Colonel T.X. Hammes

T. X. Hammes was born in American Falls, Idaho on 31 August 1953. He was commissioned from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1975. In his thirty years in the Marine Corps, he served at all levels in the operating forces to include command of a rifle company, weapons company, intelligence company, infantry battalion and the Chemical Biological Incident Response Force. He participated in stabilization operations in Somalia and Iraq as well as training insurgents in various places. He never served in the Pentagon, Headquarters Marine Corps or a Joint Staff.

Colonel Hammes has attended The Basic School, US Army Infantry Officers Advanced Course, Marine Corps Command and Staff College and the Canadian National Defense College. He also spent one year on a Research Fellowship with the Mershon Center for Strategic Studies. His final tour in the Marine Corps was as Senior Military Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University.

He is the author of "The Sling and the Stone: On War in the Twenty-First Century" and numerous articles and opinion pieces. He is currently reading for a DPhil in Modern History at Oxford University.