New Army command, focus a welcome strategy

For those horrified and disgusted by President Trump’s bizarre cozying up to Vladimir Putin this week at the Helsinki press conference — and that would appear to be most people — they perhaps can take some consolation in a new U.S. military initiative aimed at countering emerging threats from powers such as China and Russia.

The U.S. Army last week announced what it calls its most significant reorganization in decades aimed at ensuring the service is ready for future wars.

Gen. Mark Milley, the Army chief of staff, told reporters the military recognizes that China and Russia have improved their military capabilities while the U.S. has been fighting insurgents in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere for the past 15 years.

“We are in the middle of a change in the very character of war,” Milley said, adding that the Army had set aside major modernization programs for years in order to concentrate on current battles. “No one was solely dedicated to looking into the deep future and determining the implications to the United States Army and the conduct of ground combat of this changing character of war that we’re coming to grips with.”

The initiative will be directed from a new Army command center in Austin, Texas, and is expected to have a staff of about 500 people.

Tech-savvy Austin is about an hour’s drive from Fort Hood, one of the biggest military installations in the country, and University of Texas regents wisely voted to provide space for the command in university-owned buildings in Austin.

It’s also hard to imagine how the new initiative won’t rely heavily on the expertise and capabilities at another Army facility: White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley gave some perspective to the changing battlefield when he said the Army needs inroads with “young kids with laptops that hang out at Starbucks.”

Brainpower is important, but it won’t stand alone. We’ll always need the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way in actual combat. This is a smart investment to protect them, as well as our security, in a dangerous world.

Thankfully, in spite of that press conference, it does not appear the administration is about to run up the white flag anytime soon.