Lessons Unlearned: The U.S. Army's Role in Creating the Forever Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by Pat Proctor

Author:Pat Proctor [Proctor, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: History, General, Military, United States, Strategy, Afghan War (2001-), Iraq War (2003-2011)
ISBN: 9780826274373
Google: P8HNDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Published: 2020-03-09T01:42:48+00:00

Before the Army could embark on finding the Army After Next, however, it had some housekeeping to do. The Joint Staff had published the Joint Vision 2010, and the Army needed to publish its own vision to communicate how it was nested within this joint concept. The result was Army Vision 2010, published in November 1996. Much of the document was a tortured attempt to graft the six things that the Army wanted to do (“Project the Force,” “Gain Information Dominance,” “Shape the Battlespace,” conduct “Decisive Operations,” “Protect the Force,” and “Sustain the Force”) onto the four core concepts of Joint Vision 2010 (“Full Dimension Protection,” “Dominant Maneuver,” “Focused Logistics,” and “Precision Engagement”).109 Nonetheless, Army Vision 2010 was still useful as a glimpse into the Army’s conception of the future of warfare.

To “Project the Force” the Army would have to be more deployable, configuring itself into “Modular Organization[s]” and using pre-positioned equipment and “Army War Reserve Prepositioned Stocks” to rapidly deploy “Joint, Lethal, Early Entry Forces . . . Directly to Combat.” Going forward the Army would launch invasions of another country directly from the United States, with no painful, six-month-long buildup of forces as had preceded the Gulf War. To achieve this, according to the explanation of the concept of “Decisive Operations,” the Army would have to “Mass Effects, Not Forces,” substituting “Information Dominance,” “Lethality at Extended Ranges,” “Precision Systems & Munitions,” and “Mobility, Speed, [and] Agility” for numbers. It also would have to “Shape the Battlespace” by “Dominat[ing an] Expanded Multidimensional Battlespace” with “Simultaneity” and “Precision Systems and Munitions.” Because the Army would have a much-diminished force, it would have to “Protect [that] Force” with “Speed, Agility, Long Range Weapons,” and “Real Time Intelligence” that would allow it to “Avoid Detection [and] Prevent Acquisition.” The Army After Next would also have “Improved Ballistic Protection” that would give it “Early Warning” to “Avert Hits.” Key to all of these concepts was to “Gain Information Dominance” through “Wireless Communications” and “Advanced Network Technology,” which would provide the Army with “Linked Strategic, Operational, and Tactical Sensors and [Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence].”110 In short, the Army After Next was the translation of the RMA to high-intensity conflict ground operations.

Army Vision 2010 did acknowledge some role for the Army in military operations other than war, but low-intensity conflict operations were little more than a footnote in this Army transformation vision of the future. Ultimately, these activities were simply other things that the Army did beside its primary function: war.111

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