CIAO DATE: 05/2014
April 2014
Center for Strategic and International Studies
The U.S. Army is facing a time of great change. The security environment is becoming increasingly complex and uncertain, with defense challenges multiplying. At the same time, the Army is adjusting to rapidly diminishing operational demands, falling endstrength, reorganization, and tightening budgets. Despite this churn, the Army has continued its long-standing emphasis on the centrality of the soldier and squad as the cornerstone of future operations. Chiefs of staff going back decades or more have reiterated the theme that soldiers (and more recently, squads) remain the fundamental essence of the institution. Given these new realities, the CSIS Harold Brown Chair in Defense Policy Studies examined the current state of the soldier/squad system and how it might be best advanced in the face of constrained budgets. The effort was conducted under the rubric of the Ground Forces Dialogue, a Brown Chair effort aimed at facilitating a broad, sustained, web-based conversation about the future of U.S. ground forces.
Resource link: Realizing the Vision [PDF] - 3.6M