Gen. Mark Milley, the Army Chief of Staff, says the world is on the cusp of a fundamental change in the character of ground warfare. A revolution is perhaps five to 10 years away.
The US Army is expecting to prepare to combat modernized militaries in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.
Milley foresees a battlefield that “is going to be intensely lethal, the likes of which the United States Army, the United States military, has not experienced…since World War II.”
It won’t be just World War II reprised with higher tech, or even the World War III envisioned in the 1980s. Instead, Milley said, long-range precision weapons will hammer big, obvious targets — like US headquarters today — and force both sides to disperse, into small units moving independently with no semblance of a front line. Electronic and cyber warfare — jamming and hacking — will disrupt communications among these scattered units, forcing junior commanders to take the initiative as never before.
The Army needs to radically overhaul its equipment, training, and even its culture for chaotic future conflicts against high-end adversaries like Russia and China, the largest service’s top leaders said today. But its modernization budget is up to $40 billion below the other services’
Divisions in 2030 require the ability to fight in multiple domains. Some adversaries will match or exceed the United States in cyber capabilities and ability to deny air supremacy. Therefore, the division in 2030 must have the ability to fight in the cyber domain; defend itself against the expanded air, missile, and unmanned aerial system threats; and provide the commander with land-based maneuver and fires forces that can provide required effects in other domains.
Future enemies may achieve overmatch in key areas, such as precision and hypersonic weapons, electronic warfare, high-yield conventional strategic weapons, and unmanned, self-contained and robotized arms and equipment. The Army must combine capabilities across domains to preclude successful enemy employment of tactics and technologies.
SOURCES – Breaking Defense, Army
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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