Unfortunately, we do have to collect payment for people attending the Fourth HAAC, as we have facilities we have to rent and do not have sponsorship. The payment is the same as it has been for the last three years, which is $150 to attend for all three days, or $90 if you are presenting, or $60 if you attend for one day, or $0 if attend for one day and present.
The Fourth HAAC is scheduled for 21-23 October 2025. We currently have 51 presentations scheduled (and one group discussions). We are, as always, looking for more quality presentations. The current schedule is now posted to the button on this blog/web site here: HAAC 2025: Fourth Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC) – The Dupuy Institute
Conference is Tuesday – Thursday.
Friday, October 24: Tour of a Civil War Battlefield – Antietam: bloodiest day of the U.S. Civil War (and in the Western Hemisphere?). – we will arrange transport there and back ($20 charge for tour).
We do offer a guided tour of the Antietam battlefield at the end of the HAAC conference on Friday October 24. It will also be conducted by Dr. James Slaughter.
P.S. Here are the first two presentations on Antietam and the Maryland Campaign of 1862 done by Dr. James F. Slaughter III.
Presentation on “The Forgotten Campaign – the origin and development of American Economic Warfare in WWII (1939-1941)” is this Wednesday at 7:00 PM by Dr. R. Ben Richards (Major, USA, ret).
We do offer a guided tour of the Antietam battlefield at the end of the HAAC conference on Friday October 24. It will also be conducted by Dr. James Slaughter.
P.S. Here are the first two presentations on Antietam and the Maryland Campaign of 1862 done by Dr. James F. Slaughter III.
We do offer a guided tour of the Antietam battlefield at the end of the HAAC conference on Friday October 24. It will also be conducted by Dr. James Slaughter.
P.S. Here are the first two presentations on Antietam and the Maryland Campaign of 1862 done by Dr. James F. Slaughter III.
We do offer a guided tour of the Antietam battlefield at the end of the HAAC conference on Friday October 24. It will also be conducted by Dr. James Slaughter.
P.S. Here are the first two presentations on Antietam and the Maryland Campaign of 1862 done by Dr. James F. Slaughter III.
America’s Modern Wars, Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam is a theoretical work on the nature of insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. It was originally going to be called Understanding Insurgencies but at the publisher’s request we changed the title. I added the “Understanding” part. Needless to say, theoretical works rarely top the Times Best Seller List.
The publisher (Casemate) also chose the cover art. I asked them where it was from, and they only thing they could tell me as that it was from Iraq. But, it was nice and yellow and seemed to stand out and what else do you put on the cover of a theoretical work? It did seem to stand out in the bookstore shelves.
Well, last month, the commanding officer of the two soldiers in that picture contacted me and told me where it came from. To copy parts from his emails (with his permission, of course):
I was personally present when that photo was taken in March 2007 in Buhriz, Iraq (a suburb of provincial capital city Baqubah). The photo was taken several hours into a day-long battle with al Qaeda insurgents.
The photo was taken in March 2007 in the city of Buhriz which is just south and adjacent to Baqubah along the Diyala River about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. The two soldiers — SSG Derek Grimes and SPC Joshua Emmett– were Cav Scouts in the Stryker-equipped Bronco Troop, 1-14 CAV, which was part of the Cav Squadron of 3-2 SBCT – the Army’s first Stryker Brigade. I was the Troop commander. At the time the Troop was attached to 5-20 Infantry, a Stryker infantry battalion. We had just moved up to Baqubah from Baghdad after participating in the first official surge operations there.
It was our first day there. My troop was assigned the city of Buhriz as our AO and part of the troop had stumpled into a complex ambush in a well-prepared kill zone featuring IEDs, emplaced obstacles, pre-registered indirect fire (mortars), RPG volley fire, heavy machine guns, etc. The ambush devolved into a crawling 15-hour fire fight with my troop of 17 strykers reinforced with a platoon of Bradleys, a tank platoon, a engineer platoon for IED route clearance and ultimately five AH-64 Air Weapon teams that rotated through to empty their loads of thermabaric hellfire missiles. The al Qaeda fighters had laid real or decoy IEDs (mostly triple-stacked 152mm artillery shells with control wire detonators) approximately every 30 meters along the single available road.
After al Qaeda had been evicted from Ramadi at the end of 2006 they moved to Baqubah and declared the city the capital of their Islamic Caliphate. That part of Diyala was under 3rd Bde 1 Cavalry Division, but they lacked the manpower to secure the city and were being heavily attritted. The Mech Infantry Team that I took over Buhriz from lost 19 Abrams and Bradleys in their first 4 months there and over 10 percent of their company KIA. Buhriz, itself had never been under US control. It was a Baathist retirement community before al Qaeda had moved in and laid siege to a local Iraqi Army base which they took over an literally leveled after al Qaeda had defeated a US battalion-level armored counterattack that failed to penetrate into the town and relieve the siege. If Baqubah was the capital of al Qaeda in Iraq, Buhriz was the capital of al Qaeda in Baqubah. When we arrived, 3-1 CAV reported over 4,500 “active fighters” for al Qaeda in the city.
Within a few weeks, Bronco Troop became ground zero for what later became called the Sunni Awakening. Michael Gordon partly recounts the story of how this happened and how it spread through Iraq in his book Endgame. He actually embedded with my troop for a few days during the Summer. In early April we were able to form an alliance with the local population, evict al Qaeda and establish a secure fortified enclave. Because of the reputational importance of Buhriz and the threat that if Buhriz succeeded in defying al Qaeda, active opposition would spread, al Qaeda was compelled to launch a series of large-scale conventional attacks to attempt to retake the town. This of course played to our strengths, and we repulsed them each time with heavy losses to them and minimal losses to us. We had established our own intelligence network that had infiltrated al Qaeda and we were able to get enemy BDA within 48 hours of each engagement. A former Iraqi military intelligence officer and military academy graduate who ran the network reported a total loss to al Qaeda over six months of fighting over Buhriz at around 1,200 fighters KIA. Buhriz became the meat-grinder that destroyed al Qaedas fighting power and reputation in Iraq. Our local Iraqi allies spread the “Awakening” through their networks and as we demonstrated the success of our model and succeeded defeating al Qaeda and securing the people of Buhriz (and delivered essential services), the movement quickly spread throughout the Sunni and moderate Shia areas of Iraq. And yes, as you suspected in your book, their were former insurgents who had fought US soldiers in earlier battles among the Awakening membership and leadership.
Ben Richards (Major, USA, ret.) was seriously wounded in Iraq in a targeted attempt to kill him. He has since gotten a PhD and will be giving two virtual presentations, the first on this coming Wednesday, at 7:00 PM EST via zoom.
1. The Counter-Insurgency Insurgency (Battle of Baquba 2007) – 10 September:
We do offer a guided tour of the Antietam battlefield at the end of the HAAC conference on Friday October 24. It will also be conducted by Dr. James Slaughter.
There is no presentation this Wednesday evening (3 September). It has been rescheduled. The next presentation is on the Wednesday after, on 10 September: The Counter-Insurgency Insurgency (Battle of Baquba 2007) by Dr. R. Ben Richards (Major, USA, ret.).
The third presentation on Antietam and the Maryland Campaign of 1862 will be on 17 September.
The second of seven public presentations on the Battle of Antietam and the Maryland Campaign of 1862 is Wednesday night (Aug. 20) at 7:00 PM (EST) on Zoom. They will be on zoom on every other Wednesday at 7:00 PM EST. They are by Dr. James Slaughter and each presentation is around 45 minutes and then the floor will then be opened to questions and discussion. We will be recording the presentations and posting them to our YouTube channel. We have not posted up the first presentation yet.
The schedule is (with zoom links):
2. Lee’s Invasion, South Mountain, Harper’s Ferry, and McClellan’s Response – 20 August:
We do offer a guided tour of the Antietam battlefield at the end of the HAAC conference on Friday October 24. It will also be conducted by Dr. James Slaughter.
