Multi-Domain Battle (MDB) has become the flavor of the month. Pushed predominantly by the US Army and Marine Corps, it is the current iteration of various recent attempts to meld the services, the military missions, and the strategic environment into a coherent, all-encompassing concept. Jointness is no longer enough.
As repeatedly seen since the end of World War II, however, the United States has a consistent record of losing wars, both on the battlefield, and as policy contests. The US military services’ institutional cultures—what Carl Builder called their “masks of war”—deserve a significant amount of blame for these failures, as these masks are only useful when the enemy fights exactly as the services’ masks want them to. That is a genuine rarity, and becoming ever more unlikely, as Army and Marines’ initial MDB white paper itself states. But just as with any attempt at reform, the services, as bureaucratic entities, will continue to do their thing unless radical change is forced upon them.
Therefore, there is only one way to make MDB both effective and a reality: Eliminate the independent services. By sweeping clear the current organizational structure of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force and rebirthing them from scratch as cross-functional corps, built to fight according to the twelve Joint Force Prioritized Missions delineated in the most recent National Military Strategy, battlefield victory with strategic purpose will be possible again.
MDB
The Multi-Domain Battle white paper is correct that the United States’ adversaries developed competitive strategies against America and its allies across the domains of war:
Over the last 25 years, assumptions of air, land, maritime, space, and cyberspace domain superiority drove the doctrine, equipment, and posture of U.S. forces. These assumptions are proving to be invalid in light of recent changes to adversary capabilities, capacities, and approaches. Potential adversaries now possess capabilities that allow them to contest both the deployment and employment of U.S. forces in greatly expanded areas of operation, interest, and influence. U.S. forces are not organized, trained, equipped, and postured to properly contest emerging and potential threats. As a result, the freedom of action required to support U.S. policy, by deterring, and if necessary, defeating potential enemies is at risk.
Along similar lines, the Marine Corps returns to its MCDP-1 Warfighting roots by embracing “maneuver warfare through a combined arms approach . . . [to achieve] effects across five domains—air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace.” MDB is therefore necessary because adversaries achieved a competitive advantage cheaply, identifying the weak points in pre-existing war plans, capabilities, and mental models created by improvements in technology, capabilities, and the cyber domain. With the expectation of “future high-end war between nation-states and great powers,” MDB is meant to shrink these advantages.
Embracing MDB is also a recognition of reality. As one analyst noted,
The Army’s combat formations are necessarily heavy and ponderous, and they lack organic strategic lift on the necessary scale. Without sealift or airlift, the Army can’t travel. Without air superiority, it can’t fight a winning battle. And without maritime and air superiority protecting its supply lines, it can’t sustain any fight that it gets into.
The military services must work together to fight any adversary across any character of conflict, across any of the military missions, and across any domain. It is a simple fact of life in today’s strategic environment.
Masks of War
The services and their masks of war have specific norms, values, and demands that get pushed before all others, however. They shade all force structure, budgetary, and capability debates. This is why Builder asked nearly thirty years ago, “What if military forces were not what we pretend them to be—the military means to political ends—but were, instead, institutional ends in themselves that may or may not serve the larger interests of the nations that support them?” Builder’s framework for identifying the masks was built on five elements, or what he called “faces,” that could be used to differentiate between the services.
1. What characteristics and icons they valued, their “altars for worship”;
2. Their concerns with self-measurement;
3. The preoccupation they have with hardware and technology, or “toys versus the arts” of war;
4. The degree and extent of intra-service or branch distinction; and finally
5. The degree of insecurity about service legitimacy and relevancy.
From this, Builder described the Navy as being marked by a sense of “independence and stature.” The Air Force he concluded, is “the embodiment of an idea, a concept of warfare, a strategy made possible and sustained by modern technology.” The Army’s formations are the “essential artisans of war, still divided into their traditional combat arms—the infantry, artillery, and cavalry (armor)—but forged by history and the nature of war into a mutually supportive brotherhood of guilds.” Though the Marine Corps (along with the Coast Guard) was left out of Builder’s assessment because it was not an “independent institutional actor with a significant voice in the national approach to strategy or military force planning,” it has received its own assessments from others since.
Service force structures have, perhaps inevitably, become defined by the masks that gave birth to them. This strategic monism subsequently becomes continually reinforced by the yearly budget cycle. However, as the strategic environment changes, these masks become institutional power centers that are devoid of any strategic logic. As Shawn Brimley and Paul Scharre outlined in their recommendations for a cross-functional corps,
Today’s U.S. military is the product of history—not of the missions and threats it now faces. American forces are hampered by overlapping roles and missions, arcane organizational structures, Cold War platforms and programs, and recruiting practices detached from modern needs.
Even worse, because of the failure of the services’ conventional capabilities to adapt, other operational and tactical capabilities—such as raiding and drones—are raised “to the level of a defense strategy,” compounding the same problems even further.
Much of the commentary and official publications on MDB state that adversaries found their advantage because the United States was distracted by fifteen years of counterinsurgency operations. Nothing could be further from the truth. The services continued to fight the counterinsurgency wars as their masks shaped them to. One analyst recently noted of Multi-National Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) under the command of Gen. Raymond T. Odierno:
Despite the focus of much of the analysis of U.S. operations during the surge on a supposed COIN-dominated revolution in the profession of arms, MNC–I built its operational concept on a solidly traditional framework and owed its success to the effective application of some of the oldest, most well-established principles of operational art, rather than to a COIN-dominated leitmotif.
Another recent analysis of the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan said that the Army resisted any large-scale changes toward effective counterinsurgency force structures because, “if implemented, [these changes] would have resulted in a significant alteration in the Army’s sense of mission regarding the norms, values, and beliefs related to the conduct of conventional ground combat operations against other professional military organizations.” [emphasis in original]
Because the United States is unprepared to win wars in the sense of translating military gains into enduring political successes, Navy and Air Force officers have ended up running Provincial Reconstruction Teams; the Air Force has used B-1s for close air support and continually fights any attempt to build a genuine close air support force; and a civilian national security system struggles to find capable civilians to fill any gaps. Even with a supposed “revolution” in the character of war made apparent during America’s post-9/11 conflicts and with the rise of hybrid warfare, each service continues to do their thing. Just as they have done in many other conflicts. Always leading to strategic failure. Why should anyone believe MDB will be different?
Cross-Functional Corps
The current National Military Strategy defines twelve Joint Force Prioritized Missions. Each of these missions can, will, and do take place in differing time and spaces, requiring different capabilities, command structures, mental models, tactics, techniques, and procedures, budgets, acquisitions, force structures, and personnel. The services, as currently constructed, pay scant attention to the majority of these missions in favor of what their masks prefer, or only engage with them in a manner as close as possible to these preferences. This is why the United States consistently fails to win wars. The service-based force structures are built for specific battlefield purposes and cannot be hammered into the correct shape on a whim with the addition of a small amount of additional training, capabilities, and reading lists. It is also why reforming the services will have minimal effect.
Discussions have slowly trended toward the need to move beyond jointness to make MDB effective. From functionalized tactical forces to further calls for “whole-of-government” approaches. This is a step in the right direction, but not nearly a large enough step away from the failures of the past. It is time to eliminate the individual services and rebuild them as cross-functional corps. Nothing else can make MDB an effective organizational and battlefield reality, and enable the United States to win wars again.
Image credit: Sgt. James K. McCann, US Army
That all sounds fine and good on paper. That said history and maintaining that level set by those who have gone before is highly important. However it is not quantifiable and therefore doesn’t translate to paper. If we did in fact wipe the slate clean and have just one service with 12prioritized missions in time we would see that groups would form or be formed that would be simular to what we have now. During the interm we would be operating poorly and without focus. Also there would be a high level probability of overall force reduction. It may be aimed at eliminating overhead redundancy but in all probability would result in less boots on the ground.
If Mr. Davies would have served in and worked with each service during that tenure, he’d understand each branch of service, and each component in each service and each organization in each service has a different and unique culture. American’s have little remembrance of history and many have already forgotten about “9-11” let alone the lessons why. As Mr. Davies put it, the United States’ “consistent record of losing wars”, I say is 100% the responsibility of politicians, rules of engagement, and spineless bureaucrats. A successful chef has all the best ingredients and cookware at their disposal, a successful home builder has all the best tools and craftsman at their disposal, and so does the American GI, however, the American GI is not able to use their tools, trades, or craftsman as described and advertised–their hands are tied.
No offense, but this reads like a brief written by an attorney with zero time in uniform. I don’t presume to tell attorneys how to organize their field of endeavor, because I have no practical experience in that occupation. I suggest Mr. Davies needs to study the military from some place other than a senior service college, perhaps spend some time in a Division or Brigade Combat Team, before suggesting how we should re-organize.
As one who is working closely on this issue, Mr. Davies has correctly identified several of the major obstacles with dealing with our threats. What is remarkable to me reading the comments above is not their points–change is fraught with risk and may be unnecessary (if you accept the commentators’ underlying assumptions)–but the fact they ignore what peer rivals have done to the Joint Force. On raising and explaining this point, Mr. Davies is spot on. Notably, not one commentator challenges his argument on why change is necessary. While Mr. Davies offers a remedy, not one of the commentators does. I would encourage them to do so, and participate in the discourse of finding real, hard ways forward in the face of determined and potent adversaries. Thanks, Mr. Davies, for weighing in. I don’t necessarily agree, but your points and argument bear debate and serious consideration.
Except for the fact that MR Davis articulates a “flaw” in our current strategic current organizational structure without offering any tangible solutions. “Cross-Functional Corps” is an empty buzzword with no real substance in his article.
Yes the services need to reorganize, refocus, and modernize. But the indisputable truth is this neither gunpowder, rapid fire, strategic bombardment, atomic weaponry, or precision munitions have funadamentally changed warfare as we know it. Traditional military formations exist for a reason and we’re developed from lessons learned on the battlefield. Reducing the bureaucracy and decrease the militaries dependency on camp followed is important to but trying to wash away 5000 years of military experience and “invent” a new solution to an ancient problem is simply foolish and arrogant.
My iPhone mis-corrected some words in my previous comment.
It would be useful for Mr Davis or anyone else advocating this path to look at similar adventures in other countries. The Canadians merged everything into one service in 1989, only to break most responsibilities back out into separate services in 2011. The Israelis, who’ve always officially been one service, identify as separate service elements. Ditto the Chinese. The British tried integrating all airpower into one service between the world wars, only return carrier air to the Royal Navy just prior to WWII. One size does not fit all.
The four “functional corps” presented in the referenced CNAS study (Brimley and Scharre) are nothing more than four new services. The study is intriguing, and maybe even on the right tracik But it’s simply rearranging Builder’s “masks” to suit the authors’ vision.
I’m an Active duty officer with combined 18 years between the Army and the Air Force. I’ve spent time in tactical and strategic formations. I agree with Mr. Davies on concept.
Historically the US Military services have focused on waging war in their physical domain of responsibility…and that’s it, until the late 20th century. However, space, cyber/EW, Info Ops transcend physical domains …relegating physical environments to just the medium of which to wage a full-spectrum multi-domain campaign (service independent) …this became evident with the standup of JTFs trying to employ the full suite of “kinetic” and “non-kinetic capabilities” but with differing levels of readiness/training from the US Military independent services.
It’s time to say that pre-21st century military service organizations, heraldries/traditions, selfishness hold us back from efficient, rapid and effective war fighting today. A recruit shouldn’t join the U.S. Military because of a color/history of a uniform, but more importantly join for “what” they can learn and do for the U.S. Military. Time to move forward…create functional US Military corps from which to recruit, organize, train and equip warfighting experts in each of the 12 functions and present those forces to globally & regionally aligned COCOMs and JTFs. It keeps the U.S. military relevant and ensures overmatch with adversaries.