From sinking ships to jamming networks, the Army’s new two-star headquarters integrates AI-driven tactics and long-range precision to dominate the Pacific’s vast, high-tech maritime battlefield.
By Kris Osborn, Warrior
“Sink ships, shoot satellites, defend missile and aircraft attacks and hack and jam enemy networks” …. are just a few of the growing scope of operations the Army now expects its new Multi-Domain Command-Pacific force to perform.
These missions required of the U.S. Army, cited years ago by former U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Navy Admiral Harry Harris, were referenced by the U.S. Army’s 7th ID Commander Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington as a key reason why the Army has now established a new, breakthrough two-star led Multi-Domain Command Pacific force. The Army’s current effort is to build upon prior progress in the realm of multi-domain operations and surge into a new “transformation” preparing the Army for new generations of combat tactics, concepts of operation and AI-enabled sensor-to-shooter pairing.
“We looked at Multi-Domain Command–Pacific through the lens of the problem we’re helping to solve at the theater level. As the Multi-Domain Task Forces were stood up, Admiral Harry Harris, around the 2016 timeframe, said, “I need the Army to be able to do four things in the Pacific: sink ships, neutralize satellites, shoot down aircraft and missiles, and hack and jam adversary C2 networks,” Harrington said.
The reference to Harris, and the original surge toward multi-domain operations suggests that the Army is now at a critical “breakthrough” point building upon the success of its history and recent efforts. This breakthrough seems to introduce many tactical variables, as new technologies such as AI, EW, high-speed computer processing and hardened transport layer networking enable high-speed, real-time analytics, data processing and joint, near instantaneous multi-domain data transmission. Much of this relates to “pure speed” and the geographical expanse known as the Pacific Theater; an increasingly agile, networked and expeditionary force can use watercraft to deploy tanks across large swaths of ocean, use long range land weapons such as the Precision Strike Missile and Typhon to destroy ships at sea and conduct high-speed attack missions across otherwise impossible distances. These operations are fortified by a growing ability to network data with aircraft, surface Navy ships and satellites in seconds. All of this is fundamental to the Army rationale for creating its “Multi-Domain Command-Pacific,” as it supports the service’s broader “transformation” efforts … resulting in paradigm-changing combat speed, efficiency and interoperability.
“On behalf of the Theater Army, part of our responsibility is to be fit for purpose as we integrate ourselves with the Joint Force and with our partners and allies. We’ve managed to do that over time, and this capability, now at a division level, gives us a two-star commander and headquarters that more easily integrates across all the warfighting functions into the Joint Force,” Gen. Ronald Clark, Commander, U.S. Army Pacific Command, told reporters. “You’re starting to see capabilities proliferate to other divisions that we hadn’t seen before, because that ties into what we need our divisions to do in the Pacific, which may be a little bit different than in other areas of operation. For instance, as you know, the 25th Infantry Division is our first infantry division to field long-range precision fires organic to the division.”
Changing Tactics
Sure enough, traditional Combined Arms Maneuver, while still relevant as evidenced in Ukraine, is evolving quickly into a faster, more expansive, multi-domain, distributed AI-enabled warfare. While there does still seem to be a need for traditional mechanized maneuver formations, the rapid maturation of AI-enabled drones, EW applications, advanced multi-domain networking, satellite connectivity and much longer-range precision strike and sensing … is generating new tactics, formations, combat strategies and Concepts of Operation.
This reality informs the U.S. Army’s massive, “transformative” effort to establish the new Multi-Domain Command Pacific. In tactical terms, the transition to a “Multi-Doman Command Pacific” comes to fruition in large measure through breakthrough networking technologies which now enable ground maneuver forces, mechanized formations and dispersed dismounted units to share combat relevant, time sensitive data with air, sea and space assets within a greater “joint” warfare structure.
“We’re combining the maneuver capacity that existed within 7th Infantry Division—our Stryker brigades—and merging that with the long-range sensing, fires, cyber, space, electronic warfare, and information capabilities that have been developed over time through the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force,” Harrington said. “The real advantage is how we organize them at the theater level and enable the joint force alongside our allies and partners .. our formation operated across the Philippines and integrated our long-range fires. We used Army watercraft for sustainment and we used unmanned systems networked together.”
Harrington and other U.S. Army Pacific Command leaders described the arrival of Multi-Domain Command in terms of an evolution of previously existing transformative operations, some of which are evidenced in combat operations decades ago by the 7th Infantry Division. The 7th ID showed multi-domain operational capacity during Pearl Harbor in WWII and fought off Japanese invaders from U.S. Alaskan Islands in Arctic conditions.
“At the start of World War II, 7th Infantry Division was a motorized infantry division. Because of Pearl Harbor and the realization that there would likely have to be an island-landing campaign in the Pacific, the division quickly got the call to make that transformation. Very shortly thereafter, as you mentioned, they were on the island of Attu in the Aleutians. They eventually moved to the Marshall Islands, Leyte, and then Okinawa. So there is a strong sense that we’ve been here before in terms of transformation,” Harrington explained.
“Speed” and “scale” at the “time and place of need” is the language Army generals used to characterize the pure essence of its transformative breakthroughs.“
“As we look at capabilities across space, cyber, EW, and across all domains, the Theater Commander now has one integrator that he or she looks at to ensure that we are applying those effects appropriately, with the speed and scale necessary at the time and place of need,” Harrington said.
AI Breakthroughs
This increased speed is, to a large extent, enabled by AI as advanced algorithms can gather incoming sensor data from otherwise disparate pools of sensor data, integrate and organize the data and perform near “real-time” analytics to pair identify targets within a cluttered, congested battlefield, optimize sensor-to-shooter pairing and exact immediately lethality across otherwise disconnected or disaggregated areas of combat. The Army helped pioneer this use of AI during President Trump’s first administration at an exercise or “campaign of learning” called Project Convergence. At this event in the desert in 2020, the Army reduced sensor-to-shooter command and control from 20 mins down to 20-seconds using a ground based AI system known as FireStorm. The technology has evolved considerably since this time and AI-enabled collection and data processing is happening more and more at the “tactical edge” of combat with small drones, hand-held devices and advanced weapons systems. These are likely some of the reasons why Harrington said AI was critical to USARPACs new Multi-Domain Command Pacific.
“I’d describe the criticality of adaptive and agentic command-and-control that is AI-enabled as one of our four pillars in our Cross-Domain Contact Layer concept of employment. If we’re going to have a diverse sensor array and ensure those sensors are in the optimal locations based on signals of interest, AI is really helpful to get them into position without multiple analysts manually maneuvering those assets. If we’re tying that to agile effects formations—offensive and defensive—we need to absorb and make sense quickly of what those sensors are seeing from space, stratosphere, air, maritime, and terrestrial domains, and then process and rapidly push that to the best shooter based on location and magazine depth. AI is helping us do this,” Harrington said.