Striking the Balance Between Training High-Intensity Conflict and Counterinsurgency: Maintaining Full Spectrum Dominance in the US Army

摘要

The U.S. Army's operational tempo in Iraq and Afghanistan is creating a generation of leaders untrained to meet the full spectrum threats that it must be prepared to confront on the battlefield of tomorrow. The U.S. Army has been fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since with great success, especially given the challenges of the contemporary operating environment its junior leaders face every day. This success, however, has come with a cost. While soldiers, leaders, and units have adapted over the past 6 years to fight an adaptive and innovative counterinsurgency, they have lost many of the full spectrum core-competency warfighting skills that make the U.S. Army the most formidable in the world. This paper will focus on mechanized maneuver battalion and brigade-level organizations. Unless the U.S. Army's leadership begins a mental shift toward a more balanced approach to training, the Army will no longer have the institutional knowledge of how to fight and win to maintain dominance on the conventional battlefield. The basic core high- intensity warfighting skills are absolutely necessary to support U.S. military dominance and promote the achievement of U.S. interests around the world for the future.