Peer enemies would likely “step” toward land confrontation in any case as a number of remote or process-oriented offensive/defensive actions, from intelligence spoofing to cyber- and space-based attacks, would theoretically unfold before land forces engaged. And with so much at stake, nuclear deterrence would figure into the equation as well. Thus one can imagine a figuratively “empty” land battlefield – if only for a time.

“My guess is that should we engage in a war with a peer, we would find ways to engage with land forces,” Braun said. “They would find ways to engage us with land forces. I would agree that this scenario would require dispersed operations, and, if we massed at all, there would be decentralized execution wherein formations would probably mass fires more than mass physically. But to say that that would be an ‘empty battlefield’ would be a misnomer because war and battlefields are very human-dimension environments.”

As a leader of the Infantry School, Peterson is especially focused on the human dimension. Fort Benning is also home to the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE) commanded by Maj. Gen. Robert B. Brown. More than a year ago, the MCoE began seriously studying the sort of fights/threats the Army can expect in the future and how they affect its smaller formations. From its studies, the center has launched an initiative focused on the squad –“Squad: Foundation of the Decisive Force.”

As the primary element of battlefield control, the squad has both tactical and potentially strategic qualities. Along with the platoons and companies from which it derives, the squad is well suited to fight in a mobile, dispersed fashion. It is the unit the Army “most needs to develop an overmatch capability with,” Brown said. While the Army expects the squad to operate in a precision munitions-heavy environment, its emphasis is on a fight against a hybrid threat. The Army refers to this scenario as wide-area security (WAS).

“This [initiative] is a different vision for small units,” Peterson said. It may be in the way of acquisition or the capabilities we give the squad, but it’s about training and leader development.”

Indeed, leadership is one of five overmatch capabilities the squad must have, according to the MCoE. The others are mobility, force protection, power generation, and networked command/control. Together, they enable the squad not only to be more lethal but to operate more independently.

The consensus among Army leadership is that whether fighting a hybrid opponent in a WAS scenario or a peer, more akin to combined arms maneuver, the availability of precision munitions – and the ISR behind them – will encourage dispersion of small units that come together when tactics/opportunity allow.

“Because of the PGM [precision-guided munition] threat,” Peterson said, “squads may be more dispersed prior to the operation. If we know the enemy has that capability, we’d probably remain dispersed at certain points. But once we gain focus and energy toward a certain target, mass is still one of our principles of war. That’s hard, taking squads and companies and doing a midnight link-up to mass your energy and go on to your objective. With that in mind, I don’t think the battlefield is going to be empty. We might think it’s empty, but it’s actually pretty damn full. The enemy is undercover. We have to separate him from the people. We have to discover him.”

So squads must train accordingly, an imperative that has prompted discussion of the leader development necessary.

“There’s a psychological factor associated with this empty battlefield notion,” Braun said. “If you’re operating as a small unit, you don’t have that sense of security you have with a larger formation. You’re not in the proverbial phalanx.”

This psychology needs to be replicated in training, something that Braun said the Army’s reliance on simulation does not effectively produce.

“My personal opinion is that they’ve gone too far with this and it’s likely to backfire. In the end, the battlefield is not empty. The fact … there are still people fighting, getting wounded, dying remains. It’s bloody, it’s complex, all the things a video game is not. The notion of giving every soldier an avatar to play in these simulation pieces where their icon is defined by their PT [physical training] score, how they performed at the range, sounds cool, but I think we could easily go overboard thinking that’s a panacea for our training.”