The Army wants more than a supporting role in the Indo-Pacific region.
When the Obama administration announced a "pivot" to the Pacific a decade ago, it was seen as mostly a Navy and Air Force effort directed against the PLA Navy to secure the sea and air above it.
More recently, the Marines were refocused from sustained ground combat to direct support of the fleet's sea control mission.
The Army, too, was seen as only useful to contributing to the sea control mission in the Pacific.
I am against ignoring the Army's potential for sustained large-scale ground combat in Asia and the Pacific. I wrote about that in Military Review a few years ago. And the Army now thinks it needs modern weapons to fight the PLA on the ground. China is the "pacing" threat to measure the Army against. If the Army can defeat the Chinese army it can defeat lesser threats like the Russian army.
Long-range precision fires are the Army’s top modernization priority, and the service hopes to begin fielding new hypersonic weapons by fiscal year 2023.
However, the No. 2 priority is next-generation combat vehicles. The service is pursuing a new Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle, a family of robotic combat vehicles, and a new light tank known as Mobile Protected Firepower. ...“I look at the ability for that conflict, if it ever happened, to become more global and less regional,” [Gen. John “Mike” Murray, head of Army Futures Command] said. “I also believe that the Chinese would use every asset they have in their arsenal, which includes a very large mechanized force. And so I look at, you know, the [U.S. military’s] ability to deter. I look at the assets that China has in place currently [and] their modernization path. I look at ... less of a regional fight and more of a global fight if it came to that. And I just think that we fool ourselves if we look at this too narrowly.”
Murray did not identify the other regions of the world where he could envision a land war breaking out between U.S. and Chinese ground forces.
I speculated about potential regions where America and China might fight in that article, including in Russia. And focused on Taiwan in this more recent article.
We focus on the tyranny of distance in the Pacific. Which is necessary. But with sufficient logistics America needs to remember that the tyranny of the shores--where people live--is where emphasis must shift once sea control is gained.
