Generals get real about missions, budget.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Defense Watch

The Army's 101st Airborne Division returned to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, in February after a one-year deployment in Afghanistan. By September, the division headquarters was again mobilizing for action in Monrovia, Liberia, to support international efforts to contain an Ebola pandemic.

"Going to Africa to fight Ebola was not on anyone's radar screen," says Brig. Gen. Ronald E "Ron" Lewis, who was deputy commander of the 101st until June, and is now the Army's top spokesman.

These short-notice assignments, he says, "illustrate how things are changing for the Army and the type of Army needed in the future."

Life in the "post-war" Army indeed will be different. It will not be one of dreary rotational deployments but one of multitasking and responding to unforeseen events.

Generals for years have organized, trained and equipped forces for "one big fight" even when the world's geopolitical currents have been clearly moving in a different direction.

Confronting today's problems and what might come next requires a different mindset, says Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odiemo. "In the future, we have to be able to handle multiple small-scale crises simultaneously. That's the way the world is developing. We have to be adaptable, get there quickly [and] understand the economic, cultural and political environments."

For the Army, the future is already here.

Within the last several months, in addition to the 101st deployment to Africa, the 1st Infantry Division headquarters was ordered to return to Iraq to join the campaign against the Islamic State. Soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division were on their way to Europe for training exercises requested by Poland and other Baltic nations. And Stryker units departed for Asia-Pacific to forge military relationships with countries in the region.

In the Army's newly rewritten doctrine, there is an attempt to infuse more reality and resist wishful thinking in planning for the future.

The Army Operating Concept, which looks at anticipated missions and needs for the decades from 2020 to 2040, bears the imprint of Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the director of the Army Capabilities and Integration Center under the Training and Doctrine Command.

McMaster has been both hero and enfant terrible during his storied Army career. Notably, he was passed over for promotion to brigadier general in 2006 despite a stellar resume. The speculation was that McMaster was held back because he spoke uncomfortable truths that unnerved the Army...