Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
The Congo is ongoing.

The far more important question is 'When and where will be the next and who will be involved...'
My prediction is that the next war could be messy. Saying where or when is nigh impossible (who really would have said Afghanistan and Iraq before 9/11?), but describing what it could look like is.

To borrow a poorly understood doctrinal term, the next war will likely be full-spectrum, from high intensity division fights to low intensity cleaning. There isn't a war we could fight that won't require us to win the peace afterwards. Failure to win the peace, as in Iraq twice and Afghanistan once, will cost us dearly.

So this brings me to the original point of this post: we need to train an army prepared for high intensity conflict and low intensity conflict--and everything in between. We need leaders who are adaptable, but still knowledgeable in the core competencies of moving, shooting and communicating; then acting like diplomats, police and trainers.

Are these skills limited by our current wars? I don't think so. My platoon in Afghanistan had a hundred time more live fire training exercises than a Ranger Battalion had in the entire 90s. We called for fire, maneuvered, linked in with air support and then, when the fire fights were done, sat down and drank chai with the locals. Units in Afghanistan and Iraq aren't just a little better at fighting than units were in the 90s, they are ten times better. We have honed are skills in live fire training exercises called combat, and we are so much better for it.