Illustration © NATO
Synthesis of the ” Sustaining Multidomain Operations ” visioconference organized by Coges Events on November 20, 2023.
— > By Murielle Delaporte
Moderated by Hawa-Léa Sougouna, director of the Coges conference program, the panel brought together three defense players who are particularly well suited to tackle the subject of multi-domain operations (MDO) in the USA and NATO, and M2MC in France for “multi-fields multi-domains”.
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Lieutenant-Colonel Bradley Cooper, Commander of the U.S. Army’s 194th Division Sustainment Support Battalion deployed at Camp Humphreys in Pyongtaek, South Korea.
AUS Army officer with two academic degrees (MBA from the University of Phoenix in Arizona and BS in Criminal Law from the University of Georgia), Lieutenant-Colonel Cooper has been commanding the 194th Division Sustainment Support Battalion in Pyongtaek, South Korea, since May 2022. Prior to that, he worked on the Army Talent Management Task Force from 2019 to 2022 and as AUSA liaison officer. His experience in the logistics corps includes numerous deployments, such as Operation Iraqi Freedom in Kuwait and Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He was also Logistics Team Leader for the 402nd Army Field Support Brigade and Operations Manager for the 8th Theater Sustainment Command in Hawaii.
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Dr. Michael Shurkin, non resident Senior fellow, Atlantic Council
Dr. Shurkin, based in Washington, DC, is a consultant and non residentSenior Fellow at theAtlantic Council. He was a political analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and the RAND Corporation, as well as at RUSI ( Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security ). He teaches at John Hopkins University. He has written on the military policy and structure of France and other European countries, as well as on the broader theme of the future of war and the lessons of the war in Ukraine. He holds a PhD from Yale University, a BA from Stanford University and studied at the “Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales” in France.
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Colonel Emmanuel Devigne, MDO Division Head at the Command Doctrine and Training Center within the Future Combat Command.
Colonel Devigne is a graduate of the Saint-Cyr military academy, and holds three masters degrees in defense economics and strategy and in management from the Ecole de guerre, as well as a leadership certificate from the Chamonix School. He is a graduate of the College of Information & Cyberspace at the National Defense University in Washington DC. Before joining the Future Combat Command, he was Chief of Staff of the 27th BIM (Mountain Infantry Brigade) and Head of the Strategic Anticipation and Effects Office at the French armed forces general staff from 2018 to 2020. It has been deployed on training missions in Norway, Africa, French Guiana, Djibouti, Kosovo, the Baltic States and Afghanistan. He has also held a number of positions within NATO and the European Union.
Before tackling the issue of Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) support, Hawa-Léa Sougouna oriented the discussion towards a betetr understanding of what MDO covers and to what extent this concept is transposable among all NATO allies.
The multi-domain perimeter: adapting to evolving threats
Originally an American concept
For Dr. Shurkin, the MDO is ” a reaction that the United States had in the seventies in the aftermath of the Vietnam War “, when the prospect of confrontation in Central Europe became more pressing. This evolution took two forms:
- a high-tech aspect, with the development of sensors and precision strikes that were going to play a key role in the first Gulf War in 1990(Desert Storm);
- an innovative doctrinal aspect: “a classic example is the Air-Land Battle doctrine, which implied the need for a perfectly air-tight coordination between the Army and Air Force to increase joint capabilities “.
The combination of technological innovation and high-level joint integration was aimed at offsetting the Warsaw Pact’s quantitative advantage with a focus on deep strikes: the aim was to ” seek to annihilate the second and third echelons that feed the front line, while fighting on the front line to win as quickly as possible ”.
Today, in the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the same concern has resurfaced about the loss of Western competitive advantage over new adversaries such as Russia and China. The MDO concept thus reflects the same desire to improve the quality of the American armed forces by further strengthening joint coordination, with new technologies enabling “the development of new technologies” to lubricate this type of high-level jointness. “In line with the third Offset Strategy developed in 2015 by the Pentagon.
” We need to relearn how to fight adversaries like Russia and China, who have significant A2AD (Anti-Access, Anti-Denial) capabilities,” explains Dr. Shurkin, citing the reference document for the US Army’s recent doctrinal evolution, the “TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1: The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028″, which highlights not only the need to deal with A2AD threats, but also the hybridization of warfare with the introduction of cyber and information warfare” that the Chinese and Russian governments want to exploit to their advantage ”.
European variants: the case of France and the United Kingdom
For French general staffs, the two traditional domains – or rather fields – of land and sea have been joined by Air (3D), then 4D with cyber and electronic warfare, and 5D with informational warfare, the latter two being non-tangible. This is why France has adopted the acronym M2MC, for multi-fields / multi-domains. As a result, as Colonel Devigne points out, ” going from two areas of deconflictualization to five in the laptime of a century is particularly complicated. He characterized the French-style MDO according to two major trends: on the one hand, the narrowing of the competition-contestation-confrontation continuum, and on the other, the acceleration of the tempo of operations due to the evolution of communications and transmissions, as well as the ” extension of the battlefield beyond areas where physical control is possible ”.
A response to this evolution means the insertion of kinetic and non-kinetic elements, the major challenge being “to ensure that effectors converge jointly towards the same effects, which implies a great deal of coordination and integration at each strategic, operative and tactical level “, he explained.
Dr. Shurkin pointed out that both France and the UK – the latter having chosen the acronym “MDI” for ” Multi-domain Integration ” – were placing particular emphasis on C2 integration (” Command & Control “) and technology sharing. More than in the USA, creativity is encouraged at all levels of the chain of command, with the emphasis on a process of ” acculturation of the MDO at all levels “. More than a race for technological leaps, the idea is to ” optimize resources (which are more limited than in the USA) through this high level of integration “.
For him, the major difference between the European approach – in this case, primarily French and British – and the American approach is rooted in the respective size of the armed forces, and thus lies in a maneuver-based approach incorporating tactical surprise effects for the former, rather than overwhelming maneuver superiority for the latter (” manœuvering around vs overpowering enhancing manœuver ” ).
For Colonel Devigne, however, MDO, MDI and M2MC are the same answer to the same problem, with the differences in acronyms reflecting cultural and geographical approaches specific to each nation.
The logistical challenges of multi-domain operations: making sure you have the “right skills at the right place at the right time”.
Define space and cyber requirements and assess criteria for their survivability
For Lieutenant-Colonel Cooper, whose mission is to ” ensure the support – supply, maintenance and transportation – for the 2nd Infantry Division, i.e. five brigades with seven thousand personnel, deployed at Camp Humphrey in South Korea (…) two hours from North Korean forward deployed troops “the MDO will be the way to carry out a large-scale combat operation (LISCO for “Large Scale Combat Operation”). ”. After the strategic definition of MDO proposed by Dr. Shurkin, Lt-Col Cooper described MDO at the tactical level as ” a redux of Air-Land Battle with the addition of two new domains, space and cyber.”
Lt-Col Cooper pointed out that, with North Koreanarmed forces estimated at 1.4 million men, a war against the latter would be very different from the wars waged over the last twenty years in Iraq and Afghanistan: ” it would be “infantryman on infantryman” and everything logistics would be contested. “A dedicated team – the “contested logistics cross-functional team” – has just been created in the continuity of the establishment since 2018 of the Command for the Future of the Army (AFC for ” Army Future Command “. The aim is to examine certain key sectors for supporting MDOs, such as distribution and energy. Other changes are also taking place at the structural level, with the integration on the front line of armement repair, which until now were at the depot level.
Of the seventeen capability gaps identified for LISCO combat, three are sustainment-related, said the U.S. Army officer. ” But if we know how to do this as logisticians in the continuity of Air-Land Battle, what’s different today compared to thirty years ago is the technology, which is constantly improving, such as drones or autonomous robotic systems like the “Follow the leader” program we’re starting to implement. “. On the technological front, advances continue to be made, with the introduction of 3D printing at tactical level (until recently only in depots as well).
However, it is now a question of identifying the requirements for space and cyber at the tactical level, and how to support them:
– As far as space is concerned, for him it is ” the equivalent of what the maritime domain was for land during the Second World War: a means of access to a theater where a land battle is taking place. “If Lt-Col Cooper imagines the potential of a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) recompletion system, he does point out that the problem for the Army and logisticians in particular is the lack of ownership of the space assets available: ” unlike Amazon, which has its own satellites and means of transportation and can therefore ensure the traceability of its shipments, we have to ask for permission to use such resources “, he recalls.
– As far as cyber is concerned, the problem at the tactical level is not only to generate the necessary energy, but also to protect the network: ” as a logistician, the watchword is survivability … “This is all the more true given that, as supply chains become increasingly digitalized, the vulnerability of networks is clearly one of the concerns to be taken into account: ” if a cyber attack were to disrupt transit routes and the safe arrival of spare parts, our technical readiness for operations would suffer immediately. ”.
The introduction of artificial intelligence also increases energy requirements and the risk of overheating: ” We need to think about the water consumption required to cool our systems, to ensure that cyber communications remain operational”.
Interoperability and technological integration
A major difficulty in implementing a true MDO concept is the question of interoperability between classified and unclassified systems (such as the Joint Battle Command Platform or JBCP). “The 194th Division Support Battalion Commander uses this system to help track the condition of equipment and trace parts.
Dr Shurkin also emphasized the challenge of interoperability not only at national level, but also internationally, especially between armies with different degrees of digitalization: ” in France, the focus is on connecting Scorpion to something bigger, namely the Titan program. “to strengthen the integration of forces. Colonel Devigne believes that “the Scorpion-Titan collaborative combat system creates a bubble that needs to be connected to allied systems “, and that the next challenge will be to make it joint-compatible among allies.
Colonel Devigne also highlighted the role of artificial intelligence in traceability and predictive maintenance, as well as in accelerating the decision-making loop. But even if the contribution of artificial intelligence should be substantial for MDOs, if only in terms of C2 automation – a growing trend and an unavoidable parameter to be dealt with in Michael Shurkin’s opinion – the three experts agreed about the importance of the human element and the skills needed to be developed in order to face the immense challenges awaiting the armed forces. Alluding to the traditional adage of logisticians, Lt-col Cooper recalled this imperative as follows : “we are going to need “the right talents at the right place at the roght time ” to help us manage the implementation of MDO”. Shurkin praised Europe’s multi-domain approach, which encourages all military echelons to ” think MDO “. A pragmatic, lower-cost approach that capitalizes more on ” human software ” rather than on technology in a context of severe budget constraints.
For Colonel Devigne, the war in Ukraine illustrates a major change compared with recent years, namely the transparency of the battlefield that new technologies now make possible, with multi-domain being ” only at the beginning of the technological race ” that is already taking place on the ground.