Perhaps Trump is reshaping the military in a necessary way

Ryan McCarthy, New Threats Require a New Army, NYTimes, May 13, 2025:

On the last day of April, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signed a memo that has the potential to unleash profound change in the Army. After decades of being organized, trained and equipped mainly for operations in Europe and the Middle East, the Army is sharpening its focus on deterring Chinese aggression in the Pacific, along with border security and missile defense.

The changes, which were recommended by the Army leadership, are sweeping. If carried out as envisioned, they will transform the kinds of weapons America uses, how they are bought and how fast they get into the hands of soldiers.

These changes reflect President Trump’s main national security priorities and have their roots in the outset of his previous term. At the time, the nation’s oldest military service was in powerful need of modernization. It needed to reflect a new national defense strategy after more than a decade and a half of preparing units for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I was the under secretary and later the secretary of the Army during Mr. Trump’s first term. Those kinds of missions shaped my own military experience. One month after the Sept. 11 attacks, I deployed with the 75th Ranger Regiment to Afghanistan for what at the time was considered to be operations to kill or capture leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It turned out to be the opening salvo of two decades of conflict.

But, McCarthy argues, those days are over. We need to prepare for different kinds of conflict. Steps were taken in that direction in the first Trump administration, but the Biden administration thought otherwise.

No longer. The recent plan will pour more resources into the kinds of weaponry more relevant to combat in the Asia-Pacific theater: air-and-missile defense, longer-range munitions and A.I.-enabled command and control networks to defend American forces.

Now, the Army Futures Command will merge its mission of tech innovation into a larger entity that also will provide training, creating an organization that will for the first time in any military service combine the two areas.

There's more at the link.