Who “Does” MDO? What Multi-Domain Operations Will Mean For—... about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmwi.westpoint.edu%2Fwho-does...
mwi.westpoint.edu
Who “Does” MDO? What Multi-Domain
Operations Will Mean For—and Require
Of—the Army’s Tactical Units - Modern
War Institute
Rebecca Segal
11–14 minutes
“You need to be prepared to operate in an environment where your radio
communications will be denied, where using your cell phone will get you
killed, and where your GPS, if it is working at all, may be providing
inaccurate information.” I’ve heard this kind of guidance for training since
my first field exercises, through ROTC, in 2014. At that point, it seemed
to me to be largely a justification for the frequent map-and-compass-
based land navigation and drilling on encrypted radio operations. More
recently, I have seen people use it to describe multidomain operations
(MDO), the Army’s new operating concept. It’s significant that this set of
environmental characteristics both represents a fundamental basis of
the Army’s overall operating concept and describes the challenges faced
by units at the lowest levels—providing a connective tissue, in a sense,
between the big picture and small-unit activities. But that translation of
operating concept to tactics remains underexplored. How do
multidomain operations translate to the brigade combat team level and
below, where the focus is entirely on the tactical fight?
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The Army’s recently released Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations
describes an operating environment in which we are under constant
contact in all domains, the adversary is collecting data to use as
ammunition, and there is no sanctuary. Even being out of a direct- or
indirect-fire weapons range does not mean safety from space and cyber
threats. We can no longer return to a forward operating base and
reasonably assume we will not be in contact: there is no fully secured
area anymore. Furthermore, with the adversary’s investment in their
capabilities, we can no longer assume we have domain superiority when
we are in contact.
Adversaries have built offensive and defensive networks so that we are
at risk of surveillance and potentially in contact, anytime and anywhere.
The networks are integrated across all domains to make them more
resilient against our targeting and more lethal in targeting us. The Army’s
recognition of the urgent needs to address these realities have driven a
transformational change to how we fight, culminating in FM 3-0. In the
manual’s foreword, Chief of Staff of the Army General James McConville
urges leaders at all echelons to understand and apply the multidomain
principles to their formations. While MDO is partly an evolution of
previous concepts like AirLand Battle, Full Spectrum Operations, and
Unified Land Operations, it also requires a radically different mindset,
including at the tactical level. An example is what is now required to
mask your position. Simply camouflaging yourself with some face paint
and well-placed sticks is entirely insufficient when there are capabilities
that can pick up what is being said in a room through high-speed video
footage of the vibrations of a potato chip bag lying around the speaker.
One of the key aspects of the new concept is “convergence,” which is the
Army’s solution to attacking the adversary’s integrated defensive and
offensive capabilities. “Convergence,” according to FM 3-0, “is an
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Who “Does” MDO? What Multi-Domain Operations Will Mean For—... about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmwi.westpoint.edu%2Fwho-does...
outcome created by the concerted employment of capabilities from
multiple domains and echelons against combinations of decisive points
in any domain to create effects against a system, formation, decision
maker, or in a specific geographic area.” Key to the convergence
concept are the integration of offensive capabilities from multiple
domains and the employment of that integrated set of effects against a
target or system. Integrating the tenet of convergence will be critical to
successful attacks in the multidomain operating environment.
Returning to the issue of what MDO looks like when applied at the
tactical level, there is an even more fundamental question that must first
be addressed: Who does MDO? This question can be broken down into
the two key constituent elements of convergence: integration and
employment. For the first part, at what echelons does MDO integration
occur? Given the significant staff undertaking required to integrate,
synchronize, and converge capabilities across the space, cyber, air,
land, and sea domains, a staff that can handle complex planning
operations is necessary. The Army assesses a corps to be the optimal
echelon for this. Below these echelons, then, are the units employing
capabilities across multiple domains in support of multidomain
operations.
While FM 3-0 states that “all operations are multidomain operations,”
there is a difference between multidomain operations and operating in
multiple domains, and understanding that difference is important for
each echelon to clearly define, and prepare for, its role. Again, MDO
requires convergence. Therefore, simply jamming a radio, hacking into a
computer, or shooting artillery at a target, even if occurring
simultaneously, would be operating in multiple domains but not
necessarily conducting multidomain operations. To make those effects
multidomain operations, they must be integrated together to “create
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Who “Does” MDO? What Multi-Domain Operations Will Mean For—... about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmwi.westpoint.edu%2Fwho-does...
effects against a system”; it would need to be setting conditions by
jamming the radio of an adversary system, while also hacking its
defensive radar, and then shooting artillery at the system. Furthermore,
simply relying on intelligence capabilities that pull from different domains
—like a GPS device or a computer—doesn’t make an operation
suddenly count as MDO.
However, just because there’s a difference between multidomain
operations and operating in multiple domains doesn’t mean that with
adoption of the new FM 3-0 that there isn’t also an increased emphasis
on echelons below divisions being able to both operate successfully in
the new environment and employ capabilities across multiple domains.
Units must recognize that they will be operating in environments where
capabilities across all domains are degraded. Beyond that, tactical-level
units are going to be in constant contact, across all domains, not only
affecting their command-and-control capabilities, but, more urgently,
posing a massive threat to their survivability. Masking positions with
terrain, operating in dispersed formations that displace frequently, being
aware of what satellites are overhead and able to observe friendly
formations, communicating at the minimum radio power, and preventing
phones in the field are only the beginning of understanding how to
survive in such an environment. Units may, technically, have been
operating in multiple domains previously, whether through using their
communications systems that rely on space assets, leveraging a joint
cyber asset, or even conducting some localized electronic warfare
jamming, but besides not necessarily amounting to doing MDO, these
practices also don’t accurately reflect the sheer volume of contact that
will occur across all domains. In the future, our new operating concept
may also mean that units get tactical-level offensive capabilities in
nonkinetic domains to increase their chances of not only surviving, but
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Who “Does” MDO? What Multi-Domain Operations Will Mean For—... about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmwi.westpoint.edu%2Fwho-does...
also being able to conduct their missions.
To give an example, it’s possible that a corps staff will be using the tenets
of MDO to set conditions for an airborne operation, specifically focusing
on getting planes through contested airspace by using all available
assets to neutralize the adversary’s protection and antiaircraft
capabilities. To do this successfully, the corps must integrate multiple
assets onto single target sets, which could be a combination of using
electronic warfare to take out communications capabilities, space effects
to prevent adversarial satellite navigation systems from working, a
cyberattack on a radar system’s computer, or preparatory fires on the
antiaircraft system itself. Due to the extensive planning, target system
analysis, and layering of multiple domains, the aircraft is then able to
come in and drop paratroopers.
Once on the ground, the divisions, brigades, and battalions are going to
experience contact in all domains—their radios will be jammed, they’ll be
shot at, their GPS will be unreliable, and they’ll be under constant
observation in every domain every time they present a signature. They’ll
simply be fighting to survive by masking, dispersing, and displacing. But
it will require even more than that for the tactical levels to be able to not
just survive, but fight back, in each domain. In this instance, the corps is
conducting multidomain operations by integrating capabilities and the
divisions and below are participating in MDO by integrating and
employing capabilities across multiple domains.
To prepare for the new operating environment depicted by FM 3-0, at the
division and above levels this will require fully integrating MDO into
division and corps warfighters. Below that level, it will require both giving
soldiers the understanding of the part they’re playing in MDO and,
crucially, also giving them realistic training for what the battlefield will look
like in modern environments characterized by large-scale combat
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Who “Does” MDO? What Multi-Domain Operations Will Mean For—... about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmwi.westpoint.edu%2Fwho-does...
operations. Units need the ability to see themselves in all domains on the
battlefield to understand how to operate both offensively and defensively
across all domains. Further, leaders need access to the capabilities that
FM 3-0 highlights like electromagnetic emission masking, tools to
counter unmanned systems, and deceptive emitters so they have the
ability to do something about what the enemy is doing to them. We
wouldn’t go to combat having only trained on a rifle in a classroom and
we can’t go to combat having only trained on nonkinetic integration in
that way either. It’ll take time to figure out exactly what echelon needs
which capabilities—what the breakdown of tactical space and cyber
capabilities looks like, for example—and then to get those capabilities in
the hands of the right people. But until we start experimenting in the right
controlled environments and training events, we will not get the essential
buy-in from the force to be successful in multidomain operations. There
are initial signs that this integration and experimentation are beginning to
happen, and now is the time to double down on these efforts and ensure
they extend across the entire Army.
That denied environment that I was told to expect during ROTC field
training isn’t necessarily wrong. It certainly depicts part of what we may
experience in the next fight. But it fails to reflect both the breadth and the
volume of contact that we will experience, and it certainly does not
capture all that MDO is. Clarifying the concepts of the new FM 3-0 and
defining roles allows us to better prepare for our operating environment.
Whether your role is to integrate MDO, to employ capabilities as part of a
multidomain operation, or simply to work to survive and operate in the
environment, we all have a part to play in the Army’s new operating
concept. It’s not a concept of the future—it’s occurring now, it’s radically
different, and we must prepare.
Captain Rebecca Segal is a field artillery officer, a graduate of Amherst
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Who “Does” MDO? What Multi-Domain Operations Will Mean For—... about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmwi.westpoint.edu%2Fwho-does...
College, and a Massachusetts native.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the
official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the
Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Sgt. Julian Padua, US Army
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