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As the GWOT continues to wind down for a large swath of the US Military, the Special Operations community defense planners and military leaders are sure to have their eye on the next conflict that America could be facing.  While I’m the first to point out that there is a lot of hype going on inside the defense establishment (particularly when it comes to cyber attacks), it is certainly worth while not to let our guard down or let our Army go soft to peacetime.  Think about the post-Vietnam War years…

The above video shows the IDF training in some unconventional settings, including underground with Oxygen tanks to combat exposure to methane I would think.  Also, we see these soldiers conducting a demolition breach and then sending the robot in.  I see micro-UAVs being employed for this task in the very near future.

I also did some research on this subject when writing Reflexive Fire and found that when the enemy has dug into a mountain side with 2,000 or more feet of overburden (underground), that the compound is more of less impenetrable by US air power short of nuclear weapons.  For this reason, I suspect that hard target interdiction will be a task handled by SOCOM and specifically trained for.  Whoever we square off with in the coming decades, they are going to follow in the footsteps of the Viet Cong and the Taliban to avoid American air superiority.