The US Army released a new information paper on March 23 entitled “Army Multi-Domain Transformation: Ready to Win in Competition and Conflict,” on how and why the Army plans to transform itself to become “a multi-domain capable force that is able to dominate adversaries in sustained large-scale combat operations by 2035.” The new operational concepts described in the report appear to be mainly aimed at China, and the “Multi-Domain Task Force,” which was established to develop this concept, is based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state and is assigned to Indo-Pacific Command.
Though its basic principles could be employed anywhere, the new concept seems to be tailored towards fighting China from islands in the Western Pacific. “Although our Army still maintains overmatch, it is fleeting,” the paper claims, reports Defense News. “By 2040, China and Russia will have weaponized all instruments of national power to undermine the collective wills of the United States, Allies and partners, while simultaneously cultivating their own security partnerships. This will lead to an unstructured international environment where the line between conflict and peace is blurred,” the paper added. “As China and Russia continue to modernize their militaries, the Joint Force will find it increasingly difficult to deter their illicit and aggressive actions.” The Army identifies China as the country that poses the “most enduring strategic challenge” and is likely to reach “military parity” with the U.S. military by 2040.
As described by Breaking Defense, the new paper calls for the deployment of long-range missiles on islands to threaten targets deep within China’s ‘Anti-Access/Area Denial’ defenses. “Rather than deploy from the US in response to an attack – a deployment that enemy missiles, submarines, sabotage, and cyber warfare can disrupt – these forces will be pre-deployed in peacetime or rapidly deployed in crisis, setting up inside the areas the enemy hope to deny access to,” BD reports. “Once on the ground, these nimble, logistically lightweight units will avoid destruction by using cover, concealment, camouflage, decoys and frequent relocation.”
“The Army will provide [joint] combatant commanders with land forces that are persistent, cost effective, and survivable,” the paper says. “Technologically connected and geographically dispersed Army forces deployed across the land – whether archipelagic [i.e., islands] or continental – present a key operational problem for adversary sensing and targeting. Put simply, land forces are hard to kill.”
This Army concept, like the Defence Command Paper released by the UK Defense Ministry earlier this week, expects persistent confrontation with China and therefore intends to organize and posture Army forces so that they’re ready to attack China on a moment’s notice, instead of keeping them in the barracks when there isn’t a shooting war underway. It sounds very much like the hair trigger alert posture of US nuclear forces.
