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Adaptation Under Fire by Lt. General David Barno & Nora Bensahel
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Adaptation Under Fire

How Militaries Change in Wartime

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Narrator Joe Barrett

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Length 13 hours 15 minutes
Language English
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Every military must prepare for future wars despite not really knowing the shape such wars will ultimately take. In the face of such great uncertainty, militaries must be able to adapt rapidly in order to win. Adaptation under Fire identifies the characteristics that make militaries more adaptable, illustrated through historical examples and the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Authors David Barno and Nora Bensahel argue that militaries facing unknown future conflicts must nevertheless make choices about the type of doctrine that their units will use, the weapons and equipment they will purchase, and the kind of leaders they will select and develop to guide the force to victory.

Barno and Bensahel start by providing a framework for understanding adaptation and include historical cases of success and failure. Next, they examine US military adaptation during the nation's recent wars, and explain why certain forms of adaptation have proven problematic. In the final section, Barno and Bensahel conclude that the US military must become much more adaptable in order to address the fast-changing security challenges of the future, and they offer recommendations on how to do so before it is too late.

Lt. General David Barno, USA (Ret.) is a visiting professor of strategic studies and senior fellow at the Philip Merrill Center at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is also a contributing editor and columnist for War on the Rocks. General Barno completed a thirty-year active duty Army career where he commanded at every level. He served with Army Ranger battalions in combat during both the Panama and Grenada invasions. General Barno was the overall commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005.

Dr. Nora Bensahel is a visiting professor of strategic studies and senior fellow of the Merrill Center at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She is also a contributing editor and columnist for War on the Rocks. She has held senior positions at the Center for a New American Security and the RAND Corporation, and previously taught at American University and Georgetown University. She holds a PhD in political science from Stanford University.

Joe Barrett began his acting career at the age of five in the basement of his family's home in upstate New York. He has gone on to play many stage roles, both on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters from Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. He has appeared in films and television, both prime time and late night, and in hundreds of television and radio commercials. Joe has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. He has been an Audie Award finalist eight times, and his narration of Gun Church by Reed Farrel Coleman won the 2013 Audie Award for Original Work. AudioFile magazine has granted Joe fourteen Earphones Awards, including for James Salter's All That Is and Donald Katz's Home Fires. Regarding Joe's narration of John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, AudioFile said, "This moving book comes across like a concerto . . . with a soloist-Owen's voice-rising from the background of an orchestral narration." Joe is married to actor Andrea Wright, and together they have four very grown children.

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