White Sun War Launch Day

May the Fourth be with you!

Today is the big day!

My new book, White Sun War, is out today. Given the subject, it would also be appropriate that we have finally reached H-Hour.

I began this project in late 2021 to explore - in narrative form - the trends in military operations that I explored in my previous book, War Transformed. As I explained in an earlier post here, fiction is a great way to examine complex technologies and warfighting concepts in an accessible and more engaging way. As Peter Singer notes, it is like blending vegetables into your kid’s milkshake.

The book explores a potential future war over Taiwan between the Chinese on one side, and the Taiwanese, Americans and Japanese (and other allies) on the other. The characters are designed to represent a cross section of contemporary military institutions, and portray some of the newer military organisations - such as the Space Force and the USMC Marine Littoral Regiments - designed to fight in the 21st century.

The book also explores contemporary warfighting concepts that are being evolved to deal with new technologies and the geographic challenges of fighting in the massive expanse of the earth that is the Pacific. The Chinese concept of ‘intelligentisation’, the Taiwanese ‘Overall Defence Concept’ and US ‘multi-domain operations’ all feature in the story.

Even though this is a fictional account of future war, a huge amount of research went into the production of the novel.  Research into US and Chinese military organisations, Pacific Ocean weather trends, tactics and technologies were important elements of this background research.

One of the really interesting parts of the research for the book was exploring the study conducted in 1944 by the US joint chiefs of staff for an invasion of Formosa (as it was then known). It was called Operation Causeway and would be part of part the allied advance towards Japan in the later stages of the Pacific War. After capturing the island, the US military intended to develop Formosa into an advanced base allowing the United States and its partners to bomb Japan, support other advances in China, and interdict the Japanese sea and air lines communications. 

The study estimated that over 230 thousand troops would be required to retake the island from the 98 000 Japanese garrisoned on the island and over 1.6 million tons of material and logistics supplied would need to be landed. It also estimated 24 000 friendly casualties in the first two months of the operation. There is an extraordinary level of detail about the logistics of the proposed landings, and the follow-on logistic support required once the troops had landed. The study allocated allied naval forces to the invasion that would include 50 aircraft carriers (fleet, light and escort), around 300 surface warships, about 250 cargo ships and around 2600 landing craft of all types. 

The scale of an operation needed to land in Taiwan in 1944 was massive, and today it would be either similar or larger. You can read the full study here.

Back to the present…

I recently had an opportunity to discuss White Sun War with scholars from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, where I am an adjunct fellow. It was fun and wide-ranging discussion, and I want to thank Charles Edel, Emily Harding and Eliot Cohen for such a terrific conversation. You can watch the full event at the link below.

The book is available for purchase today from Amazon and other book sellers. In the coming week it will also be available on Kindle, although you can pre-order it now. The publishers are working on an audiobook version as well.

I want to thank all those who helped with reading parts of the book, or providing information about key technologies or concepts. Finally, thank you to the amazing team at Casemate publishers. They have done an extraordinary job with editing the book, it’s design and the fantastic cover.

I have had some questions about sources and references for the book. If you have read White Sun War, you will see that, like most novels, there are no footnotes. That said, I intend to post an article here in the coming weeks with the references I used for the book.

Finally, for those of you who have already ordered White Sun War - thank you! I hope it is an enjoyable and informative read. For those of you who have not, I hope you consider reading it soon.

May the fourth be with you!