Kenneth "Max" Klima

For three decades the U.S. Navy was unchallenged in its mastery of air, expeditionary, sea, undersea, and information domains. Now these wars on the fringes have ebbed toward the return of great powers and contested warfare. Our next war will be fought by navies operating with reduced, masked or non-existent signatures; conducting deception and cyber effects to confuse or alter adversary decision making, and seeking to silently detect opposing forces to conduct a debilitating attack with… Show more

For three decades the U.S. Navy was unchallenged in its mastery of air, expeditionary, sea, undersea, and information domains. Now these wars on the fringes have ebbed toward the return of great powers and contested warfare. Our next war will be fought by navies operating with reduced, masked or non-existent signatures; conducting deception and cyber effects to confuse or alter adversary decision making, and seeking to silently detect opposing forces to conduct a debilitating attack with long-range kinetic and non-kinetic fires. In this battle victory at sea will tilt toward the side better-able to use these information warfare (IW) tactics to create a tempo of operations that hyper-enable its own forces while disabling those of the enemy.

Final published article heavily edited from original document. Show less

The innovations with the greatest impact in shaping human history often have curious origins. For example, one of the foundational technologies of the information age owes its legacy not to a Nobel Prize winner or academic marvel of computer science, but to a midcentury Hollywood starlet with little formal education.

Between 1940 and 1942, actress Hedy Lamarr developed the innovative concept of frequency hopping as a means to enable the U.S. Navy to build jamming-resistant radio-guided… Show more

The innovations with the greatest impact in shaping human history often have curious origins. For example, one of the foundational technologies of the information age owes its legacy not to a Nobel Prize winner or academic marvel of computer science, but to a midcentury Hollywood starlet with little formal education.

Between 1940 and 1942, actress Hedy Lamarr developed the innovative concept of frequency hopping as a means to enable the U.S. Navy to build jamming-resistant radio-guided torpedoes. The Navy rejected Lamarr’s ideas, only to return to them decades later when her concepts became the underpinning of the science behind advanced communications and information warfare. Once declassified by the military, Lamarr’s frequency-hopping innovation evolved into spread-spectrum technology and helped launch the modern revolution in telecommunications. Show less

Publius Cornelius Scipio the younger (236-183 BCE), known more widely by the nomme de guerre Scipio Africanus, was a second century BCE Roman statesperson and general whose actions during the Second Punic War (236-183 BCE) demonstrate the eternal qualities embodied by modern concepts of joint warfare. Scipio employed said concepts at all levels of war, and showed an atypical ability to integrate military and political objectives into a single system. Although the period of antiquity was a… Show more

Publius Cornelius Scipio the younger (236-183 BCE), known more widely by the nomme de guerre Scipio Africanus, was a second century BCE Roman statesperson and general whose actions during the Second Punic War (236-183 BCE) demonstrate the eternal qualities embodied by modern concepts of joint warfare. Scipio employed said concepts at all levels of war, and showed an atypical ability to integrate military and political objectives into a single system. Although the period of antiquity was a time when the concepts of strategy were only mentally forming, the study of Scipio highlights practically every aspect of modern joint planning and operations. In analyzing Scipio, Basil Liddel Hart proposed his, “[m]ilitary work has a greater value to modern students of war than that of any other great captain of the past.” In fact, despite warfare’s advancements in technology and industry, Hart’s observation of Scipio is as applicable to today’s joint planner as it was nearly a century ago. Show less

This paper analyzes various interpretations of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty since 1949. These variations reflect the evolving conceptions of the national security interests of the NATO Allies. Three historical periods are studied: the Cold War, 1949 to 1989; the post-Cold War, 1989 to 10 September 2001; and since 11 September 2001. The collective defense commitment in Article 5 was the foundation principle of the Alliance. During the Cold War, however, interpretations of… Show more

This paper analyzes various interpretations of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty since 1949. These variations reflect the evolving conceptions of the national security interests of the NATO Allies. Three historical periods are studied: the Cold War, 1949 to 1989; the post-Cold War, 1989 to 10 September 2001; and since 11 September 2001. The collective defense commitment in Article 5 was the foundation principle of the Alliance. During the Cold War, however, interpretations of collective defense necessarily required adaptation to remain relevant. The adaptability constructed during the Cold War yielded to broader concepts of threats and risks in the post-Cold War period. Following the first invocation of Article 5 due to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the actions taken by NATO and the individual Allies demonstrate the value of NATO’s collective defense principles. The adaptability of Article 5 throughout NATO’s history thus far suggests that in the future it will remain a highly valued and integral component of the Alliance’s approach to security. Show less

Manuscript available on request from the author:

Operation Pastorius was part of a new type of warfare that many hoped would help Germany tip the balance of power of Europe against its enemies. In June 1942 two teams of four clandestine saboteurs were inserted into the United States by German submarine with orders to conduct a broad program of physical sabotage. Their mission was masterminded by the German military intelligence service, known as the Abwehr, which had been involved in… Show more

Manuscript available on request from the author:

Operation Pastorius was part of a new type of warfare that many hoped would help Germany tip the balance of power of Europe against its enemies. In June 1942 two teams of four clandestine saboteurs were inserted into the United States by German submarine with orders to conduct a broad program of physical sabotage. Their mission was masterminded by the German military intelligence service, known as the Abwehr, which had been involved in similar activities targeting all of Germany’s European foes. The Abwehr’s Chief, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris dubbed the operation “Pastorius” after the 17th Century German immigrant who founded the first Germanic settlement in North America. Operation Pastorius’ mission was to instigate a wave of sabotage operations to destroy American industrial capacity and threaten domestic security in order to prevent U.S. forces from deploying to Europe. In the minds of German leaders, sabotage of industry offered a potential low-cost, high-impact means to stop or slow American militarization.

For seventy years the objectives of Pastorius had been clear to investigators and academics – the focused physical destruction of war-related industrial capacity in the United States. However, a review of recently declassified intelligence indicates the potential of a different objective for Pastorius known only within the highest levels of Abwehr command. Rather than destruction, it would be the paranoid fear of internal discord that would become the impetus for the U.S. government retaining large elements of the military for security duties in the homeland rather than deploying to them Europe. Show less

Manuscript available on request from the author:

With the factors that drive competition in terms of Great Power security conceptions in mind, the Washington Naval Treaty appears to have neither eliminated the causes of, nor propelled the Great Powers toward, war. Further, not only did it fail to achieve its primary goal, to end naval arms competition, but served only to redirect it to other fora that had not been investigated in part due to the navies’ preoccupation with battleships. By… Show more

Manuscript available on request from the author:

With the factors that drive competition in terms of Great Power security conceptions in mind, the Washington Naval Treaty appears to have neither eliminated the causes of, nor propelled the Great Powers toward, war. Further, not only did it fail to achieve its primary goal, to end naval arms competition, but served only to redirect it to other fora that had not been investigated in part due to the navies’ preoccupation with battleships. By redirecting naval arms competition, each of the navies developed new capabilities and integrated them wholly into their respective Treaty fleets in such a manner as to provide a warfighting advantage against rivals that were larger, more capable and more lethal than during the battleship-centric era. Treaty fleets had fewer capital ships, but refocused their efforts into developing new and more advanced maritime warfare capabilities. Advancements and improvements occurred across all classes of warships, provided qualitative rather than quantitative advantages resulting in increased lethality, and were further enhanced when these developments were integrated into new warfighting concepts that went beyond battles between ships of the line. When the next war did come, the capabilities developed as a result of the Treaty, created a style of warfare that was more destructive and deadly than the fleets abandoned in 1921. Show less