Capabilities Must Match Future Threats, Army Leader Says

Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who also serves as director of Army Capabilities Integration Center, told the audience at International Security’s “Future of War” conference that because threats have changed, American responses must change as well.

Nations were the source of threats in the past, he said. Today, they also come from nonstate actors and the confluence of networked insurgent and terrorist organizations bridging over into transnational organized crime networks and having access to capabilities they didn’t have in the past.

The capabilities include communications, mobilized resources and access to destructive technologies. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is one such group, the general said, and Russia’s use of special operations forces under cover from regular forces in Ukraine also serves as an example of why the U.S. military must balance continuity in the nature of war with change in the character of warfare.

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http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=128237