Tom Clonan of The Irish Times has studied a document published by the US military that outlines its plans for the next 30-40 years. The Pentagon envisages a protracted struggle with radical Islam, accompanied by an ever increasing burden placed on resources, the liklihood of stiff competition with China and Russia, with the distinct possibility of resource wars. Additionally, the military concedes that it is dangerously overstretched.
This is hardly novel thinking on behalf of Washington. These trends in world politics appear to be rather obvious. How they plan to deal with them, however, is quite striking and innovative. As Clonan writes:
"The document reveals that new US tactical doctrine provides a template by which air, naval and field commanders will no longer just secure traditional strategic targets such as airspace, seaports and bridgeheads, but will, of necessity, also deploy and fight amongst and against the target population itself to win wars.
The document refers to this euphemistically as "commanders employing offensive, defensive and stability or civil support operations simultaneously".
The remainder of the document is devoted to describing in detail how a downsized all volunteer US military - numbering approximately one million soldiers, aircrew and sailors - could maintain an ever-present, international, offensive posture in many countries across many time-zones.
It describes how information communication technologies and digital technologies will create a new "networked" human soldier - the 'Future Force Warrior' - who will deploy among the target population and will operate simultaneously several remote, unmanned ground and air weapons systems."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment