Hill Supping with the Devil Dogs pref to On Posthuman War

First World War Studies, 2016

The US Army Future Combat Systems is a large-scale procurement program that will introduce a number of ‘manned’ and ‘unmanned’ platforms all of which will be completely interconnected into one layered network. Hailed as revolutionary, all of the FCS platforms in addition to being networked will include on-board or embedded training systems. This paper contends that the integration of embedded training systems into the US Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) exemplifies a form of post-disciplinary control that is endemic to contemporary discourses of strategic virtuosity. The concept of control is taken from Deleuze to account for a form of military training that does not operate under the logic of enclosure but rather through ubiquitous forms of adaptive management. From this the paper concludes by considering the implications of what happens when the programmatic scripts are treated as being equivalent to the open-ended and indeterminate range of possible events and outcomes that characterize the unscripted world of human and nonhuman actors.

Scientia Militaria South African Journal of Military Studies, 2011

Small Wars Journal, 2013

During the Second World War, Marines consistently trained and fought at a level far greater than any other unit of their size. This paper seeks to find the answer of why the United States Marine Corps was able to maintain unit cohesion and combat power, despite numerous instances of support troops being thrown into frontline situations. Why is it that the Marine Corps not only survived such encounters, but thrived on meeting the enemy on the field of battle. Regardless of their role, every Marine was a rifleman first.

Security Dialogue, 2015

Recent interventions from a ‘posthumanist’ or ‘new materialist’ perspective have highlighted the embedded character of human systems within a ‘panarchy’ of human and non-human systems. This article brings attention to a very particular element of materiality, one with a profound significance for issues of security – relations between human and non-human animals in instances of conflict. It is an indication of the deeply human-centred character of both international relations and security studies that almost none of the central texts mention the very significant roles that non-human animals have in the conduct of war. We argue that the character of war would have been radically different but for the forced participation by an enormous range of non-human animals. Even though, with the improvements in transportation over the last century, non-human animals are less evident in the context of the movement of people and equipment, they still play a significant number of roles in the conte...

An archaeology of military manuals from the second World War to engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan in the middle 2000s, this chapter traces the lateralization of military rhetoric and the redistribution of agency and force in counterinsurgency. An ostensibly posthuman strategy, one that takes account of low-contrast actants, both human and nonhuman, turns out to be an ethically unwieldy and kairotically dubious occupation-lite.

The American Historical Review, 1999

World Within War, The: America's Combat Experience In World War II Gerald Linderman The WORLD WITHIN WAR is a highly original social history, authoritatively recovering and capturing the full experience of combat in World War II. Based on a vast array of letters, diaries, books, and a survey of veterans by the Army War College, the book cuts through the many layers of protective shielding in soldiers' memoirs to find the shards of direct experiences that lie beneath. Linderman demonstrates that for American soldiers around the globe, the war was disintegrative. Examining how Americans prepared for battle, how they treated each other, how they conceived of the enemy, how they thought of home, and how they reacted to battle itself, Linderman argues that ultimately, combat had its own grim logic, independent of causes and countries, flags and commanders.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2016