ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

The U.S. Army has launched an Innovative Leaders Course. Due to increased complexity and uncertainty in the contemporary operational environment, this academic course has the potential to bring about combat readiness.

The aim of the year-old course is to build combat readiness by:

• First, seeking an understanding of a system and pattern recognition by using methods and approaches to problems such as Systems Thinking v2.0.
• Second, by using tools and techniques to equip the mind.
• Third, the course itself serves as the metaphorical grease to teach leaders how to reduce friction and open the curtain to...

Interviews by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, as well as the documents and summaries recently published by The Washington Post, present a lot of information about the nearly two-decade Afghanistan War. Little of it is new, however, to anyone who has paid attention. Too many congressional testimonies, books, articles, op-eds, TV and radio interviews, and multi-sponsored conferences defy the notion that the contents of the Special Inspector General’s files are shocking revelations. In short, these are not the Pentagon Papers.

Further, the Post’s...

As Army leaders, we are always looking for leadership nuggets to help us excel in our organizations. So, imagine having the opportunity to sit across the table and listen to stories of people who shaped history in arts, sciences, sports and world affairs. Think about the lessons we would glean by hearing about their triumphs and failures, things they learned along the way, and the world in which they accomplished those feats.

While few (if any) of us may ever get this opportunity, there’s another avenue available to learn some of these same lessons—reading a biography. This is a genre of...

Much as Rangers have helped lead the way for the U.S. Army since World War II, for over 60 years the Colombian army has relied on graduates of its Lancero School—Escuela de Lanceros—to set the example for others to follow during intense, enduring internal conflicts with powerful armed groups.

The similarities do not stop there. As foundational leadership schools focused on forging capable small-unit leaders, the U.S. Army Ranger School and the Lancero School share common origins, traditions and goals. The Lancero School also represents a success story enabled through decades of consistent U.S...

The Army’s emphasis on readiness and the significant investments in our soldiers, units and equipment have paid great dividends over the past few years as we shifted focus from low-intensity conflict toward multidomain operations and great-power competition.

We have made incredible strides in tactical readiness, generating and sustaining highly trained, disciplined and fit tactical units, and maintaining the capacity and capability to meet the operational demands of the joint force. As a result, the Army is more combat ready and better prepared to face potential near-peer adversaries than it...

North Korea’s nuclear provocations in 2017 cemented an ongoing shift from building Army readiness for counterinsurgency and counterterrorism to preparing for large-scale combat operations. Army senior leaders implemented the Focused Readiness model soon after, which produced the highest levels of readiness in years. They prioritized building the immense levels of tactical readiness across all three components required for large-scale combat. However, Focused Readiness also revealed critical Army operational gaps and strategic readiness shortfalls that complicated our ability to meet wartime...

The Multi-Domain Operations concept was conceived by the Army, but it is inherently joint in nature. It goes far beyond AirLand Battle, which combined its two eponymous domains in a defined area of operations. Multi-Domain Operations expands the fight to the sea, into space and beyond, to the synthetic domain of cyberspace. It acknowledges that to achieve dominance on land, the Army must work with the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and now, the Space Force, to rapidly converge effects across multiple domains at the decisive place, which might be anywhere on, or off, the planet. Multi-Domain...

The Army has invested considerable resources in its advertising efforts. Airing expensive television ads, increasing the number of recruiters and offering bonuses for recruits costs the Army hundreds of millions of dollars each year. While the results of these efforts are hard to measure, the Army has historically achieved its recruiting goals, with the recent exception of 2018.

To streamline its marketing efforts, the Army has created a new job for officers: Functional Area 58 (Marketing). The Army has a unique opportunity to expand the scope of its marketing and leverage modern methods to...

The Army has invested considerable resources in its advertising efforts. Airing expensive television ads, increasing the number of recruiters and offering bonuses for recruits costs the Army hundreds of millions of dollars each year. While the results of these efforts are hard to measure, the Army has historically achieved its recruiting goals, with the recent exception of 2018.

To streamline its marketing efforts, the Army has created a new job for officers: Functional Area 58 (Marketing). The Army has a unique opportunity to expand the scope of its marketing and leverage modern methods to...

U.S. Owns Its Share of Postwar Debacles

The Day After: Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace. Brendan Gallagher. Cornell University Press. 320 pages. $32.95

By Lt. Col. Nathan Finney

Few soldiers take the opportunity to enter academia, reflect on their time in conflict and answer questions about those experiences seared into their memories. Attending Columbia University in New York City as a Goodpaster Scholar, Lt. Col. Brendan Gallagher is one.

The result is his new book, The Day After: Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace, which is part memoir, part professional military education...

In the very near future, soldiers on the battlefield may depend more on artificial intelligence than their own comrades. In fact, it doesn’t take wild conjecture to believe that soldiers won’t need to be anywhere near the battlefield but could instead remotely operate sophisticated, intelligent and sensor-laden weapons of war possessing innate problem-solving abilities.

It would be a completely different type of warfare—and it could be coming in 15 years or less.

While Army leaders are determined that humans will always be in the loop when the fighting turns deadly, they are equally determined...

Living in a tent in Afghanistan means not having secrets. Such intimate conditions unveil what time of day you work out, your bathroom routine, how loud you snore, and many other unmentionable life details. I learned in such a tent that Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy Bolyard stayed up late and loved his snooze button. What I failed to realize in the moment was that Tim was giving me a graduate course on leadership. His life, as well as the experience of his untimely death, have made me a better leader and a better person.

Military relationships connect people in meaningful ways because they exist in...

In an Oct. 19 Washington Post online article about President Donald Trump’s decision to abruptly withdraw nearly all U.S. troops from Syria, author Missy Ryan paraphrases and quotes a prominent political scientist as saying, “While elected officials ‘have a right to be wrong,’ the military’s role is to execute orders.” Such a formulation changes the civil-military relationship to one based on servitude, not service. It is both wrong and dangerous.

No one has a right to be wrong with respect to the use of another’s life. The president of the United States and, in some circumstances, the...

This spring, the Pentagon will undertake the largest deployment of American forces to Europe in the past quarter-century. Over the course of the major exercises that will comprise Defender-Europe 2020, 37,000 U.S. service members will fall in with other NATO forces, bringing with them some 20,000 vehicles and other pieces of equipment to augment the stock of 13,000 already pre-positioned in the arena.

In analyzing what the exercise portends for the future of America’s Army, many will want to make comparisons with REFORGER, the major deployment exercise to West Germany during the Cold War. That...

There is an African proverb that states, “It takes a village ...” This maxim also holds true for the holistic approach required for soldiers who are ready, lethal and able to meet the Army’s needs.

Initiatives from the Army’s SHARP, Ready and Resilient Directorate; the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Holistic Health and Fitness Program; and the U.S. Army Futures Command’s Soldier Lethality Cross-Functional Team recognize the importance of a holistic approach to soldier lethality. The emphasis is on building the physical supremacy, cognitive dominance and emotional resilience required...