"The MP Corps has a strong history evolving over the past five decades. We, as a corps, continue to transform our organizations and doctrine as we have in the past to support the Army in the active defense of the 1970s, the Air Land battle of the 1980s, and now the force-projection doctrine of the 1990s. Our five MP functions clearly articulate the diverse role the MP play across the full spectrum of military operations. We cannot bask in our successes, nor reflect or celebrate. Our charter is to continue our legacy of stellar performance and strive to perfect it."
"When the Army developed the Active Defense strategy in 1976, the US was facing the Cold War scenario of central Europe. Military strategy and doctrine were related to a single, focused threat that revolved around the countries in the Warsaw Pact. We were an outnumbered and technically inferior force facing an armor-dominated European battlefield. The MP Corps supported the Active Defense strategy by tailoring its forces to meet the threat. In 1982, when the AirLand Battle strategy was developed, US forces were still outnumbered, but were no longer technically inferior. Still threat-based and focused on a central European conflict, the AirLand Battle strategy used a relatively fixed framework suited to the echeloned attack of soviet-style forces. It delineated and clarified the levels of war; emphasized closed, concerted operations of airpower and ground forces; balanced the offense and the defense; and highlighted the synchronization of close, deep, and rear operations. MP doctrine kept pace with the Army's AirLand Battle strategy by supporting the battlefield commander through four basic missions—battlefield circulation and control, area security (AS), enemy prisoner of war (EPW), and law and order (L&O)."