DETER AND DEFEAT


the modernization side, the Army—hav- ing focused its modernization on the irregular wars of the past 15 years—faces a shortfall in critical capability areas like short-range air defense, long-range preci- sion fires, counter-fire, electronic warfare and active protection systems for main battle tanks.


GAMING TO MODERNIZE


A map, grid and unit markers are displayed during a recent RAND war game tabletop exercise. War gaming, recent operations and training events have reflected capability gaps that the U.S. could encounter against a peer adversary in a multidomain battlespace. Fifteen years of irregular warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with years of budget uncertainty, put the Army in the difficult position of trading off between current and future readiness. (Photo courtesy of RAND Corp.)


Some of these efforts have already borne fruit, and the remainder offer promising new approaches or methodologies that could substantially improve our ability to modernize for the most demanding chal- lenges the future force could face. While we don’t control our ultimate bottom line, we now have the means to better target modernization to achieve readiness today and tomorrow.


PRIORITIZING CHALLENGES Te headlines were jarring: “If Russia Started a War in the Baltics, NATO Would Lose—Quickly,” said one. “Rus- sian Invasion Could Overrun NATO in 60 hours,” read another. Te stories went on to report the results of a RAND Corp. study, released in February 2016, which revealed the vulnerabilities of the United States military and its allies if Russian forces were to invade the neighboring NATO member states of Estonia, Lat- via or Lithuania: outnumbered troops, blocked and contested airspace, cyber interruptions and


heavy casualties.


While Russia could not sustain a pro- tracted conventional war with NATO, the study concluded, it could achieve a


20


rapid, localized victory that would force the alliance into an array of bad options.


While RAND sounded the alarm in pub- lic, the Army was already working behind the scenes to assess and adjust to the new global realities. Russia’s aggression in Ukraine in 2014 and 2015 prompted the Army to form the European Strate- gic Assessment Team, a cross-functional task force including experts from across HQDA staff and other Army elements that studied Russia’s actions and capabili- ties and offered initial recommendations. In 2016, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) con- ducted the Russian New Generation Warfare study, which offered a deeper analysis of the strategic, operational and tactical challenges posed by Russia’s approach to hybrid conflict that mixes subversive and direct political and mili- tary tactics.


As new gaps in U.S. manpower, tactics and technology became apparent, senior leaders in the Pentagon ramped up troop levels and training in Europe to boost readiness and reassure our allies. But on


Te challenge is not limited to Russia, though its annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine and Syria have attracted the most attention. A series of studies, reports and war games con- ducted by the Army G-2, TRADOC G-2, Center for Army Analysis (CAA), TRADOC Analysis Center (TRAC), RAND and others have examined vari- ous scenarios involving China, North Korea, Iran, the Islamic State group and other terrorist groups. Each employed its own methodology, but all highlighted current and emerging capability gaps the U.S. could encounter if confronted with aggression on land, over water, with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or through hybrid warfare.


Te common thread—in the research findings as well as intelligence updates and observations on the ground—is the urgent need to adapt our modernization efforts to a different, and in many ways more challenging, environment. Societal, geopolitical, economic and technological forces are changing the character of war. Te next 25 years will not be like the last. All forms of warfare are becoming faster, deadlier and more ambiguous, and they are expanding into new physical and vir- tual fields that will challenge our forces in all domains of warfare—air, land, sea, space and cyberspace.


After a decade and a half of developing the Army to deter regional powers like North Korea, fight insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, and conduct global


Army AL&T Magazine


January-March 2017


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