Conceptual models have their place. This article proposes to replace both the phases of operations and the spectrum of conflict concepts with a single model, the War Cycle, that builds on their existing utility but removes their deficiencies.
Multi-Domain Battle: The Need for Integration with National Strategy
Multi-Domain Battle has many flaws, but its most fatal is that as presently envisioned it risks being an underachiever. The United States, if it is to re-exert its global position, needs a military strategic concept that is more than just an iterative update of Air/Land Battle. It needs one that is great, if not revolutionary. Those designing Multi-Domain Battle are right in seeking a land force able to contest and win the fight in and across all domains, and which takes advantage of technological advances in connectivity, visibility, and lethality. This is a good start, but only if it nests Multi-Domain Battle within a military and national strategy.
Multi-Domain Battle: Meeting the Cultural Challenge
Major military innovation is often accompanied by tension between the camps representing the old guard who fight to preserve their place in the existing way of war and the disrupters who lay claim to a potential new order. There is much at stake in these cultural struggles in which fights over status, authority, budget, and pathways to high rank are relatively minor manifestations when considered alongside the main event—military effectiveness in future wars. However, Multi-Domain Battle as the U.S. Army’s future warfighting concept has not yet faced much challenge or criticism, at least not in public.
Multi-Domain Battle: The Echo of the Past
It was not that long ago that the revolution in military affairs of the late 1990s was advanced as a transformative event that would assure U.S. dominance over all rivals. Instead, it resulted in a technology-centric way of fighting that defied the enduring nature of war and resulted in a lessening of U.S. combat power for the wars the nation had to fight. The U.S. military may not suffer the same fate from Multi-Domain Battle. It is advancing at such a pace, however, that there has been little time to unpack all of the challenges its implementation may face, as well as the second order effects its employment will generate.