French and Napoleonic Wars to World War I , the Army Corps was composed of 40 , 000 to 50 000 men . From 1916 to the Spanish War of 1936-1939 , 20 , 000 men composed the Infantry Division . From the start of World War II in 1939 to the peak of the Axis powers in 1942 , 15 , 000 men and 300 tanks composed the Panzer division . From 1943 to the end of the Cold War , the US Army 1943 Armoured Division influenced the structure of the NATO-type Armoured Division .
By extension , with regards to the enduring transformation of the militaries and armies since the end of the Cold War throughout the early 2000s , these numbers might have decreased again , with a Mechanised Infantry Brigade , up to 5 000 men , as the “ tactical pawn ”. Even the decision to have as the spearhead of NATO forces a Very High Readiness Joint Task Force , that will “ be able to deploy within a few days to respond to challenges that arise , particularly at the periphery of NATO ’ s territory ,” of the same size and volume , proves the relevance of this concept up to now . Therefore , with the VJTF , and now the NATO enhanced Forward Presence ( 4 Multinational Battlegroups ), this ultimate downsizing is deeply linked to the chronic disappearance of conscript armies , the decline of enrollment and the cuts in the army budget , helping put an end to a model that the Europeans themselves may now find obsolete .
The Constant Tactical Factor
The second tendency that underpins military evolutionism is Constant Tactical Factor . It can be defined as a changing dialectic between the tactics and the dominant tool in the society , just as there is always an interaction between the war phenomenon and civilization . Thus , man is always fighting man with the society ’ s dominant tool , which is in fact the best weapon of the moment , the one that enables to victory . That techno-centric view simply proves that there is always a response to the outbreak or to the use of a new weapon on the battlefield – even though there is always a time lag . However ,
since the Constant Tactical Factor depends on historical cycles , with each cycle linked to a specific type of weapon , one must consider that we are currently living in a new cycle that includes not only the atomic bomb but other major advancements in technology . That new cycle – could be symbolized potentially by the drone – causes a strategic paradigm shift and is increased and sped up by the society ’ s dominant tool . Let ’ s call it www or network ; it builds itself around the live broadcasting of information and around the logic of networks . It allows universal connectivity between men and it should establish – in the near future – a new fact for every single man living on Earth : in the end , every man has access to knowledge and techniques . From there , the whole continuum of weapons invented by men ( since they started to fight against their fellow man ) now coexists in the city , with a tremendous amount of redundancy , and with the probability that the world may be taken by surprise by the lethal or non-lethal use of its more innocuous tools .
Unfortunately , by merging the five trends developed within the Strategic Foresight Analysis it could be said that on the very edge of Constant Tactical Factor we are facing the dawn of a new generation of warfare that has not yet emerged in our mind and manuals .
Battlefield versus Theatre
Ultimately , the end of the Cold war can characterize the combination of intermingled tendencies . First of all , because the notion of the battlefield seems to have completely vanished . Air battles on a large scale like the Battle of Britain in 1940 have vanished . Giant naval combats opposing fleets of aircraft carriers like the Battle of Midway in 1942 have vanished . Disproportionate terrestrial conflicts opposing armoured armies like the Battle of Kursk in 1943 , or like the virtual exercises during which NATO troops were trained during the Cold War , have also vanished . The notion of a specified battlefield , looking through conflict through a soda straw , makes now no strategic sense at the present time . Thus we need to reintroduce the concept of theatre and the three levels of war to more efficiently conduct manoeuvre warfare .
Command and Control versus Command and Contact
To shape the future of land warfare we also need to grapple with the ever-increasing sizes of our current command and control nodes . The increasing size of the numbers in our command and control nodes appear to also to be linked to the law of small numbers . In fact , the “ reference combined tactical unit ” governs the evolution , but nowadays it is easy to observe a phenome-
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