22 March 2017

News Story: Large-scale land warfare focus of new Army operations field manual

By: Jen Judson

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- The Army’s newest capstone doctrine on how it fights in the present will focus on large-scale land warfare, Combined Arms Center commander Lt. Gen. Michael Lundy told Defense News.

The CAC, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is the proponent for modernizing the force to conduct Unified Land Operations, Combined Arms Operations and Mission Command, which produces doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities and policy -- known as the DOTMLPF-P.

Lundy teased out some of the major elements of the field manual's organization in an interview at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium last week as the center prepares to publish the field manual this fall.

“What we’ve been doing for the past 14 to 15 years -- even though we’ve been executing Unified Land Warfare -- over that time we haven’t been doing large-scale land warfare, so that is a very different focus than what we have,” Lundy said. 

The Army’s last field manual was released in 2008  that guides training, leader development and operations. It was focused on “Full Spectrum Operations” which describes the Army having to not only focus on defeating enemies but, at the same time, shape the situation through operations that stabilize the area. 

Potential adversaries are looking a lot more like peers with equal capabilities and the ability to deny and deter freedom of movement in various domains, which means the Army is going to have to change the way it has grown accustomed to fighting -- mainly counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Read the full story at DefenseNews