“Multidomain operations,” declares Field Manual 3-0, the Army’s capstone operations doctrine, “are the combined arms employment of joint and Army capabilities to create and exploit relative advantages that achieve objectives, defeat enemy forces, and consolidate gains on behalf of joint force commanders.” That sounds simple enough. But the waters are muddied just two paragraphs later, when the manual asserts “all operations are multidomain operations.” In an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous operational environment, the Army needs clarity. An operating concept that better describes and helps our forces visualize how we fight will orient tactical and operational level commanders on the objective of their actions and preparations for future large-scale combat operations.

Among the most readily apparent evolutions on the modern battlefield is the proliferation of small, tactical unmanned aircraft systems. These provide precision targeting and precision strike capabilities, enabling kill chain tactics to dominate the tactical battlefield in the same way they came to dominate the operational battlefield a generation ago. These tactical reconnaissance-strike complexes now hold combat operations at risk until leaders destroy, disintegrate, or disrupt them to enable aggregated combined arms maneuver. Given this change, the US Army should adopt reconnaissance-strike battle as the chief means of executing multidomain operations at the tactical level. Reconnaissance-strike battle provides clarity to tactical leaders on objectives, guides transformation priorities, and serves as a framework to organize combat power for success on the modern battlefield.

Reconnaissance-Strike Battle: Four Decades in the Making

Though not explicitly named as such, the concepts underpinning reconnaissance-strike battle have appeared and evolved over the past four decades. The first development of reconnaissance-strike as a concept was by the Soviet Union in the mid- to late 1980s. The Soviets described and distinguished between two complementary systems, a “recce-strike complex” and a “recce-fire complex.” The first focused on the employment of ground-based rocket and tube artillery, while the second centered on the employment of tactical aviation and operational and tactical missiles. Both linked weapons platforms with control systems and the ability for precision targeting, strike, and automated data transfer.

In 1991, Operation Desert Storm arguably manifested the military-technical revolution that the Soviets foresaw in the 1980s, achieving lightning success in no small part due to the increased linkage between weapons platforms, precision-strike capability, and targeting data transfer. To understand this change, the Office of Net Assessment directed Andrew Krepinevich to examine “whether a major shift in the character of military competitions was under way.” He found, in agreement with the Soviets, a military-technical revolution was in fact occurring and would require the United States to “task organize reconnaissance-strike complexes with a global reach.” Also notable, he predicted future operations to be characterized by:

  • a greater reliance on information systems, including the ability to aggregate and store target data for later use
  • increased integration of exquisite networking capability
  • a trend toward simultaneous operations
  • the “fusion” of space, air, land, and maritime operations
  • the emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles with ability to command and control at extended range
  • an increase of fires capability beyond line of sight

The United States’ post-9/11 wars and global counterterrorism operations spawned a highly refined operational reconnaissance-strike complex. This involved the development of armed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms such as the Predator drone, tied to high-speed satellite data for real-time command-and-control of the F2T2EA sequence (find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess) used to hunt and dismantle terrorist networks. Operations against ISIS also saw an increase in the use of tactical quadcopters and exquisite tactical networks. These provided real-time, low-level tactical targeting data in support of strike capabilities including tactical aviation, close air support, and the employment of emerging loitering munitions such as the Switchblade. However, the enemy lacked peer maneuver capabilities, avoiding reconnaissance-strike complex duels that would have necessitated new equipment and tactics in the US Army beyond special operations forces.

In 2020, during the six-week-long Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijan leveraged reconnaissance-strike tactics, using unmanned aircraft systems, Israeli loitering munitions, and modified Antonov AN-2 planes. The AN-2s drew fire from Armenia’s outdated air defense systems, allowing Azerbaijan’s unmanned platforms and loitering munitions to strike from undetected altitudes. Once air defenses were engaged, Azerbaijan pinpointed and destroyed them, gaining air superiority. This enabled continuous surveillance and targeted strikes on Armenian forces, including tanks and artillery. The combination of reconnaissance and precision strikes, along with special operations infiltration, severely disrupted and demoralized the Armenian military.

Most recently, the past three years of war in Ukraine have resulted in the development and real-time refinement of what researchers describe in a 2024 Institute for the Study of War report as the tactical reconnaissance strike complex. The report’s authors defined this as “the combination of pervasive tactical reconnaissance, primarily by drone; drone-corrected precision artillery fire; precision munitions delivered by fixed- and/or rotary-wing aircraft; drone-launched precision munitions; and large numbers of FPV [first-person view] loitering munitions.” The at-scale employment of these complexes on both sides has produced several important results.

  • Extension of the tactical battlespace. Drones employed by the assault drone companies ubiquitous in Ukraine’s fighting battalions have extended the tactical battlespace. FPV drones enable strikes out to approximately twenty kilometers, mid-range bomber drones do so out to roughly fifty kilometers, and longer-range strike drones engage targets at a range of one hundred kilometers or more, all ranges traditionally owned at the division level and above.
  • Drones as tactical artillery. Drones are increasingly taking over the roles of suppression and destruction. Both sides in the war in Ukraine are using bomber drones to drop grenades and other explosives directly onto trenches and defensive positions, playing the role that mass artillery bombardments did during World War I. Separately, Ukraine’s parliament estimates drones are inflicting about 70 percent of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, while Ukrainian medics along the front lines in some areas state they are responsible for 90 percent of their battle injuries.
  • Drones to defeat drones. Both Russia and Ukraine are increasingly using FPV drones as interceptors to defeat their opponent’s ISR, loitering, and bomber drones.
  • At-risk tactical logistics. The pervasive presence of drones on the battlefield holds frontline logistics at risk with unprecedented ISR coverage, paired with precision-strike capabilities. Ukrainian drone units in particular have crippled Russian tactical logistics on several fronts.
  • Traditional maneuver stopped in its tracks. Ukrainian drone units and artillery destroy Russian armored vehicles before they can get to the fight, neutralizing mechanized assaults three to six kilometers from the front line.
  • A predominantly infantry fight. Along the front line, the effects of drone warfare have forced both Russia and Ukraine to revert almost exclusively to brutal infantry assaults supported by drones.
  • Tactical success dependent on degrading, disintegrating, destroying, or overwhelming the enemy tactical reconnaissance-strike complex. The ability to suppress enemy drones directly impacts the success of offensive operations, while the constant threat of drone attacks has a significant psychological impact on soldiers. Air defense systems, electronic warfare, and hunting enemy drone operators and the drones themselves all contribute to achieving drone superiority.

Why Reconnaissance-Strike Battle? Why Now?

An understanding of the historical evolution of reconnaissance-strike complexes, paired with observations from Ukraine, leads to a clear conclusion. Reconnaissance-strike battle should serve as the framework for the Army to employ its all-domain, all-echelon reconnaissance-strike complexes to degrade, disintegrate, destroy, or overwhelm an enemy’s reconnaissance-strike complexes. It should be designed to seek relative advantages that enable traditional combined arms maneuver to achieve objectives, defeat enemy forces, and consolidate gains for commanders at echelon in large-scale combat operations.

Properly designed and implemented, reconnaissance-strike battle should be built on four core imperatives. First, be a hard target. The enemy can see you and will strike you. You must be prepared to disperse, deceive, cover, conceal, and mask to avoid the enemy reconnaissance-strike complex. If you can’t do so because you are defending a fixed location, dig in and develop a hardened shelter, but never stop aggressive reconnaissance.

Second, the reconnaissance-strike complex is the first objective. At any echelon of engagement, if the enemy has reconnaissance-strike complexes and you do not, you die. The first and most persistent priority, therefore, must be the enemy’s reconnaissance-strike complex at echelon.

Third, the side that owns the reconnaissance-strike complex duel wins. If you find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess at larger scale, and faster than the enemy, you win.

Finally, massing capability must come before massing maneuver. Massing all-domain capability to degrade, disintegrate, or destroy the enemy’s reconnaissance-strike complex is a prerequisite to mass combat power and defeat the enemy in detail. Overwhelming the enemy’s reconnaissance-strike complex with maneuver is possible only through an extraordinary expenditure of lives.

Multidomain Operations: Good But Not Enough

The origins of multidomain operations can be traced to a speech by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work in 2015, delivered at the US Army War College. Initially called multidomain battle, the concept was further fleshed out in a December 2017 white paper. The concept continued to evolve, partly in response to the 2018 National Defense Strategy, and formally became the Army’s operating concept with the release of an updated Field Manual 3-0 in 2022. It now governs the Army’s role in competition, crisis, and conflict, up to and including large-scale combat operations against peer adversaries—namely, China or Russia. In the simplest terms, the multidomain operations concept is about creating a window of opportunity in time and space to achieve an objective through the concentrated application of combat power across all domains. This is intended to enable the US Army to penetrate enemy antiaccess and area-denial bubbles, disintegrate them, and then exploit the opportunity for freedom of maneuver to achieve the objective. While it briefs well, in practice the concept is characterized by three key limitations.

First, the utility of multidomain operations as an operating concept is principally at the strategic and operational levels of war. It does an excellent job advocating for targeting and the employment of multidomain capabilities to create relative advantage. However, its high-level focus on joint force integration and defeating enemy antiaccess and area-denial capabilities is inherently operational-level in nature.

Second, the operating concept does not account for the democratization of precision strike. The multidomain task forces represent a new, critical Army contribution to the joint force reconnaissance-strike complex. However, as designed, they are meant to support a joint task force or component commander in penetrating and disintegrating enemy antiaccess and area-denial capabilities or enabling command-and-control systems. While this improves the operational commander’s reconnaissance-strike complex, with only three multidomain task forces, it is not a capability that will be available to support tactical commanders. Moreover, the multidomain task forces are not organized and equipped in a way that reflects the global proliferation of small unmanned aircraft systems, at least not to the scale on display in current conflict zones. These platforms, distributed down to the lowest levels, are essential for a tactical reconnaissance-strike complex. With the democratization of precision strike, the Army requires formations and doctrine to enable and inform tactical leaders attempting to conduct combined arms maneuver through an enemy tactical reconnaissance-strike complex, a clear priority as evidenced by the war in Ukraine.

And third, the multidomain operations concept fails to provide clear direction or a unified vision for tactical leaders on the modern battlefield. Companies and platoons remain focused on the legacy paradigm of massed, combined arms maneuver employment. This was highlighted in a recent article by two Army officers examining Ukraine’s failed 2023 offensive. Ukraine’s attack suffered for “executing exactly what US doctrine calls for—the massing of combat power to penetrate and then exploit the breakthrough of the enemy’s defenses,” they noted. “The tactical environment nullified the strengths of a maneuver-centric approach that centered on finite mounted assets.” The multidomain operations concept’s failure to provide tactical priorities for training, capability development, and combat power employment has led to continued dominance of the legacy paradigm for maneuver warfare.

However, these limitations can be overcome. Reconnaissance-strike battle is a scalable concept that untethers multidomain operations and pushes its benefits to the tactical edge. Just as breach is a task executed through the SOSRA framework (suppress, obscure, secure, reduce, assault) and seize is a task executed through isolation, suppression, and assault, so is multidomain operations a conceptual task best executed through reconnaissance-strike battle. Multidomain operations tells us how to think; reconnaissance-strike battle should be how we fight. The latter fulfills the promise of the former, providing a scalable concept that can be applied all the way down to the platoon level.

The risk of continuing without a concept that specifically guides training and operations is catastrophic failure on first contact with a peer or near-peer adversary. This failure would be further exacerbated by a limited ability to build drone capacity or training proficiency at speed and scale after the fact. Properly designed and resourced, reconnaissance-strike battle protects against this risk. And even if the advent of the reconnaissance-strike regime is overhyped, the US Army would be able to capitalize on the catastrophic success that unopposed tactical reconnaissance-strike complexes would provide to supported maneuver formations.

The introduction of multidomain operations as the Army’s operating concept was an important step, one that recognizes battlefield realities and sets out to organize Army combat power to leverage them. But for now, it is a first step. The US Army should adopt reconnaissance-strike battle as its new tactical operating concept within multidomain operations. It provides clarity to tactical leaders on objectives and transformation priorities, as well as a framework for organizing their combat power for success on the modern battlefield.

Major Zackery Spear is an infantry officer currently serving in a joint assignment at US Indo-Pacific Command. He has deployed with the 75th Ranger Regiment in support of operations in Afghanistan and previously served as the brigade operations officer for 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, planning for and initiating the brigade’s transformation in contact.

Lieutenant Colonel Michael Culler is an armor officer currently serving in a joint assignment at US Indo-Pacific Command. He has previously served in the 25th Infantry Division as the 3rd Brigade Combat Team executive officer and at the National Training Center as an OC/T and rotational planner. He has been deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, USINDOPACOM, or the Department of Defense.

Image credit: Sgt. Wesley Riley, US Army