WASHINGTON: Forget sequestration. Never mind fiscal 2013. The Army knows it’s in for a tough decade, not just a tough year — but it’s already thinking way ahead, past 2020. With the Iraq war over, Afghanistan (slowly) winding down, and a new strategy that emphasizes Navy and Marine Corps operations in the Pacific, the Army… Keep reading →

NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON: It took 10 years for US troops to become expert on Afghanistan, and they still meet ugly surprises, like the ongoing spate of insider attacks by those they believe to be their allies. For the next war, the Army wants to fast-forward right past that long and painful learning curve. So… Keep reading →

LAS VEGAS: As the Army institutionalizes robotic systems that began as ad hoc expedients for Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chief of Staff wants drones in every combat aviation brigade and every division — even at the price of spreading them thinner across the force. The Army’s first company of Grey Eagle UAVs, a variant of… Keep reading →

LAS VEGAS: “We’ve been spoiled,” the colonel said. Since 9/11, the military has had “giant pots of money” to throw at urgent problems without going through the full acquisition process. It’s been a bonanza for contractors with innovative technology to offer. But as the war winds down, Lt. Col. Stuart Hatfield of the Army Capabilities… Keep reading →

As budgets tighten and the wars wind down, the Army is struggling to institutionalize the hard-won cultural skills it learned in Afghanistan and Iraq — and to make the case for their continued relevance and resourcing to an administration whose new strategic guidance swears off counterinsurgency. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey himself recently touted… Keep reading →

All this week, at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Army is conducting the latest iteration of its annual wargame. In the fictional future of the game, set in 2020, 120 players will wage a two-front war in the two regions that have come to dominate US strategy, with one scenario set in… Keep reading →

How do you modernize without money? Army brass are test-driving a new message at the annual Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) conference in Fort Lauderdale: Modernization is about more than new equipment – which, by the way, we can’t afford. There are plenty of other things we can do to keep our cutting edge.… Keep reading →

The U.S. Army has always struggled with what the elder George Bush once called “the vision thing.” Now that struggle is boiling over. At the latest of a series of conferences on the future of the Army, junior officers openly debated with top generals over how to sell the service to the Congress, the country,… Keep reading →

With budgets falling and China rising, the U.S. Army wants in on the one theater where President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have promised to keep investing: the Pacific. The world’s largest ocean is not an obvious fit for America’s land forces. So far, it is the Air Force and the Navy that have… Keep reading →

Escalating cyber threats, a struggling economy, the rise of China, and the unpredictable impact of the Arab Spring will dominate the next decade. At least, that’s the best collective guess of a conclave of academic experts, government officials, and military officers from the U.S. and abroad, convened by the United States Army. Their objective: This… Keep reading →