The rise of long-range strike, drones, and cyber means that the old (safe) rear area is no more. Supply lines are now a front-line fight from start to finish. (Factories) Supply depots, railheads, ports, repair facilities, and fuel infrastructure are all high-priority targets. If an enemy cannot stop forward brigades, it will attempt to starve them. Analyses of modern logistics under fire emphasize that industrial capacity and resilient supply networks—not efficiency—determine strategic endurance.
An army for the future must be able to fight under conditions of intermittent resupply, contested and damaged infrastructure, disrupted and overloaded communications, and near-constant threats to supply lines. Planning and organization must prioritize resilience, redundancy, and regeneration rather than peacetime efficiency and timeliness.
Land warfare (now) favors armies that can fight dispersed but connected, decentralized but coordinated. Small units must be able to operate at will even when isolated or cut off. Junior leaders must be able to act without micromanagement. Commanders must know their communications will be lost and they must be able to exercise control while that loss is happening. Contemporary doctrinal analysis underscores exactly this requirement for decentralized command in contested environments.
This is a question of more than new radios or drones. It is...a cultural issue. The instinct for centralization, risk aversion, and procedural control stems from the experience of peacekeeping and counterinsurgency missions, not from the needs of a high-tech, fully contested battlespace. -Source
The way I read this is that when the US goes into its next "hot" war, the battlefield will extend from the front-lines to the transformer sitting on the power-pole outside your house or apartment block.
It will extend to the bridges crossing our rivers and the pipelines and refineries that refine and move oil and natural gas. The cell and fiber-optic networks will come under attack. Our marine ports and air transportation systems will come under attack.
Car-bombs and drive-by shootings will happen on a daily basis as high-value human targets are identified and "taken out". D.C. and Silicon Valley and Houston will become Moscow on steroids.
Today, if you don't know how to turn nutrient-dense ingredients like flour, lard, sugar, dried spaghetti rice and beans into edible food, you still have time to learn. When the supply chain takes a beating, among of the first things to fall off the back of the wagon will be bags-of-air (Doritos, potato chip, popped popcorn, breakfast cereals) and highly processed foods like hot-pockets, frozen pizzas and Jimmy Dean's sausage-egg croissants. I would also plan on bottled water imported from out-of-town soda-pop and iceberg lettuce to become rare/expensive. Plan accordingly.
A strength of our American culture is the lack of class structure. Surely they have constructed classes but there is mobility. In other places, Europe, everyone maintaines there "place". Saw it in my German in-laws. Heard about it from my father's experience in WWII. In a crunch a PFC would stand up and take the lead. Roger
ReplyDeleteWhile true in WW2 Rodger that a PFC could lead from the front.
ReplyDeleteI think Joe's comment is unlike so many of the Wars America has been in the next will look a lot more like Sherman's march across the South.
IE the battlefield includes our Walmart parking lots, our water, sewer and power grids and so on.
I'm inclined to think the unity of America at WAR of WW2 will not be repeated as Gimme Dats, undocumented immigrants (According to CNN) and various grifter class "legal immigrants" all scramble to GET THERES as supply chains and systems failures are occurring.
Somebody said something about "A house divided cannot stand" and that's been true long before Civil War 1 occurred in America.
Speaking of that, it's time for my generator testing @ 5 degrees F. Thanks Joe for the timely reminder.