Army Makes Case For Funding Culture Skills Beyond COIN

As budgets tighten and the wars wind down, the Army is struggling to institutionalize the hard-won cultural skills it learned in Afghanistan and Iraq — and to make the case for their continued relevance and resourcing to an administration whose new strategic guidance swears off counterinsurgency. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey himself recently touted…

Tough Wargame Exposes Army Shortfalls

In the end, it was a near-run thing. The US-led coalition broke through to the refugee camps and began delivering aid. But their supply lines were stretched thin across land and sea, with an entire Army brigade embarked on rented cruise ships at one point. Ashore, the troops took heavy losses from local Islamic militants…

Army Scrambles To Play Catch-Up On AirSea Battle

US ARMY WAR COLLEGE: While fictional wars set in the world of 2020 rage on the floors below, up on the third floor of the War College, Army generals wrestled with the budget battles of today. Topic number one: how to beat – or join – the bandwagon that is AirSea Battle. “You’re a couple…

Islamic Militants Bloody US Forces In Big Army Wargame

US ARMY WAR COLLEGE: It’s a week into the war, and things are getting ugly. Fifty American and allied troops are dead, four hundred are wounded — some in city fighting against Islamic militants, some when the surprisingly sophisticated foe shot down their aircraft with shoulder-fired missiles and anti-helicopter mines. Now the US-led task force…

Army Wargame Wrestles With The World After Afghanistan

All this week, at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Army is conducting the latest iteration of its annual wargame. In the fictional future of the game, set in 2020, 120 players will wage a two-front war in the two regions that have come to dominate US strategy, with one scenario set in…