The U.S. Army’s primary mission is to “organize, train, and equip its forces to conduct . . . land combat.”¹ However, no military Service can ignore the “interconnectedness of sea and land.”² A majority of people on earth live on land masses near or surrounded by water.³ Further, recent incidents involving cutting undersea cables, which impact communications on land, and ground-based attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea highlight the domain overlap.⁴

In 1944, shortly after the successful invasion of Western Europe, the Army had a capability gap that threatened to slow the advance of forces deeper into Europe and potentially weaken the D-Day momentum enjoyed by Allied forces.¹ Our Army could not rapidly transit tanks through hedgerows, pervasive throughout Eastern France, without either canalizing forces to road networks or exposing the vulnerable tank underbelly to enemy forces.²

Captain (CPT) Doe, an Army officer stationed in Germany, meets his friends one day after work and drinks several beers before returning home on his bicycle. Someone informed him that the German legal limit of intoxication while operating a bicycle is much higher than that for automobiles, and he believes he is well under this limit.¹ The U.S. military police stop him at a random sobriety checkpoint and measure his blood alcohol level, which is .10 grams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood. This is over the American military limit for drunk driving under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Still, CPT Doe thinks nothing of the incident because he was operating a bicycle.

How should the United States respond if another country attempts to station a nuclear weapon in outer space? Although the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (OST) forbids stationing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in outer space, prohibition does not guarantee prevention.¹ Certain powerful states, possessing significant space and nuclear capabilities, habitually violate international law and have tested capabilities that probe the OST’s boundaries.

The wisdom in the statement attributed to Sun Tzu that “every battle is won before it is ever fought”¹ aptly applies to the modern conflict continuum. In the article Legal Considerations Before and During LSCOs,² the Office of Legal Counsel to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed how military lawyers should prepare to provide legal advice during large-scale combat operations (LSCOs). Specifically, we examined the expectations placed on operational attorneys in LSCOs and how to prepare for the challenges we might face.