Return to training for non counterinsurgency warfare

LA Times:

Their parachutes were rigged. Their weapons were secured. Three days of food and supplies were strapped to their bodies.

In full combat gear, hundreds of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division dropped from the North Carolina sky at 23 feet per second. They hit the ground hard and scrambled to their feet, rifles ready.

It was only an exercise, but for paratroopers just back from Afghanistan and Iraq it was a back-to-the-future moment, part of a new training focus that looks beyond America's current counterinsurgency wars.

For the first time in years, Army troops are training for "full-spectrum operations" — mounting large strikes against all types of enemies, not just insurgents.

The paratroopers among the scrub oaks at Ft. Bragg didn't role-play at cajoling village elders, helping with bridge or road projects, or training local police and soldiers — their main duties in Afghanistan and Iraq before returning to the North Carolina base in recent weeks.

Instead, their mission was to seize a simulated overseas airfield and kill or drive off imaginary enemy forces.

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There is more.

The 82nd Airborne are elite troops, but they are essentially light infantry so it is hard to call their exercise "full spectrum." The training appears to be for more of the combat persisting warfare rather than the limited warfare of counterinsurgency where you are also protecting the people from enemy raids. Combat persisting warfare is where you close with and destroy the enemy and you stay in contact until he is destroyed. It is also called conventional warfare.