The Headwinds Looming for the U.S. Army
David Barno and Nora Bensahel
October 27, 2020
The U.S. Army is facing a stormy period that will be marked by wrenching change in the coming years. In the early weeks of the COVID-19 shutdown, we argued that the defense budget would decline as a result of the simultaneous health and economic crises facing the nation. Seven months later, the effects of the pandemic are already worse than we could have predicted, and show no signs of abating as the virus continues to spread. That means that the Pentagon needs to prepare for even more sharply reduced budgets than it might have expected even a short while ago. And while this will force all of the services to make painful choices, the Army will face the most daunting challenges of all.
The rise of China and the primacy of the Indo-Pacific as the U.S. military’s most important theater of operations upend the Army’s longstanding role in American defense. For the first time in decades, land will not be the most critical domain of warfare, and it may not even be the decisive one. In a future war with China, the air and sea domains, together with space and cyber, will define the shape of the conflict. As a force organized, trained, and equipped for land warfare, the U.S. Army clearly will be at a huge disadvantage in both the strategic arguments and budget fights to come. Its budget, end strength, and force structure will all face significant cuts, which could easily exceed the cuts of the sequestration era. In order to adapt successfully to these tectonic shifts, the Army will have to grapple with becoming a supporting service, the shift from maneuver to fires, the growing mission of homeland defense, and rebalancing active and reserve forces.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/10/the-headwinds-looming-for-the-u-s-army/
