By Kris Osborn, Warrior 

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,” U.S. Army’s 7th ID Commander Maj. Gen. Bernard 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. 

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.