Military

Army begins training for the next war, which may be much different — and bigger

For more than a decade, troops here have been schooled in counterinsurgency. “Mission-specific” training, they call it: going house to house, busting down doors, rooting out terror cells, recognizing crude explosives. Now, after a pair of mission-specific wars, an Army in transition aims to get back to the future. The training needed to fight full-scale, more conventional battles has suffered, Army leaders contend. So Fort Riley is putting soldiers such as Staff Sgt. Gilbert Monroe back into big tanks and simulating wars on a scale grander than Iraq or Afghanistan.