Combat Studies Institute Press Libri

Staff rides provide officers and other students of military history with the opportunity to obtain important insights into military operations and to study the effects of technology in combat, concepts of leadership, and how men have fought and endured in battles. The Cowpens Staff Ride and Battlefield Tour, by Lieutenant Colonel John Moncure, offers a staff ride guide on a critical Revolutionary War battle. The guidebook examines the war from a strategic perspective, looks at the campaign as an operational event, and provides the backdrop to the tactical battle. The author has gathered operations orders, dispatches, and numerous eyewitness accounts to allow each visitor to reconstruct the events that occurred at the Cowpens.

The book features a collection of essays that profiles seven influential military commanders, including Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte. It explores their mastery of warfare across different eras, cultures, and military branches—land, sea, and air. Each commander is examined for how they leveraged their contemporary social, political, economic, and technological contexts to achieve significant victories that reshaped history. The essays highlight the diverse strategies and impacts of these leaders on the world.

Focusing on the importance of historical accounts in military operations, this collection presents eight detailed narratives of platoon-level actions in Afghanistan, ranging from intense firefights to civic projects. Through interviews with soldiers, the book captures the essence of small-unit leadership and the lessons learned from both combat and non-combat scenarios. Commissioned by General Petraeus, it serves as a resource for current and future military leaders, emphasizing the U.S. Army's commitment to learning from its experiences.

Focusing on military training, this collection presents 16 case studies developed by the Combat Studies Institute to illustrate Mission Command principles. Each case details a military action and includes an analysis that connects it to these principles, making the material suitable for both formal training and self-study. The cases emphasize strategic leadership without providing direct examples of leaders, offering insights into effective command practices in various military contexts.

In March 1947, the United States established an economic and military assistance program to bolster the nationalist Greek government against a communist insurgency. The Greek government suffered from a collapsed economy, deep social divisions, and an inability to defeat the insurgents in battle. The Joint US Military Advisory and Planning Group provided operational advice to the Greek National Army that improved the nationalists' aggressiveness, tactics, battlefield management, and logistics. The advisors used training, mentorship, directive control, and disciplinary action to affect the nationalists' combat leadership. The improved leadership led to more effective combat operations against the communists. These operations pressured the insurgency, which had alienated Yugoslavia and committed to fighting with conventional tactics. These two insurgent errors, the massive economic and military aid program, and the improved nationalist combat performance resulted in a decisive victory in August 1949. The study provides insight into how advisors can affect a military's leadership.

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In September 2012, the Department of the Army published new capstone doctrine, Army Doctrine Publication 1 (ADP 1), The Army, in which the concept of military professionalism occupies an especially prominent place. Coinciding with the release of The Army, the Chief of Staff declared that 2013 features a focus on professionalism; entitled "America's Army-Our Profession," in an effort to better understand the idea of military professionalism. Military history can and should contribute to an understanding of American military professionalism. Investigating the nature of professionalism in the officer corps serving during President George Washington's administration, the central argument of this study is that early Army leaders demonstrated a particularly American style of military professionalism. The early officer corps grappled with the same elements described by the Army's current doctrine as fundamentally characteristic of military professionalism: trust, expertise, service, esprit and stewardship. Understanding the strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and limitations of the early officer corps' approach to professionalism in light of these five key characteristics provides important background and a useful conceptual framework to more fully understand the American military tradition and today's doctrine concerning military professionalism.