According to a high-ranking Pentagon official, a proliferation of precision weapons and the spread of Russian styles of warfare in Ukraine may deprive the United states of the American way of war that we have grown accustomed to over the last three decades."
Robert Work, US Deputy Defense Secretary, presented his vision of ground warfare in a post-insurgency era, in which US adversaries cycle between using subterfuge tactics and high-tech precision artillery - "conventional weapons with near-zero miss", in his warning - to potentially overmatch the US military.
"I tell you now, our technological superiority is slipping. We see it every day," Work told the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
"It's certainly possible, even probable, that we will fight similar campaigns in the future," Work said in his prepared remarks, expressing a sentiment rarely voiced at senior levels in the Obama administration.
According to him, instead of battling insurgency as the USA did in Iraq or Afghanistan, future US ground opponents should look more like the Russian-backed conquest of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The US army should prepare for future wars that see foreign-backed adversaries launching subterfuge operations alongside highly precise artillery. Advanced missiles once only available to regional powers have dropped dramatically in price, converging with a spread in drone technology and sophisticated cyber knowledge, Robert Work said.
"We're not too far away from guided 50-caliber rounds," Work said.
The Pentagon official also said that US ground forces are underprepared for an enemy that matches an irregular force's paramilitary skills to a conventional force's high-tech weaponry.