Everyone recognizes the biggest challenges facing the U.S. Army. They are the same across the services and are all related: Declining budgets require significant force structure cuts. At the same time, the U.S. military must still meet a broad range of missions, including deterring aggression, fighting major conventional conflicts, engaging with allies and partners, and securing the global commons through homeland defense and support to civil authorities. It must accomplish all of these missions while resetting the force, avoiding hollowness and investing in future capabilities, particularly those focused on maintaining a technological and operational edge in the high-end fight. For the Army, there is also the mission of completing the withdrawal from Afghanistan.These challenges would be enough for any organization to address. The Army, however, has five other challenges: strategic land power, envisioning future combat on land, joint countering of anti-access/area denial threats, balancing the active and reserve components, and investing in the soldier. These challenges go to the heart of the nature of military operations on land, which is what makes the Army unique among the services, and how a host of global trends—demographic, technological, political and even social—will impact the way states are able to employ military power in general and land power in particular.
American flags across the country had been lowered to half-staff to honor 13 American troops who were killed there by a suicide bomber. And at the front gate of Fort Carson, a group of women were setting out 13 pairs of boots and 13 cold Bud Lights as a memorial. The deployment is the latest in a long line for the unit, whose ranks are now made up largely of soldiers who were toddlers when the United States invaded. In their view, war in foreign lands is not a finite, momentous event but rather a continuing reality — a task that probably will always be there in need of volunteers.
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