The U.S. military could have a new, joint operating concept within a year, loosely based on the Army’s Multi-Domain Operations proposal, the commander of the U.S. Army Futures Command said.

Speaking Feb. 10 at the Atlantic Council, Gen. Mike Murray said the services have similar concepts but haven’t been able to agree on details. That could soon change, he said.

The Army has been working for about four years on the notion that a broad-capability force that could find itself challenged in the air, land, sea, space or cyberspace domains should exploit a gap in another domain. 

The other services generally share the wider idea but have been working on their own concepts, Murray said. “What was always missing, in my opinion, is an overarching joint concept,” Murray said. 

Things have changed since former Secretary of the Army Mark Esper and former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley moved up. With Esper now serving as defense secretary and Milley serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Joint Staff is now working on its own Multi-Domain Operations concept.

“I would expect to see a new joint operational concept—kind of an umbrella concept the services need to get under—in the next 12 months or so,” Murray said.