National Defense Magazine:
After nearly two decades of fighting insurgents on the ground, the Army is turning its attention to threats from the air and beefing up its ability to fend off attacks.
The United States military has enjoyed air supremacy for many decades. Not a single American soldier has been killed by enemy aircraft since the Korean War, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville noted recently.
“We’ve been pretty uncontested except on the land … but as we go into the future we’re not sure that that’s the way it’s going to be,” he said at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Army Science and Technology Conference. “We believe we’ll be contested [from] the air … and so we have to develop the force and modernize the force so it can win on that battlefield.”
Brig. Gen. Randy McIntire, the head of the cross-functional team charged with spearheading the service’s efforts to modernize its air-and-missile defense systems, said the Army will have to rebuild its capabilities after many years of neglect and underfunding.
