An Army M109A6 Paladin armored howitzer under camouflage during wargames in Germany.
WASHINGTON: The future Army will fight as a tough, intractable
“inside force” — a term usually associated with Marines —
forward-deployed in adversaries’ backyards, says a new strategy paper from the service’s Chief of Staff. This approach, Gen. James McConville writes, has already shown promise in joint wargames.
In pop culture terms, the Army’s casting itself as Bruce Willis’s iconic action hero/survivor John McClane, in a new production you might call Die Hard In the Pacific.
Ranges of Chinese land-based missiles. (CSBA graphic; click to expand)
Released today, “Army Multi-Domain Transformation” calls for long-range, land-based missiles on West Pacific islands to threaten targets deep within China’s “Anti-Access/Area Denial” defenses.
(The approach could work in Eastern Europe as well, but the document
only mentions the Pacific by name). 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. 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.”
Trench warfare in World War I.
Are they really? The answer, historically, is yes. Even in the 1990s,
when American precision airstrikes seemed unstoppable, they struggled
to find and kill targets ranging from Iraq SCUD launchers to Serbian
tanks. Indeed, ground troops have survived by, well, going to ground –
digging in and hiding out – in the face of tremendous bombardments all
the way back to the trench warfare of the Western Front. Other famous
cases of survival under fire include the Germans at Monte Cassino, the
Japanese at Iwo Jima, and countless examples with the Viet Cong.
Now, that’s not the most encouraging model of survival under fire. (John McClane doesn’t particularly enjoy any of the Die Hard
movies, either). After all, American troops are used to being the ones
with overwhelming firepower. But they’ll increasingly have endure being
on the receiving end of precision-guided onslaughts,
as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea modernize their long-range
sensors, command networks, and missiles – anti-aircraft, anti-ship, and
anti-troop – into layered A2/AD defenses.
The goal of Anti-Access/Area Denial, as the name implies, is to make
it too deadly for American forces to operate inside a given area. The
goal of an American “inside force” is to establish itself inside
that that area before the shooting starts and dig in. That foothold
disrupts the enemy’s area-denial scheme, creating an opening in the
foe’s defenses into which US reinforcements can flow.
Marine Corps special operators.
In recent years, it’s been the Marine Corps who’ve called themselves
the “inside force,” emphasizing the agility and toughness of their
Marine Expeditionary Units deployed by ship and aircraft around the
world. Now the Army is making its bid to use the term – and while it
lacks the Marines’ expeditionary agility, its sheer size gives it the
edge in staying power. This paper is a shot across the Marines’ bow in
the already roiling budget wars.
Will this work? Well, the wargames are promising, the paper says.
“Large portions of the MDO [the Army’s Multi-Domain Operations concept]
have already been validated in Joint wargames,” it says. “Many of these
wargames have revealed the utility of ‘inside forces’ postured before
conflict begins.”
The Army is particularly eager to show its approach – and its budget –
will really matter in a Pacific war with China, historically considered
a Navy-first affair.
“In INDOPACOM [Indo-Pacific Command],” the paper says, “relatively
light multi-domain forces, capable of engaging targets in all domains at
operational and even strategic ranges will be prepositioned in parts of
the first island chain [which runs from Indonesia through the
Philippines to Japan – ed.] and act as the linchpin of
effective joint and combined defenses. Joint and combined capabilities
in the first island chain will mix anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and
surface-to-surface missiles to threaten early damage to adversary
forces.”
Equally important, the paper says, they’ll be able to absorb the damage the enemy dishes out in return.
American HIMARS multiple rocket launchers during a live-fire exercise in Australia, part of the Talisman Saber 2019 wargames.
Highlights From The Paper
Below are selected excerpts from Army Multi-Domain Transformation: Ready to Win in Competition and Conflict, organized by theme.
Cover of Gen. James McConville’s first strategy paper, released March 23, 2021.
Win The First Battle
Now and in the future, first battles are decisive to the outcome
of campaigns. Winning the first battle or preventing a fait accompli in
crisis will be necessary to prevent prolonged conflict and escalation.
Ground forces will decisively shape the first battle by leveraging
positional and capability advantage to rapidly deliver options for
crisis response, and to win in conflict.
Global Conflicts
The Army is also creating a Global Near-Peer Scenario as a
backbone to [Army analysis]….The Army scenario will be global in focus.
Peer adversaries are global actors that have global pressure points.
They do not adhere to neatly drawn Combatant Command boundaries. The
scenario also acknowledges the requirement for different theories of
victory in different geographic settings….
Adversary nations have political structures that enable them to
conduct long-term strategic planning in the context of decades, not
years. To remain relevant and effective, the Army must expand our
temporal context and pursue a consistent intellectual picture spanning
from 2028 to 2035 and beyond.
The
Army says its “Strategic Landpower Network” of connections in foreign
countries can smooth the path for the rest of the services.
Global Friendships
The Army will continue to provide the foundation for DoD security
cooperation through the Army’s comprehensive landpower network of
Allies and partners….The Army is uniquely qualified to maintain and
expand this vital network…..
Partner militaries, including their senior leaders, are
predominately land force-centric. In the Indo-Pacific, 24 of 29 armed
forces chiefs are army officers, and of the 30 NATO member states, 22
have armed forces chiefs from their respective armies….
In 2019, the Army trained over 7,100 foreign students in various
courses throughout the enterprise. Of those, 1,200 were foreign officers
in professional military education courses. The Army will prioritize
course allocations to grow our pool of participating partners 50% over
the next five years…
[T]he National Guard’s State Partnership Program (SPP) aligns National Guard units with over 84 nations.
Forward Deployment
Since Operation Desert Storm, China and Russia have studied the
American conduct of war, and have designed concepts and capabilities to
counter our strengths and exploit our weaknesses, particularly in force
projection. The Joint Force can no longer assume that the homeland is a
sanctuary, or consider the ‘global commons’ uncontested. Joint Force
deployment will be contested from fort to port to foxhole, eroding our
ability to project power….
Fighting state actors from a cold start by projecting power from
the homeland over many months is no longer a viable course of action.
There is no alternative to the dynamic presence of formations in
contested theaters. Army forces are uniquely structured to establish
this presence, with a suite of capabilities that provide depth of range
and speed, and benefit from extensive landpower networks with partner
armed forces.
A
notional organization for a future Multi-Domain Task Force, with
weapons ranging from hypersonic missiles to electronic warfare.
Small Footprint
[Calibrated Force Posture] hinges upon enduring presence, not
permanent presence – a combination of assigned forces, rotational
forces, and access for key capabilities. [Army forces] They will be
highly mobile, with alternate and supplemental positions to ensure
survivability and unpredictability. This will require dynamic posture
initiatives–turn-key or warm start sites to provide opportunities for
maneuver without incurring the cost and host nation imposition of
traditional basing or permanence. This posture will be optimized to host
low-signature forward capabilities on a more ambiguous, distributed,
and difficult to target infrastructure.
The ‘Inside Force’
Ground forces can defeat sophisticated adversary defensive
schemes from inside positions, creating corridors for air, maritime and
all-domain forces to exploit….
Operating as the Joint Force Commander’s “inside force,” the Army
provides an asymmetric counter to the challenges posed by near-peer
adversary militaries, through unique, land-based, foundational
capabilities. The asymmetric advantages are based on the ability of
landpower to maneuver and communicate rapidly, strike at range, and
survive in complex terrain – leading to greater decision dominance and
overmatch. At the operational level, Army “inside forces” will conduct
persistent cross-domain maneuver to conduct flanking attacks and turning
maneuvers. Army forces in distributed forward positions, will attack by
strikes and raids across intra-theater lines of operation to create
operational mobility corridors.
I Will Survive
The key attribute of capable inside forces is resiliency.
Resiliency goes beyond hardened bases and encompasses a host of
attributes that are mutually supporting. Resiliency for land forces
combines mobility, cover, concealment, and deception. With mobility,
land forces will be light and agile enough to quickly conduct
operations, then reposition….
[T]his must also be augmented with the ability of the unit to
conceal itself from detection through physical, electronic and cyber
means. Deception will present false targets to the adversary through a
combination of electronic spoofing and physical decoys….
The Army will persist in the face of adversary aggression – to
include the use of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN)
weapons. Our adversaries will not hesitate to employ CBRN weapons if
their vital interests or the integrity of their regimes lie in jeopardy.
Launch of Army-Navy Common-Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) in Hawaii on March 19, 2020.
Deep Strike
The capability to strike in depth with lethal and non-lethal
cross-domain effects is critical to creating overmatch in operations
against a peer adversary. Army multi-domain forces will be organized and
equipped to extend land-based effects into other domains, providing a
suite of tools to integrate in the joint fires process, from the onset.
This includes short, mid, and long range precision fires to engage and
destroy adversary land, air, and sea capabilities in depth….
In addition to providing an “inside force”, the Army will provide
“outside forces” at the strategic and theater level that will have the
capability and capacity to secure global key terrain, strategic choke
points, lines of communication, threaten an adversary strategic flank,
or hold their interests at risk.
Agile Logistics
The Joint Force must move away from synchronizing sustainment
using archaic structures that are time and manpower intensive. By 2035,
sustainment nodes will be survivable and capable of rapidly moving
logistics to enable the Joint Force. The Army will provide the
foundation for the Joint Force theater sustainment system….
Future MDO Forces will rely on host nation support, survivable
and lightweight power sources, and dispersed caches as a part of Army
Prepositioned Stocks (APS), [using] small, mobile, and tailorable
material and ammunition stores.
