The War of the Future? Picture Big Armies and Many Fronts
The War of the Future? Picture Big Armies and Many Fronts by Helene Cooper, New York Times
… From the Middle East to South Asia to Africa, American forces for the past decade and a half have fought counterinsurgency and counterterrorist campaigns — essentially smaller-scale guerrilla warfare — rather than the large land wars of the past. But Russia’s invasion of Crimea, a surging China and an unpredictable North Korea have led American military commanders to make sure soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are trained in conventional warfare.
It is part of learning how to fight what the Pentagon calls the hybrid wars of the future, envisioned as a mix of conventional battles, insurgencies and cyberthreats.
“You’re looking at different level of capabilities when you’re talking about a higher-end threat, and the United States Army hasn’t fought against that type of enemy in a long time,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army chief of staff, said in an interview. “The way we train won’t be the same because the environment now is totally different.”
Future wars, he said, “could have conventional forces, Special Forces, guerrillas, terrorists, criminals all mixed together in a highly complex terrain environment, with potentially high densities of civilians.”…
