The U.S. Army’s major Pacific-area exercise in 2020 will focus on China-based scenarios in the South and possibly East China Seas.
The Commander of U.S. Army forces in the Pacific, General Robert Brown, explained the outlines of the 2020 Defender Pacific exercise at a conference in March. While the army focuses on partner-building throughout the Pacific, the high-end combat scenarios it prioritized have generally focused on a conflict on the Korean peninsula.
The exercise will deploy a division-sized force to the South China Sea to augment army forces already stationed forward in the Western Pacific and operate in traditional U.S. partner-nations like the Philippines and Thailand, but also may go to Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei.
I mentioned the exercise recently and noted that this move to help the Navy with anti-ship missions is a start to thinking about using the Army for its core capability of large-scale combat operations on the Asian continent.
I lamented the narrow focus on South Korea that limited the Army's thinking about its role in INDOPACOM as just a supporting force for the Navy in this Military Review article.
Eventually I assume the Army will practice how it could move a corps to those allied and friendly nations--and beyond. And after that, a multi-corps force?
