ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

As the U.S. competes against global adversaries in the space domain, the Army needs continued investment in technology to deliver capabilities to warfighters, the commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command said.

The U.S. military should expand its thinking when it comes to anti-access/area-denial capabilities, a panel of experts said during a recent Association of the U.S. Army Hot Topic on fires.

Anti-access/area-denial, or A2/AD, refers to “actions or capabilities” that prevent adversarial forces from entering an operational theater, or that restrict their freedom of movement within a theater.

In today’s “unprecedented” strategic environment, the Army’s ability to deliver fires remains key, the commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division said.

While the Army has been trying to see farther at least since the Civil War, it is now working to leverage data and unmanned systems to push even deeper into the battlefield, a panel of experts said Dec. 3.

“We’ve been here before. What’s different is the scale and speed,” Brig. Gen. Rory Crooks, director of Army Futures Command’s Long-Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team, said during a panel discussion that was part of an Association of the U.S. Army Hot Topic on fires.

Despite “significant progress” in transforming its fires portfolio, the U.S. Army is not yet capable of overmatching potential adversaries in protracted large-scale combat operations at an acceptable degree of risk, according to a new paper by the Association of the U.S. Army.

Registration is open for an Association of the U.S. Army Hot Topic on long-range precision fires.

Scheduled for Dec. 3 at AUSA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, the daylong Hot Topic is titled “Land-Based Fires in Large-Scale Combat Operations.”

During the event, speakers and panelists will highlight the integration of ground-based fires within the broader context of multidomain operations and underscore their importance in ensuring operational success.

Guam, a tiny but strategic U.S. territory in the Western Pacific, is most vulnerable to “the pacing threat of China,” and defending it is critical to the joint force operating in the Indo-Pacific theater, senior Army leaders said.

To boost expertise in space operations, the Army is working to establish a new space MOS and branch, said Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Work also is underway to push critical space capabilities down to the tactical level.