By JOE GOULD
Oct. 12, 2014
The US Army's new operating concept will include an annual future-looking war game called the Army Warfighter Assessment at Fort Bliss, Texas. Here, soldiers from 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, dismount from a Stryker during the similar Network Integration Evaluation. (Lt. Col. Deanna Bague / US Army)
WASHINGTON — At this year’s Association of the US Army annual expo here, Army leaders are expected to tout a new operating concept that puts greater focus on smaller units expected to adapt and innovate to combat faceless enemies in a formless battlefield.
Army leaders say the document, “Win in a Complex World,” emphasizes smart, adaptive leadership and an interagency approach that may not always use force.
“We need an Army that is, that can be, adaptive, innovative, exploits the initiative, and can solve problems in many different ways,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told Defense News. “So, it is not just solving a problem through the use of military force, it is solving a problem by integrating the interagency, multinational capabilities to come up with options that allow us to answer problems in many different ways. And I think that is the future of warfare.”
The Army will deploy smaller formations that have to be tailorable, scalable and more expeditionary, with networked vehicles. When it comes to modernization requirements, Odierno said, form will follow function as operational concepts drive technological development.
Under the catch-all “Force 2025 Maneuvers,” the Army will hold a variety of experiments and exercises to steer the service doctrinally, including a new annual war game called the Army Warfighter Assessment (AWA).
Envisioned as a way to test new concepts and technologies, the AWA would be spearheaded by Brigade Modernization Command (BMC). It would take place using a brigade-size unit at Fort Bliss, Texas, not coincidentally the home of the Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) exercise, which tests technology, mostly communication and computer network items, under realistic combat conditions.
The plan is, in 2017, to replace that year’s second NIE with an AWA, according to Rickey Smith, director of Army Capabilities Integration Center-Forward, which oversees BMC. More than the NIE’s network testing, the AWA would integrate joint and multinational forces to test new technology and — unique for the Army — concepts in the “human dimension,” chiefly optimizing soldier and team performance.
“What are some of the things we really want to put through the ringer before we have a requirement or concepts document; we want to play with it to see if it even merits taking it down the path,” Smith said. “If there’s one thing about the AWA, the non-materiel aspects are really the key, the biggest ‘ah ha.’ ”
That’s not to say technology won’t play a major role. Future exercises will take the manned-unmanned teaming concept from the air — Shadow and Gray Eagle drones paired with Apache AH-64Es — to ground vehicles. “We don’t want muskets, we want to keep advancing,” Smith said.
Center for Strategic and International Studies analyst Maren Leed said the Army’s operating concept is “intended to be an umbrella for a lot of experimentation and conceptual work, but also include an institutional component: How do we do acquisition differently, how do we address some of the institutional functions in new ways.”
Training and Doctrine Command chief Gen. David Perkins said the service will produce “war-fighting challenges” each quarter to guide innovation and help the Army be more adaptable. The operating concept, which contains 20 challenges, describes them as driving development of the future force and the source for capabilities the Army must possess to win.
“We’re not just looking at building a better tank,” Perkins said. “This is, in some ways, almost boundless.”
Periodic analysis would identify and seek to close capability gaps, emphasizing off-the-shelf technologies in the near term, integration of existing technologies in the midterm and less mature but promising technologies 15 to 20 years out.
According to a draft of the concept, there are nine technological priorities, which cover technologies such as directed energy weapons, 3-D printing and automated flight controls for degraded visual environments. The Army also seeks technology to counter weapons of mass destruction, provide robust communication links and provide air-ground reconnaissance.
Perkins drew a contrast between “Win in a Complex World,” and its Cold War-era predecessor, “Air-Land Battle,” which envisioned a superpower clash with Soviet Russia on the plains of Central Europe. Its central challenge was in essence a math problem of so many tanks and artillery pieces, Perkins said, whereas war today is chaotic, unsolvable and unpredictable.
“Not only is it unknown, but it’s impossible to know,” Perkins said. “Don’t spend all your time ... learning something that you think will be accurate. Now you may go to Africa, you may go to Korea, you may go to Europe, you may go to Afghanistan. It is multi-domain, it is unknown, it is unknowable.”
Frank Hoffman, a senior research fellow at the National Defense University, said the concept captures modern warfare’s “multiple domains, dimensions and partners we must be able to cope with,” and “need for adaptability and robust land power.”
“I also think the Army will have to aspire to a new core competency in the ability to lead and enable fluid combinations of national and international partners beyond just the joint war-fighting community,” Hoffman said. “To ‘win in a complex world’ will require that we more than manage to cope with complexity, we are going to have to generate our own and exploit it.”
The operating concept replaces the technological “Big Five” of the Air-Land Battle era — the Black Hawk and Apache helicopters, the Bradley fighting vehicle, the Patriot air defense system and the M1 Abrams tank — with a conceptual “Big Five”: optimized soldier and team performance; capabilities overmatch; joint/interorganization interoperability; scalable and tailorable joint combined arms forces; and adaptive professionals and institutions to operate in complex environments.
Winning may mean pre-empting a war by deterring another nation’s aggression or adventurism. For the Army, that might mean a division staff coordinating personnel from the State Department, Doctors Without Borders, the United Nations and partner nations.
The concept of operations seeks to position the Army as the foundation for the joint force.
“We have to integrate partners both physically and intellectually,” Perkins said. “For example, we’re now greatly expanding fellowships with the State Department, Department of Justice, other countries. We’re not only focused on synchronizing firepower, but also national power. So our soldiers must not only know about artillery but national power.”
When it does come time to fight, how do you fight an adaptive foe who wears no uniform and wields cheap roadside bombs? It could be to isolate them financially, politically or by targeting them remotely. For that, you need ground troops, Perkins said.
“We are now in the post-precision era,” he said. “What’s important now is not ‘can I kill you?’ but ‘should I kill you?’
“It’s very hard to understand things remotely,” Perkins said. “You can target things remotely, but you can’t understand without being there on the ground, being able to work through all the complexities that are there.”
Instead of assuming the US will have technological superiority, count on an enemy having equivalent technology, Perkins said. If an enemy has night-vision goggles, for example, the point is to use them better than the other guy. That means optimizing soldier and team performance.
“It’s not that my technology is going to be significantly different than yours,” he said. “It’s just that I’m much better at using my technology, and I can innovate and adapt quicker than you can.”
Enemies may lack the technology of the US, but that is an advantage. Foes will find low-tech ways, like improvised bombs to counter US military strengths. The Army, says the operating concept, needs to balance the technological focus of its modernization efforts with a focus on the human aspects of war.
“We need critical thinkers, and we want you to work in team from the very beginning,” he said. “This is not a solo sport. This is a team of teams.” ■
Michelle Tan contributed to this report.
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