How the Army Plans for the Future

Rickey Smith has a cool job: he gets to help guess what the future holds and try to determine what the Army needs to meet whatever comes its way. Smith is director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center (Forward), an organization within the Training and Doctrine Command that peers into a crystal ball and conceptualizes everything from the equipment on a soldiers’ back, to the formations they use in battle, to the locations of the battles to come. Smith was tracking iPad precursors in the 1990s and remembers when soldiers trained to go around cities, not fight inside urban areas. As the Army looks past the war years, TRADOC is conjuring up the next challenges the force is likely to face.