"Ike vs Ridway" Topic

LESSONS FOR TODAY FROM THE PHILOSOPHICAL BATTLE BETWEEN TWO OF AMERICA'S GREATEST MILITARY LEADERS

"The impending national COVID-19 recovery effort, combined with an enormous and rising national debt, portends a years-long period of declining defense budgets. This will force a re-evaluation of priorities, to be sure, but it will also accelerate trends that have already begun to take shape. The Department of Defense is committed to the development and application of critical technology, for instance, and that is unlikely to change. In the age of high-technology war and multi-domain operations, the military is likely to forsake traditional force structure and conventional capability for modernization and new technology. The Marine Corps is already taking the lead on this approach, shedding tanks and infantry formations to prioritize new technology in a multi-domain fight. In the years ahead, defense officials will be tempted to reduce manned systems and conventional force structure. These changes will manifest as soon as the forthcoming budget proposal.

The Pentagon, promising a "dramatic shift" toward new capabilities, is likely to cut traditional land warfighting functions and formations in favor of research and development investments in space, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing in 2021 and beyond. In making significant cuts to budgets in the months ahead, defense officials would be wise to review another period in which emerging technology—in the form of nuclear weapons and airpower—held the allure of allowing the nation to win while reducing investment in the conventional force…"
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Amicalement
Armand

How is a nerd in an office, or an AI system going to defeat thousands of Jihadis with AKs and RPGs between you and an enemy capital city?

Nope, going to take a combined arms US Army division or two as well as a US Marine division to close with and destroy them, face to face, no matter what "tech" exists. This will be true for a while..just coz the US hasn't had to take a city for a while doesn't mean they won't have to in the future and I dread the day when they rely on computer viruses and hacking attacks to actually take one.

I don't think the US military will actually be as stupid as the author of this article however.

The Army also has a new Cyberwarfare Branch and understands the need for this type of warfare. It will be part of the combined arms team.

And yes I read about the USMC mothballing their M1s and cutting back on some of their Infantry units. Along with some MV-22s, IIRC. They still have LAVs and Amtracks. But they reduced those too.

I hope this new lighter concept works out. But I would not be surprised if down the road they go back to adding some of their M1s …

But as Ridgeway saw, all warfare will not involve nukes. It's just too messy on all levels. So Grunts, Tanks, etc., combined arms will still be useful. Unless you wanted to start & end WWIII …