The fight around Bakhmut that began in the summer of 2022 and dragged on well into the following year exposed an old truth under new conditions: A brigade can keep fighting while reaching operational culmination. Russian and Ukrainian formations fought through months of dense artillery, drone observation, electronic warfare, damaged routes, and exhausted replacements. Courage did not solve the problem of repeated battle. A formation needed ammunition, fuel, medical evacuation, recovery, engineers, air defense, route security, fresh units, and command posts able to move and still control the fight. Modern combat made every supporting function visible and targetable. Brigades retained tactical skill while approaching culmination through attrition, fragmentation, and isolation. The larger battle system around them lost coherence because division-level battle management and corps-level operational sequencing did not exist to coordinate their efforts.
Persistent surveillance changed the value of time. Movement carried risk once small drones, ground sensors, electronic signature detection, and human observers fed rapid targeting cycles. Fires no longer waited for a clean battlefield geometry. Logistics columns, artillery positions, assembly areas, headquarters, and crossing sites became part of the same observed system. A unit could seize ground and still fail to continue because supply routes were under fire, radios were jammed, recovery assets lagged, and tired formations had no clean path out of contact.
Army leaders have recognized the pressure building above brigade level. The Army of 2030 plan states the Army is moving focus back toward larger formations after years of brigade-centered war. Army leaders have emphasized that divisions are critical to connect sensors, shooters, and sustainers. But beyond connection, what will divisions do in large-scale combat operations?
Large-scale combat operations create a battle-management problem that exceeds brigade capacity. A division must synchronize reconnaissance, fires, maneuver, and sustainment across multiple brigades fighting simultaneously over extended depth and duration. Division integration operates through continuous planning, fires allocation, protection priorities, and operational sequencing. Brigade commanders retain initiative within division-directed bounds.
This is not just a matter of a higher echelon supporting and coordinating among subordinate units an echelon below. In the Army force structure, each of these echelons is organized and resourced for specific purposes, all tied to the levels of war. Brigades execute close fights. Divisions manage the battle itself. Corps manage campaigns and connect to theater strategy. No echelon carries the same burden at the same scale as another. Divisions are not just necessary because every echelon is necessary to those below it. They are uniquely necessary to keeping brigades in the close fight, just as brigades are specifically suited to that close fight.
The Misreading of Ukraine and Methodical Battle
A recent critique of division-centric operations cited Ukrainian brigades’ effectiveness as evidence that brigades should fight independently, arguing that Ukrainian brigades operated autonomously without integration at echelon. The argument misreads Ukraine’s actual experience and erred by conflating division synchronization with failed French methodical battle.
Ukrainian brigades fought thirty kilometers forward with organic artillery, reconnaissance, engineers, and air defense. Although they operated with significant initiative, brigades did not fight in isolation. Corps headquarters shaped deep operations and allocated scarce assets—155-millimeter artillery, HIMARS, and fixed-wing drones—across the campaign. Ukrainian corps fought 100–150 kilometers deep while brigades managed close fights. Corps sequenced brigade operations and connected brigade efforts to campaign objectives. Ukrainian brigades exercised initiative within a corps-directed framework.
Ukraine discovered during combat that brigades fighting without a permanent coordinating headquarters caused poor coordination, accountability failures, and inability to allocate scarce assets. In 2025, Ukraine formally established corps-level commands specifically to provide this function. Ukraine considered a corps-division-brigade structure but lacked qualified staff to implement it. Instead, Ukrainian corps now perform battle-management functions. Ukraine’s experience validates the necessity of a permanent intermediate echelon between brigades and higher command. The US Army calls this the division. Ukraine calls it the corps because it lacks the personnel to sustain both. Brigades alone cannot sustain combat without this coordination.
The same misreading appears when division-centric operations are conflated with French methodical battle. French doctrine in the 1930s assumed commanders could control tempo, mass resources at chosen points, and sequence operations methodically. Methodical battle required higher commanders to see the whole battlefield, allocate fires precisely, and direct movement according to plan. German forces exploited this assumption. They introduced tempo the French could not control and chose breakthrough points the French had not predicted. The doctrine collapsed.
Division-centric warfighting does not revive French methodical battle. Methodical battle centralized decision-making to impose a timetable on subordinate units. Modern division battle management centralizes integration so brigades can act faster, exploit opportunity, and remain tied to a common purpose. Division commanders synchronize brigade operations while brigades retain operational autonomy. Brigades develop contact, make tactical decisions, and act within commander’s intent. Division synchronization means allocating scarce resources, managing reconnaissance handover, setting fire priorities, controlling routes, and establishing protection architecture. When conditions change, brigades adapt. Division responds to adjust support and priority.
The Brigade-Centric Model Reached Its Limit
The brigade-centric model matched the wars it was optimized for. Brigade combat teams deployed as modular packages with habitual enablers, direct access to joint support, and predictable rotation cycles. They operated from secure bases, moved sustainment along established routes, and received enabling support from a joint force with air superiority. Under those conditions, brigades carried a high share of the planning burden.
Large-scale combat operations expose the limits of brigade autonomy. A brigade commander in sustained contact can control the close fight but cannot see the operational consequences of remaining in sustained contact. The commander cannot know brigade exhaustion levels across the division, cannot compare ammunition burn rates against available supply, and cannot track when the brigade approaches culmination. The division must carry that burden. Without division-level battle management preventing brigade culmination through defined commitment durations, transitions, and reconstitution cycles, brigades accelerate toward culmination regardless of what assets they possess. Every brigade decision carries operational weight on other brigades and that weight exceeds what a brigade commander can see or manage.
The burden grows when the close fight stretches across multiple days. A brigade headquarters cannot simultaneously plan deep reconnaissance beyond its sensors, coordinate air defense across brigades, manage ammunition at division scale, allocate engineers among competing brigades, control routes carrying traffic from other brigades, and plan transition to new terrain three days forward. Those functions shape tactical success but exceed brigade span of control during sustained contact. The result is fragmentation: the brigade fights its piece while the larger system drifts beyond its reach.
The brigade remains indispensable for the close fight. Its commander sees enemy contact, decides under pressure, controls subordinates, and drives tactical action. But a brigade consumed by close contact loses visibility into the deeper battle. The commander cannot track enemy forces maneuvering from distant positions. The intelligence officer focuses on the enemy battalion in contact. The operations officer manages current movement through engagement. The staff cannot plan route changes two days forward because division still owns those decisions. A commander cannot fight the close fight and solve division-level problems simultaneously.
The Division as Battle-Management Formation
The return to division-centric warfighting reflects a practical recognition: The division must carry an integration burden brigades cannot carry while under fire. The essential question is purpose. What burden leaves the brigade and what burden belongs with the division?
The division should be defined as the Army’s primary battle-management formation in large-scale combat operations. Battle management, in practical Army terms, means arranging combat power across time, space, and function enabling brigades to fight as part of a coherent system. The division connects reconnaissance to fires, fires to maneuver, maneuver to sustainment, sustainment to protection, and protection to reconstitution. It keeps tactical action from dissolving into separate brigade fights.
The division integrates reconnaissance and fires across a frontage too wide and a depth too complex for a single brigade. It establishes collection priorities, controls reconnaissance handover, synchronizes counterreconnaissance, and links sensors to shooters. In a transparent battlefield, the side able to see, decide, strike, move, and recover in sequence gains more than a temporary advantage. It gains the ability to repeat combined arms action under pressure.
The division analyzes and weights the close fight. Artillery, aviation, engineers, air defense, electronic warfare, sustainment, protection, and reserves remain scarce during large-scale combat. The division commander decides where to concentrate advantage, where to accept risk, and when to shift priority. Those decisions turn separate capabilities into battlefield tempo. A brigade can request support but the division must allocate support across the whole fight.
The division protects the battle system. Command posts, sustainment nodes, crossing sites, casualty collection points, maintenance areas, aviation support areas, fires positions, and routes form the physical architecture enabling brigades to continue fighting. Their loss can halt tempo faster than enemy resistance at the forward edge. Protection in large-scale combat is a condition for continued maneuver, not a rear-area administrative chore.
Recent Army training observations reinforce the point. The Mission Command Training Program publishes annual reports highlighting key observations, and both the fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025 editions focus on the division level because modern command posts must synchronize staff processes, assessments, sustainment, intelligence, protection, fires, and transitions. Warfighter exercises keep surfacing a central problem: Large formations must manage the fight while the fight keeps changing.
The Division in Sustained Combined Arms Battle
The division exists to make sustained combined arms battle executable and repeatable while preventing brigade culmination. A brigade could conduct a single battle but the division connects effort across time and across lines of operation. It decides when a brigade enters contact, how long it can remain committed before reaching culmination, what support it receives to extend operational reach, what risk another brigade accepts elsewhere, and when transition or reconstitution becomes more important than continuing forward. Without division-level management of the sustained combat cycle, brigades inevitably approach culmination through attrition, fragmentation, and isolation. Organic capability alone cannot sustain multibrigade operations across extended depth and duration. The division manages this burden by coordinating the cycle across brigades.
Sustained battle requires planning horizons beyond immediate execution. The division must control current operations while shaping future operations and preparing follow-on options. A recently published document from the Center for Army Lessons Learned, “Staff Processes in LSCO Part III: Division Planning,” addresses this burden. Division staffs cannot treat planning as complete once a base order is issued. They must keep planning alive across current operations, future operations, and plans while subordinate units remain in contact.
The division’s function includes transition management. Passage of lines, relief in place, wet-gap crossing, pursuit, defense, reserve commitment, consolidation, and reconstitution all create seams. Enemy forces attack seams because seams are a natural source of friction. The division must manage those moments by synchronizing fires, movement control, routes, protection, sustainment, and command posts. Successful transition preserves tempo. Failed transition gives the enemy commander more time.
The division also preserves combat power. Preservation does not mean holding formations away from risk. Rather, it means committing units for defined purposes and defined durations, then pulling them out before attrition consumes future options. A division losing track of brigade exhaustion, ammunition status, maintenance backlog, casualty replacement, and command post fatigue will eventually discover limits only after tempo collapses.
Ukraine shows the operational cost of attrition without division-level battle management and corps-level campaign sequencing. Units remaining in contact for prolonged periods can retain tactical skill while approaching culmination through fatigue, casualties, equipment losses, and broken support systems. This is not a brigade failure. Rather, it is evidence of the division’s functional necessity. The division must manage battle as a cycle: prepare, commit, support, protect, transition, reconstitute, and recommit. Without division management of this cycle across multiple brigades, and without corps sequencing of division operations across lines of operation toward campaign objectives, brigades will reach culmination regardless of their tactical acumen. Repetition under pressure defines the division’s unique burden.
Recommendations
Even as divisions wait for doctrine to clarify their roles in large-scale combat operations, they cannot wait to make battle management executable at division level. They should begin by taking four steps.
First, organize the division staff for sustained contact. A division must align its command post structure, staff sections, and battle rhythm around the functions that enable brigades to fight continuously: reconnaissance synchronization, fires allocation, sustainment flow, protection priorities, and transition management. A division staff organized around administrative sections will fragment when brigades enter sustained contact. A division staff organized around battle-management functions will keep those functions synchronized while brigades fight. The division should specify which staff officers own each function, how those officers communicate across the command post, and what information flows to the commander during sustained contact. That alignment determines whether division decisions lag or keep pace with brigade needs.
Second, make sustained contact planning a core division competency. Division staffs must plan current operations, future operations, and plans simultaneously while brigades remain in contact. That planning burden exceeds what division staffs typically carry. The division should protect a dedicated planning cell focused on the next sixty to ninety days of operations while the main command post manages current fighting. The division should conduct planning conferences that force the staff to account for brigade exhaustion, ammunition status, casualty flow, and maintenance backlog when shaping future brigade commitments. Planning that ignores those realities will send brigades into contact weaker than required.
Third, rehearse sustained transition under pressure. Passage of lines, relief in place, and consolidation are seams where tempo collapses if not synchronized. The division should conduct exercises that force the staff to manage current brigade contact while executing a relief in place with another brigade. Those exercises should test whether the division can shift main effort, change support relationships, move command posts, and maintain fires support without losing control of the formation. A division that cannot rehearse those moments will discover its vulnerabilities under enemy fire.
Fourth, require division exercises to test battle-management function, not just brigade tactics. Senior observers at division exercises should ask what the division did to keep brigades fighting. Did the division synchronize reconnaissance across brigades? Did fires support shift with priority? Did sustainment follow maneuver? Did the division pull brigades out before attrition consumed future options? Those questions move exercise focus from brigade maneuver to division integration. A division that tests integration repeatedly will build the judgment required to execute it under pressure.
A brigade can fight but cannot sustain that fight alone. Ukraine shows the cost when the larger system fails: Brigades retain tactical skill while losing combat effectiveness to attrition, fragmentation, and isolation. Divisions do not have the luxury of waiting for Army doctrine to clarify. The formations and staffs exist now. The question is whether division headquarters will function as battle-management formations or continue managing brigades as if they operate independently. Divisions who organize the staff around sustained contact, plan beyond immediate execution, rehearse transitions under pressure, and exercise integration will begin their next operations with an advantage. Those who do not will discover the limits of brigade-centric habits when the first brigade enters sustained contact and its requests for division support overwhelm the division’s capacity to decide.
Michael Carvelli is a US Army lieutenant colonel and engineer officer who writes from an operational planning, protection, and engineering perspective. He serves as an assistant division operations officer in First Army.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: 1st Sgt. Luisito Brooks, US Army
