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| Land-based missiles could form a virtual wall against Chinese aggression (CSBA graphic) |
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: Less than six months after its official rollout, the Army’s new concept of future warfare has gotten traction with all four armed services. In brief, Multi-Domain Battle envisions the military — everything from submarines to satellites, tanks to jets, destroyers to drones, grunts to hackers — working together to overwhelm the enemy with attacks from all domains: land, sea, air, space, cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum. While that vision is years from reality, it’s already spurred inter-service cooperation on how to make it real.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: Less than six months after its official rollout, the Army’s new concept of future warfare has gotten traction with all four armed services. In brief, Multi-Domain Battle envisions the military — everything from submarines to satellites, tanks to jets, destroyers to drones, grunts to hackers — working together to overwhelm the enemy with attacks from all domains: land, sea, air, space, cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum. While that vision is years from reality, it’s already spurred inter-service cooperation on how to make it real.
This morning, the Association of the US Army kicks off a conference here in Huntsville with at least four panels focused on Multi-Domain Battle. That’s one more sign of how far the concept has come since it formally debuted at AUSA’s grand annual meeting in Washington, D.C., where it was publicly endorsed by a panel including
- Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, the Pentagon’s most influential thinker about future warfare, who today is also the highest-ranking Obama official still in place;
- Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, who earlier this month laid out in detail his own Multi-Domain Command & Control (MDC2) initiative, the first step towards a network that can connect the future force;
- Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller, who rolled out his consciously similar Marine Corps Operating Concept that same fall and has made training more cyber/electronic warfare Marines a top priority; and
- Navy Adm. Harry Harris, head of Pacific Command, who since has since started a series of wargames to explore and refine Multi-Domain Battle.
In fact, there’s already at least one weapon in the works directly inspired by Multi-Domain Battle: a version of the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMs) modified to strike ships at sea. Both Adm. Harris — eager for every advantage against the growing Chinese fleet — and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley have called for the Army to sink ships, and the Marines are interested as well. That’s a capability the ground services have lacked since the Coastal Artillery disbanded in 1950. Reviving it in the form of long-range precision missiles is the most dramatic and tangible example of the kind of change Multi-Domain Battle can bring — but it’s far from the only one.
Read the full story at BreakingDefense