Army's future looks a lot like the present - Washington Times: "Generals are often accused of planning to fight the last war, but the Army is making a virtue of it in the service's latest projections about future needs and capabilities.
'The most effective way to build capabilities for the future, we concluded, was to make a grounded projection based on what we're doing today,' said Lt. Col. Mark Elfendahl of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, referring to the kind of counterinsurgency and humanitarian-relief operations in which the service is currently involved.
At a briefing for reporters Monday, Col. Elfendahl discussed the Army's recently published 'Operating Concept, 2016-2028,' which lays out the service's vision of how it will fight wars in coming years.
But this is a future that looks a lot like the present, and not by accident.
Col. Elfendahl said that, after the expensive failure of the Army's futuristic plans for generation-skipping technologies like the Future Combat System, the service has learned its lesson.
'Rather than trying to play Buck Rogers and jump out way into the future, [the Operating Concept] is, in a sense, bringing the future closer to us, closer to the present,' he said."
