The Army Must Not Sell Its Role Short

Being a joint force enabler is a necessary but insufficient role in Asia

The Army is a key enabler for the rest of the military, even in the Pacific. Yet emphasizing this role does nothing to defend against calls to cut the already small Army maneuver brigade force. The Tyranny of Distance is real in the sea-dominated Pacific. But so is the Tyranny of the Shores. The Army must not be mere Pips in the Navy show.

The Army is important even in the Pacific:

The Army is tasked with setting the theater with critical capabilities — medical, fuel, engineering, signal, logistics and more — for the joint force. It also has a critical role in seizing land to emplace sustainment, deliver Army or joint cross-domain fires and other missions. The joint force cannot campaign without the Army setting the theater.

The US Army in the Pacific also builds joint readiness by training west of the international date line to enhance ally and partner capacity and defend and contribute to regional security. This campaigning denies key terrain — human and geographic — to any potential adversary.

A key element of this effort is Operation Pathways, which has soldiers training across the theater and building interoperability with partners in exercises such as Talisman Sabre (Australia), Super Garuda Shield (Indonesia) and Balikatan (Philippines).

Each service contributes to campaigns, yet one service provides most of the connective tissue between them. Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Marine Gen. Joe Dunford described the Army as “the linchpin” of the joint force. “The Army literally has been the force that has held together the joint force with critical command-and-control capabilities, critical logistics capabilities and other enablers,” he said.

Providing the connective tissue is a real capability that is vital. But it is not enough to stake out this role as an auxiliary to the Navy and Air Force. This does nothing to contain the urge to rebuild the Navy out of Army force structure in regard to maneuver brigades. Good Lord, this discussion within the Army is brutal:

Internal discussions are exploring trimming the force to between 360,000 and 420,000 troops -- down from its current level of roughly 450,000.

We’re back to the 1990s discussions, which was the dawn of my published writing.

The role the Army plays in “enhancing ally and partner” ground force capacity in the Pacific points to the Army role that dares not speak its name—conventional large-scale combat operations (LSCO). Yes, even in INDOPACOM, the Army has a role in its core competency:

Ground power remains vital even in the Pacific region. At the very least, having the ability to land an American Army corps on the Asian mainland in INDOPACOM will pose additional demands on China’s defense efforts that will reduce their ability to break a blockade.

American strategy must encompass more than driving the Chinese naval and air power back so that the Navy can sail about off the coast of China unmolested. I went into this in more detail in Military Review, arguing that corps-sized Army units operating around the periphery of China to work with allies or partners under threat by China with whom we’ve trained to enhance their ground capabilities—and that might one day include Russia—to strain China’s resources and stretch their defense worries. Just having that threat will divert China’s resources from seeking to defeat our Navy and Air Force in the western Pacific. The Army could inflict a “bleeding ulcer” on China’s war making potential.

I lamented in that article the lack of planning for using more than a brigade of Army troops in any discussion of a war with China. The editor challenged my claim, which I defended although I admitted that I could have missed something. I believe that led to this article, “The Army’s Role in a Future Pacific Theater” (beginning on page 102) published the month before mine that surveyed the literature, and concluded:

It appears from this survey of the available literature generated by experts both in and out of the military that if the United States were to enter a war against China, the Army would necessarily assist the other military services greatly by acting as a supporting entity to the joint force in the ensuing conflict. Thus, we should expect that the U.S. Army will play a significant role at a minimum as a joint force enabler, securing joint freedom of action. Consequently, the Army, while shifting focus toward modernization and joint integration, should emphasize preparation for scenarios in which it will play a supporting role in the Pacific against a near-peer adversary.

I rejected the idea that just because nobody was discussing more than a supporting role in what is admittedly a largely—but not exclusively—sea theater that a bigger land warfare role shouldn’t be planned.

I also wrote in the same journal a couple years later that Taiwan is one battleground that could use Army maneuver forces of at last two divisions under a corps headquarters.¹ After the lines of supply to Taiwan are secured, of course. As a defense analyst for Forbes observed, my caution that China could win a war against Taiwan simply by retaining a bridgehead on Taiwan when a ceasefire is declared was a “seminal assessment” of the reality. Taiwan needs to be able to drive the invaders into the sea rather than relying on “porcupine” weapons to deter or defeat the PLA as it crosses the Taiwan Strait via multiple means and comes ashore. And American Army heavy forces could well be needed to ensure that outcome.

And as long as I’m here I’d like to express my chagrin that we didn’t name the formerly Pacific-focused combatant command to raise the profile of the Indian Ocean as PAINCOM.

But I digress.

My main worry is that a cult of jointness with multidomain operations is too focused on doing jobs that other services are supposed to do. This dilution of service focus undermines the real synergy that comes from each service winning their own domains. I used the Guadalcanal campaign in World War II as an example in this AUSA Land Warfare Paper.

Emphasizing being the Pips to the Navy’s Gladys Knight does not support the intended lesson (back to the initial link):

Congress and the secretary of defense must ensure that the joint force is empowered with a sufficiently robust Army — the linchpin — to deter or defeat any potential threats. Significant cuts to Army force structure would run counter to this imperative.

The Tyranny of the Shores requires the Army to provide its core capability—LSCO—in PAINCOM INDOPACOM.

NOTE: I made the image with the Substack capability.

1. A year later, Military Review included my article in a China Reader Special Edition that you may also be interested in.