The D Brief: Army rethinks maneuver warfare; Osprey-inquest results; Farnborough wrap-up; Weekend reading; And a bit more.
The U.S. Army may need to de-emphasize maneuver warfare in the face of new weapons that will make tomorrow’s wars “increasingly lethal,” the service’s Training and Doctrine Command said in a report unpacked Thursday by Defense One’s Sam Skove.
The gist: TRADOC’s report specifically focuses on “large-scale combat operations,” a term of art used to refer to combat similar to that seen in World War II, rather than the insurgencies the Army has fought in recent decades.
The change is driven in part by the ubiquity of drones and other forms of sensors, which mean that enemies can find and hit U.S. troops with artillery, rockets, and missiles with greater precision than before, Skove writes. Drones are “transforming target acquisition and engagement,” according to the report, with long-range fires more lethal as a result.
One big takeaway: For future wars, “the U.S. will need to embrace a World War I-type ability to churn out munitions and soldiers,” Skove reports. Continue reading, here.
Update: A deadly Osprey crash that killed eight airmen in November off the coast of Japan was caused by the “catastrophic failure” of a prop-rotor gearbox and the pilot’s decision to keep flying despite warnings, the U.S. Air Force said this week.
This is the first time this specific part, called a “pinion gear,” has failed, the head of the Accident Investigation Board and commander of AFSOC, Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, told reporters Wednesday ahead of the investigation’s release. The service still doesn’t know why the part failed; but once it did, no human could have done anything to save the aircraft, Conley said.
Notable: The investigation also found the V-22 program office was at fault, because the program didn’t share information widely enough on the risks associated with parts in the gearbox. What to do from here? Defense One’s Audrey Decker explains.
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1945, the Potsdam Conference came to an end after two weeks of talks between Soviet, British, and American negotiators including Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Harry Truman.
For your ears only: Check out what one key analyst expects now that Ukraine has received a few F-16s from its European allies. Justin Bronk of the London-based Royal United Services Institute spoke with Dmitri Alperovitch Thursday to discuss the “challenges and opportunities presented by the introduction of this new weapons platform” on the Geopolitics Decanted podcast. Listen along, here.
Also: We reviewed some of the notable takeaways from this summer’s Farnborough International Airshow, an aerospace-themed expo held every two years in the UK. Dan Darling, vice president of market insights at Forecast International, a research and consulting firm owned by Defense One’s parent company, joined Defense One Radio this week to unpack developments in NATO’s search for a new helicopter, how Greece turned a corner to begin acquiring F-35 aircraft, and a bit more.
Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Looking for some weekend reading? The Heritage Institute has a new position paper arguing a few large points, including that the United States “must withhold forces from other theaters if it is to defend the U.S. homeland successfully and deter China,” and that “U.S. allies and partners must take primary responsibility for their own defense as the U.S. focuses on homeland defense and deterring China”. This latter point, the authors argue, is “an opportunity to strengthen America’s alliances and partnerships around the world.”
Separately, a coming acquisition “bow wave” is unaffordable, according to a recent report from the Stimson Center, co-written by Dan Grazier, late of the Project on Government Oversight. With the defense budget already at a post-WWII high, the Defense Department “has begun several new major weapons programs in recent years that threaten to send Pentagon budgets to unprecedented levels in the next decade and beyond,” Stimson’s report said. Details, here.
And there’s also the “Mandate for Leadership,” a 920-page work that is the most prominent product of Project 2025, the Heritage-helmed “presidential transition project.” Co-written by some 140 former Trump administration officials, the work has drawn so much fire that the GOP candidate has disavowed it and its director has stepped down. But project officials say their efforts to identify loyal Trump appointees for a second administration is continuing. The project’s military chapter was written by Christopher Miller, who was acting SecDef during Donald Trump’s final weeks in office.
Additional reading:
That’s it for us this week. Have a safe weekend, everyone, and we’ll be back again Monday!
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