Among the Mil Nerds

Though it is generally out of view for those of us who don’t live in that world, the world’s militaries maintain a universe of think tanks and war colleges to study all aspects of war. Some of this work is conducted by men and women in uniform and hidden behind walls of classification and secrecy. But quite a lot of it, probably most, is done by civilian researchers and academics with a lot of it available to the public, if not widely read. Last week I mentioned following the Twitter feed of Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at one of the top national security think tanks funded and run on behalf of the U.S. Navy and Marine corps. But there’s a whole world of such researchers working either adjacent to or on behalf of various national militaries. You can read a lot of what they write and many are following developments in Ukraine with their Twitter feeds.