It’s Time to Move the Army Ladder
Eric Wesley and Robert Simpson
January 26, 2021
If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.
– Steven Covey
For 20 years, the U.S. Army has fought militarily inferior enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq. The wars have been inconclusive. Now, the Army is embarking on an effort to compete with China and Russia — two advanced nuclear powers with the potential to compete toe to toe with the United States in almost every aspect of conflict. Unfortunately, absent fundamental changes the Army is likely to fail in this effort, as it has failed in every major modernization push since the “Big Five†effort of the mid-1970s.
The Army — the service that operates on the ground, where people live — has a substantial role to play in solving the problem of war against an adversary like China or Russia. It has taken several steps to modernize its forces, but it is not clear that it has done so effectively. To the contrary, the Army risks incrementally “managing†the problem one technological step at a time, rather than stepping back to ensure that it is tackling the right strategic problem and then making the more necessary bold moves — albeit not without risk — required to achieve an adequate long-term solution.
https://warontherocks.com/2021/01/its-time-to-move-the-army-ladder/
