Back in the fight: divisions, corps, and armies in competition and conflict

[Peter1469]

Back in the fight: divisions, corps, and armies in competition and conflict

This article is from West Point's Modern War Institute. This article means a lot to me because when I joined the Army as an infantry soldier we were geared to fight at the division and higher level. 9-11 changed all that. So the skills that I grew up with were all but forgotten by the soldiers who joined after 9-11. Until recently when the Army realized they needed to focus on near-peer conflict (Russia and China). The big strategic change to the force structure after 9-11 was the creation of the brigade combat team. Basically a brigade plussed up with additional combat and support units to make the brigade a self sustaining entity like a division was. The BCT was the basic unit of organization and replaced the divisions who served that role previously.

[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.88)]In recent years [/COLOR]the United States military has shifted focus[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.88)] toward great-power competition against a variety of potential state and nonstate adversaries. For the US Army, specifically, this means that following decades of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is now posturing to compete and win against peer and near-peer opponents who feature advanced military capabilities designed to deny American influence and freedom of action. This shift in emphasis, which requires the service to rebuild and refine capabilities at theater army, field army, corps, and division echelons, is essential to its ability to achieve US objectives.

[/COLOR][COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.88)]The evolving anti-access and area denial capabilities of potential adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea present potent challenges to the Army’s ability to conduct expeditionary warfare at the operational level—where intermediate commands connect tactical actions to strategic aims. As belligerent nations strive to establish regional hegemony and undermine American credibility, their advances in establishing layered standoff and hybrid approaches have enabled marked increases in political and territorial aggression. The Army, [/COLOR]as America’s primary landpower institution[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.88)], has a responsibility to safeguard national interests against these threats in the land domain.

[/COLOR][COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.88)]However, alongside the Army’s increased focus on countering peer and near-peer adversaries is the continuing, and often overlapping, requirement to simultaneously combat a variety of nonstate and hybrid organizations. These adversaries, who may combine unconventional and conventional means to achieve outsized effect, often emerge as terrorist factions that employ asymmetric tactics and subversive informational strategies to unleash destabilizing political and ideological agendas. The Army performs a crucial role in defeating these organizations by enabling diverse coalitions to reduce and destroy enemy networks before they can strike the US homeland.

[/COLOR]Competition and Conflict

Read the rest of the article at the link.