After Nearly 15 Years of Nonstop Counterinsurgency Warfare, US Army May Have Been Overtaken by Other Countries In Conventional Military Capabilities

Spencer Ackerman

April 8, 2015

US military tactics falling behind those of adversaries, Pentagon official warns

A “proliferation of precision” weapons and the spread of styles of warfare displayed by Russia in Ukraine risks ending “the American way of war that we have grown accustomed to over the last three decades”, the Pentagon’s No 2 official warned on Wednesday.

In a speech likely to be hotly debated in defense circles, US deputy defense secretary Robert Work outlined a vision of ground warfare for what might be called a post-insurgency era, one in which US adversaries cycle between using subterfuge tactics and high-tech precision artillery – “conventional weapons with near-zero miss”, in his warning – to potentially overmatch the US military.

“I tell you now, our technological superiority is slipping. We see it every day,” Work told the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Work’s extended meditation on the future of ground warfare marks a departure for the Pentagon in the Barack Obama era, which has thus far forsworn large-scale land campaigns in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, to the point where some army officers have wondered if their reward for those grueling wars is irrelevance.