Seductive Effect of an Expeditionary Mindset

<p>The U.S. Army is in the midst of undergoing a radical transformation adopting a capabilities-based and modular-type force structure to combat full spectrum conflict for future threats. The premise behind restructuring all U.S. Army forces in this manner is that threats will be ambiguous and they will no longer present a situation where US military forces would necessarily fight a single opponent in a conventional manner at a known location. Although there is no clear agreement about the likelihood of any specific threat most experts agree that the United States must transition from the focused strategy of containing a single statecentric threat to a broad effective strategy able to confront a wide range of potential conflicts from low to high intensity anywhere in the world. U.S. strategy has deliberately made a trade-off between considering where and who a specific threat may be to considering and classifying the various types of threats the United States may face. In order to create the appropriate force structure in the U.S. Army military planners have forecasted the common features of the full-spectrum of conflict and have proposed the development of various expeditionary capabilities that address future threats. Many contend that mobility is now the key ingredient in transitioning to this new capabilities-based strategy. Consequently U.S. Army planners have recently begun to focus on the common aspects of how U.S. forces will confront a wide variety of future threats and have identified specific equipment and procedures that will facilitate shaping and entry operations operating and maneuvering from strategic distances and intra-theater operational maneuver. This monograph will analyze three mobility technologies that address expeditionary goals and assess their contributions to worse case security issues and the most likely security issues. The specific technologies addresses in this paper are; the Future Combat System (FCS) t</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p>