23/2/2018 The War of the Future?

Picture Big Armies and Many Fronts - The New York Times

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U.S.

The War of the Future? Picture Big

Armies and Many Fronts
By HELENE COOPER JUNE 10, 2016
TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. — Kilo Company of the Third Battalion,
Second Marines was deep in a simulated firefight on a recent morning
here in the high California desert.

A group of Marines on the aptly named Machine Gun Hill unleashed

round after round of live fire as another group of Marines tried to seize
the surrounding valley from an imaginary enemy.

“They’re dug in,” shouted Brian Somers, the chief warrant officer of
Kilo Company, describing the “enemy” forces, supposedly supported by a
real state with real resources and who were theoretically returning fire.
“This is conventional warfare.”

After 15 years of fighting terrorists, the United States military is

learning how to fight big armies again.

From the Middle East to South Asia to Africa, American forces for
the past decade and a half have fought counterinsurgency and
counterterrorist campaigns — essentially smaller-scale guerrilla warfare

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23/2/2018 The War of the Future? Picture Big Armies and Many Fronts - The New York Times

— rather than the large land wars of the past. But Russia’s invasion of
Crimea, a surging China and an unpredictable North Korea have led
American military commanders to make sure soldiers, sailors, airmen
and Marines are trained in conventional warfare.

It is part of learning how to fight what the Pentagon calls the hybrid
wars of the future, envisioned as a mix of conventional battles,
insurgencies and cyberthreats.

“You’re looking at different level of capabilities when you’re talking about

a higher-end threat, and the United States Army hasn’t fought against
that type of enemy in a long time,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Army chief of
staff, said in an interview. “The way we train won’t be the same because
the environment now is totally different.”

Future wars, he said, “could have conventional forces, Special

Forces, guerrillas, terrorists, criminals all mixed together in a highly
complex terrain environment, with potentially high densities of civilians.”

In recent months the Army has held training exercises with

hundreds of troops, tanks, drones, missiles and armored vehicles
clashing against a supposed enemy force with similar abilities. The
exercises are far different from what the United States faced in
Afghanistan in 2001, when Qaeda insurgents and Taliban fighters
disappeared into the hills and mountains and pulled the American
military into a counterinsurgency guerrilla campaign that continues to
this day.

Iraq, which began in 2003 as a classic movement of state-versus-

state warfare with tanks and a big invading force, evolved into another
counterinsurgency campaign. Today American forces are fighting yet
another counterinsurgency against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

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23/2/2018 The War of the Future? Picture Big Armies and Many Fronts - The New York Times

“All of us, from the Army to the Navy to the Marine Corps, we fought
well and courageously for 15 years against a tough foe,” said Gen. Robert
B. Neller, the commandant of the Marine Corps. “But now we think about
who might the next fight be.”

It will probably be, he said, “somebody who’s got electronic warfare,

armored vehicles and the ability to maneuver.”

On the recent morning at Twentynine Palms, General Neller was

joined by Adm. John M. Richardson, the chief of naval operations, to
watch the training exercise — the first time a Navy chief had traveled to
the Marine base to do so. Defense officials say the changing nature of war
calls for closer cooperation between the services.

“When you look at this return of great power competition, one of the
things that we have to pay more attention to, think harder about, is not
only power projection, which is what we’ve been doing, but also sea
control,” Admiral Richardson said. “Naval combat at sea. Work our way,
fight our way in, from further out in the ocean.”

After the morning’s live-fire mortar pounding from Machine Gun

Hill, the two chiefs drove 30 minutes down the road to observe another
exercise, the retaking of an occupied urban area. Marines had built a
small city in the desert, complete with advertising for cellphone
companies on the sides of empty apartment buildings.

The town in the simulation looked straight out of Iraq, and could
have been Falluja or Ramadi, except without people. The buildings were
sand-colored, with a distinctive Iraqi look to them.

“What part of the world are we playing in?” General Neller asked.
“Are the role players speaking English?”

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23/2/2018 The War of the Future? Picture Big Armies and Many Fronts - The New York Times

The answer came back: “Arabic, sir.”

The interchange and the exercise showed that as American forces

learn conventional warfare, they continue to train in counterinsurgency
tactics to take on the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, the Taliban — or some
other group.

“We should not expect the Chinese and Russians to forgo

counterinsurgency warfare,” said Kathleen H. Hicks, the director of the
international security program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. Or, she said, “they may mass and stand and fight.”

Follow Helene Cooper on Twitter @helenecooper.

A version of this article appears in print on June 11, 2016, on Page A10 of the New York
edition with the headline: Wars of the Future? Picture Big Armies and Many Fronts.

© 2018 The New York Times Company

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