This episode of All About the Base, a video series analyzing critical industrial base topics, examines the enduring importance of U.S. land power within an increasingly complex global security environment. Ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, rising tensions in the Asia-Pacific, and advances in emerging technologies have renewed debate over the future role of U.S. land power and raised fundamental questions about how land forces should be organized, employed, and resourced to support the joint force in the decades ahead. How should the United States integrate autonomy, AI, and advanced capabilities within its land forces to address security challenges of the future? What changes are needed to ensure that land forces maintain the right balance of readiness, modernization, leadership development, and force structure? And how can the United States strengthen partnerships, authorities, and resources to ensure land forces can deter and, if needed, prevail in future conflicts?
Host Dr. Jerry McGinn, Director of the Center for the Industrial Base, discussed these questions and more with the Honorable Mike Obadal, 36th Under Secretary of the Army; and the Honorable Ryan D. McCarthy, 24th Secretary of the U.S. Army, in a recent panel event at CSIS. As this episode highlights, their conversation reinforced that while the character of war is evolving, the nature of war fundamentally remains the pursuit of political aims through force. So long as governments exercise political authority over physical territory, land power will remain a decisive domain for protecting the population and projecting the power of the United States.
This conversation was part of a yearlong Future of Land Power study. The first working paper, The Value of U.S. Land Power, was published on July 14, 2026.
The All About the Base series is made possible by general funding to CSIS. The recorded panel event was made possible by the generous support of the Association of the United States Army.
