For a generation, America fought wars with one enormous advantage: our troops could assemble, train, communicate, and deploy from a homeland the enemy could not seriously touch.
The Army is now warning that assumption is over.
Acting Army Chief of Staff General Christopher LaNeve says the next major conflict could begin against the United States long before American formations reach a foreign battlefield.
Cyberattacks could disrupt the power grid and transportation network. Long-range weapons and drones could threaten bases.
Communications and supply lines could be attacked while troops are still mobilizing at home.
The warning is the strategic problem behind the Army’s newly released fighting doctrine. It represents one of the most consequential shifts in American defense planning since the end of the Cold War.
Photo: US Air National Guard/Master Sergeant Sarah McClanahan, public domain; faithfully cropped and color-enhanced.
Speaking at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting, LaNeve made the stakes plain. Deterrence remains the goal, but the Army must be ready if an adversary decides to test the United States.
The Army’s official announcement says its new operational guidance, How the Army Fights, is built around four connected elements: Convergence, Strike, Close Battle, and Endurance.
Those words may sound like military doctrine, but the underlying message is simple. The Army expects future enemies to contest every stage of a war — including the part that happens inside the United States.
Convergence means combining intelligence, cyber capabilities, space assets, electronic warfare, fires, and maneuver so commanders can create an advantage faster than the enemy can react. Strike means hitting critical targets across distance and in multiple domains.
Close Battle is the brutal ground fight required to seize and hold terrain. Endurance is the ability to keep moving people, ammunition, fuel, data, and replacements when the enemy is actively trying to sever those lifelines.
That last point may be the one Americans understand least.
During the Global War on Terror, the United States generally operated from protected bases, enjoyed reliable communications, and moved supplies through networks insurgent groups could not meaningfully destroy. A war against a major power would be different.
Ports could be disrupted. Rail and highway systems could be targeted.
Satellites and communications links could be jammed. Civilian infrastructure that supports military mobilization could become part of the battlefield.
According to Fox News, LaNeve said U.S. power projection will be contested and that the assumptions built during two decades of counterterrorism operations no longer hold. The report also points to Chinese cyber positioning that American officials say could disrupt mobilization during a crisis.
That changes the meaning of homeland defense. Guarding the border and watching the skies are no longer enough.
The United States must protect the digital systems, communications networks, transportation hubs, industrial capacity, and military installations that make deployment possible in the first place.
The Army is already training for the fight it believes is coming. At Fort Irwin, armored brigades are practicing the combination of fires and maneuver central to the new doctrine.
The service is also accelerating counter-drone defenses. Small unmanned aircraft have transformed battlefields from Ukraine to the Middle East by making movement easier to detect and far cheaper to attack. A weapon that costs a few thousand dollars can force a military to spend vastly more protecting a base, a convoy, or a command post.
The homeland is exposed to the same technology. Drones near American installations, ports, power plants, or transportation hubs could be used for surveillance, sabotage, or direct attack.
The Army’s Task Force 401 is working on layered defenses meant to detect and defeat that threat before it reaches soldiers or critical infrastructure.
Biological danger is also returning to the training schedule. The service is adding biological-threat scenarios to combat exercises because a sophisticated enemy may try to weaken units, disrupt mobilization, or overwhelm civilian systems without firing a conventional missile.
National Defense reported that Army leaders are trying to absorb rapidly changing technology without forgetting the core fact of war: territory is ultimately controlled by people on the ground. Its account describes land power as indispensable even as autonomous systems and long-range precision weapons reshape the battlefield.
LaNeve calls the soldier the Army’s number-one platform. Artificial intelligence, robots, drones, sensors, and long-range fires can make units faster and more lethal.
They cannot replace the human judgment required when communications fail, plans collapse, civilians are present, and an enemy refuses to quit.
Military readiness cannot be reduced to the number of expensive systems in an inventory. A country that cannot produce ammunition, repair equipment, move forces, defend its networks, and sustain soldiers under attack does not have a credible war plan.
It has a collection of hardware.
LaNeve’s warning should therefore reach far beyond the Pentagon. Governors, utilities, railroads, ports, telecommunications companies, manufacturers, and local emergency planners all have a role in protecting the strategic base from which America projects power.
For too long, Washington acted as if oceans guaranteed sanctuary. China’s cyber operations, the spread of precision missiles, the explosion of cheap drones, and the dependence of modern logistics on vulnerable civilian networks have erased that comfort.
The answer is not panic. It is preparation.
A prepared America is harder to coerce. Resilient infrastructure makes an opening attack less useful.
Dispersed supplies make sabotage less decisive. Trained soldiers and reliable industrial capacity make a quick enemy victory less likely.
That is how readiness strengthens deterrence: it convinces an adversary that an attack will fail and the cost will be unbearable.
Americans should hear the warning for what it is. The next war may not wait for our troops to arrive overseas.
It could begin with an effort to stop them from ever leaving home.
The United States can no longer afford to treat the homeland as a rear area guaranteed to remain untouched. It is the foundation of American military power — and in a future conflict, it may be the enemy’s first target.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at 100 Percent Fed Up. View the original article here.
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[ H/T WLT Report ]
