Welcome to the first blog of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps Future Concepts Directorate (FCD). We are excited to introduce our directorate and the interesting topics FCD will be discussing over the next year and beyond.
The FCD is the JAG Corps’ think tank and is one of four directorates of the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center located on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Its mission is to serve as the JAG Corps’ focal point on the study of the law of future armed conflict by assessing the legal requirements of the future operational environment. It also reviews Army doctrine on behalf of the JAG Corps, and provides the intellectual foundation to design, develop, and field a globally responsive future JAG Corps.
FCD Mission
The FCD operates along three primary lines of effort: future conflict, doctrine, and strategic initiatives. First, it seeks to be the premier organization within the United States Government on the study of the law of future conflict. We think of this broadly as applying the law of armed conflict to the future operational environment, or LOAC-F. FCD partners or engages with any organization thinking about technology and its applications on the future battlefield. Second, FCD provides timely, ethical, responsive, and purposeful support and analysis to the Army’s doctrine development organizations. Third, FCD provides the same support to the JAG Corps’ own strategic initiatives in order to prepare its legal professionals to support future multi-domain operations.
Resources
Our goal is to make the FCD website a one stop shop for all matters pertaining to LOAC-F with news, analysis, and reports from our experts and partners. The site, found here, will contain links to relevant articles from the field and Academia, frequent blog posts, links to the FCD Podcast entitled “Battlefield NEXT, and news about technology, law, and future warfare.
We will also be highlighting interesting and useful information on The Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School’s Lifelong Learning website. Lifelong Learning can be found here and contains noteworthy news, articles, and resources that can be used for professional development.
The FCD will also be providing expanded reading lists that include examples of what our military leaders are reading about the military profession and strategic environment. However, we will also include other works that might seemingly be unrelated to our dual profession, but nevertheless offer different lenses through which we see issues. The objective in this respect is to spark creativity and inspiration in order to see the future more clearly. A few examples of works we are reading right now include Ghost Fleet by P.W. Singer and August Cole, The Light Brigade by Karmen Hurly, Army of None by Paul Scharre, and East West Street by Philippe Sands. We have also been listening to the Podcasts Revisionist History, Hardcore History, Bombshell, and the podcast of the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Regular Blog Posts
Substantive topics we will be attempting to tackle this year will be the use of artificial intelligence, offensive cyber operations, space operations including ground operations in space, autonomous weapons, ultrasonic effects, low yield tactical nuclear devices, emerging biological threats, deep fakes and their dangers to national security, private special operations capable organizations in light of Syria and Crimea, and effects of technology on future civilian populations.
Although there is much discussion about the use of emerging technology on the battlefield, many future conflicts will still bear similar characteristics as present-day conflicts in places like Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Accordingly, we will continue to explore chronic issues in warfare that will likely remain issues in the future including the use of explosive ordnance in urban areas as cities get larger and more densely populated, the continuing unlawful practice of t