Scales and Ollivant: Terrorist armies fight smarter and deadlier than ever

Military transformations can be hard to detect. They generally occur over decades, sometimes over generations. Soldiers are usually the first torecognize them, but for the perceptive, the signs of a sea change developing on today’s battlefields are there. Look carefully at media images of ground fighting across the Middle East, and you will notice that the bad guys are fighting differently than they have in the past.

Read the original article at the Washington Post!

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College. Douglas A. Ollivant is a fellow at the New America Foundation’s Future of War project.