These are huge strategic challenges — and Ryan McCarthy is emphasizing them more than any of his predecessors in at least a decade.

Such smallsat payloads, hosted on commercial satellites, are an important piece of the Army’s evolving concept of Multi-Domain Operations, which seeks to combine efforts on land, the sea, air, space, and cyberspace to defeat sophisticated adversaries such as Russia and China.

The Army’s experimental Multi-Domain Task Force tested new tactics for Pacific conflict, hand-in-glove with the Marines, Air Force, and Australians.

The battery of eight missiles, while primarily meant to test out tactics, will be capable of combat. So will a prototype battery of lasers entering service in 2021.

A light scout and a mid-size transport remain Army aviation’s top two priorities, Secretary Mark Esper said, but industry needs to start thinking about the next heavy-lift aircraft and stop fighting against cuts to the venerable CH-47.

But modernizing the Army will take decades and tough decisions about everything from online propaganda to the National Guard.

Three major lines of effort will converge circa 2024, when a new breed of troops will man new kinds of combat units equipped with new technologies: talent & training, concepts & units, and money & modernization.

A new Army unit will hack and jam enemy networks and provide targeting data for both long-range missiles and missile defense.

Over 17 years of fighting terrorists and insurgents, “our SIGINT forces mastered the art and science of identifying and tracking individual threats with pinpoint precision,” Lt. Gen. Berrier said. “We now face a significant challenge on a much larger scale.”

WASHINGTON: The concept called Multi-Domain Battle – a single seamless offensive across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace – may seem futuristic, but the Army wants to start implementing at least parts of it right now. In wargames, doctrine, and interservice dialogue, “it’s actually becoming reality,” said Gen. David Perkins. As one of the fathers… Keep reading →