... U.S. military leaders, including Rumsfeld's successor, Robert M. Gates, now recognize that the nature of warfare itself is changing, from conventional conflicts between nations to "small wars" — counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, religious and ethnic strife — and that the Army must change with it.
The new doctrine, spelled out in publications such as the newest Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, published in late 2006, is that the Army must be prepared to wage all types of warfare but focus much more of its attention on irregular, guerrilla conflicts like that in Iraq.
This is a fundamental change that will drive most other decisions within the Army — from recruitment to equipment — and will permeate every defense debate for the foreseeable future.
In fact, it already has. Military journals are full of articles and commentary on counterinsurgency. Last summer, eight months after the Army field manual appeared, the Air Force rushed out its own doctrine on the subject.
For the Army, the new doctrine means a seismic culture shift. It will still have guns and tanks, but it will also need more people skilled in languages, public affairs, economic development, even anthropology. Instead of grudgingly accepting the task of nation building, as it did in the Balkans and in Iraq at first, the new Army for the most part will have to embrace the role. In this way, the high-technology, smart-weapons "revolution in military affairs" that has captivated Pentagon strategists for decades is becoming a revolution beyond military affairs.
Though it is too early to tell precisely what the ramifications might be in general defense policy and the budget, most experts think the Army will not get a big budget increase, but will have to reorder its priorities, shifting money from, say, high-tech hardware to personnel...
More here too, at Abu Muqawama
Comments
The U.S. Army faces a daunting most likely/most dangerous challenge. Prep for irregular warfare (most likely) or prep for major combat operations (most dangerous). I dont think we can stop preparing/educating/training to conduct large scale conventional combat operations. The Army is the "buck stops here" land force - we dont have the luxury of being able to pick and choose our missions. If we are really good at COIN but get our lunch handed to us by a peer (like happened at the Kasserine Pass in 1943) or a third world country that seizes a window of opportunity (like happened to Task Force Smith in Korea in 1950), the American people wont accept "that justs because we focused on COIN for the last decade because we thought that is all wed be involved in". The stakes for lack of preparedness for conventional operations are high - we lost about the same amount of people in and around the Kasserine Pass in January 1943 as we lost in the first three years of OIF. Historically, there have been few examples of an army that was made up of units that were simultaneously and seamlessly good at both major combat operations and irregular warfare.
Not sure all the answers to successfully changing this paradigm, but I am pretty certain it will involve more resources and probably a significantly larger force.