ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

Marking a major milestone in its transformation, the Army has unveiled a long-awaited update to its doctrine that will change the way soldiers train and fight in the future.

“There will always be a critical role for combat-credible forces around the world,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said Oct. 11 during the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2022 Annual Meeting and Exposition. “There’s no substitute for having American soldiers on the ground for reassurance and deterrence.”

The general officer in charge of recruiting the next generation of soldiers said the shrinking pool of young people who are eligible to serve represents “a problem in our nation.”

Gen. Paul Funk, commander of the Army Training and Doctrine Command, said the two biggest hurdles to qualifying young people for service are obesity and addiction, which he considers “national security issues that we’ve got to address.” 

As the Army continues to refine its Multi-Domain Operations concept, the service is seeking to start a conversation about what the future may look like—and what kind of world soldiers will find themselves operating in.

From a world where the U.S. and China compete for global primacy to a future of persistent instability and conflict, the Army must think “rigorously and creatively” about the future, Gen. Mike Murray, commanding general of Army Futures Command, writes in the foreword of a pamphlet produced by the command.

Long-range precision fires will be “extremely important” in deterring future conflict amid “endless” competition ahead, the Army’s top general said.

“No one wants endless war, no one wants endless conflict, but how we compete is extremely important,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said Oct. 1 during the virtual Fires Conference hosted by the Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The commanding general of Army Training and Doctrine Command will be the guest speaker on the June 30 edition of The AUSA Noon Report.

Gen. Paul Funk, who has led Training and Doctrine Command since June 2019, is responsible for 32 Army schools that recruit, train and educate more than 750,000 soldiers and service members annually.

The livestream program starts at noon Eastern and is hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army. Retired Gen. Carter Ham, AUSA president and CEO, will provide opening remarks.

The U.S. military could have a new, joint operating concept within a year, loosely based on the Army’s Multi-Domain Operations proposal, the commander of the U.S. Army Futures Command said.

Speaking Feb. 10 at the Atlantic Council, Gen. Mike Murray said the services have similar concepts but haven’t been able to agree on details. That could soon change, he said.

The Army has been working for about four years on the notion that a broad-capability force that could find itself challenged in the air, land, sea, space or cyberspace domains should exploit a gap in another domain. 

The Army is taking a close look at itself—from how it fights to how it recruits, trains and equips soldiers—as it transitions from almost two decades of counterinsurgency warfare and prepares to fight a near-peer competitor.

“Great-power competition doesn’t necessarily mean great-power conflict,” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville. “Quite frankly, we don’t want it to mean great-power conflict. We want to be in competition. We want to have that competition below the level of armed conflict, and the way you do that is you’re strong.”

A new paper from the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare looks at how politics in the 1950s influenced Army doctrine, particularly the shift to nuclear weapons.

Written by retired Army Lt. Col. David C. Rasmussen, an Afghanistan veteran and political scientist, the paper looks at the Eisenhower era when efforts were underway to reduce U.S. troop presence in Europe and cut defense spending by 30 percent, proposals resisted by then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Matthew Ridgway.