Noah Thurm
Introduction
The Army’s 2008 revision to Field Manual 3-0, Operations, defines “full-spectrum operations” that achieve synthesis of offensive, defensive, stability, and civil support capabilities.[1] FM 3-0 also describes the new operational environment as one characterized by persistent conflict—protracted hostilities and confrontation among state, nonstate, and individual actors willing to use violence for political ends.[2] There is temporal and attitudinal conflict between full-spectrum operations and the operational environment described and leaving this doctrinal conflict unresolved can easily lead to confusion and failure to achieve operational objectives. Full-spectrum operations are a retrospective device meant to crystallize the lessons learned from protracted conflict and counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. By contrast, describing a new operational environment characterized by the conspicuous absence of complete peace is necessarily prospective, making a probabilistic judgment about what the future of Army operations might look like. The endstate is doctrine that will send forces to tomorrow’s war armed only with yesterday’s tools.
Operational Themes and Classes
Full Spectrum of Conflict and Operational Themes (FM 3-0, 2008)
Although conflict is predicted to be persistent in FM 3-0, the doctrine defines 5 operational themes of ascending gravity. The first, and lowest intensity, is peacetime military engagement, consisting of training, security assistance, recovery operations, and arms control, among other activities.[3] Next-most intense are limited interventions, characterized by strikes, raids, and humanitarian aid.[4] Limited interventions are the first operational theme in which the “full spectrum” of operational capabilities may be needed—strikes and raids are offensive in aim but entail defense from countermeasures, and humanitarian operations fall squarely within Operations Other Than War (OOTW) to which stability and support both belong. Peace operations, despite their name, are an escalation in scale and scope from limited intervention. Peace operations involve a multiagency, multinational crisis response that bears significantly heavier costs to shape battlefield conditions and make reconciliation possible.[5] It is a far more involved aim, requiring all elements of national power to bring about the cessation of hostilities. The fourth operational theme is irregular warfare, which is a collection of the various doctrinal euphemisms for counterinsurgency, like foreign internal defense. Insurgency is as much a conflict of legitimacy as it is of clashing military elements, requiring the full spectrum of capabilities to eliminate the violent military threat and the basis for political challenge to the authority of the incumbent government. The final operational theme is the most serious: major combat operations, which introduces forcible entry, naval and air operations, and joint operations as required capabilities.[6]
With five themes and four classes of operations FM 3-0 is quite exhaustive, but still leaves unaddressed how limited intervention, peace operations, and irregular warfare operations should be conducted against competent, modernized adversaries. The persistent conflict the authors of FM 3-0 envision is an outgrowth of great power competition, and thus will entail limited, low-level conflict between modern militaries contesting land, air, and naval theaters. The Army is once again revising FM 3-0 to develop the conceptual basis for multi-domain conflict in a project called Waypoint 2028. As part of this doctrinal rewrite, Phase Zero of conflict is no longer complete peace.[7] The purpose of the change is to have doctrine mirror the behavior of China and Russia, both of which regularly operate beyond Phase Zero, but below outright general war.[8] This emphasis is crucial. If the primary threat is not nonstate actors or insurgents without indirect fire or air capabilities, civil support and stability operations can no longer rely on permanent forward operating bases for logistical support and resupply. The elevation of support and stability to be operationally equal to offense and defense is a positive revision, but as written they are consumers rather than producers of security. A new, more complex support function in the operational spectrum is required. Emphasizing larger operational areas, heightened survivability, and precision maneuver in supply and sustainment will allow for operations other than war in more lethal environments.
Expanding Operational Reach
Stability and civil support tasks are necessarily static. They entail deep civilian and local political integration and rely on stockpiles of weapons and commodities for sustainment. In Iraq and Afghanistan lines of communication and supply were mostly uncontested outside of IEDs, and large forward operating bases were easily secured and maintained—the true danger existed only outside the wire. The inability of insurgents in either theater to amass air power or sustain indirect fire made static stability and support operations tenable. This will not be the case in a localized or proxy conflict with a competent state, necessitating greater mobility and agility in support. Operating bases will have to be further from the front or outside the country altogether, requiring combat formations and civil support detachments to operate autonomously for longer without continuous resupply. What makes this concept of support complex is the expeditionary component. A renewed emphasis on forward arming and refueling alongside mobile refueling will require concerted training and rehearsal.[9] Somewhat paradoxically given the greater lethality of the next adversary, the demands of the new operational environment will require a smaller sustainment tail. Reducing the physical expanse of logistical infrastructure will be critical to survivability and sustainment against adversaries with precise indirect fires that will disrupt depots, stockpiles, and immobile supply activities meant to secure territory and promote civil control.[10] Facing an enemy with far greater reach requires some transitional operational concept between direct combat and static support.
Strengthening Defense
A second dimension beyond range that support operations must evolve is survivability and independent defensive capability. The requirement for sustainers and supporters to defend themselves is evergreen but becomes increasingly important against more lethal enemies. This entails individual and crew-wide weapons proficiency for active defense, but also extends to passive cyber and electromagnetic defenses when facing modernized adversaries.[11] The best defense is to avoid detection altogether. Failing that, support detachments must be able to withstand indirect fire and direct assault while moving through hostile territory. This again makes support more complex. Civil support against a near-peer enemy is a combined arms operation, requiring integrated cyber, air, and land defense capabilities with the mobility needed to sustain fighting far afield. The purpose of doctrine is to make clear the means required and the ways they will be employed for strategic success. It is thus paramount that doctrine specify the combination of means necessary to defend those performing support and stability tasks in the operational environment FM 3-0 describes.
Developing Technological Superiority
Technological advancement should be the third dimension of a new logistical paradigm. Modernization of logistics using real-time battlefield data and predictive analytics allows for greater precision and reduces the risk of detection by an ever more lethal enemy. At present maneuver forces often operate without prompt and high-fidelity predictive information, which can be paralyzing in the face of indirect fire and artillery. This represents a stark departure from the kind of intelligence operations needed to sustain civil support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. To combat those insurgencies the Army relied on localized and anecdotal intelligence against a dispersed enemy integrated with the civilian population. In a limited intervention against a more capable enemy, remote identification and targeting will be critical. The heavy equipment and more conventional force deployment necessary to sustain indirect fire and land-to-land artillery are far more easily detectable with advanced technology than an urban insurgent force. Geospatial intelligence and other detection technologies can dispense of much of the fog surrounding maneuver and mobile support. This precision will allow stability and sustainment forces to operate over extended distances with limited resupply and reduce the overall vulnerability of the support and logistical infrastructure. This too is a complex support function. The attachment of big data tools and more advanced intelligence gathering to stability and civil support tasks is not introduced in FM 3-0 but should be a foundational piece of the operational spectrum in preparation for the next battle.
U.S. Army National Guard soldiers at Bemowo Piskie Training Area, Poland, Feb. 11, 2022. (SFC Adrian Patoka/U.S. Army Photo)
Conclusion
The strategic shift towards great power competition requires a reevaluation of Army doctrine and operational capabilities. Existing doctrine demonstrates a fundamental mismatch between expectations of how the next battlefield will look and the capabilities required to shape conditions for strategic success. Small wars and low-intensity conflict like the limited interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan may be persistent, but they will increasingly come against more competent actors like Russia, China, and their associated clients. Conceptualizing ways to conduct comprehensive operations short of general war and major combat operations will be paramount to protecting strategic interests without risking nuclear escalation. This is the suppressed premise in the removal of peace as Phase Zero in the Army’s phases of conflict. The emerging security situation is one of near-constant low-level rivalry in flashpoints like Ukraine, the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait. Civil support and stability operations in these areas are meant to check attempts to expand American adversaries’ spheres of influence and avoid the creation of political vacuums on their borders. Yet current doctrine if applied will be insufficient to secure, sustain, and support a limited intervention. Russia’s war of choice in Ukraine makes plain the need for updated doctrine.
Abandoned tanks, burnt out trucks, and captured artillery pieces litter the frozen marshes of Eastern Ukraine. Ever since their February 24th invasion, Russian forces have been poorly equipped, poorly organized, and have failed to accomplish their intended fait accompli of quick territorial gains.[12] These are not merely tactical level shortcomings; Russian operational logistics have proved incapable of keeping an expeditionary force supported and supplied as they move west from the Russian border and south from Belarus, towards Kyiv. When Russian tanks rolled across these same fields during World War II, Ukrainian guerillas were destroying German supply and logistics lines. Now, armed with Javelin missiles, Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces are concentrating on holding big cities and disrupting long, vulnerable supply chains snaking through Eastern Ukraine. The Russians cannot defend all the roads and rails needed for their supply chains. Siege units currently strangling Kyiv and other cities will be forced to withdraw back to Russian territory when supply chains are exhausted and can no longer sustain a protracted conflict. It would be easy, but a grave mistake, to brush off Russian operational shortsightedness as bare incompetence. Sustaining expeditionary forces in a hostile environment against well-equipped and foreign-supported adversaries is a difficult task, but one the US Department of Defense must prepare for, sooner rather than later. As the U.S.’s national security strategy pivots away from counterinsurgency and limited intervention towards great power competition, doctrine must adapt alongside it to prepare American forces to defeat more capable adversaries than ever before.
The gap between conventional combat operations and static civil support in low-threat environments must be filled before any intervention in a buffer zone or client state can be considered. Support and sustainment operations will be far more vulnerable in the future operational environment, requiring a complex detachment of independent defensive capability and more advanced technology. More broadly, all of DOD must prepare to engage in low-intensity conflict against adversaries supported or directly equipped by foreign competitors. Developing complex support capabilities is paramount to the ability to project power overseas. Sustaining multilateral defensive operations with NATO or our Asian allies will require organization from the strategic down to the tactical levels, and reconceptualizing the operational spectrum now will avoid the fate of the Russians whenever it is next needed.
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