Amphibious Operations and the Future of War

The war in Ukraine has been playing out in—and across—all domains. So it is perhaps surprising that Russia's invasion plan held almost no role for the type of operation designed to bridge two of those domains. There has been little sign that Russia sought to employ amphibious operations to gain a foothold in the south of the country—despite Ukraine's long Black Sea coast. Is this an indicator that such operations are a relic of the past? Or is it an anomaly? To help understand those questions, we're returning to an episode originally released early last year that featured a conversation with Tim Heck, MWI's deputy editorial director and coeditor of the book On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare.