During the Cold War, protracted peacetime competition, sporadically interrupted by cycles of intense combat, inspired a series of paradigm shifts in the US military’s approach to training. These gave birth to a wide range of training innovations, ranging from the US Navy’s Top Gun School, to the US Air Force’s Red Flag exercise, and later the US Army’s Combat Training Centers. A new level of stress and rigor was introduced through radical transformations of training regimens—helping to ensure American warfighters subsequent tactical and operational dominance.   

Today, the US requires a similar rethink in the way it trains its armed forces. The technological capabilities and asymmetric strategies of key potential adversaries risk largely invalidating the current American Way of War—a way of war that is largely predicated on power projection, the capacity to continuously operate from sanctuaries, and overwhelming technological superiority. To preserve American military superiority, the US must reimagine not only how it plans to fight, but also how it trains. Drawing on representatives from industry, the defense policy community, the services, and government, this panel describes how the US should reconceptualize training—innovating and accelerating into the future—towards “A New American Way of Training.”