WASHINGTON — There’s no doubt in the Army’s Capability Integration Center chief’s mind that the Army must hone its close-combat skills, even as some have suggested America will fight future wars from a safe distance using mostly long-range strike weapons.
McMaster believes Army modernization is behind in areas like command and control and mission command capabilities as well as in armored combat vehicles. He\u2019s regularly advocated for a quicker effort to replace aging, but still capable, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Abrams Tanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
But for McMaster, all of this should be tied directly to what soldiers need to be effective in a fight even at the lowest echelons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While equipping the soldier doesn\u2019t give Congress and the American public a sexy vehicle, aircraft or weapon to admire, McMaster said modernization dollars need to be focused to the soldier at the squad level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His reasoning is that the Army will operate in what it calls “Anti-Access Area Denial” \u2013 or A2\/AD \u2013 environments and, in the future, all domains in which the US military fights will be contested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Army, he said, is focused on establishing the squad-level unit as a foundation of the “decisive force,” which means “the ability to give our infantry and small units the mobility, protection and lethality they need.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That could mean equipping the Army with the revolutionary XM25 precision-guided grenade launcher and other advanced weapons like the Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System (LMAMS), McMaster said. But it could also mean giving soldiers the ability to target, locate and get fires into the fight quickly, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Our enemies are moving into complex terrain and they are evading our long-range detection capabilities,” McMaster said. “The combination of those two things, the difficulty or targeting the enemy with long-range precision fires and the enemy\u2019s elusiveness means we are going to fight in close combat.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s no doubt in the Army\u2019s Capability Integration Center chief\u2019s mind that the Army must hone its close-combat skills, even as some have suggested America will fight future wars from a safe distance using mostly long-range strike weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":66808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":78,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[78,29,14],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3330],"class_list":["post-31073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ausa-digital-show-dailies","category-digital-show-dailies","category-land"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"JVU6JRWA6JFTPALHURDSKHT7SI","arc_canonical_url":"\/digital-show-dailies\/ausa\/2016\/09\/28\/mcmaster-army-must-prioritize-close-combat-capability\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n