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I will have an op-ed up tomorrow at Pajamas Media on Leon Panetta’s nomination to be the Director of the CIA. For now here are some other views:

Lewsis Shepherd – Swap Panetta and Blair: A Modest Proposal

The ideal candidate is someone who is smart, who is not looking to feather his or her nest to reap economic benefits, and who understands that the President needs an honest broker. Look at the Clinton choices-Jim Woolsey, John Deutch, and George Tenet. Horrible choices and a terrible legacy. And George Bush did no better-George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden. Hayden is awful because he has perpetuated the militarization of the intelligence community. Goss played politics. And Tenet? Two words. SLAM DUNK! Enough said about that clown.

Josh Marshall ( TPM ) – Really a Mystery

Marshall quotes a retired military senior member of the IC:

“….I think there is a lot more here than is being said. I believe that Feinstein did not want someone like Panetta who has a large and independent power base and network. If you get a career guy they are a lot easier to isolate and move around. Panetta has been around for a long time and has his own network. I actually think that it is a good choice. He knows how intelligence needs to be presented to the President – that is the critical issue here.

…. We need a significant re-orientation away from tactical support by CIA and other National agencies and back to their primary mission – direct intelligence support to the President. The last 15 years have seen an explosion of tactical intelligence capability with the advent of UAVs (which DoD fought against for so long due to the fighter pilot mentality). National systems need to be re-oriented to national priorities and away from tactical or operational desires of the warfighter. “

More later.

Dr. Chet Richards is (semi) liveblogging Boyd ’08  At the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Tight working group this year, featuring John Robb as the keynote speaker and Robert Paterson as a driving force behind the Boyd 2008 conference and master of ceremonies.

I could not make it out this year unfortunately, but Chet has updates !:

Sun Tzu is Alive and Well

Sun Tzu in Charlottetown

Live from Boyd 2008

Boyd 2008: Community resources

Robb on resilience

John Robb is on

Boyd 2008 Has Started

Other Links:

Robert Paterson – Boyd 2008 Conference Dec 6-7 Making sense of “Interesting Times” The Agenda 

Global Dashboard – The Boyd Conference 2008

Official Website:

The Boyd 2008 Conference

Some heavy hitters reflect on the Mumbai Massacre:

John Robb – URBAN TAKEDOWN: MUMBAI,  JOURNAL: More on Tactical Innovation, JOURNAL: Off the Shelf Leverage

Ralph Peters – Devils in Mumbai ( Hat tip Morgan)

Thomas P.M. Barnett – This attack will work against them

DNI – Implications of Mumbai

Robert Kagan – The Sovereignty Dodge (Hat Tip NYKR in DC)

On a related note, here is Shlok Vaidya’s radio interview with John Batchelor.

Pakistan is a ramshackle state whose Punjabi military elite have a remarkable talent for brazenly playing with fire, given the fragility and artificiality of their country and their previous loss of Bangladesh (West Pakistan) through genocide and military incompetence. The Pushtuns are quasi-independent, the Baluchis would like to be and the Kashmiris are loose cannons. If any regime is vulnerable to the tactic of state sponsored terrorism and granular insurgency, it’s Islamabad.

I’m getting errors in trying to download the Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World from the DNI.gov/NIC site despite having up to date Adobe Acrobat/Reader. Is anyone else having a similar problem ?

UPDATE:

Thanks Charles and Dan. 

In the meantime, while we wait for the USG to post a working link, here is some early analysis by Jeff at IntelFusion.

UPDATE II.

Courtesy of Shlok Vaidya –  Global Trends 2025: A World Transformed. Thanks Shlok – Fingar should offer you a job.  Will have comments on the report later tonight.

UPDATE III.

Commentary on 2025 in a series of posts at Atlantic Council by James Joyner, by Dr. Barnett and SWJ Blog,

UPDATE IV.

I’m still sifting the report but I’m not impressed. Aside from the cautious positions on possible developments heavily rooted in presentist analysis I kind of get the drift that the possibilities have not been looked at too closely as to how their interactions might or might not be countervailing with one another. Sort of an implicit assumption of synergism.

Winslow Wheeler was kind enough to send me an advance copy of America’s Defense Meltdown, which will be released on November 12  by the Center for Defense Information.  Don Vandergriff, Fabius Maximus and Dr. Chet Richards  (who is among the impressive stable of authors) have already blogged about America’s Defense Meltdown, a book that James Fallows of The Atlantic calls ” phenomenal”. I shall now liberally quote from Chet’s post at DNI:

America’s Defense Meltdown

This is a unique volume by a collection of authors that have never collaborated to this degree before and, it is safe to predict, will never again.  They include:

• Tom  Christie, close colleague of John Boyd’s, co-author of the energy maneuverability papers, and my boss at the TACAIR shop in PA&E
• Bob Dilger, guru of the A-10’s gun, the GAU-8, and who showed how competition could reduce the cost of munitions by 90% while improving quality; long-time advocate for close air support
• Bruce Gudmundsson, retired Marine and author of seven books, including the classic Stormtroop Tactics (available from our book store)
• Bill Lind, who needs no introduction to DNI’s readers
• Doug Macgregor, hero of 73 Easting, author of Breaking the Phalanx and Transformation Under Fire
• John Sayen, also retired Marine, author, and one of the best military analysts writing today (he and Doug Macgregor co-reviewed my chapter)
• Pierre Sprey, another of Boyd’s closest colleagues, driving force behind the A-10 and a major influence on the F-16.  Now runs Mapleshade Studios in Maryland.
• Jim Stevenson, long-time author, publisher, and defense analyst; wrote the classic study of defense program mismanagement on the A-12
• Don Vandergriff, another author who needs no introduction; probably the leading expert on instituting leadership programs for 4GW
• GI Wilson, another colleague of Boyd’s, member of the team that put together FMFM-1, and co-author of the paper that coined the term “fourth generation warfare.”
• Winslow Wheeler, who also edited the volume, long-time congressional staffer, and author of another classic, The Wastrels of Defense.

Read the rest of Chet’s post here and access the executive summary.

There’s going to be a titanic struggle over defense budget priorities in the next administration and the natural bias of Congress and the military-industrial complex in downsizing eras is to keep the same process dysfunctionalities intact rather than re-examine how a smaller pie can best be spent (and the pie is likely to be much smaller circa 2010 regardless of who is elected president). So in the 1990’s the armed services shed personnel – usually warfighters rather than desk jockeys – to preserve platforms; in the 1970’s we “hollowed out” the military by skipping on training, maintenance, spare parts and so on.

Back then, those poorly made decisions occurred during peacetime. Today, the country is at war in far-flung corners of the globe. It’s important that the right issues are raised and tough questions asked.