ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

The U.S. military should adopt an updated approach to warfighting, according to a new paper published by the Association of the U.S. Army. 

In “Move, Strike, Protect: An Alternative to the Primacy of Decisiveness and the Offense or Defense Dichotomy in Military Thinking,” author Lt. Col. Amos Fox argues that “forces must be optimized” for the move, strike and protect model of conflict.  

The hazy future is a big concern as the Army stands ready for a near-term conflict and the U.S. government and military continue to wrestle with what the future of warfare will look like, a panel of experts said Oct. 12. 

The term “strategic competition” gets thrown around a lot, but a key question that must be asked is, “What does warfare look like? What does it look like when it goes bad?” said Vikram Singh, senior adviser at the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Asia Center.

A new Association of the U.S. Army Land Warfare Paper by Maj. Amos Fox suggests long-held assumptions and principles of war are dangerously outdated. 

Many warfighting and battle-fighting concepts currently floating around Western military thought are flawed and fail to recognize how much the world has changed, Fox writes in his new paper, “On the Principles of War: Reorganizing Thought and Practice for Large-Scale Combat Operations.” 

Reshaping the military to tackle evolving threats should be a higher government priority, four national security analysts warned during testimony.

The nation is facing a complex security environment driven by four nation state challenges and the threat of violent extremism, and that has major implications for the Army and the joint force, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. spoke during the sustaining member luncheon at the Association of the U.S. Army’s 2016 Annual Meeting and Exposition.

“We need a balanced portfolio of capabilities” able to deal with a range of adversaries across the full range of military conflict, Dunford said