President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.
The inter-service biases we all hold have a tendency to distract us from seeing the forest for the trees. Carl Forsling’s analysis of the Army Vision reflects his biases in favor of the U.S. Marine Corps. A clear-eyed assessment of both the Army Vision Force 2025 and the Marine’s Expeditionary Force 21 makes it clear that both services’ vision of themselves and the future are actually complementary.
These two visions are a result of the last 15 years of fighting experience that the Army and Air Force have built. They are both highly divergent, and also complementary. The Army has taken the brunt of the changes that have occurred in the global civilization since the fall of the Soviet Union and is now learning to operate against connected and individually powerful enemies who operate in complex social and urban terrains. The Air Force has been finding its connection to its joint family, overcoming the hubris of early airpower advocates and finding a voice in the joint fight. The two services probably fight better together now than at any other time in the past. But can that hard won cooperation be sustained with such radically different visions of their futures?
