The Missing Element in U.S. Military Modernization | Small Wars Journal

"The high-tech modernization emphasis for U.S. ground forces is more problematic, mainly for the reason that the actual conflicts waged by the U.S. in the past 25 years could not have been won with more firepower. Instead, discrimination and precision in the use of force was more critical than firepower. The lethality of a weapon system cannot compensate when the local population is complicit in the placement of improvised explosive devices, for example. The current training regimen for U.S. Army Brigade Combat Teams emphasizes a return to combined arms maneuver warfare in order to prepare for and deter conflict with a near-peer or regional adversary such as Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea. To prepare for such conflicts is rational and necessary, but the unfortunate corollary to the return to conventional warfare tactics is the overconfident assessment that the U.S. Army is sufficiently proficient in counterterrorism and contingency operations. This assessment may be valid at the tactical level, but the rise of the Islamic State after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, the ongoing stalemate in Afghanistan, and the proliferation of jihadist networks should demonstrate that the U.S. military effort was ultimately inconclusive, and more importantly, that the broader war is not over."