The Army's Multi-Domain Task Force

Is jointness the best camouflage?

I’ve long suspected that the Army is building long-range fires because it has lost the trust it built up during the war on Islamist terror in Air Force willingness to support Army troops in combat. The Army understands the Air Force has little commitment to prioritizing Army needs for deep strikes. Marketing Army long-range fires as a key component for defeating anti-access/areas denial (A2/AD) capabilities of enemies such as China is a budgetary survival mechanism.

Even when the Army wins, it loses once the war is over:

The one foe that our Army can't vanquish is the budget process.

When we are at peace, nobody thinks the Army is needed and can safely be cut more than the Air Force or Navy.

If called to fight, if the Army loses a war nobody wants to use the Army again, and so it is subject to greater reductions than the other services.

And if the Army wins, the Army suffers from the peace effect plus nobody wants to pay the price of winning again, and so the Army is cut more than the other services.

Certainly, America needs aero-naval power to control the seas before it can project power. So when enemy land threats overseas are defeated—or when America decides it has fought enough—the now unneeded Army is downsized.

The return of great power competition as a framework for preparing for war makes it worse for the Army. The Air Force shifts from supporting the Army with excellent and responsive close air support against minor powers or irregular fighters to prioritizing gaining air superiority against peer enemies.

And of course, the allure of a decisive air campaign to win a war distracts the Air Force even more. For the Army, the A-10 issue really wasn’t about the aging plane. It was an issue of trust that the Air Force would dedicate any aircraft for Army support. At times, it was painfully obvious that if the Army wanted fire support it would have to come from the Army:

Without air support, fire support would be scarce. The Air Force faces opposition in the air now, and never liked close air support anyway:

I'd be happy if the Army could spend money on other things. But the Army understands that the Air Force won't necessarily be where the Army needs it, when it needs it. Hence long-range fires. ...

[With] a return to great power threats and the elevation of conventional warfare, Air Force priorities are changing and the Army has little choice unless it wants to do without the missions the Air Force won't prioritize.

Seriously, the Air Force will float any BS notion to avoid providing close air support:

"I can’t predict the future, but I would bet the non-kinetic effects will reign supreme," [the Air Force chief of staff] said during the Dubai International Air Chiefs Conference. "Now we’re somewhere stuck in the thinking that mass needs to be physical. What if we did not have to produce sorties to achieve the same effect? What if a future small diameter bomb looks like ones and zeros?"

How long did the the Air Force chief of staff have to practice in the mirror to avoid peeing his pants with laughter as he presented that notion?

The Army had to cope with that attitude by making an offering to the God of War. The rise of China’s naval power and in particular their ability with land-based missiles and aircraft to create zones offshore that enemies cannot enter without being destroyed (area denial) or, further away, cannot enter without paying a high cost (anti-access), posed a threat to a shrinking Navy’s ability to cope without help from the joint force. This isn’t the official definition. But when I read someone else describe it this way, it makes far more sense. Long-range systems are less numerous than shorter-range systems, creating different densities of effort that affect how or if an enemy can operate within their firing envelopes. The official definitions don’t really make the effects clear. Indeed, they implies the reverse.

And boy is the Army doing that. The Army is building long-range fires and deploying them in INDOPACOM:

The Army describes MDTFs as “theater-level maneuver elements designed to synchronize precision effects and precision fires in all domains against adversary anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) networks in all domains, enabling joint forces to execute their operational plan (OPLAN)-directed roles.”

The document includes the official definitions of A2 and AD that I find confusing.

But back on point, that Army focus on jointness in support of the Navy and Air Force to break through China’s A2/AD networks firmly puts the Army in a supporting role. But the origins are a little more interesting:

Reported improvements to Russian and Chinese artillery systems present a challenge to the U.S. Army. Improved longer-ranged artillery systems, new employment techniques for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and the proliferation of special munitions (such as precision, thermobaric, loitering, and top-attack munitions) have renewed concerns about the potential impact of Russian and Chinese fires on U.S. combat operations and ground combat systems. In response, the U.S. Army is seeking to improve its ability to deliver what it refers to as long-range precision fires (LRPF) by upgrading current artillery and missile systems, developing new longer-ranged systems and hypersonic weapons, and modifying existing air- and sea-launched missiles for ground launch.

Notwithstanding the focus on using these LRPF capabilities in the Pacific, the description of the motivation for creating MDTF is far more land focused, no? Those capabilities are no doubt useful against A2/AD targets the benefit the Navy. But the Navy and Air Force can deal with those things. And that’s what the Marines are evolving to under Force Design (formerly Force Design 2030). Why should the Army do that, too? Shouldn’t somebody do large-scale combat operation?

The MDTF is really too large to be easily moved around by limited Air Force cargo planes. I commented on limits the Army faces:

The Army's Typhon missile system recently deployed to the Philippines isn't as mobile as the Army would like. The Army should think about whether it is likely the Air Force will find the time to move its weaponry before building them and assuming the Air Force will come for their missile of dreams, eh?

There are limits to what the Army can camouflage. Large cargo planes exceed that capability.

Heck, the Marines seem prone to bulking up their SIFs beyond any reasonable definition of “agile”. I think this trend is universal, whether at the level of what infantry carries or at the unit level.

Which makes me think that this Army unit is really about land operations. And building it required marketing it as a part of Multi-Domain Operations in support of sea control campaigns in INDOPACOM.

Again, not that these Army long-range fires units won’t be useful in support of the Navy and Air Force by knocking out enemy anti-ship and air defense assets. In an alternate timeline, they’d be Navy weapons.

But getting a ship to move them to the theater is much more feasible than relying on air transport. The Army no doubt could use the MDTF in land campaigns for deep strikes when the Air Force’s finely tuned air plans don’t make room for sudden and distracting calls from the Army in contact for air support right now before everything goes to Hell.

Those jittery ground types are prone to panic when tanks are within AT4 range, unable to see the elegance of taking out the second and third echelon tanks the troops can’t even see yet. And they certainly don’t appreciate the nuance of taking out the headquarters and bridges and logistics links. The PowerPoint presentations make that clear.

So sure, the MDTF could play a role in establishing sea control in the western Pacific. But I doubt it will be significant in comparison to Navy and Air Force capabilities (sorry Marines, you’re on the same boat as the Army—but without the range the Army system brings to the table). The numbers just aren’t there even if the Army can get the Navy or Air Force to move them around.

But on a large island nation like the Philippines, the MDTF could move around quite a bit on roads. Potentially, it could support a ground campaign on Taiwan (which I discussed in Military Review) or even island hopping in the South China Sea. As the unit could in Europe if the Russians get seriously nostalgic about rebuilding the Soviet empire. And let’s not forget Army missions on the Asian mainland, which the Army should at least be able to threaten around the periphery of China (also in Military Review).

So the Army has long range fires. They might not help the Navy or Air Force that much in their core missions to secure their domains. But they sure would help the Army with its core mission of waging large-scale combat operations on land.

NOTE: Table from the CRS report quoted about LRPF capabilities.