By Robbin Laird

We are publishing four books this year which provide detailed assessments of the question of how did we get where we find ourselves today.

In addition, we are publishing assessments as well of aspects of shaping a way ahead, which provide a partial answer to how we leverage what we have in order to achieve what Western leaders determine we need to do in response to the rise of the multi-polar authoritarian dynamic.

There is one book which we are publishing that does both, even though it is rooted in explaining how we got to where we are in terms of the U.S. force structure.

That book is entitled: America, Global Military Competition, and Opportunities Lost: Reflections on the Work of Michael W. Wynne.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West believed in the ascendency of liberal democracies. The United States became the sole superpower or hyper power and Western Europe celebrated a “peace dividend” and dismantled much of their defense capability.

The focus of the West was not on the rise of the next round of great power competition, and the American leaders the focus was upon the dramatic events of September 11, 2001 and a priority on a war on global terrorism and then the George W. Bush launched an invasion of Iraq and a stepped up engagement in Afghanistan. President Obama would follow this with closing the Iraq phase and ramping up “the good war” in Afghanistan.

“Stability operations” rather than building and maintaining a force for great power competition was the order of the day and Europeans strengthened their “out of area” forces rather than direct defense forces.

But someone failed to send the memo to Beijing and Moscow that the great power completion was over. In this book, we look at the lost decade of the United States in focusing on the land wars at the expense of a focus on building an innovative new force for great power competition.

We do so by looking at the dramatic firing of the Chief of Staff of the USAF and the Secretary of the USAF in 2008 which marked a symbolic transition to shaping a military primary able to do counter-insurgency warfare.

In the book, we look at the work of Michael Wynne, the 21st Secretary of the USAF and members of his team, as they continued to highlight opportunities throughout this decade to do course correction. Fortunately, the F-35 global enterprise was woven throughout the decade, with little support from DoD or any president for that matter, and that thread has been part of the great power competition awakening and shaping of the forces needed to compete with China, Russia and the other players in the rise of multi-polar authoritarianism.

The “rules-based” order of the West is shrinking as the area influenced by mutl-polar authoritarian powers, groups and movements is expanding. “Stability operations” was an investment which only accelerated the new global order.

Now we have Trump 2.0 focused on dealing with the global shift and seeking ways to do so and moving the Western coalition as well to confront these challenges.

But Trump 2.0 faces major challenges in sorting through how to reshape how the United States shapes a force structure to work effectively in such a situation.

There are many essays in the Wynne book which both analyze how we got where we are but point to a way ahead. In fact, this is what is unique about Wynne’s work

One essay suggestive of the Wynne approach which was published on March 30, 2014 was entitled, “Existential Warfare: Preparing the USAF for the Decade Ahead” and contains thoughts on dealign with the seizure of Crimea and the need to re-focus the force.

That essay follows:

The Crimean crisis and the PRC pushing out in the Pacific are two reminders that the world is not of our own making. The defense of Europe and the Pacific requires capabilities to deter and prevail where global reach and dominance is a sine qua non of playing the game.

The Air Force of today has been shaped to reflect the requirement for more efficient conduct of the wars of the past decade, and not the next. Rather than looking at Putin’s actions as that of a romantic ideologue of the 19th century, they are part of the reality of the 21st century.

Though we all quest for the congenial society of the “global commons” which interestingly remains the quest of our State Department, others are muscling in on either territory or territorial waters desiring to restore empires of old or simply rewriting the map to their advantage. They are trying to shape a “global commons” to their advantage, not simply sending representatives to the UN to debate the subject.

The heritage of the USAF has not been to be in a holding pattern while others remake the map. The tradition has been to hold hostage any geographic location in the world to protect U.S. interests.

This was the mantra of General Curtis Lemay as he formed Strategic Air Command with its rigid rule set and later of President Ronald Reagan as he realized that weakness was what led to war, while strength underwrote deterrence.

As a nation we realized that this notion could lead to our providing an umbrella for growth around the world and under that umbrella governments would become more interested in growing their economies then growing their defenses. This was built on the ability of the U.S. to demonstrate leadership within which global military reach was a reality, not an aspiration.

The Challenge

The United States, for now, seems to have temporarily forgotten the history of the rise and fall of nations. Trips to the Mayan Villages or the Roman Ruins show that ferocity beats acquiescence in hoping for a better future.

It would appear that in the midst of the current administration’s desire to be liked around the world, it is finding that weakness is either tolerated or taken advantage of. Likes and dislikes factor into geo-politics as part of alliance structures, but for the U.S. to lead those alliances it needs to reinforce its support with effective military global reach.

First Georgia, and now Crimea, reminds us that the defense of Europe is not a done deal, but a continuing effort. If we are pivoting to the Pacific and part of the alliance structure to defend Europe, global reach by definition is crucial, not simply parking regional capabilities for wars against relatively backward militaries.

No matter what happens on the global stage, some have difficulty recognizing the reality of a brutal world.

We hear the echoes as Secretary of State Kerry calls global warming our greatest enemy and President Obama chides the Russian Government for not measuring up to his projected standards of appropriate conduct.

The question is clearly on the table for the Baltics and Poland: how will the U.S. and European nations actually move to defend them rapidly if necessary? In fact, shaping an exercise program to do so would make more sense than the U.S. subsidizing the Russian energy czars by giving Ukraine extra money to pay for the increased price of Russian imported natural gas.

Air Force Modernization to Enhance Global Reach

The Chief of Staff of the USAF, General Welsh, is seeing his modernization plan, one held on abeyance to pay in part for the Afghan war, a war we are now exiting or being tossed out of, facing significant difficulties in getting either budgets or strategic attention.

Strategic attention is in short supply in today’s Washington. The debates focus more on insider positioning than on dealing with the intrusions of global reality. It is not about playing on the chess board with pawns and no Queens.

General Welsh has called for a new strategic plan, the first in nine years, and asked that the theme be ‘Strategic Agility.’ Being one of the co-authors of the previous plan, I would suggest he focus on the ‘existential defense’ and global reach as the key themes underwriting the strategic necessity of his new strategic plan.

Having an Air Force which can operate globally and hold key adversaries at risk is not a nice to have luxury but a key underpinning of ensuring that the global commons in which we operates meets the U.S. and its allies interests, and not those of our adversaries.

As one CNO extolled, America needs to build a force prepared for the existential fight and all other wars are therefore a lesser-included case. This concept has been left fallow as we concluded that the existential case was far too low probability to fund and the weapons for the lesser-included wars far less expensive.

For the Air Force, this meant buying King Air platforms and for other services rules of engagement that promoted a fair fight and led to placing our warriors in legal limbo for decisions made under fire.

Is this the way we want to fight the existential fight?

Current events would argue for refocusing our attention on what are proper ways to modernize our military. In part it is about money, in part it is about the priorities within which money is to be spent. It is also about the opportunity to leverage what our allies are investing in and how to cross our modernization strategies with theirs.

It is not just about money, but it is about focusing on effective outcomes to force modernization.

I have written previously about the ‘Offensive Enterprise’ and the ‘Defensive Enterprise.’ We historically separated offense and defense whereby Batteries of Nike Missiles and F-106 Air Defenders served simply the defensive enterprise.

But America’s strength lies in the ‘Offensive Enterprise’ where we put our forces at risk, but the world understood the effectiveness of reprisals.

With the conjunction of the fifth generation revolution with new missile defense sensors and shooters a new approach is possible.

But first we must start with where we are. This is a position of structural weakness: in which leading from behind is confused with global leadership.

We are in a situation where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says he doesn’t want to put our Airman, Navy in this case, at risk and demurs on providing a Syrian ‘No Fly Zone’ but days later the Israelis show this as weakness in command as they fly in and destroy a questionable weapons depot.

We had capability but didn’t want to use it. This might be seen as a difference between existential war and wars of choice. It certainly was by many of our allies causing the Administration to rush to the podiums with support for treaty allies and force allocation decisions that are still being realized but continues to leave some with questions of intent.

Now the President asks NATO to beef up its defenses; and stand with America. What does that mean in the absence of a clear strategic plan and commitment to funding that plan?

Ending wars is one thing but failing to prepare for the ones already hitting you in the face is another. This is not about the future; it is about the reality of the present being recognized as an attempt by adversaries to shape the future.

In this continuing saga, the budget shrinks the Navy, collapses the Army and now has fostered a description of ‘Pipe Dreaming’ by the principal Airman.

What are we missing when assembling a deterrent force for an existential opponent or for the next war not of our choice?

We can take some guidance from our constitution, which has in the preamble ‘We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’

Given this charge, we need to alert our Congress, as did General George Washington, of the need to fund properly the requirements and get on with the business of defense. It would appear that Gen Welsh in declaring the current defense plan a ‘Pipe Dream’ is doing his best to alert the present-day Congress of this outcome.

While he is sounding the alarm, his investment decisions are becoming evident in what funding he has asked for. Though recognizing that the out years are swelling beyond what might be allowed, he is also following some internal dictums.

These are steering the Air Force structure away from non-stealthy platforms and towards straightforward air dominant platforms shaped by a global force of fifth generation aircraft. He has asked for investment funds for the sixth generation air dominance platform and is turning more and more into disciplinary constructs that while tolerant of social needs recognize that attention to duty is a primary requirement for service in a fighting force.

Gen. Welsh has stipulated his top three investments for the future in the Air Domain as the F-35, the Long Range Strike Platform and the Range extending Tanker. There are undoubtedly corollaries in the Space and Cyber Domain but these have been expressed often.

We could add a fourth, new weapons for the air fleet. Hypersonics appears to be a crucial and breakthrough technology, which can reshape the impact of weapons, but we are flying a fifth generation aircraft with third and fourth generation weapons.

We can get to a weapons revolution by leveraging the global enterprise of the F-35 and our allies building new weapons for the global fleet as well as leveraging allied investments as well. For example, our working relationship with Australia allows us to accelerate our joint hypersonics research both more cost effectively and in terms of capability as well.

Though it is hard to surprise your competitors in this period of sharp and intrusive cyber attacks, our airmen have always surprised with their training competence and so also in the future war, as our coalition members learn about the intrinsic value of the F-35 beyond its value as a fighter and understand through exercises and realities its value as a Battle Management Platform.

Without a doubt, as we embrace the concept of coalition warfare, we have built and are distributing an interoperable battle management platform that connects available shooters with available targets and with intense training will surprise even our own leadership with our collective capabilities.

By Murielle Delaporte

Conceived of as “a forum for an exchange between industries and specialized military units operating in a variety of environments ”, General Catar is delighted to “welcome this community to Grenoble, capital of the Alps and of the French Army Mountain Infantry Brigade, the 27th BIM”, and is confident in the success of the first edition of the International Mountain Troop Summit (SITM), which registered participation and volume of exhibitors and equipment manufacturers’ attendance are already in line with expectations.

The aim of this “world premiere” is “to get people to think about issues common to environments traditionally operating in silos, since mountains can be both cold and hot, and are considered by different nations as a frontier zone, a refuge zone or a strategic space for competition among powers ”.

For the commander of the 27th Mountain Infantry Brigade, the idea is to “create a First of Rope spirit that will enable allies to have each other’s back ”, while a strong international dynamic as well as numerous historic partnerships are already in place.

Over the course of the two-day event, military personnel – joint, combined and allied – and equipment manufacturers will be able to “discuss innovation and multiply lessons learned” keeping in mind “ the fundamentals of warfighting, i.e. moving, stationing and using weapons ”.

“With these three core functions,” explains General Catar, ”you cover all the consequences inflicted by these mountain and extreme-cold environments, (…) the most engaging environments that do require such exchange within our communities”.

A First Born From A Long History Of International Cooperation

The SITM responds to “the intuition and purpose of bringing together a community of military units operating in a variety of environments” and corresponding to very specific operational challenges: on the one hand, the mountains, where maneuvering in hot and cold environments requires constant adaptation of tactics and equipment; on the other, the extreme cold, reflecting current strategic challenges and threats in the Arctic zone as well as in NATO’s High North.

These concerns are reflected in the partnerships forged over the years by the 27th BIM, both bilaterally and multilaterally, thanks to its versatility and expertise in all these areas – a specificity shared only with Italy’s Taurinense Alpine Brigade. Both “mutually created by cross-threat in 1888 ” and now the largest were deployed on several occasions to Afghanistan as part of NATO’s war on terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the United States of America.

Defense Agreements and a French-style “Integrated Offer”

“The 27th Mountain Infantry Brigade is the Army brigade with the most active internationally, with a wide range of partners who come to us for our expertise, while our interest lies in maneuvering in other environments”, explains General Catar, underlining the brigade’s highly integrated structure and therefore the integrated offer it can propose to its foreign partners.

“Within the 27th BIM, we have a highly integrated structure, with a specialized school for training non-commissioned officers, specific gear, and an operational readiness training area spread across the entire Alpine arc, with firing ranges and military posts in the mountains.”

Such a full spectrum focus interests the partners of the 27th BIM, with whom France has signed defense agreements, such as the United Arab Emirates, with whom it has built a “new mountain capability” focused on border defense and the protection of mountain transit routes: ”we have been training the 11th Emirati Mountain Battalion for ten years, and we train together through exercises that progress from year to year. (…) As for us, with 35 degrees Celsius and high humidity, we are looking for a harder training environment than in other hot mountains.”

Bilateral cooperation plans of this kind also exist with Jordan and Morocco, with whom joint maneuvers are carried out, as well as exchanges on technical and tactical training and lessons learned.

Strategic Solidarity in the High North and Multilateral Exercises

Recent events have not only strengthened traditional partnerships between “local” mountain troops, but also led to the creation of new cooperative ventures within NATO and the European Union.

Since the early 2000’s, the 27th BIM has been involved in all NATO exercises, such as Nordic Response and Dynamic Front, as part of a “strategic solidarity approach in the High North” in order to ensure the rapid deployment of specialized units in this region under Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, as well as a deterrence approach to express “France’s military and diplomatic weight ”.

The French presence is thus recurrent in the Baltic States (currently Estonia), in Norway and, since its recent accession to NATO, in Finland. During Nordic Response 2024, the 7th BCA (“Bataillon de chasseurs alpins”) was integrated into a Norwegian battle group and brigade, with Finnish support for the very first time[1]:

“Thanks to the total defense concept characteristic of Scandinavian countries and Finland, the projected resources of French troops – snowmobiles and quads in particular – were supplemented by Finnish tracked vehicles for three weeks”, recalls the French brigade commander.

“We are also working with the Americans in Alaska, who recently re-established a complete Extreme Cold unit, as part of Exercise Nanook, which enables us to train in a “Very Extreme Cold” environment. (…) To be able to exert such a high level of stress on our bodies and gear in France, we need to be very high up in the mountains. The advantage of countries like Canada, Norway and Finland is that they offer more extensive cold periods in which to operate ,” explains General Catar.

The annual “Uppick” missions, which take place in Greenland in the form of three-week raids in complete autonomy, are part of this quest for training in areas of extreme cold. The ‘’Groupe militaire de haute montagne’’ and the ‘’Groupement commando de montagne’’ are traditionnally involved in these expeditions.

Sharing lessons learned has become automatic within the French Army, but also with Allies, notably through NATO’s Centers Of Excellence. Two of these are particularly relevant to the activities of the 27th BIM: the Mountain Warfare Centre of Excellence (MW COE) in Slovenia, and the Cold Weather Operations (CWO COE) in Norway.

Last fall, France also hosted the 2024 edition of the MTI forum – a European initiative dedicated to mountain combat and known as the “Mountain Training Initiative”, which includes a number of European partners, including non-NATO members such as Switzerland, which participates as an observer.

A New Forum For Military Readiness In Demanding Environments

An All-Terrain Approach

Few items of equipment are designed to withstand both hot and cold environments: on the contrary, know-how tends to be very different, due to the specific needs each mission requires: “In hot mountains, combat uniform will have to be breathable and light, whereas in cold mountains, it will have to be breathable and insulating. In cold environments, we need to play with combinations of equipment and technical layers of gear ”, explains General Catar.

Men do remain at the heart of any action, and they “do not really like extremes, whether hot or cold”, hence the importance of a know-how specific to each environment, a specificity shared by the French and Italian Brigades, both of which – it is useful to recall – have served in Afghanistan.

“The 27th BIM has been deployed in Afghanistan for winter mandates four years running; it has also served in the Sahel and is regularly deployed for the “Harpie Mission” [against illegal gold-panning] in French Guiana. (…) It is precisely this skillset necessary to handle both extremes of the thermometer that we thought interesting to bring to bear during this International Mountain Troops Summit. (…) It’s also a state of mind, in the sense that any demanding environment prepares you for commitments in any demanding environment, whatever it might be. The technical mastery of cold-weather equipment prepares you for operational readiness for any mission …”

The versatility of the 27th BIM is another specificity while “not everyone has an access pass to operate in extreme cold”, hence the need to disseminate certain know-how that has today become necessary for most conventional forces, especially as they have to train in places where temperatures are not necessarily very mild, even in France (Jura, for example).

This is already the case for mountain troops, who run “Cold Zone” training courses for all branches of the armed forces, enabling them to familiarize themselves with the first steps of life in sub-zero temperatures.

The 27th BIM also took part in having the rest of the armed forces adopt specific Cold Weather gear, as they have been called upon to reinforce NATO’s Eastern flank from 2022 onwards. The Brigade also drafted targeted documents on vehicle maintenance in cold environments for wider distribution.

Not only is certain equipment specific, but its maintenance is indeed also very specific: humidity is the number one enemy in cold zones, as it transforms into ice and cracks screens. Avoiding condensation and thermal shock are two of the principles you need to learn, both for yourself and for your equipment.

How can one avoid thermal shock to one’s equipment, when people need on the opposite to regenerate in the heat?

“You have your equipment sleep in the cold pit of your igloo at -5 or -6 degrees celsius, while you sleep on a small bench with a zero to 1 degree comfort…”, answers the general. Ditto: operating in total autonomy, including in terms of connectivity, requires specific know-how within the transmitter units.

Despite deployments to hot zones over the last few decades, the 27th BIM has been able to preserve its “moderate zone” skills thanks to its dedicated military school (the EMHM for “Ecole militaire de haute montagne”  and the GAM for “Groupement d’aguerrissement montagne”, as well as its “extreme cold” skills thanks to regular interactions with Scandinavian allies. One sector in which this know-how is particularly essential, albeit in need of constant improvement, concerns combat medical support and rescue teams:

“Performing an IV by -20 degrees Celsius is not a mass sport ”, General Catar points out. The French military health service (SSA for “service de santé des Armées”, which will be exhibiting at SITM) develops products specifically for this demanding environment.

An intrinsic joint and combined approach

The 27th BIM is characterized by a constant joint approach. It operates as tactical combined armed group (or task force) – GTIA in French for “Groupement Tactique Interarmes” – integrating numerous units, including, as fas as support is concerned, “the 511th Train Regiment, the 7th Material Regiment from Lyon, the 7th Armed Forces Medical Center, the Grenoble Army Commissariat and so on”.

The 4th BAC (Brigade Aéroterrestre) of the French Army Aviation – ALAT for “aviation légère de l’armée de Terre – is one of the units taking part in the “Mountain” training courses offered by the 27th BIM, which teach, among other things, logistics flows and energy management.

Military exchanges on extreme cold are also conducted on a joint basis, through seminars and in the field. Recent events in Ukraine and renewed interest in the key Northern sea lanes of communication, which are undergoing major changes as a result of climate change, have also been the catalyst for a new type of cooperation between the 27th BIM and the French Navy: expertise in the extreme cold of the marine environment, as well as the “ deployment of units for surveillance in the North Atlantic and the Arctic zone” are among the exchanges currently being developed between the French Army and Navy, while interoperability with the French Air Force and Space Force is ongoing, due to air transport and air delivery requirements.

Such an approach is logical in that “extreme cold affects all military capabilities”, hence the guideline adopted during the International Mountain Troops Summit covering “the basic axes of the combatant, i.e. moving, stationing and using weapons”. Mobility, support for the fighter, protection against the cold, regeneration and “ hot spots ”, visual and thermal camouflage (“ a body at 37 by -15 degrees celsius is noticeable… ”, General Catar points out), energy management, fluid management – “ which is very disturbed in such environments ” -, optics, connectivity (which requires a lot of energy), simulation for training and for assessing the impact of combat in cold environments on men and equipment…

These are just some of the areas where innovative solutions are welcome and needed to improve combat capabilities and ensure long-term survival in mountain and extreme-cold environments.

The length of stays in such harsh conditions does depend on the mission and can last from 3 to 4 days for commando operations to 3-week raids in total autonomy, “the diktat of weight, particularly for food, and energy autonomy” being one of the key constraints to manage.

The equipment manufacturers expected at SITM, as well as certain exhibitors such as the French Atomic Energy Commission (“Commissariat à l’énergie atomique”), with which the 27th BIM has a partnership, will cover all these fields of expertise.

But one thing which is interesting to stress out is the fact that there is not just one shade of cold or snow, and that equipment must be adapted to suit any type of geographical environment: “ an adaptation in terms of mobility is necessary for each deployment. (…) Tracked vehicles in the High North are designed for light, powdery snow, which has nothing in common with our much wetter snow in the Alps … ”.

For General Catar, the SITM offers a means of responding to all these issues and find solutions to compensate some of our capability gaps. He identifies two key ones for mountain troops:

“The first is combat intelligence in a maneuver environment. The second is support and integrated, forward-looking logistics: the ability to be well supported – supply, maintenance, medical support – is what gives the armed forces operational superiority by providing the ability to withstand extreme environments and deliver military effects over time. (…)

You can’t just ‘beat a dead caribou’, you have to plan ahead for this type of operation, which requires a great deal of planning ”, the Mountain Troops Commander concludes.

This article was first published on the International Mountain Troops Summit.

The summit recently concluded in Grenoble with the next summit to be held in 2027.

The International Mountain Troops Summit (SITM) is the meeting place for armies from all over the world who operate in extreme conditions, in mountainous environments and in freezing temperatures. It will be next held in Grenoble on 10 and 11 February 2027.