This is good on the surface:
At a time where the Navy has been pretty quiet about All-Domain Operations — an emerging war fighting concept being pushed by the Pentagon’s top leaders — the head of Indo-Pacific Command, commander of the Navy’s biggest theater of operations, has proposed a bold new plan.
In a speech at a navy conference earlier this month, Adm. Philip Davidson offered an expansive vision of how to transform the way US forces train and partner with allies across the vast Indo-Pacific region, calling for the services to be linked in new, more permanent ways.
What is the role of ground forces? Especially the Army?
Already we see the Marines being downgraded from operating as a major force in land campaigns with a reduction in tube artillery, infantry battalions, and the elimination of the already small tank force. The Marines are clearly going back to direct support of the fleet.
Does that INDOPACOM integration plan view the Army, too, as something to garrison islands with local defense forces plus air/missile defense and anti-ship assets to directly support the fleet?
If so, that is not bold. It is just integrating the other services as auxiliaries to the Navy. Nice work if you can get it.
My view, as I wrote in Military Review, is that the plan needs to allow the Army to contribute its core competency of large-scale ground operations to the war plan, which with other services carrying out their core competencies provides synergy to allow gains in all the domains, as I wrote in a complementary AUSA Land Warfare Paper.
Obviously, for America INDOPACOM is a sea and air environment in the initial period of the campaign. Ground forces should support the fleet.
But once control of the seas is gained by our Navy and Air Force working with allied fleets and air power, the tyranny of the shores means we have to look to the mainland for decisive wins alongside allies.
All-Domain Operations should mean all domains.
*I continue to wish we'd renamed PACOM to PAINCOM. Sigh.
