A hostile power conquers a strategically important island chain, vowing to block all sea and air traffic of U.S. allies. Treaty obligations force America to intervene, but first the White House deploys cyber and space technologies to blind and disrupt opposing forces, allowing special operations troops and amphibious Marines to land, with Army engineers in tow. Coordinated Air Force and Navy sensors and firepower — manned, along with drones — take on the enemy from there.
That scenario, laid out in a recent paper by Gen. Robert B. Brown, commander of U.S. Army Pacific, distills the military’s new vision of the future of multi-domain warfare. It’s just a theory — for now — being shaped this year in and outside the Pentagon. But it could soon become the military’s war-fighting modus operandi, as it turns to threats from China and Russia on unpredictable battlefields rather than insurgents in the deserts and cities of Iraq and Afghanistan. Included within all the strategy papers is a humbling but necessary admission: The U.S. military can no longer assume superiority at all times.
Multi-Domain Battle — encompassing land, sea, air, space and cyber — has evolved from the concept of AirLand Battle, the late Cold War doctrine to coordinate air and ground forces. The idea itself can be traced back to ancient Greeks fighting at sea and on land in tandem. Critically, it integrates different branches of the military — all of which come with their own customs, styles and rivalries. Cyberwarfare, more important with each passing day, is the newest element. Though the pieces have been in place for years, this is the first time the military is trying to organize them as one strategy.
MULTI-DOMAIN BATTLE HAS FILTERED DOWN TO IN-HOUSE RESEARCHERS AND DEFENSE CONTRACTORS WHO SEE APPLICATIONS — AND BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES — FOR THEIR NEW TECHNOLOGIES.
And then there’s the targeting of “peer threats,” namely China and Russia. Both nations are often politically at odds with the U.S. and have sophisticated militaries that have advanced rapidly while America was occupied elsewhere. The Army and Marines white paper spelling out the multi-domain battle concept is frank: “A decade and a half of counterinsurgency campaigns eroded the ability of the U.S. military to confront emerging peer threats who developed effective countermeasures to Joint Force advantages.”
