Futures Seminar: The United States Army in 2025 and Beyond - Compendium of U.S. Army War College Papers, Volume 2 - 23 Topics Including Grand Strategy, Electromagnetic Spectrum, Drones, Training

This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. These papers represent 23 different recommendations by twenty-three different Army War College students. Some ideas and recommendations are specific and affect narrow slices of the Army; others are broad and span multiple services or components. Some are tactical; others strategic. Some very aspirational; others very practical. Regardless, they are the thoughts of strategic thinkers who have embraced their responsibility to help posture the enterprise for the future by thinking and writing about tough issues. The enterprise is better for their effort.
The pathway for the AY15 Seminar was built upon our exploration of a central idea – a guiding principle. Grounded by the framework provided in the October 2014 Army Operating Concept, the Seminar explored the fundamental question: “What kind of Army does the nation need in 2025 and beyond?” The Seminar moved along two separate but supporting lines. First, through classroom work the students gained an understanding the environment which will shape the Army of 2025 and beyond. The Seminar applied a variety of lens – political, military, fiscal, technological and structural – to add perspective to our vision and view. Second, the students played substantive roles in the Unified Quest 15 (UQ 15) series of workshops and wargames. UQ 15, the Army’s Title 10 wargame, gave the Seminar the opportunity to experiment with emerging concepts and thought and add a robust experience to their classroom education. The beneficial outcomes of the Seminar’s two lines of inquiry are this compendium of student papers, 23 Army War College graduates who are engaged and contributing to the future of the enterprise and, perhaps as importantly, hundreds of hours of thought, debate, discussion and reflection on the future Army – which also serves as the seed-corn for ideas and questions to be explored by Futures Seminar students and the Army in the years to come.

Using a Grand Strategy to Build an Army of the Future * The Future of Army Futures * Adapting to Strategic Trends: Reweighing the Army’s Three Components * A General Purpose Fighting Force: The Foundation to Win in the Complex World of the 21st Century * Preserving the U.S. Army’s Land Combat Power * The Army Service Component Command: Criticality to Force 2025 and Beyond * Establish Permanent Joint Land Component Headquarters: Reduce or Eliminate Service Component Headquarters * The Defense of Duffers Domain * The Army Platoon as a Joint Warfighting Combat Team * The Army Engineer Regiment and the Future * Mission Command and the Future Force * Single U.S. Defense Force in the Future * Section 2: Addressing Army Capabilities * Will Technology be an Advantage or a Vulnerability for the U.S. Army in 2025 * Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations * STEM Impact on Army Warfighting Challenges and Manpower * Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Come of Age: Military Implications * Seizing Objective 2040: Develop a Single Synthetic Training Environment * Simulation: The Remedy to Future Joint Force Readiness and Leader Development * Section 3: Addressing Army Personnel Development * Adaptive Leader Training: Finding the Sweet Spot * Talent Development for the Army of the Future * Human Capital and the Future Army: Balancing Talent and Resources * Talent Management for Mission Command of an Information Age Army * Reconsidering DOPMA: A 30-Year Officer Career Timeline