Enhancing “lethality” has become a buzzword at the Pentagon and a mantra among force modernizers as the U.S. military gears up for great power competition. But the Defense Department needs to invest more in nonlethal capabilities to expand the range of options for commanders and troops when killing people isn’t the best course of action, the Director of the Joint Intermediate Force Capabilities Office said on October 20.
“Adversaries such as China and Russia are beating the United States in the ‘gray zone,’ a phase of competition below the threshold of war,” Marine Col. Wendell Leimbach Jr. said at the Future Force Capabilities Conference and Exhibition in Columbus, Georgia, which is hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association. That includes deploying paramilitary forces in places like Eastern Europe and the South China Sea.