WritingRadio2026
100 Watts and a Wire
No kilowatt amplifier? No 100 foot tower with a multi-element beam. Not to worry. You too can earn DXCC and WAS. Read on.
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Unpublished research, working papers, and manuscripts from Donald S. Inbody spanning naval history, political science, military affairs, and more.
No kilowatt amplifier? No 100 foot tower with a multi-element beam. Not to worry. You too can earn DXCC and WAS. Read on.
Every election cycle, a measurable number of valid military and overseas ballots are rejected for a single reason: the mail is too slow. The federal framework governing absentee voting by uniformed service members and U.S. citizens overseas was built over more than seventy years. It works at the front end. Blank ballots reach voters. The back end works less well. Marked ballots must travel back to county election offices, and the mail does not always move fast enough to complete the round trip within state deadlines. Many states address this through grace periods. A grace period counts a ballot postmarked by Election Day and received within a defined window after. In November 2025 the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Watson v. Republican National Committee, a direct challenge to the constitutionality of those grace periods. Oral argument was held in March 2026. A decision is expected by the close of the October 2025 term. If the Court eliminates grace periods without providing a substitute, the rejection rate among military and overseas voters will rise. The data make that prediction available with reasonable confidence. This paper reviews the evidence, the litigation, and what should be done.
An examination of the evolving relationship between civilian leadership and military institutions in the post-Cold War United States, exploring tensions between democratic accountability and professional military autonomy.
In 2022, the anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Armed Forces & Society published a series of articles in a special edition about Afghanistan. This is the introduction to the series.
A summary of the history of military and overseas voting in the United States since the American Revolution. Published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia.
A summary of the patterns of voting by American military personnel based on data drawn in 2008 and prior. Based on the research by Dr. Donald S. Inbody in his book The Soldier Vote.
A study of military absentee voting patterns, barriers to participation, and policy recommendations for ensuring service members can exercise their constitutional right to vote regardless of deployment location.
A speech I delivered to a group of military veterans graduating from Texas State University in December 2014.
This paper presents a method for determining the periodic structure of relative sunspot numbers (cycles) and the variation (modulation) in those cycles without resorting to standard averaging techniques. In doing so, we apply the signal coherence spectral analysis to the time series of relative sunspot numbers between 1849 and 2006 as compiled by the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC) at the Royal Observatory of Belgium using the FORTRAN 95 program developed by Hinich (2000). We detect an exceptionally coherent signal at 3,966 days which corresponds to the well known near-11 year Schwabe cycle. Additionally, we find numerous harmonics which rise significantly above the probability threshold (.75), some of which have been previously noted in the literature.
An historical examination of the uses of swarming in military operations and the means of countering them.
Congress has had and continues to have significant and even overriding influence on the nature of American civil-military relations and in naval policy. More specifically, particular members of Congress established themselves as experts in naval matters and brought strong influence to bear on policy decisions. While the relationship between civil and military authorities in the United States is the subject of much research and there is little disagreement over the notion of civilian control of the military, most of the work concerns the relationship between the military and the Presidency or perhaps the Secretary of Defense. Little is written on the nature of the relationship of Congress with the United States Navy.
With the recent publication of Test Pub 3-02, Test Doctrine for Amphibious Operations, a test version of Joint Pub 3-02, Joint Doctrine for Amphibious Operations, much interest has focused on the appropriate command relationship between the Commander, Amphibious Task Force (CATF) and the Commander, Landing Force (CLF). An examination of historical evidence reveals that the command relationship between the two commanders had little real impact on the real issues that faced them. The allocation and control of air support, whether land-based or carrier-based, is shown to be the major contentious issue in most of the operations examined. A change of the command relations between CATF and CLF would not have made a difference in the outcome as in few cases was land or carrier-based air ever under the direct control of either CATF or CLF. For the modern Joint Force Commander (JFC) to properly use amphibious forces, he will need to consider the following: • CATF and CLF equal access to higher headquarters during the planning process. • How air support will be commanded and controlled in support of the amphibious task force and landing force. • Whether to use an intermediate echelon common superior (Naval Component Commander or Joint Force Maritime Component Commander) or retain JFC direct control of CATF and CLF. The implications for the Joint Force Commander (JFC) revolve around clear definition of the type of air support required and who may require that air support from the JFACC, whether CATF, CLF or some other commander. The command relationship between CATF and CLF is not as important as ensuring that all commanders fully understand the priorities of the mission at hand.
The journal I kept while serving as the Commanding Officer of USS Duluth (LPD-6).
A short story I wrote while teaching at the Naval Academy. It is drawn on my experience as the Operations Officer and Tactical Action Officer on USS Harry W. Hill (DD-986) on a deployment to the Persian Gulf in 1988 during the tanker wars. During that tour we escorted some two dozen convoys through the Strait of Hormuz.
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