Coming out of nearly a dozen years of infantry combat in the Middle East against insurgent forces, the Army is still heavily focused on infantry tactics operations, peacekeeping and special warfare.
The knowledge and skills needed to fight traditional US Army battles, with armor and mechanized infantry backed up by superior air support, in what used to be called Air Land Battle seem about as ancient as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
But, now, the Pentagon is starting to worry that the next fight might be against Russian forces in the Baltic or a conflict with the Iranians, backed up by an umbrella of high tech, Russian-made air defense systems and surface to surface missiles.
Where would the US Army stand in a slug fest against the Russian Army or the Iranians? To have an accurate answer, several tenets have to be examined: current tactical competence, capabilities, capacity, readiness and doctrine.
TACTICAL COMPETENCE
Retired US Army armor officer, Colonel Gian Gentile, recently wrote an eye opening article in Armor Magazine, titled "Death of the Armor Corps," which discusses the current tactical competence of officers and troopers from Armor branch. The article is shocking to say the least and quite frightening.
According to Gentile, "I have also heard reports from the field that the operational army has Armor (19K) Non Commissioned Officers as high as the rank of Staff Sergeant who have never qualified on a M1 Tank. When was the last time that a heavy Brigade Combat Team has done a combined arms, live fire exercise integrating all arms at Brigade level? Do the Armor, Artillery, and Infantry Branches even have the collective knowledge to know how to do one anymore? My own experience as a cavalry squadron commander returning from a combat deployment in Baghdad a few years ago mirrors these kinds of stories where I had lieutenants who had never qualified on a Bradley and a squadron that didn't know collectively anymore how to run a Bradley gunnery range."