ISSUE: While the U.S. Army has made significant progress transforming its fires portfolio, it is not yet capable of overmatching potential adversaries in protracted large-scale combat operations (LSCO) at an acceptable degree of risk.

SCOPE: Describes the progress of the transformation in fires capability to date, as well as challenges and implications for offensive and defensive fires and the acquisition system that enables it.

Introduction

Current conflicts, particularly the Russo-Ukrainian War, provide an opportunity for the U.S. Army to assess its progress toward becoming capable of overmatching[1] any potential adversary in protracted large-scale combat operations (LSCO). These campaigns and battles offer valuable insights that the U.S. Army is leveraging to refine the trajectory of its most significant transformation in 40 years. While lessons span many areas, this paper focuses on land-based fires in LSCO and on the acquisition enterprise that enables it.

In addition to active “hot” conflicts, the U.S. Army is learning from Project Convergence—which is both a campaign of persistent experimentation in support of Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and a robust exercise program with allies and partners. This is happening while the Army also campaigns in the Indo-Pacific with Operation PATHWAYS against China, the “pacing threat” in strategic competition, and in Europe with DEFENDER-Europe.

Initial Impressions

The Russo-Ukrainian War provides clear implications regarding the utility of long-range precision fires and shorter-range massed artillery and rocket fire; the insatiable demand for ammunition, most notably artillery, and the inability of the industrial base to support it. This is not necessarily due to shortfalls in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) itself. Rather, it is largely due to the inconsistent demand signal from the Army and DoD driven by unpredictable budgetary support from Congress. Additional implications evident from this war include: the importance of survivability through dispersion, decoys and displacement; apparent vulnerability of towed artillery; targeting with both military and civilian means; and the increased utilization of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and counter-UAS (CUAS). Finally, the conflict has highlighted the contours and demands of protracted warfare, having now lasted more than 1,000 days.

Several other insights have emerged from the Russo-Ukrainian War, such as the effectiveness of the Tactical Reconnaissance-Strike Complex comprised of ubiquitous UAS, indirect fires, and communications that has made operational-level maneuver very costly for both combatants.[2] Additionally, the multi-domain character of modern warfare is being demonstrated with occurrences such as the Ukrainian military successfully sinking the Moskva, a Russian warship, in the Black Sea—despite the fact that Ukraine does not have a navy.[3]

With these impressions and insights in mind, the U.S. Army is charting new territory, perhaps most notably in campaigning with allies and partners through Operation PATHWAYS across the Indo-Pacific. This is happening in multiple areas: first in its creative employment of Multi-Domain Task Forces (MDTFs);[4] second in its enhancement of prepositioned stocks; and third in its development of techniques to overcome the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) measures and to establish its own A2/AD capabilities to limit the PLA’s ability to secure key terrain. 

Background: The Road Toward Convergence

After more than a decade predominantly focused on counterinsurgency (COIN), the U.S. Army assessed in the early 2010s that it was out-gunned and out-ranged by its two near-peer competitors. Having witnessed the overwhelming success of U.S.-led forces both in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the Russian and especially Chinese militaries increasingly equipped themselves to counter U.S. ground and naval forces with long-range fires. The U.S. Army New Generation Warfare Study, conducted after the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine, kick-started a massive modernization effort that rivaled the transformation of the Army four decades earlier.

With its key weapon systems dating from the 1980s, U.S. Army modernization for decades consisted primarily of incremental upgrades to the original systems. It became increasingly apparent that new systems, developed and built in the 21st century, would be needed to counter equally modern systems on the battlefield. In other words, upgrading the dial on a rotary phone was not going to be sufficient to compete with an iPhone.

Fires Modernization

In response to this assessment, the U.S. Army established six modernization priorities in 2017, the first of which was Long Range Precision Fires (LRPF), and the sixth of which was Air and Missile Defense (AMD). Demand from the combatant commanders of both U.S. European Command and U.S. Pacific Command, renamed U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, in 2018, also contributed to the Army designating LRPF as its number-one modernization priority.[5]  These priorities were spearheaded by eight cross-functional teams (CFTs) and initiated the development of 31 key programs and four priority efforts for implementation. In 2018, the Army established a four-star headquarters, Army Futures Command (AFC), to drive this major undertaking.

While making progress in many of its initiatives, such as the delivery of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM)[6] and the successful test flight of the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW),[7] there have been setbacks with some platforms, such as the Strategic Long-Range Cannon (SLRC) and the Extended-Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA). Nevertheless, LRPF has generated significant momentum and is well on its way to delivering the capabilities needed to counter modernized enemy systems. While obstacles remain, they are surmountable.

Seemingly, the only thing that can disrupt this critical effort is budgetary dysfunction. It continually burdens DoD with continuing resolutions (CRs) that delay new starts which are essential to modernization. Due in some measure to these legislative failures, Army leaders have stressed that “we are nearly out of time” to transform the force. More than five years of modernization have been lost to the cumulative CRs since 2011.[8]  The PLA experienced no such delay.

Beyond Materiel

• Need to re-build muscle memory on massing fires and LSCO
  • Massing Fires. Global War on Terror demands drove the Army toward adopting a modular force structure that included removing direct-support field artillery battalions from the Division Artillery (DivArty) and assigning them directly to the Brigade Combat Team (BCT). This was due to the immediate demands of the BCT-centric force, but it resulted in the degradation of the Army’s ability to mass fires at echelon, not to mention a generation of leaders who had little experience in doing so.
  • The Army also reduced field artillery force structure at echelons above brigade. Efforts are underway to reverse this trend, notably with the activation of the 56th Fires Command—a two-star command—in Germany, in addition to the five MDTFs around the globe (three in U.S. Army Pacific; one in Germany; and one in the Continental United States.
  • Exercises. Combined exercises in multiple theaters are currently at an unprecedented level, as U.S. allies and partners are driven even closer by the increasingly aggressive behavior of both Russia and China. Division-level focus at Combat Training Centers and extensive combined exercises in both the Indo-Pacific (Operation PATHWAYS) and in Europe (DEFENDER-Europe) are important steps toward reinvigorating thinking and operating at echelons well above BCT.

• Much attention and energy has been focused on the materiel aspect of Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities and Policy (DOTMLPF-P) yet improved capability is formation-based. Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA) General Randy George has addressed this with one of his four priorities: Providing Ready Combat Formations. Dialogue had tended to focus on things, e.g., LRPF, as the answer. However, LRPF are simply the means, in addition to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, robust comms and networks, C2, organizational structure, force posture et al., to provide effective fire support.

Implications and Considerations

Operational Employment

• As demonstrated by ongoing conflicts and campaigning, the re-ascendancy of land-based fires is not a substitute for maneuver but a complement to it in support of the joint and combined team.
• While modernized systems can deliver impressive effects, integration and synchronization are the secret sauce to achieving convergence[9] and contributing to joint force overmatch of enemies on the battlefield.
• U.S. reliance on precision munitions during two decades of COIN operations contributed to the reduction of the collective muscle memory for massing fires at echelon.
• The AMD enterprise faces multiple challenges. 
  • First, the incredibly high demand for protection from enemy air, missile and rocket attacks places a severe strain on AMD Soldiers due to their high OPTEMPO (operational tempo). This is likely to increase due to several factors including the Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept being adopted by the United States Air Force to disperse its forces into smaller formations across the Indo-Pacific for survivability. While a sound approach to preparing for potential conflict with a peer competitor, ACE would significantly increase the demand for low-density high-demand AMD assets. Furthermore, the demand for new systems is increasing much faster than the DIB can respond (assuming it were fully resourced) or force structure can support.[10]
  • Second, the new dimension of UAS and CUAS in the air-ground littoral is illustrative of the most dynamic change in character of warfare seen in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
  • Third, the AMD enterprise needs to address the cost curve in which systems and munitions employed to defeat incoming missile, rocket and artillery fire, and UAS, are far more expensive than the incoming weapon.
• While some question land-based LRPF, combatant commanders have testified repeatedly about their importance to the joint all-domain fight. LRPF provide complementary options to joint force commanders and create multiple dilemmas for potential adversaries.
• Components of solution to converge efforts and reestablish overmatch include: LRPF; M777 upgrade or replacement; wheeled field artillery; focus on the DivArty and division-level fires; combined exercises across Indo-Pacific (Operation PATHWAYS) and Europe (DEFENDER-Europe); echeloned capabilities; enhanced sensor-to-shooter; multi-domain targeting; and leveraging joint, interagency, intergovernmental and multinational capabilities.[11]

Development and Acquisition

• The combination of exquisite and legacy weapon systems and ammunition will be necessary due to fiscal constraints and the limitations of the DIB to secure the materials, machinery and workforce to produce everything required, even should there be no funding constraints or CRs. It will also be necessary due to the need for continual improvement of the legacy force while modernized systems are produced and fielded to formations.  
• Fires transformation is dependent on a resilient DIB that is incentivized to invest and produce key systems and large quantities of critical munitions.[12]
• Excess capacity or redundancy is not an inefficiency to be eliminated. It is a necessary characteristic of a force with the resilience to wage protracted conflict.
• Efforts to accelerate development and acquisition were announced by CSA George in October 2024, to include buying in tranches rather than buying for the entire Army at once, as part of the Transforming in Contact priority.
• In order to transform with the urgency that the CSA has stressed, the Army needs to accelerate the fielding of modernized systems.  While cost frequently tends to be the headline criterion in the acquisition of new systems, the Army may need to prioritize schedule over either the cost or performance in certain circumstances. Acquisition of new systems can focus on achieving interim threshold capabilities (minimum viable product)—range, for example—in the initial tranches and iteratively work toward objective capabilities in subsequent tranches.  

Way Ahead

Early in the Army’s modernization overhaul, two insightful leaders emphasized in 2018, “The Army must not only continue its pursuit of material solutions in long-range fires and air defense to improve range and lethality but must also build the right force structure at each echelon to integrate and employ cross-domain fires throughout the depth of the battlefield.”[13]

The stakes are high for the Army and the joint force as the Army transforms its fires portfolio for LSCO. There is an inherent tension between the present and the future, between the legacy force and what comes next. The Army must modernize legacy systems even as it develops new systems to replace them. It cannot call a time-out.

Finally, to ensure overmatch on future battlefields, the U.S. Army fires enterprise and the entire joint force must be prepared for the unexpected and be able to prevail and win an extended conflict. As Winston Churchill cautioned:

“Let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.”[14]

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Author Biography

Colonel Daniel S. Roper, USA, Ret., is Director of National Security Studies at AUSA. A career Artilleryman, he has commanded in West Germany, Hawaii and the Continental United States, and he is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Advanced Operational Arts Studies War College Fellowship. He served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Charles McEnany is a National Security Analyst at the Association of the United States Army. He has an MA in Security Policy Studies from George Washington University.

MAJ Young H. Joo is a Strategic Intelligence Officer and an Army Fellow at AUSA. He has previously served with both conventional and joint special operations forces throughout the Asia-Pacific region. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, National Intelligence University, and a doctorate from American University.

Notes