ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

Combining two key Army commands serves as a “win” for the U.S. and its allies ahead of a major multinational exercise in Africa later this year, a senior Army leader said. 

“We’re very excited about the merger,” Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said Feb. 23 during a press call. 

He added that “the consolidation of our two commands is a win for Africa and a win for the United States Army.”

The French army will test its new warfighting doctrine this spring in a major exercise with U.S. and British forces as it prepares to face a future fight against a state adversary.

Much like the U.S. Army’s Multi-Domain Operations concept, which assumes strategic challenges from a near-peer adversary on land, air, sea, cyber and space, the “Strategic Vision of the Chief of Staff of the French Army: 2030 Operational Superiority” addresses the need for shared vision and interoperability among its Allies and partners. 

The Heritage Foundation’s “2021 Index of U.S. Military Strength” gives the U.S. Army high marks for improved readiness but once again scores the service as “marginal” because those readiness gains continue to be offset by ongoing struggles to modernize and grow the force.

The Army isn’t alone. The report also rates the Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and U.S. nuclear capabilities as marginal. The new U.S. Space Force was not assessed in the 2021 report.

The Army must build a unified network capable of supporting troops anywhere around the world as the force prepares for the future battlefield, said the new deputy Army chief of staff, G-6.

“This unified network is going to be operationally imperative to support multidomain operations,” said Lt. Gen. John Morrison. 

The goal is to “make it easy for formations that are in the [continental U.S.] to rapidly deploy to any area of operations and immediately plug in and start conducting operations,” he said. 

Communication and exercises helped prepare the Army for an unprecedented “whole of nation” response to the COVID-19 pandemic, DoD and Army leaders said.

“COVID-19 required an unprecedented response,” Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson, commanding general of Army North said Oct. 14 during AUSA Now, the Association of the U.S. Army’s virtual 2020 annual meeting.

“We have only trained for something like this in an exercise,” she said, adding that 10 FEMA regions were activated in response to the pandemic. 

European allies remain vital to U.S. national security, but the U.S. military’s current posture in the region is “too small and without depth,” a former commander of U.S. Army Europe testified before Congress.

In testimony during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the role of allies and partners in U.S. military strategy and operations, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges reiterated his stance that the decision announced by DoD on July 29 to draw down 12,000 troops from Europe “is a mistake in my view.”

Winning on the future battlefield, where all domains will be at stake, will require more than just cooperation between the services, according to the general in charge of the Army’s modernization efforts.

“We’ve never done it alone in the past, [and] we’re never going to do it alone in the future,” said Gen. John Murray, commander of Army Futures Command.

“We have to build joint synergy,” he said Sept. 10 during a virtual conference hosted by Defense News, stressing that cooperation alone between the services isn’t enough.

U.S. Army Europe is in “a pretty healthy place” despite challenges brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the command is already planning for Defender-Europe 2021, a top general said. 

“We’ve been able to work with our host nations to continue to flow personnel into and out of Europe,” Brig. Gen. Sean Bernabe, deputy commanding general of Army Europe, said during a virtual panel hosted by Defense News on July 9.  

The Army is working to put its Multi-Domain Operations concept into action during a new exercise slated to begin this fall.

Project Convergence is expected to become an annual exercise designed to help the Army learn how to “connect things and bring things together,” said Gen. Mike Murray, commander of Army Futures Command.

“Within our Multi-Domain Operations concept, convergence is one of the key tenets, how do you bring the five domains together,” Murray said in June during an Association of the U.S. Army Thought Leaders livestream event.

A new Land Warfare Paper from the Association of the U.S. Army suggests the evolving Multi-Domain Operations concept embraced by the Army and being studied by the Joint Staff may contain two critical flaws.

Written by Maj. Amos Fox, the paper says the Army took a “positive first step” to address future threats across land, air, sea, space and cyberspace with technological innovations and revised doctrine.