However, although it was fully responsive to the call of futuristic thinkers for an information-age fighting force, it seemed from the beginning like an uneasy fit with the kind of warfare the Army was waging in Iraq and Afghanistan.
George Goodwin, who has written a book on Towton to coincide with the battle's 550th anniversary in 2011, reckons as many as 75, 000 men, perhaps 10% of the country's fighting-age population, took the field that day.