Ground Combat

By David E. Johnson

David E. Johnson is a senior historian at the RAND Corporation.

After the United States emerged from the Vietnam War, it witnessed the events of the 1973 Yom Kippur War—a state-level conflict fought against Israel by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. That war underscored how far potential enemies had advanced in terms of weapons and tactics. The U.S. Army responded with a renewed focus on major combat operations, which entailed a combination of doctrine, training, and new weapon systems.

Those changes produced an efficient and lethal ground combat force, as Operation Desert Storm and initial combat operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom showed. But the focus was on state-level conflict. As such, these operations did not prepare the Army for the full spectrum of operations it has been called on to support.

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