Lt. Gen Guy Swan on Coronavirus and the Military
When you look at military or intelligence failures over the years, and the word failures can be a bit harsh, but when the US has failed to achieve a desired level of safety or security, it is true that the after action reports reflect a failure of imagination of one kind or another. What are some of the lessons learned as you’re sitting back and watching the almost unbelievable events develop day after day.
General Swan: You’re exactly right. This is about imagination and creativity, things that aren’t always associated with the armed forces. But that’s exactly what we need now in our schools, in our war colleges, we need to be challenging the status quo. Even in this modernization effort that’s underway in the US army and the other military services.
There is a recognition that we can’t go back to the way it was. We need to look forward. So, you’re seeing more realization that warfare is going to be, as we say, multi-domain. It’s now going to transcend just land and air and sea. It’s going to include space and cyber and whichever nation can harness all those domains and operate in all of them simultaneously and interdependently is going to have a great advantage over its adversaries. I think that’s where we need to be and a lot of that is going on right now. I think some would say we can’t go back, as we’ve done frequently in our history, to refight the last war.
Source: Coronavirus and the Military
