The Friday Formation
05 June 2026
🪖 The Friday Formation
Friday, 5 June 2026
The Iran conflict thread runs through a lot of this week’s writing — air defense analysis, strategic constraint, and the limits of kinetic force. Worth reading those pieces together.
Two pieces stand out. Jonathan Buckland’s “The Glass Backbone” in MWI makes an uncomfortable argument: Army logistics is not structured to survive peer competition. The problem is architectural, not addressable at the margins. Command teams should have this conversation before the next rotation, not after.
COL Laura Weimer’s piece in From the Green Notebook is the other must-read. She commanded a division HHBN when a company commander died by suicide. What she writes is a field account of leading through that — the grief, the readiness pressure, the decisions with no clean answer. That kind of transparency, from someone at her level, is exactly what this project exists to encourage.
Plenty here.
Chris
🏛️ Featured Leadership Essays
🔧 The Glass Backbone: Why the Army’s Logistics Will Break in the Next War
Jonathan Buckland | Modern War Institute | 3 June 2026
Buckland’s argument is clean and uncomfortable: the Army’s logistics architecture is not designed to survive peer competition. The vulnerabilities are structural, not fixable at the margins. Command teams should sit with this one.
⚔️ Is Cognitive Warfare Dead on Arrival?
Cole Livieratos | Irregular Warfare Initiative | 3 June 2026
Cognitive warfare has attracted major institutional investment — but Livieratos argues the concept may be fundamentally incoherent. A sharp challenge to a fashionable idea, right when the information operations discussion is most active.
📜 In the Wake of a Leader’s Suicide: Leading Through Grief, Readiness, and Organizational Complexity
COL Laura Weimer | From the Green Notebook | 2 June 2026
COL Weimer commanded a division headquarters battalion when a company commander died by suicide. She writes directly about what leading through that actually looks like — the grief, the readiness demands, the decisions with no clean answers. Required reading for anyone in command.
⚔️ Warfighting
Trevor Alexander & Christopher Burlison | Modern War Institute | 2 June 2026
Ukraine has used decoys to complicate Russian targeting. The Army hasn’t adopted similar techniques. The authors examine the structural, doctrinal, and acquisition barriers keeping the force from fielding proven air defense deception.
⚔️ Designing Judgment: Leadership under Uncertainty on the Modern Battlefield
Jerry Hall | Modern War Institute | June 2026
How do you deliberately develop judgment — the kind that functions under genuine battlefield uncertainty? Hall connects doctrine, experience, and leader development in a framework relevant from platoon to corps.
⚔️ Is Cognitive Warfare Dead on Arrival?
Cole Livieratos | Irregular Warfare Initiative | 3 June 2026
A direct challenge to the concept of cognitive warfare. Livieratos argues that as currently framed, the concept may be analytically incoherent — generating investment without generating clarity. Worth reading alongside the SWJ piece below.
Maurice “Duc” DuClos | Irregular Warfare Initiative | 28 May 2026
As consolidation pressure grows on SOF, DuClos argues the opposite direction is correct. Decentralization isn’t a legacy habit — it’s a structural advantage that consolidation would eliminate.
⚔️ The Last A-Team: Special Forces Aren’t Special Anymore
Ned Marsh | Irregular Warfare Initiative (republished in Small Wars Journal) | 28 May 2026
A pointed indictment of institutional drift in Special Forces. Marsh argues the regiment has been so fundamentally changed by risk aversion and bureaucratization that its strategic distinctiveness has been lost.
⚔️ A Case for Integrating Counter Position Navigation and Timing Weapons
CW3 Joshua P. Stevens | Gray Space | June 2026
How the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force is integrating C-PNT weapons to disrupt adversary systems while mitigating electromagnetic fratricide. A practical look at tactical planning and performance steps for counter-GPS operations.
Army Lawyer | Issue 1, 2026 | 29 May 2026
The argument that conventional forces need clear statutory authority to participate in irregular warfare missions — and that the current legal framework has left commanders with ambiguous authorities at the wrong moment.
⚔️ Between Beijing and the Budget: The Domestic Realities of Taiwan’s Defense Spending Drama
Jessica C. Liao & Kyle Marcrum | Strategic Studies Institute | 2 June 2026
Taiwan’s legislature blocked a major defense budget, then passed a scaled-down version days before a key summit. The authors argue the U.S. media narrative has consistently missed the domestic political dynamics shaping Taiwan’s actual defense posture.
⚔️ Operational-Level Maneuver: Why Tactical Success Alone Is Not Enough
Marc-Andre Walther | Small Wars Journal | 4 June 2026
Tactical wins without operational coherence don’t translate into strategic outcomes. Drawing on Ukraine and doctrine, Walther argues the force needs to re-learn operational art — a discipline crowded out by years of tactical focus.
⚔️ Cognitive Warfare: A New Strategic Frontier?
Jean-Michel Valantin & Fabrice Lollia | Small Wars Journal | 4 June 2026
AI-enabled propaganda, narrative strategies, and cognitive operations as a core dimension of the Iran conflict. A strategic-level examination of what it means to compete in the cognitive domain.
⚔️ Hormuz and the Geometry of Constraint: Rethinking Control in a Closed System
Cong Nguyen | Small Wars Journal | 3 June 2026
The Strait of Hormuz isn’t just a chokepoint — it’s a closed system with geometric properties that shape how control is contested. A novel analytical framework relevant to current Iran conflict planning.
🔧 Delivering Ready Combat Power
🔧 The Importance of TACOM Maintenance Deep Dives Across 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team
MAJ Bobbi Walden | Army Sustainment | 2 June 2026
TACOM maintenance deep dives uncovered equipment readiness issues that standard reporting missed. Lessons on how direct engagement between program managers and operational units produces actionable readiness improvements.
2LT Denzell N. Beecham | Army Sustainment | 29 May 2026
Remote maintenance support, predictive readiness systems, and forward repair concepts for brigades operating in operationally independent environments. Practical implications for sustainment planning in distributed operations.
🔧 A New Era in Army Maintenance: Policy-Driven Technological Change
LTG Michelle Donahue | Army Sustainment | 28 May 2026
How policy changes are driving the Army’s maintenance modernization — and what that means for how formations must train, equip, and sustain their equipment in a peer competition environment.
CW4 Chase D. Givens | Army Sustainment | 28 May 2026
The case for deeper technical education in Army maintenance — and how emerging technologies like predictive analytics and digital twins can be integrated into training pipelines to produce more capable mechanics.
CPT Alexander J. Young | Army Sustainment | 28 May 2026
An underexamined logistics challenge: handling contaminated remains in CBRN environments during large-scale combat operations. A frank assessment of gaps in doctrine and capability.
Army Lawyer | Issue 1, 2026 | 29 May 2026
Mil-to-mil legal engagements are a foundational enabler of NATO operations — and they’re at risk. The article makes the case for treating legal interoperability as a strategic readiness requirement.
🔧 Aviation Forward Arming and Refueling Operations in Large-Scale Combat Operations
Aviation Digest | 28 May 2026
Doctrine and lessons learned for executing aviation FARP operations in contested, large-scale combat environments — covering readiness requirements, survivability, and mission command for AFARP teams.
🔧 Preliminary Observations: JLTV-Mounted Q-50 Innovation Efforts
CPT Tyris Foster et al. | Field Artillery | 1 June 2026
Initial observations from efforts to mount the Q-50 lightweight counter-UAS system on the JLTV platform — expanding the ability to integrate counter-drone fires into mobile fire support elements.
CW2 Ryan Saltzgaber | Field Artillery | 1 June 2026
A principled examination of reactive counterfire doctrine — why it matters, where it falls short, and what the fire support community must get right to execute counterfire effectively in a peer fight.
🔄 Continuous Transformation
🔄 Winning the Systems War: Why the Army Should Reorganize Itself for Modern Combat
Ryan Walters | Irregular Warfare Initiative | 1 June 2026
Walters argues the Army’s current organizational structure is misaligned with the systems-competition that defines modern warfare. He offers a framework for what reorganization should prioritize.
🔄 The Sixty-Ton Problem: Scandium Supply Chain Risk and the US Defense Industrial Base
Morgan Bazilian, Macdonald Amoah & Jahara Matisek | Modern War Institute | 28 May 2026
Scandium — essential to advanced defense materials — is almost entirely controlled by adversaries. The authors map the supply chain risk and what it means for U.S. defense industrial strategy.
🔄 How America Lost Its Most Important Defense Tech Habit
Jack Barry | War on the Rocks (Cogs of War) | 29 May 2026
The U.S. defense tech sector has lost a cultural practice that historically drove breakthrough innovation. Barry identifies what it was and why its absence matters now.
🔄 Closing the Digital Readiness Gap: A Case for an Integrated Signal Training Ecosystem
U.S. Army Signal School | Army Communicator | 3 June 2026
The Signal School proposes a Signal Foundry and Signal Digital Master Gunner program to close the digital readiness gap — creating an integrated training ecosystem for large-scale combat operations readiness.
🔄 Right Sizing EW Expertise in the Army
Gray Space | 2 June 2026
The Army’s electromagnetic warfare expertise is misaligned with operational demand. This article examines how to right-size EW talent across the force to meet the requirements of peer competition.
🔄 Army Warrant Officers Instrumental in the Revitalization of the Air Force Warrant Officer Corps
Gray Space | 3 June 2026
Cross-service lessons on warrant officer development — how Army warrant officer culture and structures influenced the Air Force’s revitalization of its own warrant officer corps.
🔄 BOLC Lessons Learned: Transitioning from Cadet to Cyber Warfare Officer
Gray Space | 3 June 2026
First-person lessons from the transition between USMA and the Cyber BOLC — what the institutional pipeline gets right, what it misses, and what new cyber officers should expect.
Aviation Digest | 3 June 2026
DOTD’s digital DA Form 2028 initiative streamlines the training feedback and doctrine update process — practical transformation that closes the loop between field experience and institutional learning.
🏛️ Strengthening the Profession
📜 In the Wake of a Leader’s Suicide: Leading Through Grief, Readiness, and Organizational Complexity
COL Laura Weimer | From the Green Notebook | 2 June 2026
COL Weimer commanded a division HHBN when a company commander died by suicide. She writes directly about what leading through that looks like — the grief, the readiness demands, the decisions with no clean answers.
📜 Gambling with Influence: Don’t Bet Your Life on Someone Else’s Promise
Joe Byerly | From the Green Notebook | 30 May 2026
A general offered a career-defining opportunity. The author turned it down. A sharp lesson in understanding the actual limits of someone’s authority — and why confusing confidence for power can cost more than a career decision.
📜 Leave the Notebook Behind: Trust, Rapport, and Communication
Center for Junior Officers | June 2026
Putting down the notebook and engaging directly with your formation — a piece on trust, rapport, and what communication actually looks like when leaders are present rather than note-taking. A practical reminder for junior officers and NCOs.
Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin | 3 June 2026
What it actually means to think like a commander in the intelligence context — a challenge to intelligence professionals to move beyond information delivery toward anticipatory, commander-focused analysis.
Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin | 3 June 2026
The argument that developing and maintaining intellectual capacity is not optional — it’s a moral and professional imperative for every soldier and intelligence professional who wants to outthink adversaries in a rapidly changing environment.
📜 Pivotal Perspective: In Defense of the Formation: How Engaging With Your Unit Increases Lethality
Army Lawyer | Issue 1, 2026 | 29 May 2026
An argument for why leaders who genuinely engage with their formations — rather than managing from a distance — produce more lethal, cohesive units. The case against administrative leadership.
📜 Ready? Set. Go! Readiness in Legal Training and Education Across the JAG Corps
Army Lawyer | Issue 1, 2026 | 2 June 2026
How the JAG Corps is modernizing legal training and education to keep pace with operational demands — a look at the initiatives reshaping how Army lawyers are prepared for the complexity of modern legal support.
📜 The Man Behind the SCOTUS Military Justice Case Names: Warden Jacob J. Parker
Army Lawyer | Issue 1, 2026 | 2 June 2026
A historical profile of the warden whose name appears in Supreme Court military justice case names — connecting legal history to the institutional development of military justice.
Army Lawyer | Issue 1, 2026 | 28 May 2026
A candid look at cognitive decline and how judge advocates — and by extension any leader — can prepare for and navigate the reality that intelligence changes with age. An honest take on professional longevity.
📜 From Soldier to ‘Condemned Prisoner’: A Review of Modern Military Death Sentence Procedure
Army Lawyer | Issue 1, 2026 | 28 May 2026
A procedural examination of how the military justice system handles capital cases from referral through execution — drawing on landmark SCOTUS cases and the current state of military capital punishment.
📜 The Gunner’s Seat: New Armor School CSM and Focus Areas
Armor Journal | Spring 2026 | 1 June 2026
The incoming Armor School CSM outlines focus areas for the branch — including gunnery proficiency, NCO development, and preparation for large-scale combat operations. A signal of where branch leadership is directing energy.
📜 The Weird Pillar: Spiritual Fitness, Moral Injury, and the Stuff We Can’t Measure
MOPs & MOEs Podcast | 31 May 2026
Spiritual fitness gets the least airtime of the Army’s four pillars — but moral injury is real and reshaping how the force understands readiness. A candid conversation about the dimension of wellness the formation rarely talks about.
📖 Resources & Calls
· CSA Recommended Articles – Army University Press – The Chief’s reading list.
· Professional Writing Playlist (YouTube) – Talks and discussions on military writing.
· Professional Military Writing – Military Review – Why writing matters.
· Army FAO Association Podcasts – FAO professional development listening.
🧩 TL;DR
· Quick Read: Gambling with Influence: Don’t Bet Your Life on Someone Else’s Promise
· Deep Dive: Between Beijing and the Budget: The Domestic Realities of Taiwan’s Defense Spending Drama
· Listen: MWI Podcast: Putin’s Intelligence Services
· For the Formation: The Weird Pillar – Spiritual Fitness, Moral Injury, and the Stuff We Can’t Measure
🧭 About the Harding Project
The Harding Project is the Army initiative to strengthen the profession through professional writing and public discourse.
The one-stop shop for all branch journal articles is the Line of Departure website – check it out to get your daily dose of Army professional development! If you have good ideas or lessons to share with the rest of the force, please pen them and send them our way at submissions@hardingproject.com.
We’re renewing professional writing across the force—one article at a time. Read. Reflect. Act. The profession doesn’t stand still, and neither should we.