Come work with us 👇
10.03.2026 06:43
👍 7
🔁 4
💬 0
📌 0
Come work with us 👇
Three open positions at the assistant/associate level at the Royal Danish Defence College. 📅 Deadline 29 March.
👉 Military Operations: candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...
👉 AI, new technologies and frontline leadership: candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...
Reach out if you have questions
Three open positions at the assistant/associate level at the Royal Danish Defence College. 📅 Deadline 29 March.
👉 Military Operations: candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...
👉 AI, new technologies and frontline leadership: candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...
Reach out if you have questions
Exhausted Danish infantry soldiers during operation Panther's Claws in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, July 2009
Helmand, July 2009. Danish soldiers resting after 8 hours of breaching minefields and clearing houses. Seconds later, I had to wake them to move forward again.
To claim allies weren't on the front lines is a lie and an insult to those who served and lost.
We stepped up. That's what allies do.
Don't take it personally. One man speaking is just noise; the real problem is that people follow and may accept it as truth.
Exhausted Danish infantry soldiers during operation Panther's Claws in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, July 2009
Helmand, July 2009. Danish soldiers resting after 8 hours of breaching minefields and clearing houses. Seconds later, I had to wake them to move forward again.
To claim allies weren't on the front lines is a lie and an insult to those who served and lost.
We stepped up. That's what allies do.
We're growing further and are hiring again!
2 posts as Assistant/Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Defence College's Institute for Military Operations
We're looking for people who are interested in different aspects of military operations, read more below
www.jobindex.dk/jobannonce/r...
Submission no. 500 at the Journal of Scandinavian Military Studies (SJMS) landed this morning!
We publish in the field of military studies: multidisciplinary, practice‑relevant, with Scandinavian roots and a global scope
All open access
Learn more about @sjms.bsky.social: sjms.nu/articles/10....
Institutions get the behaviour they reward.
Learn more about publishing in @sjms.bsky.social!
@sjasmith.bsky.social (editor of @defencestudies.bsky.social) and I had a pleasant chat about publishing in Military Studies with Queen's University's On Defence and Security Podcast series
www.queensu.ca/cidp/podcast...
I presented Eisenhower’s matrix to young leaders last week: do only what you alone can do; the rest delegate.
The idea is simple, the practice isn’t. Urgency creeps in, leaders micromanage, postpone strategy, team check-ins, or even their own health.
Start prioritising what really matters.
“Eyes on, hands off.” Mission command sounds simple, but micromanagement often creeps in. Too detailed orders, risk aversion, and a lack of trust make implementation difficult.
Currently in Stockholm to teach our latest in Mission Command in NATO.
📚 sjms.nu/articles/10.... (open access)
Wrong terms imply right terms, which in turn imply that you can define them (correctly).
We have yet to see that done in a meaningful manner, aside from the fact that some things in war tend to recur while others tend to change quickly.
If it's a caution against sensationalism, I am all for it.
I agree, and that is an important insight. In the Times article, there is no argument as to what war *is* or how it has changed, merely that this particular war is fought with different means, and these means will probably change again in the next war.
Is that distinction even meaningful? In an article we did a few years back on nature vs character, we found the debate echoed across academia, doctrine, and practice. Yet when it came to defining their actual content, there was no agreement.
(OA version in Ch5 here: www.fak.dk/globalassets... )
I suppose 'enraged' is also a form of engagement.
Grateful for the dialogue today; reminded that contributing to critical understanding of military institutions requires both courage and careful judgment.
Learn more in our 2024 article: sjms.nu/articles/10....
Thanks to Krigsskolen and @sjms.bsky.social for organising.
3️⃣ Your identity (insider, outsider), institutional affiliation, and relationship with gatekeepers all influence what is permissible and what ethical responsibility entails in practice.
2️⃣ Researchers must balance principles like openness, consent, and data integrity against security concerns. This balancing act isn’t theoretical; it shows up in design, access negotiation, data handling, and publication.
Today, we discussed research in classified or restricted environments with 25 engaged PhD students. A few reflections:
1️⃣ Even in classified or restricted military environments, meaningful and ethical research is possible, though not without trade-offs.
Dannebrog on a wodden pole flying in Afghanistan's Helmand province in the sping of 2009
Today in Denmark,
The Dannebrog flies for those who went when asked,
for those who never came back,
and for those who still struggle.
#flagdag
Getting logistics right is one of the operation's overlooked successes. The book also describes this well.
I don't see how planning doctrine is rejected. I point out that there is a stark difference between the world described in doctrine and the empirical reality.
And often when officers describe how the world “actually works”, I have found that they tend to revert to the doctrinal world.
Here is this summer's best reading experience (and why anyone who teaches planning should read it, too).
This is a fascinating inside story of planning at the land component level before and during the invasion of Iraq.
TL;DR: Iraq was not an outlier; it represents the dynamics of modern C2 🧵
I would love to see it! The last three NATO HQs (one DIV, two JFCs) where I conducted fieldwork all had this issue. In one of them, the lead planner (six months in) had never engaged with COM.
This was not a 3/3-5/5 issue, but a matter of COM getting bogged down in other tasks.
I suspect there might be a self-image issue as well. We all grew up on the tactical bit. It feels safe. And troops in contact rightly have priority.
But at higher levels, this is not where the staff or COM should make their money and not at the expense of PLANS
"It is a planner's job to think about the 'How' and 'What if' of unfolding plans, but planners are not empowered to make decisions. That privilege is reserved for commanders."
But planners shape those decisions. Things may not be clear-cut in (the empirical) reality.
OA: 2-5.dk/wp-content/u...
4️⃣ While planning in doctrine is disinterested and rational, the book highlights individuals' influence (or lack of) on the process, including commanders and other staff officers, as well as those who attended specific war colleges and those who did not.