Multi-domain Operations and the Corollary Response
The U.S. Army is preparing for a shift from Unified Land Operations to Multi-Domain Operations. At first glance, Multi-Domain Operations may seem to be a continuation of Air-Land Operations, but ultimately represents a shift in strategy seeking to employ the newest technological advantages at America’s disposal to swiftly execute a response in domains where the potential adversary cannot legitimately respond to America’s operational dominance.
Multi-Domain Operations is, in a word, intelligence. It is composed of the five steps: compete, penetrate, dis-integrate, exploit, and re-compete.
Breaking this process down, we should first understand that competition represents the setup phase of the ultimate operation. At this point forces are staged in their optimal locations and the enemy's forces are assessed. The goal of this stage, however, is the gathering of intelligence and assessment of the enemy’s capabilities.
Next, penetration occurs on both the physical and electromagnetic levels. On the physical level, specialized agents can penetrate deep into the adversary’s territory. On the electromagnetic spectrum, agents disrupt the adversary’s ability to effectively track and respond to friendly penetration.
In the dis-integrate phase, friendly agents are expected to neutralize enemy security systems and enable the tactical mobility of subsequent U.S. forces. Essentially the dis-integrate phase implies the use of strike capabilities and positional advantages.
The exploit phase requires the U.S. forces to first recognize then take initiative, pressing advantages to maximize the strategic gains made in the previous stages of the operation.
Lastly, to re-compete implies that the command staff establishes and consolidates the gains made before repeating the entire process. The beauty of this strategic operation is in both its simplicity and repeatability.
While this operational model is arguably the best system utilized by the U.S. to date, there exist two potential drawbacks that military strategists will have to plan around as they ensure the desired operational command outcomes in a given theater.
First, the model is difficult to export to auxiliary forces. Multi-Domain warfare seeks to disrupt and destroy enemy intelligence networks before committing troops, in effect reducing casualties and removing counterattack capabilities. American intelligence and surveillance is unparalleled, and, to use a contemporary example, if the Russian invasion of Ukraine has told the wider strategic world anything it is that America is decades ahead of even its most seemingly capable potential competitors. The military technological advantage America holds is truly astonishing, but that in turn makes transportation of this model to allies more difficult. To provide an analogy, it would be as if present day programmers at Apple were asked to write code with modern efficiency to be executed on the ENIAC computer system: a wide barrier of technological advancement lies between the planners and the agent of execution. The program written by U.S. strategists would work quite well if U.S. forces were the agent of execution. But auxiliary forces, operating without those tools which exist at the pinnacle of modern warfighting technology, would be incapable of achieving the necessary results. While the U.S. has the ability and prerogative to disrupt enemy communications, U.S. allies would not be able to act without significant intervention and support from American technical military professionals. Execution of this operating system requires the strategist to choose between a few deployment options: a) to employ actual U.S. forces, b) to water down the strategy, or c) abandon Multi-Domain Operations entirely and stick with Unified Land Operations.
The second issue is that the model is predictable. While an enemy combatant may not be able to respond to America’s overwhelming technological superiority, each stage of the operational strategy is easy to predict from a defensive perspective. At any point when communications are lost, the enemy can be on high-alert for the deep-strike and force consolidation that is sure to follow. Ability to predict the next action does not necessarily enable the enemy force to respond properly, but it does present a vulnerability in that friendly military maneuvers would be telegraphed and potentially ambushed. For example, during the Afghanistan war American forces were dragged down by Fabian tactics utilized by fanatical forces who were willing to set IEDs and employ civilian suidice bombers in their efforts to dwindle American strength.
In the face of an enemy who has nothing to lose, I fear a predictable model would enable a country to be cruel to itself as a means of mutual destruction.
