ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

Those who have watched the Army’s concept for Multi-Domain Operations evolve since the fall of 2017 have experienced an odd sense of déjà vu. Thirty-seven years ago, the Army promulgated what it described as a multidimensional warfighting doctrine called AirLand Battle that would reset battle strategy. It was a shift from a focus on low-intensity, small-unit, decentralized counterinsurgency operations to larger-scale operations, heavily dependent on sophisticated technology for decisive operations fighting outnumbered in the U.S. European Command Theater.

Although Multi-Domain Operations shares...

“Teka muna,” the Filipino general said.

We had just exchanged pleasantries, so I started to peruse the menu at a quaint café in the quiet neighborhood of McKinley Park, away from the daily chaos of metropolitan Manila. In Tagalog, “teka muna” roughly translates into “wait a second.” The general had to take a phone call.

It was May 23, 2017, and the general was the same officer I had worked with on my first deployment to the Philippines as a Special Forces officer seven years earlier. When he hung up, he explained that an important mission was occurring at that moment, and he was simply getting...

Honor is the foundation of the profession of arms. It is the unbreakable thread that holds the fabric of our Army together, tightly interlacing duty and country. This core value remains at the heart of our shared professional identity as servants to the nation. Honor is the link between leadership and any organization that desires to sustain success. In the Army, no amount of ability matters without honor. Honor must come first and is the ultimate competitive advantage.

The highest military honor a nation can bestow is the 21-gun salute. The custom originates with the earliest warriors—it...

Honor is the foundation of the profession of arms. It is the unbreakable thread that holds the fabric of our Army together, tightly interlacing duty and country. This core value remains at the heart of our shared professional identity as servants to the nation. Honor is the link between leadership and any organization that desires to sustain success. In the Army, no amount of ability matters without honor. Honor must come first and is the ultimate competitive advantage.

The highest military honor a nation can bestow is the 21-gun salute. The custom originates with the earliest warriors—it...

Honor is the foundation of the profession of arms. It is the unbreakable thread that holds the fabric of our Army together, tightly interlacing duty and country. This core value remains at the heart of our shared professional identity as servants to the nation. Honor is the link between leadership and any organization that desires to sustain success. In the Army, no amount of ability matters without honor. Honor must come first and is the ultimate competitive advantage.

The highest military honor a nation can bestow is the 21-gun salute. The custom originates with the earliest warriors—it...

Tales of America’s First Armored Soldiers

Pershing’s Tankers: Personal Accounts of the AEF Tank Corps in World War I. Edited by Lawrence M. Kaplan. University Press of Kentucky (An AUSA Title). 312 pages. $50

By Edward G. Lengel

The officers and men of the U.S. Army Tank Corps knew they were making history as they deployed to the Western Front in the late summer of 1918. Although the British and French—and to a lesser extent the Germans—had been experimenting with armored vehicles in combat since 1916, Americans were new to mechanized warfare. Rather than dismiss tanks as aberrations, however...

A technology involving data transactions will fundamentally change how the U.S. military operates. It is a confusing concept, but one that should be embraced as it offers tremendous potential, specifically in logistics. It’s called blockchain technology, and it will change the way business is done across every industry—including supply chain management, agriculture, banking, transportation, education, cyber and more.

It will not only change industries, it will disrupt them. Just as businesses like Uber and Amazon disrupted markets, blockchain will disrupt markets yet again.

Imagine a military...

“The problem of military innovation is necessarily a problem of bureaucratic innovation,” Stephen Peter Rosen writes in Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military. While bureaucracies are not supposed to be good at innovation, Rosen points out, “Bureaucracies do innovate … even military ones, and the question becomes not whether but why and how they change.” He goes on to analyze military innovation in peacetime, wartime and in response to technology.

Even though today’s challenges don’t neatly fit into one of Rosen’s three categories, his book is a fascinating read for any...

U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Pamphlet 525-3-6: The U.S. Army Functional Concept for Movement and Maneuver 2020–2040, dated February 2017, describes a lethal future battlefield. This battlefield will include fighting in multiple domains to include land, air, maritime, space and cyberspace. Robotics on the ground and in the air will be common. Use of artificial intelligence will be exploited by friendly and threat forces. Transitioning between operations against multiple threats will be common and frequent. Newer technologies, such as advanced body armor and munitions, which can...

The recruiting environment for the U.S. Army is difficult and will become even more so. The problem resides in previous “truths” of Army recruiting relying on fit, motivated high school graduates looking to fill their need for patriotic service. They no longer produce the number of recruits the Army needs.

According to the U.S. Census, over the past 10 years there has been an 8 to 9 percent increase in the number of young adults living at home following high school graduation. The U.S. unemployment rate for those 25 years and older with a high school diploma is just over 4 percent—a 10-year low...

On July 11, 2014, battalions from Ukraine’s 24th and 72nd Mechanized Brigades assembled outside of the town of Zelenopillya, located about 5 miles from the Russian border. Having achieved success against the Russian-led separatist forces in the breakaway oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk (the Donbass) over the previous two months, they were assembling before what was planned to be a final push to the border to cut off the supply lines of the paramilitary forces from their Russian sponsors.

What started as a fairly normal day soon took an unexpected turn. It started with the buzzing of Russian...

On July 11, 2014, battalions from Ukraine’s 24th and 72nd Mechanized Brigades assembled outside of the town of Zelenopillya, located about 5 miles from the Russian border. Having achieved success against the Russian-led separatist forces in the breakaway oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk (the Donbass) over the previous two months, they were assembling before what was planned to be a final push to the border to cut off the supply lines of the paramilitary forces from their Russian sponsors.

What started as a fairly normal day soon took an unexpected turn. It started with the buzzing of Russian...

Hubris Can Undermine Even Elite Forces

Day of the Rangers: The Battle of Mogadishu 25 Years On. Leigh Neville. Osprey Publishing. 352 pages. $30

By Col. Gregory Fontenot, U.S. Army retired

Leigh Neville’s Day of the Rangers: The Battle of Mogadishu 25 Years On should be read widely. Neville has made a serious contribution to our understanding of that sad day in October 1993 in Somalia. He takes his title from the way the day is recalled in Mogadishu. It is appropriate as Neville’s narrative and those who participated reveal what was good as well as what went wrong when special operators and a...

America’s Army has entered an urgent and risky period of reform that Secretary of the Army Mark T. Esper calls “Army Renaissance.”

Speaking at his first Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting since he became the Army’s 23rd secretary, Esper said, “Seventeen consecutive years of irregular war, extended periods of budget uncertainty and an increasingly complex security environment have eroded our competitive edge. Our adversaries meanwhile have taken advantage of this to better their positions.”

The Army has been responding, he said. It has improved readiness, is increasing lethality and has...

Greetings from the Association of the United States Army (AUSA), our Army’s and our soldiers’ professional organization.

I recently had the honor of spending time with the Kansas City Chapter of the Association of the United States Army.

Retired Maj. Emma Toops, chapter president, and the Greater Kansas City Chapter were my hosts for a fun and event-filled two days in this wonderful mid-western Missouri city with many historic sites and a forward-thinking focus on the future.

One of the unique opportunities I had during my first few hours on the ground was to visit one of the chapter’s outreach...