Tactics, tech and work of close combat experts is turning warfare ‘upside down’

[Peter1469]

Tactics, tech and work of close combat experts is turning warfare ‘upside down’

The Close Combat Lethality Task Force aims to give the squad leader the tools and authorities to dominate their battle-space.

The days are coming when a squad leader on a battlefield, far from headquarters and large supporting units, will pull out something that looks like a smartphone, open an app and push a button and something in front of his squad will explode.

That’s one piece of a large vision that is emerging from work being done by the Pentagon’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force, said one of its originators, retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales.

Cool, right?

“We used to believe that operational art drove tactical art,” Scales said. “We’re seeing now that it’s the opposite.”

The forum is heavy on technical advances both present and future, but the retired two-star shared more notes on how the way the United States and others fight will be “turned upside down” by a combination of technical and tactical.



“It’s not a technical problem, it’s an organizational and bureaucratic problem,” he said. “We have the tech to do what I’m describing with a quadcopter purchased at Walmart. The problem is having it integrated and immediately responsive.”



The smartphone bombing app was one of a number of examples of how small units, the size of either an Army or Marine squad, will influence operational and strategic levels of warfare from the tactical level.

Read the entire article at the link.

[Cletus]

Too much tech. Not enough basics.

[Peter1469]

Too much tech. Not enough basics.

I certainly agree that the basics have been lost. Land nav with a map and compass (and protractor) for infantry, and sailing by the stars for the Navy.

But the tech is good so long as it works.

If I were assaulting an enemy fortification I would much rather blow it via airstrike, than by assault.

[Cletus]

The best Field Manual ever written was FM 21-75, Combat Training of the Individual Soldier and Patrolling, not the 2017 version... the 1962 version.