Publishing Disclaimer: In all of its publications and products, Military Review presents professional information. However, the views expressed therein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Army University, the Department of the Army, or any other agency of the U.S. government.

---

 

Prolonging the Fight

Enhancing Unit Survival Skills for the LSCO Environment

 

Capt. Denton Knight, U.S. Army

 

Download the PDF

 

In 1978, August Sabbe drowned following a fierce struggle with a Soviet KGB officer who intercepted him while he was fishing in Estonia’s Võhandu river.¹ Sabbe was the last Estonian Forest Brother to perish; a capstone to thirty-four years of Soviet resistance. A group of partisans from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the Forest Brothers opposed the Soviet occupation following World War II. Their ability to live off the land, navigate challenging terrain, and remain hidden was key to their resistance efforts, despite facing a much larger and better-equipped Soviet force. They built secret bunkers in the middle of swamps and secretly corresponded with networks of supporters across the country. While the Forest Brother core was militarily overwhelmed by the early 1950s, small pockets endured through the ensuing decades. Despite their capitulation, the spirit of these fighters emboldened Estonian resistance movements, and they became symbols of national pride when Estonia redeclared its independence in 1991. Their resolve went so far as to encourage the stirring 1989 Baltic Way, wherein more than two million people joined hands creating a human chain spanning 430 miles across all three Baltic States.² Without essential wilderness survival skills such as foraging, evading capture, and building shelters, however, Sabbe and the other Forest Brothers could never have sustained the fire that eventually led to independence.

Building on this legacy, the Estonian Defence Force was well qualified to partner with soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment (2-30 IN) “Wild Boars” at an Estonian survival course in the autumn of 2024. While deployed in support of Operations Northern Forest and Atlantic Resolve, 2-30 IN soldiers worked on developing their abilities to survive in austere environments. Furthermore, as a transformation-in-contact unit, 3rd Brigade (Mobile), 10th Mountain Division, has been testing new equipment and formations while innovating solutions to the large-scale combat operations (LSCO) threat. The lessons the Wild Boars learned while training in Finland, Estonia, and Germany can benefit the Army in preparing for LSCO.

Large-scale operations in the modern battlespace will increase the likelihood of facing an enemy with the aerial reconnaissance, firepower, and mass to isolate friendly companies or cut battalions off from brigade or division support. Furthermore, with the integration of infantry squad vehicles tested during transformation in contact, light infantry formations can more quickly seize terrain. For instance, during Combine Resolve 25-1 (a large multinational exercise), the battalion rapidly extended over twenty kilometers to take a vital piece of terrain during a counterattack. While the ability to strike fast is vital, it also led to several instances where companies and platoons were forced to fight alone and unafraid for hours or even days at a time. In a nonsimulated environment, those hours of isolated fight could extend to days or weeks. And in a scrappy real-world fight, soldiers will fight their utmost to survive. Every infantryman now needs to be prepared to survive in the wilderness and operate in remote locales. Yet, the force has never been less prepared with basic survival skills than it is now. Based on what we learned in Europe, I propose a pathway to transform survival training from a specialized skill for an elite few to a common competency across the force.

Why a Renewed Emphasis on Survival in the Twenty-First Century?

The U.S. Department of War’s capability to project power abroad is a logistical marvel. During the Global War on Terrorism’s span of two decades, the United States simultaneously supported counterinsurgency in the Philippines, conducted special operations in every theater of command, and deployed over two million troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Yet, in a contested LSCO environment, we cannot continue operating with the assumption of continued logistical dominance to support our troops. As part of preparing for LSCO, the Army updated Field Manual (FM) 4-0, Sustainment Operations, and stood up a new Contested Logistics Cross-Functional Team tasked with developing new forms of autonomous logistical delivery, data-based sustainment forecasting, and new power solutions.³ However, in addition to developing capacity for contesting logistics, the Army should simultaneously prepare soldiers to better fight and survive without the sustainment and support they became accustomed to during the more limited operations of the Global War on Terrorism.

In LSCO engagements against near-peer adversaries, there is a significant risk of disrupted supply lines or electronic warfare attacks that would force small units to operate semiautonomously from their higher headquarters. Therefore, units are rehearsing tactics, techniques, and procedures to plan, communicate, and fight while employing anything from the latest technological capabilities to the most limited analog techniques. Yet, while units are focusing on classic analog capabilities and enhancing survivability, there has not been a corresponding effort to ensure soldiers are prepared to simply survive. Survivability is a technical term defined in Army Technical Publication (ATP) 3-37.34, Survivability Operations, as “a quality or capability of military forces which permits them to avoid or withstand hostile actions or environmental conditions while retaining the ability to fulfill their primary mission.”⁴ In other words, survivability is about keeping units and their weapons effective and in the fight no matter what the enemy—or nature—throws at them. Survival on the other hand, as covered in ATP 3-50.21, Survival, explicitly concerns a lone soldier’s ability to endure when separated from their unit in remote or hostile territory.⁵ As the Wild Boars learned the hard way when cut off from company supply trains during Combine Resolve 25-1, those same individual survival skills could have enabled our teams, squads, and sections to remain warm, hydrated, and alive for more extended periods of time. Yet, the Army doctrine that teaches survivability, ATP 3-37.34, fails to mention wilderness survival skills even once in the entire publication. This is a glaring omission. Without survival proficiencies, our soldiers faced hypothermia and frostbite that made it impossible to fulfill their primary mission.

As explained by U.S. Army Infantry Branch historian David Stieghan, the natural composition of American society has changed significantly since World War II, our most recent highly contested LSCO engagement.⁶ Enough soldiers had prior outdoor experience from hunting and farming to be equipped to survive during that war, but today, survival skills are the exception rather than the norm. Only 17.34 percent of Americans now live in rural areas—and even those that did grow up in the countryside likely spent more time in schools than outside.⁷ Yet the Army still does not offer all soldiers basic wilderness survival training. Instead, it limits such training to advanced courses for special operations; Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE) School; and an ad hoc smattering of Jungle Warfare School, Ranger School, and the Military Mountaineering Course. This is not enough. If we want to be ready, the Army should incorporate basic survival skills training for every soldier and develop new ways to support unit survival.

The Constraints: Balancing Survival Capabilities against Soldier Load

The point of this article is not to argue every soldier needs to know skills like boiling animal rawhide to make a field expedient glue, trapping animals, or conducting extensive survival medicine in a combat environment.⁸ Rather than training complex techniques, the Army simply needs to train soldiers on the basic skills they require to continue fighting with supply or communication lines cut off at any echelon. Ukrainian experiences further indicate that units should be prepared to operate independently and without communications signals for up to forty-eight hours. The “survival rule of threes” works as a simple planning factor for leaders across echelons: individuals can live for approximately three minutes without air, three hours in extreme heat or cold, three days without water, and three weeks without food.⁹ All leaders should be familiar with these challenges and prepared to find ways to extend the duration of their fight, including adding new equipment to the soldier load.

From Tim O’Brien’s lyrical account of the soldier’s spiritual and physical load in The Things They Carried to recent technical analyses, much has been written acknowledging the impacts of excessive weight on soldier mobility and body mechanics.¹⁰ Based on 2-30 IN’s experience at the Joint Readiness Training Center in 2023, the battalion’s former command team, Lt. Col. Aaron Childers and Command Sgt. Maj. Joshua Yost, published a piece in the 2024 Infantry magazine on the risk of overloading soldiers and the need to tailor equipment packing lists, focus training, and conduct disciplined resupply in order to “fight light.”¹¹ Clearly, there is little appetite for adding numerous items to soldiers’ already extensive loads. However, by applying the principles of Childers and Yost’s article, it is possible to enhance survival capabilities without significant additional weight. Those principles imply tailoring survival equipment for each mission based on the climate and terrain at hand and distributing that load throughout the formation. Rather than aiming to enable every soldier to survive indefinitely while isolated, the goal for LSCO packing should focus on collectively enhancing survival and endurance at echelon.

Table 1 shows a recommended baseline approach to distributing survival gear across echelons in a manner that minimally impacts soldier burden. Combined, all the additional equipment would only add an average of one kilogram to each soldier’s rucksack or body. The chart breaks down possible additional equipment across the four SERE survival proficiencies of sustenance, protection, survival medicine, and navigation.¹² The training and equipment needed to enhance these proficiencies are discussed in the following sections. While medicine and navigation are partially trained, the Army largely operates off a faulty assumption of dominant sustainment and health service support to fulfill the sustenance and protection elements of survival. In an environment of contested logistics, developing self-sufficiency across all four competencies will be critical to developing the survivability and resiliency to continue the fight.

An Army Marches on Its Stomach—Supplementing Sustenance

Napoleon lost his army in 1812 despite tactical success in occupying Moscow because he could not sustain it through the long Russian winter.¹³ While it was common practice at the time to sustain troops by raiding the local populace while campaigning, the Russians effectively foiled his plan through abandoning and razing Moscow before its occupation, thereby ensuring his strategic defeat. In 2024, as a result of Ukrainian artillery offensives against their supply lines and having previously destroyed that region’s utility infrastructure, the Russian military was forced to ration drinking water for its own soldiers.¹⁴ Dehydration and waterborne disease infection rates spiked as soldiers drank from dirty water sources and puddles without proper filters. Both these failures highlight the importance of developing the capability to not only contest logistics but also filter and purify water and procure food from the land. Currently, the U.S. Army only plans for supply from the rear, failing to consider alternative sources of sustenance.

With recent technologies, procuring water from the natural environment has become easier than it once was. However, ease of extraction varies significantly by climate. While the swamps of Louisiana or Finnish arctic bogs only require a water purification system, harvesting water from arid environments can be difficult to impossible, particularly in a combat environment. It is better to focus here on contesting logistical supply and carrying ample water with soldiers or in vehicles. Meanwhile, arctic environs require melting and purification of water locked in the form of snow and ice but may not require filtration. Soldiers in the arctic are already experimenting with new methods of sustainment that include ways of heating bulk water storage systems in extreme cold weather or transporting ice and melting it before consumption.¹⁵

Warm environments with medium to heavy rainfall are among the most common climates soldiers are likely to face. In these climates, water is generally easily found, so the challenge becomes filtration and purification. Techniques for this should be echeloned by unit size and distributed to minimize soldier load. The Army is currently familiar with employing iodine purification tablets, but these only purify rather than filter dirty water and may miss heavy metals and toxins. Prolonged ingestion of iodine also risks incurring long-term health impacts such as thyroid disorders.¹⁶ While suitable in certain environments, they should be reserved as an emergency option carried at the platoon or squad levels. A far preferable approach to iodine would be to equip all soldiers with a quality water filtration bottle that can enable soldiers to safely filter water from any source.¹⁷ Although a filtration bottle weighs slightly more than a canteen, it offers significant flexibility to be refilled almost anywhere. This could be complemented by a gravity-fed water filtration bag that would be carried by the squad and hung on a tree at a patrol base or objective rally point to refill backpack bladders and supplementary bottles.¹⁸ Finally, there are commercially available devices and chemicals that can be used to purify five gallons of water at once.¹⁹ These could be held at the company command post and used to purify five gallon jugs before they are brought forward to platoons/squads. Although companies train to refill from a four-hundred-gallon water trailer, or “water buffalo,” the chlorine purifier and water jugs offer a feasible alternative for mass water resupply if the enemy has disrupted support from the combat trains command post or if terrain or mechanical issues render the water buffalo inoperable.

While approaches to water acquisition are numerous, there are fewer feasible alternatives for acquiring food. Thankfully, humans can survive much longer without adequate food than water. The Army’s current options for feeding troops are either logistically complex hot meals brought and prepared forward or MREs (meals, ready to eat). MREs weigh on average 750–1,000 grams and offer 1,250 kilocalories of nutrition (although they can be “field stripped” to weigh only 600–750 grams by removing excess packaging and the heater element).²⁰ The new Close Combat Assault Rations employs vacuum microwave drying and sonic compression to weigh only 950 grams per ration while providing 2,800 kilocalories to sustain a warfighter for at least twenty-four hours.²¹ Although these are already energy efficient sources, the Army could increase training on how to efficiently consume MREs and augment provision through the natural environment or civil partners.

While Ranger School forces soldiers to fight off only one or two MREs per day, and special operations courses emphasize utilizing every component of an MRE to maximize caloric nutrition, soldiers in basic training receive little instruction. Incorporating a simple MRE nutrition course and introducing MRE limitations to one field training exercise during basic training would provide initial exposure to such concepts. Of course, such rationing must be balanced against the dwindling energy capacity of soldiers to operate with fewer calories. Further MRE utilization refinement should take place within units during situational training exercises and at combat training centers.

Large- and mid-sized game animals are likely to flee a combat zone. Traps and fishing lines tend to have low success rates without deep knowledge of a specific environment, can indicate the unit’s presence in the area, and will not work if a unit must continue moving. Between pulling security, planning, maintaining weapons, and keeping a low signature in a sensor-laden battlespace, soldiers can hardly risk moving around and hunting extensively. However, equipping soldiers with at least one evasion chart per team with basic flora/fauna identification information could enable them to supplement diets whenever possible, even while moving. Practicing these skills while conducting joint training alongside partner forces would best develop hands-on scavenging experience through crosstraining with our allies.

Local nongovernmental organizations in Ukraine have been helping prepare meals for soldiers in the trenches to supplement formal provisions.²² Likewise, U.S. forces, through civil affairs or otherwise, should be prepared to partner with or pay local civilians for provisions. In the event of urban warfare, it becomes even more crucial to coordinate sustenance with local communities and civic groups.

Protection—Preserving Heat

Protection as a survival proficiency specifically focuses on protective clothing, equipment, shelter, and fire. Ultimately, environmental protection comes back to the rule of three—humans can only endure extreme cold or heat for approximately three hours. The Army already expends considerable energy and funds ensuring soldiers are well equipped for cold temperatures ranging from forty degrees above zero to minus sixty degrees Fahrenheit through the seven-layer Generation III Extended Cold Weather Clothing System (ECWCS).²³ While unit-level training on how to appropriately wear the ECWCS could be improved in many cases, the system largely works well (although issued equipment currently fails to offer properly water resistant but mid-insulation boots that avoid overheating the foot). In hot temperatures, the Army has further developed an extensive heat category scale regulating when soldiers can remove layers and safe work-rest ratios for staying cool.²⁴ Overall, however, the Army needs to expand training on fire starting, shelter building, and knot tying.

A small fire can boost morale, comfort, and survival for units operating independently for extended periods of time. Even apart from cooking food or boiling water, a small fire’s impact on soldier longevity through drying equipment and warming bodies should not be underestimated. Infantry units should train to dig Dakota fire holes: easily concealed, highly efficient pit fires that create minimal smoke and can be started in windy conditions. The Wild Boars tested the visibility of these fires using short-range drone thermal cameras and found their thermal signature to be minimal. While soldiers already have MRE matches, bringing one ferrocerium rod per team can be far more dependable as it can create sparks in wet, windy, and cold conditions. A lightweight wire saw can enhance quiet and quick acquisition of kindling. One hatchet per squad can aid with cutting firewood or preparing game animals or fish. Finally, units could return to carrying the M9 bayonet to serve as a survival knife. The seven-inch blade can be used to create tinder and kindling, prepare scavenged food, and serve for self-defense in close combat.

All these tools are also useful for creating basic shelters, or “hooches.” While employing the poncho to build a hooch is already a common practice, it should become standard practice that leaders intentionally train soldiers in how to build them. NCOs should emphasize techniques for preserving heat, keeping the hooches close to the ground, and making them quick to assemble and disassemble. Doing so also requires teaching basic knot tying. No soldier should graduate basic training without knowing the square knot, bowline, and clove hitch. Platoons should integrate regular knot-tying practice and teaching into their regular training plan while requiring more advanced knot skills for specialists and NCOs. Proficiency in these basic knots will serve soldiers well throughout their Army careers and support their ability to quickly set up tents and other basic shelters in cold conditions. Although training soldiers to stay warm is not complicated, for too long, we in the Army have allowed these basic skills to erode.

Survival Medicine, Navigation, and Battle Damage Assessment, Repair, and Recovery

Survival medicine. Compared to sustenance and protection, the Army’s current systems are more effective at training survival medicine and navigation, but these skills still require increased training time. According to ATP 3-50.21, survival medicine focuses on caring for isolated personnel across four fundamentals: prevention, recognition, mitigation, and treatment.²⁵ While soldiers already receive training on tactical combat casualty care, commanders should reemphasize this training and expand it to better prepare soldiers for the delayed evacuation times common in LSCO. It could also incorporate treatment of wilderness-related injuries such as snakebites. For major injuries, combat or wilderness related, the platoon medic should operate as the lead, focusing on mitigation measures to reduce the severity of an injury and prolong life until evacuation is possible (such as application of tourniquets to prevent extreme bleeding or an emergency blanket to treat hypothermia and shock). Rather than expecting to evacuate soldiers within the golden hour after injury, medics should prepare for delayed or compromised evacuations. Medics could also carry certain regionally aligned snake, spider, or scorpion antivenoms to apply immediately after recognition of a bite. Medics should be able to recognize symptoms of injuries such as hypothermia and train to use an evasion chart to identify both medicinal plants and dangerous insects and animals.

Prevention is based on common-sense actions that lower the risk of injuries, such as picking the safest point to cross a cold stream. Personal hygiene and sanitization are overlooked elements that greatly support prevention. To prevent minor illnesses and infections, all soldiers should carry hand sanitizer to clean minor wounds and prevent the spread of germs—both critical threats during survival situations. Teams should carry a bottle of disinfectant such as hydrogen peroxide to further prevent infection. Finally, emergency blankets are a lightweight but crucial tool to prevent hypothermia if a soldier succumbs to extreme cold or shock from a wound. Altogether, focusing medical efforts on preventing unnecessary infections/injuries and better preparing medics to triage and prolong life when cut off from supply lines are key to realigning medical training for the LSCO environment.

Navigation. The Army continues to require map and compass navigation skills even while training with advanced GPS-based technology and end-user devices running ATAK software.²⁶ Yet junior NCOs and soldiers express feeling underconfident and poorly trained in basic land navigation skills. Increasing practice opportunities for junior soldiers and prioritizing them in the unit training progression is vital to be prepared for the moment batteries die or those advanced systems break down.

Battle damage assessment, repair, and recovery. Finally, the Army should build vehicle maintenance competencies to increase mobile resiliency. During rotational training, the Wild Boars were reliant upon support vehicle recoveries and towing from the forward support company. Particularly with the fielding of the infantry squad vehicles across light infantry brigades, the Army should ensure soldiers are prepared to conduct minor repairs for their own vehicles.²⁷ At minimum, all soldiers should be ready to change a tire on their own; at best, a formalized basic mechanic’s course would be an asset to all infantry soldiers. Vehicle’s basic issue items need revision and review to ensure they are sufficient for such repairs. Taken together, these techniques can increase survivability despite equipment failures over a prolonged period.

Integrating Survival Training for Every Soldier

Many small-unit leaders have already begun incorporating survival training by identifying and empowering experts in their formations to teach survival skills and prepare soldiers to survive in the modern battlefield. Some junior leaders may have already invested in the survival equipment for their units to experiment with. The Transformation and Training Command (T2COM, formerly TRADOC) should explore options to formally incorporate unit survival training into doctrine and training. They could begin by updating the FMs and ATPs to provide ways and techniques for conducting survival operations as a team, squad, platoon, or company isolated from higher echelons of supply. The recent TRADOC G-2 publication, The Operational Environment 2024–2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations, discusses the role of contested logistics in LSCO but still does not address the corresponding need for enhanced survival skills to be self-sufficient.²⁸ Current doctrine and ATPs are limited to a discussion of survival in the context of individual soldier isolation. T2COM should further update FM 4-0 and ADP 3-37, Protection, to reflect changes needed within the protection and sustainment warfighting functions to incorporate alternative methods of procurement.²⁹ Units should plan to supplement medical and logistical support functions with natural resources or civil partners and prepare to provide life-support operations while isolated from higher echelons. Most importantly, ATP 3-37.34 should include a chapter on the survival techniques that could enable whole unit survivability while isolated.

These changes could be further operationalized by adding collective tasks at the company, platoon, and squad levels focused on continuing operations while isolated. To support units in training to accomplish these tasks, specific survival skills need to be integrated into the STP 21-1-SMCT, Soldier’s Manual of Common Tasks, Warrior Skills, across all military occupational specialties. Additional soldier training publications (STP) would outline the critical tasks demanded specific to each MOS and across more advanced skill levels for NCOs. Finally, those tasks need to be assigned a location of first instruction, whether in a T2COM institution or at an operational unit. Current collective tasks and supporting soldier tasks fail to meet the standards needed for self-sufficient operations. Table 2 details the current and limited breakdown of tasks relevant to unit survival as found in STP 21-1-SMCT and in certain MOS-specific STPs.³⁰ Only medical and navigation tasks are currently incorporated, and only partially, into the Army’s basic soldier training plans.

In contrast to this limited survival training, I propose additional standard unit collective tasks for infantry squads, platoons, and companies based on continuing operations when isolated from sustainment support. Collective tasks can incorporate the four survival functions of sustenance, protection, survival medicine, and navigation and should be trained as skill-level one warrior tasks. Table 3 proposes a tentative list of supporting tasks, suggesting where the Army could introduce training on those tasks, and recommending how frequently they should be retrained and for what skill level (skill level one corresponds to junior soldiers and skill levels two through five to NCOs). Further refinement and analysis could determine the precise time demand required for this additional training.

Time Constraints and Culture Change

Since a groundbreaking 2015 study found that units would need 258 more workdays per year to properly meet every training requirement, the Army has sought ways of eliminating training requirements.³¹ Criticisms such as these led to the recent update to Army Regulation 350-1, Army Training and Leader Development, that removes administrative training requirements and makes combat lifesaver, online SERE training, and law of war training optional, among others.³² While this elimination of training requirements appears to run counter to this article’s recommendations, there is an important distinction between the type of training being cut and what is proposed here. In place of an online SERE course guiding soldiers through survival basics, soldiers need to go out into the field and learn how to make a fire in the rain or conduct tactical combat casualty care in the middle of a swamp. Soldiers have personally voiced worries over their survival capabilities given the formation’s young age and inexperience with the outdoors. Anecdotally, soldiers are genuinely excited to teach, learn about, and train wilderness survival skills. Survival skills are useful throughout one’s life and are exactly the sort of abilities soldiers enter the military hoping to learn. Integrating survival training throughout the Army achieves Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll’s emphasis on getting soldiers “out in the world figuring out what we need to do as an Army” instead of watching PowerPoint presentations.³³

Rather than viewing these additional training opportunities as burdens, we in 2-30 IN are convinced that most leaders will relish the opportunity to hone skills and better prepare their teams for the next conflict. The U.S. Army’s transformation-in-contact effort aims to foster grounded and bottom-up feedback for LSCO preparedness and modernization. The Army should integrate survival skills training in a similar manner, allowing the tactical units to shape the development and training of the most relevant skills. Different units operating in different climates require variations in equipment and training opportunities. Army modernization efforts should explore options to address these challenges such as specifying flexible funds for purchasing innovative survival equipment, regionally aligning pre-positioned equipment stockpiles for climate specific equipment, or providing regional crosstraining options by unit (such as bringing trainers from the 11th Airborne Division to support other units’ arctic missions).

The Army is already seeking ways to transform our systems and operational approach today rather than waiting until the pain of conflict forces it upon us. Fielding and training on the latest communications technologies and unmanned aircraft systems are essential to this transformation. However, we must equally prioritize preserving old analog capabilities and survival skills. During the coming of age of the U.S. Army in the nineteenth century, small units fought independent skirmishes across the western frontier as they sought to define and defend the borders of their new country. Whatever the ethics of that expansion, this history demonstrates that before the U.S. Army operated with logistical dominance, it has an older legacy of nimble and autonomous warfighting. Shifting from the Army’s current dependence on long supply lines to one that continues to dominate sustainment while rebuilding self-reliance will require radical structural and cultural change. Yet as we observe in Ukraine today, LSCO can quickly stagnate into stalemate, and advanced electronic warfare can undermine our technological and logistical advantages. Only innovative units that draw on the old American way of fighting independently will be able to endure through to victory in the twenty-first century.

 

---

Notes

1. Dario Cavegn, ed., “Researchers Find Last Bunker of Alleged Last Forest Brother,” ERR News, 25 September 2018, https://news.err.ee/864092/researchers-find-last-bunker-of-alleged-last-forest-brother.
2. Inga Samoškaitė, “Thirty-Five Years Later, the Baltic Way Still Inspires the Fight for Freedom,” New Atlanticist (blog), Atlantic Council, 22 August 2024, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/thirty-five-years-later-the-baltic-way-still-inspires-the-fight-for-freedom/.
3. Jen Judson, “What Is the U.S. Army’s New Contested Logistics Team Working On?,” Defense News, 9 October 2023. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/10/09/what-is-the-us-armys-new-contested-logistics-team-working-on/; Field Manual (FM) 4-0, Sustainment Operations (U.S. Government Publishing Office [GPO], August 2024).
4. Army Technical Publication (ATP) 3-37.34, Survivability Operations (U.S. GPO, 2019), 1-1.
5. ATP 3-50.21, Survival (U.S. GPO, 2023), ix.
6. David S. Stieghan, interview by Denton Knight, Infantry Branch historian, U.S. Army Infantry School, Fort Moore, GA, 23 October 2024.
7. Aaron O’Neill, “Urbanization in the United States 1790 to 2050,” Statistica, 4 July 2024, https://www.statista.com/statistics/269967/urbanization-in-the-united-states/.
8. ATP 3-50.21, Survival.
9. “The Survival Rule of Threes,” Survival Nexus, accessed 18 September 2025, https://thesurvivalnexus.com/articles/the-survival-rule-of-threes.
10. Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (Houghton Mifflin, 1990).
11. Aaron Childers and Joshua Yost, “The Art and Science of ‘Fighting Light,’” Infantry (Fall 2024), https://www.lineofdeparture.army.mil/Journals/Infantry/Infantry-Fall-2024/Soldier-Load/.
12. Air Force Handbook 10-644, Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) Operations (Department of the Air Force, 27 March 2017), https://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_a3/publication/afh10-644/afh10-644.pdf.
13. Britannica, “French Invasion of Russia,” updated 4 April 2025, https://www.britannica.com/event/French-invasion-of-Russia.
14. Stavros Atlamazoglou. “Ukraine’s Military Deep Within Russia: Putin’s Troops Drink from Puddles,” The Buzz (blog), National Interest, 14 August 2024, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ukraines-military-deep-within-russia-putins-troops-drink-puddles-212323.
15. Nathan Bedel, “Water Mitigations in the Arctic: JPMRC 22 Offers Sustainment Lessons Learned,” U.S. Army, 14 December 2022, https://www.army.mil/article/261641/water_mitigations_in_the_arctic_jpmrc_22_offers_sustainment_lessons_learned.
16. Howard Backer and Jeffrey Hollowell, “Use of Iodine for Water Disinfection: Iodine Toxicity and Maximum Recommended Dose,” Environmental Health Perspectives 108, no. 8 (August 2000): 679–84, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1638306/.
17. For examples of water filtration bottles, see Ronald, “5 Best Filtered Water Bottles for Camping in 2025,” Outdoor Campside, 21 March 2025, https://outdoorcampside.com/best-filtered-water-bottles-for-camping/; Harry Graham, “Top 5 Best Filtered Water Bottles of 2025,” Top Product Review, 18 September 2025, https://thetopproductreview.com/best_filtered_water_bottle.html.
18. For examples of gravity water filters, see Brad McCartney, “Best Gravity Water Filters for Backpacking and Hiking 2025,” Bike Hike Safari, 17 March 2025, https://bikehikesafari.com/best-gravity-water-filter/.
19. See, for example, “Clean and Safe Drinking Water for Everyone, Everywhere,” H2GO Global, accessed 18 September 2025, https://h2go.global/.
20. “Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE),” Defense Logistics Agency, accessed 19 September 2025, https://www.dla.mil/Troop-Support/Subsistence/Operational-rations/MRE/.
21. “Close Combat Assault Ration,” Defense Logistics Agency, accessed 11 December 2025, https://www.dla.mil/Troop-Support/Subsistence/Operational-rations/Close-Combat-Assault-Ration/.
22. Joseph Roche, “In a Ukrainian Soldier’s Mess Tin: Balancing Abundance and Malnutrition on the Ukrainian Frontlines,” Euromaidan Press, 29 November 2023, https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/11/29/in-a-ukrainian-soldiers-mess-tin-balancing-abundance-and-malnutrition-on-the-ukrainian-frontlines/.
23. “Generation III Extended Cold Weather Clothing System (GEN III ECWCS),” Program Executive Office Soldier, accessed 19 September 2025, https://www.peosoldier.army.mil/Equipment/Equipment-Portfolio/Project-Manager-Soldier-Survivability-Portfolio/Generation-III-Extended-Cold-Weather-Clothing-System/.
24. U.S. Army Public Health Center, “Heat Illness Prevention Pocket Guide” (U.S. Army Public Health Center, January 2020), https://home.army.mil/wood/application/files/8416/2765/1794/Heat_Illness_Pocket_Guide.pdf.
25. ATP 3-50.21, Survival, 1-1.
26. “Android Tactical Assault Kit (also ATAK) … is a suite of software that provides geospatial information and allows user collaboration over geography.” “What Is TAK?,” CivTAC, accessed 19 September 2025, https://www.civtak.org/category/government/army/.
27. For more on battle damage assessment, repair, and recovery, see ATP 4-31, Ground Equipment Battle Damage Assessment, Repair, and Recovery (U.S. GPO, 2025).
28. Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Pamphlet 525-92, The Operational Environment 2024–2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations (TRADOC, 5 December 2024), 18.
29. FM 4-0, Sustainment Operations; ADP 3-37, Protection (U.S. GPO, 2014).
30. Soldier Training Publication (STP) 21-1-SMCT, Soldier’s Manual of Common Tasks, Warrior Skills, Level 1 (U.S. GPO, 2023), https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_c/ARN39553-STP_21-1-SMCT-000-WEB-1.pdf.
31. Crispin J. Burke, “No Time, Literally, for All Requirements,” Association of the United States Army, 4 April 2016, https://www.ausa.org/articles/no-time-literally-all-requirements.
32. Patty Nieberg, “Here Is the Training That the Army Says Is No Longer Mandatory,” Task & Purpose, 1 April 2025, https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-training-changes-optional/.
33. Chris Panella, “U.S. Army Wants More Troops Like Ones in Alaska, Secretary Says,” Business Insider, 26 April 2025, https://www.businessinsider.com/us-army-wants-more-troops-like-ones-in-alaska-secretary-2025-4.

 

 

 

 

Back to Top

January-February 2026