Historical Echo: From Camp Pennsylvania to the Next War
The next war does not begin when the first round is fired. It begins the moment the warning order drops. In an era of long‑range fires, cyber intrusion, space denial, and ubiquitous sensing, a capable adversary can contest every mile between a motor pool in the continental United States and the objective area overseas. Deployment itself has become the opening battle, and for the U.S. Army, it may be the most decisive one.
War today may begin with a cyber alert, a port shutdown, a delayed train, a GPS outage, and a phone call to a soldier’s family. By the time the first shot is fired, the outcome may already be decided. In 2003, I deployed to war knowing the enemy could not touch us until we crossed the berm. That assumption shaped everything, including our timelines, our confidence, and our sense of control. If I were deploying today, I would assume the opposite: that the enemy is already in contact the moment the warning order drops. The uncomfortable truth is if we treat deployment as a logistics problem instead of a fight, the next war may be lost before it ever begins.
In January, 2003, my task force from the 3rd Infantry Division settled into Camp Pennsylvania on Kuwait’s northern plain. We acclimated to the desert, sorted load plans, rehearsed missions, and huddled over maps late into the night running MDMP. The days were long, dusty, and purposeful. We were building combat power deliberately, protected by time, space, and sanctuary. Railheads, ports, sealift, and commercial air moved men and machines without interference. Prepositioned stocks waited for us. Movement was a logistics problem; maneuver came later. That separation felt natural then, because we could afford it.
Looking back, that deployment now feels like a relic of another era. It was complex, but predictable. The enemy could not meaningfully touch us between home station and the line of departure. Today, that assumption is dangerous. If we plan future large‑scale combat operations as if they will resemble Kuwait in 2003, we are planning to fail.
Near‑peer adversaries can now contest deployment from the first hour. Cyber attacks can disrupt rail scheduling, fuel distribution, and port operations. Space denial can blind navigation and logistics visibility. Long‑range precision fires can hold ports and airfields at risk. Maritime harassment can slow or halt sealift. Information operations can target soldiers’ families and influencers back home while units are still packing conexes. The battlefield now extends from the motor pool to the objective area, and contact may begin long before a formation ever sees the enemy up close.
That reality demands a fundamental shift in how we think about power projection. Deployment is no longer a prelude to combat. It is combat.
This is not a theoretical concern. Recent operations offer glimpses of what the future demands. The joint operation in Venezuela to seize Nicolás Maduro was not a corps‑sized movement, but it demonstrated the DNA required for contested power projection: compressed planning, joint coordination and effects, deception, cyber shaping, rapid lodgment, and seamless transition from initial entry to decisive action. The scale was limited, but the logic scales if we design for it. The main lesson is that speed, ambiguity, and multidomain integration are not luxuries. They are prerequisites. The U.S. joint force did a great job at not only concealing its forces, but also concealing its intent right up to the decisive point.
Those same themes underpin my recent War on the Rocks article on mechanized warfare and decisive windows. Offensive mechanized operations are not obsolete; rather, they are conditional and still necessary to win wars. Persistent ISR, drones, precision fires, and electronic warfare have made the modern battlefield brutally transparent. Large armored formations only succeed when the joint force creates brief windows in which they can mass, breach, and exploit before dispersing again. When those windows open, mechanized forces remain the only tool capable of seizing ground at scale and turning opportunity into decision.
What closes those windows is enemy sensing and long‑range fires and effects. What opens them is deception, electronic warfare dominance, precision fires, rapid breaching, and tightly synchronized combined arms. Critically, that logic applies before first contact as well. The deployment that delivers mechanized combat power must arrive inside the window the joint force creates. If the force is delayed, exposed, or attrited en route, the window closes before the fight even begins.
In 2003, our deployment flowed over weeks. Today, warning may come with days or even hours. Planning cycles must compress accordingly. That compression cannot rely on heroics or caffeine. It requires routine use of AI‑enabled tools that fuse lift availability, adversary ISR patterns, cyber vulnerabilities, diplomatic constraints, and deception opportunities into viable options at the speed of relevance. Strategic movement can no longer assume a cushion of time. It must function under uncertainty, friction, and contact.
The way we move forces must change just as dramatically. Large, predictable railheads and single‑port departures are gifts to enemy sensors and long-range fires and effects. Dispersion is now protection. Deployment must fragment its signature from the outset, using multiple ports, modes, and commercial blends. Units must disaggregate without losing command and control, mass only at the last possible moment, and conceal intent even when concealment of presence is impossible. Against an adversary who can see deep and strike far, the surest way to survive deployment is to avoid looking like a deployment at all.
Protection must be continuous. From the first vehicle leaving the motor pool, deploying forces require layered air, maritime, space, cyber, and electronic warfare protection. The journey itself is a contested corridor. OPSEC briefings and camouflage are no longer sufficient. If we treat deployment as combat, then we must protect it like combat.
I often think back to those weeks at Camp Pennsylvania. We drew equipment, refined plans, rehearsed under the stars (not under drones), and rested. We worried about dust in air filters, not malware in rail signaling systems. We practiced casualty evacuation without drone swarms overhead. That time built confidence and cohesion we would need later in the Karbala Gap and at Saddam International Airport. It was likely the last time an American mechanized division enjoyed that level of sanctuary. We should not expect it again.
Preparing for the next war requires more than updated checklists. It requires a cultural and doctrinal shift. Deployment must be institutionalized as a joint, multidomain operation from the moment the warning order is issued through RSOI and beyond. Movement and maneuver are not separate phases divided by geography or time. They are a continuum. Every deployment plan must include deception, electronic warfare, counter‑ISR, and active defense from the start and not bolted on at the end.
Speed matters, but speed without resilience is fragility. Units will not have the luxury of rigid sequencing or weeks of staff preparation. Planning organizations must be able to reoptimize routes, lift, ports, and deception packages continuously as conditions change. Good decisions made quickly will matter more than perfect decisions made too late.
Once abroad, the Army must abandon the big‑camp mindset. Future RSOI will be expeditionary, mobile, and conducted under threat. Units must demonstrate they can stage, integrate, and prepare for combat while under contact before they are ever certified for offensive operations. The days of sprawling, easily targeted staging bases are over.
All of this serves a single operational purpose: creating and protecting the window for decisive mechanized action. Mechanized warfare still matters, but only if we can deliver it intact, on time, and under cover of joint effects. Logistics remains decisive. Autonomous resupply, modular repair, additive manufacturing, and contested‑logistics training are not just enablers—they are requirements. The window closes the moment fuel, ammunition, or recovery cannot keep pace.
The Venezuela operation showed what is possible when time is compressed, signatures are blurred, and domains are synchronized from home station to objective. Scale that to a division or corps, and the requirements become unmistakable. Pre‑baked deception, distributed ports, continuous cyber and electronic warfare, protected lift, and mobile RSOI are how mechanized power arrives inside the window before it slams shut.
In 2003, we had weeks to prepare before crossing the berm. In the next war, soldiers may deploy under contact and fight within the same 72 hours. Mechanized warfare still matters, but only if we can get it there. If we want to deter aggression, we must convince adversaries that U.S. Army combat power can appear where and when it chooses, despite their sensors and interference. That starts now in how we plan, train, equip, organize our formations, and think. Treat deployment as combat. Create the window and get through it quickly. Twenty‑three years ago at Camp Pennsylvania, we were preparing to begin a war. In the next one, the war begins when the order arrives.