Since the end of the Cold War, large-scale ground warfare seems to have gone away, the development of the US Army has lagged behind, and the status of the two major services in the US military has gradually increased. But even so, the U.S. Army remains one of the most powerful in the world. Modern informationized warfare has begun to gradually develop in the direction of unmanned and intelligent, and this has been reflected in the two major services of the United States, the sea and the air. Now, the major military reforms ushered in by the US Army are also in this direction. Such a change does not only refer to the innovation and development of weapons and equipment, but more importantly, the US military will build the army into an important part of its global operations, and the army will once again play a key role.
Over the past three decades, the main strategic purpose of the United States has been to seize and consolidate world leadership, maintaining its global strategic superiority by fighting terrorism and competing for the world's resources. At present, the strategic front of the US military has advanced from the depths of the ocean to the coastal waters, mainly because the United States is the only remaining superpower in the world after the end of the Cold War, and other countries have a huge gap between the military, economic, scientific and technological fields and the United States. In such competition or confrontation, although the US Army is also an indispensable presence, it is more decisive that the navy and air force take turns to strike.
Today, the world situation and regional pattern have undergone tremendous changes, and as Asia has gradually replaced Europe as the center of the world, the strength of rising powers in various fields has been rapidly improved, which has prompted the United States to shift its policy focus back to the mode of strategic competition of major powers. It is worth noting that the great power competition at this time is not exactly the same as the US-Soviet hegemony in the last century, and the comprehensive strategic confrontation between countries will be comprehensive and the most intense. To this end, the US military has put forward a new operational concept that can meet the competition between major powers in the new period, and in the newly proposed operational concept, the position and role of the US Army have become one level with the navy and air force, and sometimes even exceed the role of the navy and air force in specific tactics. This puts forward higher requirements for the development of the US Army, and is also an external requirement for the US Army in a critical period of historical transformation.
In the history of the U.S. Army, the most fateful exercise that can be called a fate-changing exercise is definitely the "Louisiana Exercise" during World War II, which turned the originally vulnerable U.S. Army into a tough army that swept through the Eurasian battlefield. Recently, the US Army is also staging a live-fire exercise called "Project Integration-2021", which is a verification of the integration of various high-tech technologies under research, which can be said to be a necessary exercise for the modernization and transformation of the US Army, and also a key exercise for transforming technological superiority into combat effectiveness. Not long ago, the U.S. Army put forward six modernization priorities, and this "Project Convergence-2021" exercise is a technical verification of the next generation of combat vehicle projects, in order to improve the U.S. Army's joint global command and control capabilities.
According to U.S. media, this year's exercise reached 7,000 people, 13 times more than last year, and as many as 110 new technologies need to be tested. Last year, the U.S. Army tested new technologies such as extended-range artillery, long-range precision strike missiles, unmanned aerial systems, and robotic combat vehicles, and this year, the exercise will test new technologies such as anti-jamming ground-to-air communication waveform technology, data compilation technology, "Japanese wind" high-altitude solar unmanned aerial vehicles, and medium and low orbit satellite communication technology. In addition, the exercise also integrated the US Army's integrated air defense and anti-missile combat command system, directed energy mobile short-range air defense system, the Air Force's F-35B fighter, B-1 bomber, the Navy's "Aegis" system, the "Standard-6" air defense missile system, and the Marine Corps' mission-oriented radar system into a unified network, making the Army also a key part of global integrated operations.
According to U.S. experts, the transformed U.S. Army will have the ability to break through the anti-access/area denial system established by strategic opponents, and the U.S. Army's artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomy technology, and general data architecture technologies will allow the Army to make rapid and accurate decisions in multiple combat areas. At the same time, the U.S. Army's joint global situational awareness capabilities, joint long-range precision strike capabilities, semi-self-help resupply capabilities, and "integrated visual enhancement system" air assault capabilities will be further enhanced, which is a necessary condition for the Army as part of the new concept of distributed maritime operations. In summary, the transformation of the US Army has been a certain distance from the armies of other countries, which of course has its own technical advantages, but the new operational concept of the US Army is also worthy of attention. The army created under this global technology integration system will exert great power in future wars, and will also change the traditional army's combat style in the past and become a new trend in the development of the armies of various countries in the future.