The Friday Formation
03 April 2026
🪖 The Friday Formation
This week’s dispatch on Army writing, leadership, and learning
Friday, 27 March 2026 - 03 April 2026
🗓️ Editor’s Note
Two weeks, one Formation. Last week’s issue didn’t drop — so this one carries both weeks of reading.
The content spans a lot of ground: the Iran conflict and its strategic aftermath, LSCO fundamentals from the branch journals, the continuing evolution of AI and data at the tactical level, and a strong slate from CJO and the NCO Journal on what it actually takes to develop people. Pace yourself. Bookmark liberally. Read what’s most relevant to your current assignment first.
A few personal highlights worth calling out: the MWI piece on cognitive fratricide is one of the sharper things written about the transparent battlefield in a while. The MCOE “Winning the First Fight” piece is mandatory reading for anyone in armor or combined arms. And Senator Gallego’s War on the Rocks essay is worth sitting with regardless of where you stand politically — it asks hard questions about planning and accountability that the profession should engage with.
Plenty here. Get after it.
Chris
⚔️ Warfighting
🦖 The Infantry Division Transformed: Four Fighting Principles
James “Jay” Bartholomees and Greg Scheffler — MWI
Argues the contemporary infantry division must embrace four enduring fighting principles to remain effective — and that recent force design has drifted from them.
🤔 Cognitive Fratricide: How the Transparent Battlefield Creates Decision Paralysis
Jerae Perez — MWI
Examines how information overload on the transparent battlefield degrades decision speed and quality, creating a new form of self-inflicted friction.
🔫 How to Kill a Multidomain Task Force
Ben Blane, Ryan DeBooy, and Dale Hunter — MWI
A red-team analysis of the MDTF’s vulnerabilities — written to help the force understand what adversaries will exploit and how to harden against it.
🏘️ Want Combat-Ready Units? Don’t Let the Connected World Fracture Unit Cohesion
John Spencer — MWI
Argues that smartphones, social media, and constant connectivity are quietly eroding the cohesion that makes units fight and survive.
📊 The Industrial Window of War: How to Measure Russia’s Munitions Throughput and How to Disrupt It
Cosimo Meneguzzo and Fabrizio Minniti — MWI
Offers a framework for assessing Russian artillery production rates and identifies leverage points for disrupting the Kremlin’s industrial war machine.
🦖 From Proficiency to Lethality
SFC Chas D. Ward and SFC Kenneth L. Shelton — Armor Journal
Outlines a progressive leader development model for armor and cavalry NCOs, bridging the gap between technical qualification and tactical lethality.
🦖 A Rapidly Changing Operational Environment
SSG Matthew Watson — Armor Journal
An NCO’s ground-level assessment of how rapidly the operational environment is shifting — and what armor leaders must internalize to keep pace.
🏛️ Historical Vignette: June 7th, 1944
CPT Peter Neil — Air Defense Artillery Journal
A historical vignette examining ADA operations on D+1 at Normandy — and the enduring lessons for air defenders operating in complex, high-threat environments.
🚁 Targeted and Exposed: Why Command Requires Rethinking Aviation Survivability
SFC Samuel Karoki — Aviation Digest
Challenges aviation leaders to reckon with how near-peer adversaries now target command nodes, and what that means for mission planning and survivability.
🏙️ Building Trust in the Urban Environment
CPT Anthony J. DiNallo — Aviation Digest
Explores how aviation forces can build the trust and interoperability needed for effective operations in complex urban terrain.
SFC Jessie E. Lauritzen and SSG Charles W. Pferrer — Infantry Journal
Argues that the mortar platoon is entering a new era of relevance — and that the Army must invest in training and doctrine to realize its full potential.
🚦 Five Wargames Every Force Design Process Needs
Nathaniel Ambler, Maegen Nix, and Travis Reese — War on the Rocks
Proposes a taxonomy of wargames that should be embedded in every major force design effort to stress-test concepts before they are locked into structure.
💥 The Arsenal as the Battlefield: The War on Iran and the Return of Counter-Industrial Targeting
Tyler Hacker, Greg Malandrino, and Evan Braden Montgomery — War on the Rocks
Argues that targeting Iran’s defense-industrial base — not just its fielded forces — may be the decisive lever in any future conflict with Tehran.
🔭 The Folly of Seizing Kharg Island
Bilal Y. Saab — War on the Rocks
Makes the strategic case against seizing Iran’s main oil export terminal, arguing the costs and second-order effects would far outweigh any tactical gain.
Jacob Stoil — War Room
Applies Col. John Warden’s Five Rings model to Iran’s strategic architecture, identifying the centers of gravity most vulnerable to strategic pressure.
🎖️ Perspectives: The Weight of War and Reclaiming Combat Agility
CW2 Aaron McClendon — SWCS Special Warfare Journal
A personal account of the psychological and physical burden of sustained special operations, and what the force must do differently to sustain its people.
🎧 Urban Warfare Project Podcast: Drones and Urban Warfare in Ukraine
Host: John Spencer; Guest: Dr. Anthony Tingle — Urban Warfare Project, MWI
Analyzes how drone proliferation has fundamentally changed the tactics, tempo, and survivability calculus of urban combat in Ukraine.
🔧 Delivering Ready Combat Power
🤖 Can Biometric Data Make Units More Combat Ready? Yes — and This Brigade Gunnery Exercise Showed How
Jon Bate, Stephanie Hightower, and Rebecca Rough — MWI
A Stryker brigade used wearable technology to link sleep and recovery data to crew lethality — finding that measuring human readiness can meaningfully improve qualification results.
📈 Maximizing Combat Readiness: Leveraging SABIR
MAJ Ian Morris and CPT Brooks Seeger — Army Sustainment
Explains how the Standard Army Battle Rhythm and SABIR system can be used to drive predictive readiness and reduce equipment deadlining across the formation.
CPT Ben Kusinski — Armor Journal
Explores the integration challenges between armor maneuver and sustainment elements during large-scale combat operations.
🚁 Optimizing the Ammunition Process
CW2 Dennis Puccini Jr. and SSG Devante J. Mckenzie — Aviation Digest
Bridges the gap between ammunition planning and execution in aviation operations, with practical process improvements for aviation units.
🚁 Cartridge Actuated Device and Propellant Actuated Device
1LT Letherio R. Jones Jr. — Aviation Digest
A technical primer on CAD/PAD safety and handling for aviation crews — knowledge that directly impacts survivability and mission success.
💰 Financial Light in the Darkness
MAJ Wesleigh J. Cochrane — The Army Lawyer
Explains the legal and financial resources available to soldiers and families in crisis — and why JAG officers must proactively connect them to those resources.
🎖️ Joint Readiness Is Not Optional
CW3 Emmanuel Tello — Warrant Officer Journal
Makes the case that warrant officers must understand and operate effectively in joint environments — and that technical expertise alone is no longer sufficient.
CW3 Joseph S. Thigpen — Warrant Officer Journal
A candid reflection on the gap between training standards and operational reality — and what it takes to close it before the next fight.
🎧 LogStat: JPMRC Trends at BDE & Below
Host: CPT Garett Pyle; Guest: LTC Keith Twichell
Continues the series with readiness and logistics trends from JPMRC rotations — pattern analysis that every sustainment leader should track.
🎧 MOPs & MOEs: Offset PT and Performance
Hosts: Alex Morrow & Drew Hammond; Guests: COL Christopher Brawley, CSM Jeremiah Waggoner, and Dr. Ellie Van Luit — MOPs & MOEs
A data-driven conversation on how offset PT — physical training decoupled from unit formation — actually improves individual performance and unit readiness outcomes.
🔄 Continuous Transformation
🌍 The Sisyphean Struggle for Influence Campaigning in Competition
Jeremy S. Mushtare — MWI
Argues that influence operations in the competition phase are structurally resistant to decisive outcomes — and proposes a more realistic framework for what success looks like.
Tom Johansmeyer — IWI
Reassesses the blowback from Russia’s NotPetya cyberattack, arguing the unintended economic damage to Russian interests exceeded Western losses.
🕵️ Terrorist Attribution: Patterns of Claimed and Unclaimed Attacks
Mahmut Cengiz — IWI
Identifies patterns in when and why terrorist organizations choose to claim — or deliberately withhold credit for — attacks, with implications for intelligence analysis.
🌍 Preventing ISIS’s Rising Resurgence After Syria’s Power Shift
Cudi Zerey — SWJ
Assesses the conditions enabling an ISIS resurgence in post-Assad Syria and proposes a framework for disrupting its reconstitution.
🧊 Greenland and Strategic North American Defense in the 21st Century
Troy Bouffard, Cameron Carlson, and Dr. Lilliam Hussong — SWJ
Makes the strategic case for Greenland’s growing importance to Arctic defense, NORAD modernization, and great-power competition in the High North.
🕵️ Engineering Conspiracy Theories: Information Warfare
Douglas Wilbur — SWJ
Analyzes how state and non-state actors deliberately engineer and amplify conspiracy theories as instruments of information warfare.
🌏 Japan First in the Indo-Pacific: Takaichi’s Shift from Pacifist Constraint to Allied Mobilization
Christopher Lee and Ben Blane — SWJ
Examines the strategic implications of Japan’s shifting defense posture — and what it means for U.S. alliance management and Indo-Pacific deterrence.
🌍 Is the United States Drifting Toward Rogue State Status?
Michael Greif — SWJ
A provocative assessment of whether recent U.S. foreign policy behavior is eroding the rules-based international order from within.
🌍 Trump, Iran, Water Desalination, and War Crimes
George Headley — SWJ
Examines the legal and strategic dimensions of targeting water infrastructure in the Iran conflict, and where the line between military necessity and war crime falls.
🌍 Germany’s Military Reawakening
Tahir Azad — SWJ
Traces Germany’s rapid shift from strategic restraint to rearmament — and assesses whether the Bundeswehr can actually deliver on its new commitments.
🛡️ Proxy Pressure on Iran: The Promise and Pitfalls of Arming the Kurds
Jonathan Schroden and Zack Gold — War on the Rocks
Evaluates the strategic logic and practical risks of using Kurdish proxy forces as a lever against Iranian influence in the Middle East.
🔭 The Most Important Deterrent That NATO Needs Is Creativity
Ethan Eagle and Jeroen Franssen — War on the Rocks
Makes the case that NATO’s deterrence posture is increasingly defined by structural inertia — and that strategic creativity may matter more than hardware.
🌍 CJIATF-PR: Lessons from Coalition Operations
Michael Margolius and Travis Pantaleo — War Room
Draws operational and organizational lessons from the Combined Joint Interagency Task Force — a model for integrating partners in complex, multi-domain operations.
🎧 SSI Live #123: Obama and the Bomb
Host: MAJ Brennan Deveraux and Dr. Frank Jones — SSI
Examines the Obama administration’s nuclear posture and decision-making — and what it reveals about the enduring tensions between deterrence, disarmament, and modernization.
🕵️ Redefining Open Source Intelligence
Dr. Jeffrey A. Mader — MIPB
Argues that the explosion of open-source data demands a fundamental rethinking of how OSINT is collected, analyzed, and integrated into intelligence products.
🤖 Efficient Workforce: Building for Tomorrow
Douglas R. Bush — Army AL&T
The Army’s top acquisition official makes the case for workforce efficiency as a strategic imperative — not just a management concern.
📜 Strengthening the Profession of Arms
SSG Melinda B. Jones — NCO Journal
Makes the case that genuine leader engagement — not presence alone — is what separates high-performing units from merely compliant ones.
🪖 Through the Lens of the Singapore Army
First Warrant Officer (1WO) Kok Leong Ho, Singapore Army — NCO Journal
Offers an outside perspective on U.S. Army NCO development — and the habits of excellence that a partner nation’s senior NCO corps considers foundational.
MSG Nathan P. Feinberg — NCO Journal
Argues that writing quality reflects thinking quality — and that NCOs who train their soldiers to write clearly are building the same mental discipline they need under fire.
Dr. Robert Nelson and SGM Benjamin Pingel — NCO Journal
Examines cognitive warfare as a domain NCO leaders must understand — and how to develop the mental resilience and critical thinking skills to counter it.
📖 Talent Management at Echelon: People Are the Platform
David A. Beaumont — Center for Junior Officers
Argues that talent management is not an HR function — it is a core leadership responsibility at every echelon, and the platform everything else is built on.
📹 FM 1: The Army — A Primer to Our Profession of Arms
CADD — Center for Junior Officers
A video primer on FM 1 and what it means to serve in a profession of arms — useful for introducing new soldiers and officers to the foundations of the Army.
📖 Yes, Clausewitz Still Matters for Today’s Lieutenants
Noah Jager — Center for Junior Officers
Pushes back against the tendency to dismiss Clausewitz as obsolete — arguing his core insights on war, politics, and friction are more relevant than ever.
📖 Working the Marketplace, Not Hoping for It
Robert Beyer — Center for Junior Officers
Practical guidance for junior officers on how to actively manage their careers in the Army’s talent marketplace — rather than waiting for assignments to happen to them.
Michael Hackney — Military Mentors
Makes the case for structured mentoring as a force multiplier — and explains why informal relationships alone are not enough to develop the Army’s next generation.
Josh Bowen — 3x5 Leadership
Explores the concept of leadership initiative — the disposition to act, decide, and lead before being told to — and how to develop it in yourself and your soldiers.
🎖️ Forging the Expert Infantryman
CPT Patrick M. Elsenbast and 1SG Ryan D. Shaw — Infantry Journal
Examines what it takes to develop expert infantrymen — and how leaders at every level can build a culture of genuine mastery rather than checkbox competence.
🎧 Bend But Do Not Break: Rethinking the Future of the All-Volunteer Force
Host: Joe Byerly; Guest: Jaron Wharton — From the Green Notebook
A frank conversation on the stresses facing the all-volunteer force — recruiting shortfalls, retention pressure, and what must change to keep the model viable.
📖 Resources & Calls
• CSA Recommended Articles – Army University Press – The Chief’s reading list.
• Call for Papers – Army Civilian Journal – Invitation to contribute.
• Professional Writing Playlist (YouTube) – Talks and discussions on military writing.
• Professional Military Writing – Military Review – Why writing matters.
• Army Foreign Area Officer Association Podcasts – FAO professional development listening.
🧰 TL;DR
· Quick Read: Cognitive Fratricide: How the Transparent Battlefield Creates Decision Paralysis
· Deep Dive: Discovery Before Disaster: The Louisiana Maneuvers and the Untested Warfighting Concepts of Today’s Army
· Listen: MOPs & MOEs: COL Adisa King on Leadership and Culture
· For the Formation: Winning the First Fight — MCOE
🧭 About the Harding Project
The Harding Project is Chief of Staff of the Army General Randy George’s 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 Friday at a time. Read. Reflect. Act. The profession doesn’t stand still, and neither should we.