First unveiled in 2016, the Army continues to hone its concepts for multidomain battle.
This year, the Army plans to roll out how it and the Air Force should operate in this unfamiliar environment. Gen. David Perkins, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command, said he and Air Force Gen. Mike Holmes, head of Air Combat Command, are working on concepts and expect to release a co-authored paper on how the two forces will combine efforts in early 2018.
The multidomain battle concept layers various spheres of battle, from traditional air-land operations to coordination with navy elements, space, cyber and human domains.
Bringing effects and coordinating fires across all those domains will require extensive coordination, planning and timing. But those are only a few of the tactical methods that must be considered, Perkins has said.
The forces must find ways to operate as never before, with contested air space, limited time windows, and communications interference from enemies — like Russia and China — with growing sophistication and near-peer capabilities.
This is critical as America’s adversaries have been taking notes and watching how the United States conducts large and small-scale wars since at least the Persian Gulf War.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.