My husband worked extensively on the ARFORGEN model, but I never heard him mention how the forces restructuring and distributed ops might impact media perception of our actions and “involvement” overseas. Good article - will forward it on to the guys.

Interesting article. Hopefully the answer to your final question, "What will the new narrative be?", will not be "Whatever the media needs it to be to win an election."

Chester, this is a brilliant insight.

As we have argued at our blog, the trend at the U.S. military, including the ground forces, is for higher standards for personnel, higher levels of training, more responsibility at lower levels, and the replacement of quantity with elite quality. This trend goes exactly opposite to calls for a larger, mass-mobilized army, the kind covered by the old media narrative you describe.

At the same time, more than half of prevailing on the battlefield today is about winning the battle of perceptions, winning the "information war." Making it more difficult for the media to impose the old narrative on U.S. military operations increases the chance of success for those operations.

Your post showed how these two trends come together. By making its forces smaller and more elite, the U.S. military increases its chances of success in both the kinetic war and the information war.

Well done.

Great article! If the media had reported the current treasonous spin during the WW 11, they would have been afraid to return to the front. I have wonderd if there was no media coverage in Iraq, would all the bombings cease? Someday perhaps, the media can be hald accountable for their actions.

Good article. Grammatical point. Learn the difference between "less" and "fewer" and how to use them properly.

If US forces are increasingly deployed "in small numbers into remote places" where journalists can't or won't go, the MSM might assume that the military isn't doing anything at all. The narrative might then change to "we're spending too much on the military - cut their budget and spend the money on social programs instead".

I wonder if the new narrative will be something along the lines of the stories of the redcoats so popular in Victorian England; sort of Kipling updated.

There may be other factors that will have an effect on manpower and human deployment requirements check this out: http://www.inl.gov/adaptiverobotics/robotswarm/index.shtml

Technology may be moving a lot faster than many folks realize. Kurzweil might be right, i.e. we are close to the knee of an exponential growth curve.

"What will the new narrative be?"

It will be entirely different IF the embedded are required to go through extensive training far beyond what they get now. They will better understand those they live with and report on in far away places.

It's the totally-ignorant-of-the-military reporters we hear from who are causing the problems. Still wet behind the ears in everyday living to be reliable journalists, they can't report local news convincingly.

I recently (last week) finished a unique and quite massive narrative of WW1 called `The Great War'. It is written from the Australian perspective by an ex-journalist named Les Carlyon who also wrote the much acclaimed `Gallipoli'.

In `The Great War' Carlyon exposes the attempted interference of several journalists in strategy, tactics and even the appointment of senior officers – as a class they haven’t changed!

Interestingly Carlyon describes the first actions involving US forces in 1918. Two brigades of the recently arrived US expeditionary force had been placed under the command of General Sir John Monash, the Australian Corps Commander.

Monash’s Corps was wearing thin with many of his troops having been in constant action for three years from Gallipoli through, Fromelle, Pozieres, Bullecourt, Paschendale, Ypres, Hamel and Villers-Bretonneux.

Letters written by Australian soldiers who watched the US troops march through the torn countryside to their line of departure describe the `yanks’ as looking like we did three years ago, all keen for the `adventure’ of battle.

Patton was one of the US officers under Monash’s command who witnessed the Australian Corps attack the Germans at Hamel in the first successful combined arms attack with tanks, pre-planned artillery and rushing infantry.

Instead of the usual advance of 200 to 300 yards, Monash’s attack crushed the German divisions in front of him and penetrated 35 miles through the German lines into open country – the beginning of the end for the Kaiser.

History tells us Patton thought the use of armour in this way had a future!

I was filled with sadness at the waste documented in `The Great War’.

In a diversionary attack at Fromelle we lost over 5000 men in an hour or so from two brigades attacking across open ground with enfilading machine guns on both flanks.

At Pozieres the Australian 1st, 2nd and 4th Divisions suffered the loss of more than 23,000 men in five weeks.

In total from a volunteer force of 331,000 who served in Europe and the Middle East WW1 cost Australia over 60,000 killed in action with more than 166,000 battle casualties of which an additional 62,000 died during or on their return to Australia as a result of their injuries.

Australia’s population at the time was 5 million.