I wrote about how the Army is expanding its vision across the Indo-Pacific area. Thus far it is at a smaller scale but the scope is broadening.
And the broadening of the horizons away from northwest Asia can't go faster than our logistics capacity:
“If there’s a challenge, it’s moving enough focus and enough direction from everything else we’re doing towards the Pacific," said Joel Szabat, the assistant secretary for international affairs within the Department of Transportation.
Szabat, whose department deals with U.S. military logistics in wartime, said the center of gravity has shifted so much toward the Asia-Pacific region that even a major crisis on par with 9/11 won’t derail the change. ...
But he warned that new lines of effort must be implemented if that shift is to be sustainable during a war with the region’s biggest player — China.
Of course, the focus of the article is on moving and sustaining Marines. Which is natural given that the littorals are their specialty and culturally the Pacific is owned by the Marines. It makes little sense to leave them at home while Army units land on Asian shores.
Eventually, however, the logistics will improve enough so that the Army may be considered an asset in its core competencies across all of INDOPACOM, as I wrote in Military Review.
Yet even as the Army broadens its horizons away from South Korea, the focus of Army actions remains on helping with anti-ship and air defense:
But in the maritime-dominant Indo-Pacific Command, the Army may serve more as an enabler, keeping sea lanes open and airwaves clear to beat back ballistic missile launches and electronic jamming so that the Air Force’s planes can take off, the Navy’s ships can maneuver and the Marines and select light Army units can engage enemies directly.
Which is okay as far as it goes. Before the Army and Marines can operate on the land, the sea and air space of the littorals must be controlled sufficiently. If the Navy and Air Force need help from ground forces, so be it.
But while INDOPACOM has vast seas in it, why is it "maritime-dominated?" There are huge armies and land-based air power there, along with lots of people living on the land. As the article notes:
The Pacific Ocean alone covers more area than all of the land masses on the planet. It is 15 times larger than the United States, has seven of the world’s 10 largest armies and it is home to 24 of the world’s 36 megacities.
So yeah, it is big. And has vast oceans. And it has vast land masses. And even apart from that, dismissing the Army's core competencies in the region is ridiculous:
“Unless we’re on the Asian land mass you won’t see major land operations,” [Col. Jerry Hall, the deputy branch chief for theater exercise at USARPAC] said.
Guadalcanal (as I wrote about here in a Land Warfare Paper)? Iwo Jima? Liberation of the Philippines? Okinawa? Those World War II campaigns weren't major American land operations with a corps or more of ground troops involved? And all off of the Asian land mass.
Do we really want to simplify China's strategic choices by ruling out operating on the mainland? We may never choose to do it because it would be a bad idea, but China should never think the option isn't there.
Eventually the Army must be able to contribute its core competencies of land combat in order to have true multi-domain operations in INDOPACOM. And we have plenty of land allies and friends with their own armies to help.
In related issues that brings us back to the logistics of the vast region, this is good news for the trans-Pacific supply line beginning in Los Angeles. Tip to American Thinker.
And I have I mentioned recently that I would have paid good money to have our command out there named PAINCOM instead?
