Dr Charles Knight

Researching capabilities for urban ops & asymmetric war. PhD in repressive COIN. Schooled in then-defensive 🇬🇧 army, 🇴🇲 & Cold War. Critiques to refine.

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

How do militaries avoid future urban war repeating the strategic disaster of 1st Fallujah? Pleased our monograph analysing media reporting of 6 battles, with recommendations, published by EuroISME today. Research at Macquarie & Charles Sturt Universities.

https://t.co/algI6AS4xW

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@ElissaSlotkin Many of the angry replies below your post claimed that US service members know not to obey illegal orders. Yet the strikes on Iran may have been illegal: some would say clearly so. Does this not justify elected representatives seeking to provide guidance?
https://t.co/8xLBxvjKdt

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@cyberecho70035 @SpencerGuard To return to my original point. The failure of MSM to report in any depth on the conflict in Lebanon or Gaza (compounded by the IDF not embedding journalists), obscures what may be a profound shift in military affairs. FPV certainly rank with ATGW in 1973.
https://t.co/C8pr1eos5N

[Electronic Intifada @intifada]

Israeli soldiers are captured on footage fleeing a Hizballah drone while abandoning their fellow soldiers.

"Right here is the shot that the Israelis have been afraid of," says @JonElmer.

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@cyberecho70035 @SpencerGuard Touché! Yet my point was that it is a longstanding conflict & history unravels one sided perspectives. We might go back to the provocative terrorism of the Sicarii against Romans, Greeks & Jews that induced repression, Jewish revolt, the destruction of the temple & the diaspora?

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@CaperaPierre @VoicesofWW2 Il y a de bonnes raisons pour lesquelles une marche a été composée en son honneur.

https://t.co/kRC3dA1i2U

https://t.co/wrR4fpTGEJ

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@FNCGlobalNews @SpencerGuard Surely that's a rhetorical question? The US abandoned Lebanon at a critical juncture. Subsequent support was insufficient to maintain a large capable military able to disarm Hezbollah. Why would the Lebanese army compromise its 'neutrality' for an impossible task?

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@SpencerGuard Can the last 90 years be understood as a Greek tragedy without catharsis? Was the settlers policy of not integrating harmartia, the (unintended) seed of an endless cycle of conflict? Have the Fates set the stage for perpetual war between the tribes of the Levant?

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@SpencerGuard There are no good or bad guys. We can unpack the conflict in Palestine/Israel back at least to the arrival of Jewish settlers in significant numbers & the unsurprising resentment of those already living there. It is a colossal tragedy that leading Zionists eschewed integration.

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@Zuasibel @colwight @YossiGoldstein8 @thearabellaau No, only a competent court can determine that, which is unlikely to be established this side of a spectacular US decline.

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@SpencerGuard My point was that I'd like MSM to cover the fight. I was not being partisan. Still, you leave out that the PLO were there after being ejected from Jordan in 'Black September', flowing from Israel's seizure of the West Bank in 1967, in a war that may not have been 'self-defence'.

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@AdelAGhafar The value of massive US investment and rehearsal sustained over four decades in Oman at the air bases at Thumrait and Masirah was probably just trashed. As for KSA, has anybody mentioned to the President the implications of even mentioning 'kissing somebody's a**" to an Arab?

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@Zuasibel @colwight @YossiGoldstein8 @thearabellaau Well no, the thing that matters is that Israel did not take all feasible precautions to protect non-combatants. It was materially feasible to build secure, safe areas. UN assistance was not essential. The interesting IHL question is whether political feasibility is relevant.

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@RapidResponse47 @SecScottBessent Oman has quietly worked with the US since the 80s, allowing construction of military infrastructure & rehearsal of its use. The US valued & encouraged Omani links with Iran throughout. What explains US perfidy & threats?

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@Zuasibel @colwight @YossiGoldstein8 @thearabellaau What was the request? To where were the non-combatants to be moved?£ Building secure camps all along the Eastern border of Gaza (Israel is a world leader in barrier walls) and filtering non-combatants into them was feasible.

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@colwight @paulrubens Anecdotally proposals along these lines were made by allies. Failure to build safe havens was a strategic error and may in time be considered criminal.

Ruling out 2S would increase international hostility & play into the hands of extremists on both sides (neither want that).

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@Zuasibel @colwight @YossiGoldstein8 @thearabellaau Creating safe areas would have tangibly demonstrated compliance with the IHL obligation to take all feasible precautions to protect non combatants & would have avoided giving opponents exactly the material they needed. It may have been self demonisation?

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@colwight @YossiGoldstein8 @thearabellaau Had the Israelis constructed a series of provisioned secure safe havens and filtered all non-combatants who wished to seek shelter, they would have met their obligation to take all feasible measures to protect. The geopolitical outcome of IDF operations would have been different.

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@Stu_Lyle @SapperGeologist @JaysonGeroux Through-wall frag & dense black smoke with 36 Gren req. tight control & was one of drivers of the 1943 Comd+2 clearing drill (still ~5% cas from own Sect weapons). Avoid the cumulative risks of using frag in buildings & relying on mini grenades to neutralise. Need small? ⬇️ 200g

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@Stu_Lyle @SapperGeologist @JaysonGeroux Muzzle launching for standard pyrotechnic delay grenades proved valuable in Vietnam as they will punch through foliage and light walls. In the 90s ADI (🇦🇺) developed a modern bullet trap version that would project any of their family of grenades (now only the F1, F2 & F3).

[Dr Charles Knight @ChasAHKnight]

@Stu_Lyle @SapperGeologist @JaysonGeroux I'm persuaded by the Cold War Swiss approach: make the bang big enough that your 'CQB' only needs to deliver the 'coup de grace'.