Featured Articles

Redesigning the Battalion CP: Balancing Function and Survivability

Lt. Col. Aaron Childers and Maj. Joseph Jenkins

The U.S. Army has had to rethink its command posts (CPs), particularly at the battalion and brigade level, after lessons in Ukraine have indicated that CPs must be faster and leaner to survive on the modern battlefield. Unlike the global war on terrorism (GWOT), the modern battlefield has more advanced unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and precision fires, which have made the bigger legacy CPs a ripe target for enemy artillery. Lighter and leaner CPs are necessary for the survivability of both personnel and equipment and, simply put, to maintain tempo with the "speed of war."

Featured Articles

Platoon FSCX as Enabler Integration Training within IWTS — A Technique

Col. Trevor Voelkel, Lt. Col. Eric Evans, Maj. Craig Hymel, and Maj. Christopher Cummings

The Army Integrated Weapons Training Strategy (IWTS) provides a specified framework for conducting collective training and validating units as part of a progression of ever-larger echelons. While IWTS provides objective criteria for validating individual and squad-level proficiency prior to platoon collective training, it does not fully account for certain key systems, nor does it provide a readily available solution for tying these disparate training events together in support of platoon-level training.

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Rangers Lead the Way In LSCO: Applying the Principles of Patrolling to Large-Scale Combat Operations at NTC

Capt. Trent Frum, Master Sgt. Shane Dixon, Sgt. 1st Class Jared Stallone, Sgt. 1st Class Ricardo Esparza, and Sgt. 1st Class Antonio Rollins

According to Training Circular (TC) 3-21.76, Ranger Handbook, all patrols are governed by five principles: planning, reconnaissance, security, control, and common sense. While each principle in concept is basic, and each one is codified within existing Army publications, not enough Soldiers and leaders use them in training for large-scale combat operations (LSCO) at the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, CA.

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Commercial sUAS in Support of Targeting

Capt. Cody Rosenberg

In 2017, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant weaponized commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS); the first drones were outfitted with rudimentary systems that dropped grenades and 60mm mortars.1 Fast forward to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and we saw Azerbaijan successfully target Armenian armored forces using Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones. In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have seen extensive use of drones from both sides — at both the tactical and strategic level. These systems are, and will continue to be, a great threat on the modern battlefield.