Soldiers who once practised dealing with terrorists' roadside bombs now drill in dodging enemy air strikes or chemical weapons
draws his finger down a list of his priorities for the Pentagon: hypersonics, directed energy, space, cyber, quantum science and autonomy. It could not be further from the dusty battlegrounds of the past 18 years. “When we talk about space, this is not designed for counter-terrorism,” he says. Mr Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, was propelled into the job of secretary of defence in January, having served as understudy to James Mattis for less than 18 months.
One priority is to re-tool the armed forces with the weapons they need. Mr Griffin paints a picture of each service wielding its own ultra-fast and long-range hypersonic missiles, fed information from a vast satellite network girdling the skies, all of it supported by a procurement process that can spit out high-tech weapons in years rather than decades.
The second priority is ensuring that the armed forces not only have the arms they need, but also the training and readiness to use them in the sort of fighting they would face in eastern Europe and the western Pacific. Disaster relief is nice, says one general, but “this is a warfighting operation.
A third focus is changing what the Pentagon actually does with its troops, planes and ships. “The basic concept”, says Mr Rood, “is that we’re going to give priority to the Indo-Pacific.” He points out that 2018 saw the longest absence of an aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf since 2001; two carriers were instead sent to the Pacific.
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