subjects. There is a good piece on the challenges awaiting the new Taiwanese President, due to be inaugurated just after this article is published. There are also articles on drones and drone carriers as well as an excellent article on evolving the West’s current approach to deterrence.

As always, if you only have time to read one article, my pick of the week is the first one on the list below.

Happy reading!

1. Challenges for the New Taiwanese President

On May 20, Lai Ching-te will be inaugurated as the next leader of Taiwan. He is an experienced politician and served as Vice-President for the out-going president. The new president will have an array of economic and security challenges to deal with, with China dominating government policy. This article provides useful insights into the beginning of the Lai administration, and can be read here.

2. Countering Small Drones for Australia

In this piece, defence expert Mark Sweikert examines the challenges of countering small drones in the kinds of operations that might involve the Australian Defence Force in the near future. The article explores current procurement efforts to address this threat, and finds several gaps. You can read the whole article here.

3. A Chinese Drone Carrier?

In the past week or so, reports have emerged about the construction of a Chinese navy drone carrier upriver from the major shipbuilding yards at Shanghai. It will be interesting to see how this experiment turns out. As Dean Cheng, an expert on the Chinese military, described this week, he’s not sure that it’s a drone carrier, but that it would be another reminder that the PLA is a learning organization. It is willing to experiment, which is not what we associate with either authoritarian militaries. You can read the full article on this new development here.

4. Ground Operations in Ukraine

One of my favourite substacks is the one run by Tom Cooper. It provides detailed analysis on the war in Ukraine. This piece from the past 24 hours is an almost forensic run down of Russian ground operations in the north east and eastern parts of Ukraine, broken down in the various axes of advance currently being executed by Russian Army formations. You can read the full post here.

5. A New Model for Deterrence

Finally, piece from one of my favourite strategic thinkers in one of my favourite military journals, the Military Strategy Magazine. In this, Echevarria explores the deterrence policy and supporting strategy the United States and its NATO allies had in place to deter Russian aggression. The article also proposes an outline for a more consequentialist approach to deterrence that might improve on current risk-averse Western models. You can read the full piece here.