The military needs to accelerate changes to meet new and emerging threats
The new Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman, Troy E. Black, stressed the need for the U.S. military to change and adopt to the novel threats unfolding before us. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows a sample of what kind of warfare that the U.S. may face. Black pointed out that no person on active duty today has fought in a great power war.
From the U.S. Department of Defense website:
The National Defense Strategy calls China America’s pacing threat. Russia, with its invasion of neighboring Ukraine, also is a major problem. The U.S. military must change to deter these possible threats and if deterrence fails, to win against these enemies.
“We spent the last … 20 years … in regional conflicts with the potential to spread trans-regionally,” he said. “Now we really are in that space where we’re trying to use the whole-of-government approach. Obviously, we are hyper-focused on the military piece on what happens if there is horizontal escalation and protracted warfare.”
He said the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an example of all-domain warfare that the United States must prepare for.
Black makes the point that no one on active duty today has ever fought in a great power war. World War II was the last whole-of-government effort and the United States fielded a military force of more than 12 million combatants. The U.S. Marine Corps, alone, fielded 660,000. There was rationing in the civilian population and all industry and raw materials were turned to war production and keeping those service members in the fight.
The U.S. military is the most professional and deadly force in the world today. “If we have to go to war, I hope today is the day,” he said. “Because we will defeat anybody: Today.”
DOD needs to be able to focus on threats today, but also be ready for the future. “How do you maintain that primacy,” he asked. “That we don’t want a fair fight is now a cliché. But it is true. We want people chasing us, we don’t want to chase them in military capabilities.”
The Department of Defense has additional information here.
Category: Military issues
Robots…we need Robots!!!
And I don’t mean the big “Shoot Me” targets like in Mech Warrior or so many Japanese anime. I mean AI powered wingman that allow the “meat” to sit back and contemplate the next chess move! We need logistics that just works and can go across any terrain, but doesn’t need a 19″ private to understand how to read a map when the GPS gets denied and they end up in an ambush! We need lasers that don’t run out of ammo, and Nuclear reactors that don’t need to be refilled every day with thousands of gallons of fuel that has to be trucked across the battlefield!
19″ private (is that even possible???)
Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman, Troy E. Black
(not what you expect….)
I’m sorry I’m just jumping in early on a Friday because I have a 3 pm appointment for the WOT which I’ll miss but my 10 year old inner child just can’t help itself.
Is a 19″ private something like a 12″ pianist?
My inner 10 year old has no control either. He’s a rotten little fucker.
Well, he might be like John Dillinger… ya never know.
Agree with all of the above, MIRanger, but in addition to all of that we NEED to start paying more attention to defending the Homeland against internal threats…both foreign and domestic. While we are concerning ourselves with defending the borders of others at the potential FEBA, we have literally 1000s of known bad guys that could wreak havoc and spread terror and discontent HERE. We’ve seen articles of late that bear this out. We all know what a well equipped and trained squad or platoon sized element can do when a surprise attack is sprung. We don’t have enough consumable stores of beans and bullets to fight a “near peer” opponent for too long. And how long would it take to replace the high tech aircraft and ships that will be taken out in the initial days? Is NATO going to send us a few divisions to guard our borders? Are we going to go ahead and unmothball the thousands of acres of buildings that DoD has at their ammo plants, train up production workers, start stock piling the raw materials needed to produce ordnance, shore up the rail transport (and rolling stock) needed to move the product to where it needs to be? Lot of our rail stock is being used to transport oil these days. Warren Buffet, grins. What about trigger pullers, lanyard yankers, sailors and airmen? Where are they going to come from? The Draft? We keep printing money to send overseas and the next shortage will be ink and paper.
Now is all of this being talked about to get something done about our needs? Or is this just fear mongering to justify more grubermint control over We, The People?
Prepare
Can’t spend the money to spin up those factories because we must support Ukraine, Israel, and more importantly social programs that go nowhere. EPA will probably say they’re a threat to the environment anyway.
Way too many boarders have gained access to the fruited plain.I have said for a long time someone wanting to do us harm only needs a book of matches. Just think what they can do with a supply of guns and ammo let alone blasting supplies. We are a rich target environment indeed.
No, we do not need robots.
But if we do, if and only if and when, there is at least one non-binary or transgender soldier in each platoon Army wide.
Suprised Black did not mention this considering how important and laser-focued the Army is in these endeavours.
Riddle me this, what is the gender of the persons with whom a non-binary has sexual intercourse? And can one of them get pregnant? Asking for someone who is not a friend.
Unsure. I would say just issue them a Phildo and let nature take its course.
SgtMaj Black must’ve checked out Kamala Harris’ word salad instructions from the library, because everything he said is horseshit.
(Step away from the DEI book and walk away, son.
I’m just a cynical retired Infantry NCO who took years to make it past SSG only to “take a knee” as a junior SFC less than a year after coming off the Trail. With that out of the way, I’ve been saying for years that, as “combat experienced” as our NCO Corps and officers are, we lack true sustained combat experience against near-peers. I heard NCOs brag about how many deployments they had, but they always had an infrastructure, massive fire superiority, and fought against a PITA enemy that would initiate ambushes with increasingly complex and deadly IEDs before engaging in a brief firefight and withdrawing. We were fighting a different war.
Now, I don’t know what in the hell SgtMaj Black is talking about. If he wants to get technical, we haven’t been in a “great power war” since Korea, or maybe even WWII. We’ve engaged in conventional large-scale battles against well-armed and equipped professional armies as recently as 2003, though. Iraq had one of the largest armed forces in the world then, and especially in 1990-1991. They had fairly modern tanks and aircraft and were a definite threat. That’s why during both wars we just wreaked havoc. The leadership I served under in Baghdad were very much post-Cold War experienced NCOs. They had trained to take on Soviet trained and equipped enemies, did their deployments to Bosnia, Kosovo, the Sinai, and elsewhere, and many had done overseas assignments in Germany or Korea. The senior NCOs were mostly Gulf War or Panama vets, with a handful of Grenada and Mogadishu vets spread in there. Those guys are almost all retired by now, but there are still plenty of SNCOs who were boots on the ground in Iraq in Spring 2003 who remember what it was like to take on uniformed opponents and engage in battles against outmatched, but still very deadly, tanks and other weapons.
In Viet Nam the NVA in particular were very hard and skilled light infantry. They also had and were well skilled with artillery and the rockets of that era. I was most impressed with how they for the most part carried every thing they brought to battle on their backs. Thank God they were not backed up with air power south of the DMZ! Also I am thankful they did not possess drones. One of our biggest mistakes was in calling cease fires. That only resulted in letting them regain their footing rearm, re organize and re engage.
Exactly what I’m talking about. We’ve been in some major and sustained conflicts against determined enemies. Using the term “great power war” and then calling Iraq and Afghanistan “regional conflicts with the potential to spread trans-regionally” implies that the last significant war was WWII. Great powers fought globally. Wars since then, or at least since Korea, has seen us with overwhelming air superiority and vast technical advantages that didn’t necessarily help.
I think it’s either ignorance or poor word choice. There are still Desert Storm vets serving, and plenty of those who forced the Iraqi military to surrender in 2003. I wouldn’t dare to understate what you and your fellow Vietnam vets saw, nor would I discount Korean War vets or anyone else who’s been on the receiving end of enemy fire in any conflict, large or small.
Perhaps SgtMaj Black could have used the term “near-peer” war. Russia and China combined could put a hurting on us, and I trust nothing about how ineffective or effective Russia’s Army is based on the news. One side is talking about mass Ukrainian casualties while the other claims that Russia is nearing defeat. The only way to really find out is to go over and volunteer for your country of choice, and it sure as hell isn’t my fight.
If I remember rightly, in 1990 Iraq had the 4th or 5th largest army in the world. We were expecting casualties in the 10s of thousands. The thing that saved us was that Saddam was stupid. He let us fight the kind of battle we had trained for decades to fight. A large scale battle of manuever. We need to train back to that level of proficiency.
What saved us in 1991 and 2003 was that the Iraqi military chose desertion or surrender over fighting.
In 1991 Saddam had the largest Artillery and Armor concentration ever but we had no armor battle other than the battle of 73 Easting.
Ditto in 2003 when Saddam had 2 Divisions on Safwan Hill but they were all abandoned.
If the Iraqis chose to fight, it would have been a bloody war instead of a replay of combined arms exercises at 29 Palms.
I agree to a large extent. Going into Iraq in ’03, I was convinced that we were going to be engaged in the worst fighting in decades. Initially, 3/187 “Rakkasan” was supposed to defend a ridgeline against a Republican Guard division. We had the sand table brief and started training, but before we SAW Gunners were issued tripods to act as static defense light machine gunners, the mission changed.
Initially, my battalion was going to air assault through some 23 rings of ADA to take Saddam International. The OPORD brief said that those who made it to the tarmac would know which direction to run, because that was where we’d be taking fire from. From what I recall, it was estimated that a reinforced Mechanized regiment was there along with Republican Guard units with about 32 BMPs and 36 T-72s in support. I was convinced that the Battle of Baghdad was going to be a combination of Stalingrad and Mogadishu. They were, after all, defending their capital city. That didn’t happen as we rolled in hard and fast with very little ROE.
The mission changed again, and we did a Ground Assault Convoy across open desert. Twenty-eight house later, we were staging to clear the airport terminal. 3ID already had the outside grounds secured.
Say what you want about Milley, but he knew peer warfare requires more wherewithal now:
P.S. All the networked/reach-back-to-States stuff will work real well when the Chcioms/Russkies interrupt the Internet. /sarc