Throughout its history, the US Army has continuously adapted itself to the environment—not out of ambition, but out of necessity, as the response to evolving global threats has always demanded new doctrine and technologies. From the dawn of the nation to the multidomain front lines of the twenty-first century, the Army has never enjoyed the luxury of standing still. The service’s relevance to the national defense strategy and the security of allies and partners depends on its ability to keep pace with an increasingly complex global threat environment. On the surface, transformation and campaigning ahead of conflict appear to be opposite—and perhaps even competing—initiatives for the US Army. Upon closer inspection of designated units in contact, however, the Army’s busy campaigning efforts across the Indo-Pacific region are accelerating rather than hindering transformation.

In response to the global environment, rather than promising delivery of a new Army or advanced capabilities as a one-time overhaul, the US Army’s most senior uniformed and civilian leaders issued a new transformation initiative that views modernization as an ongoing and iterative process, one that recognizes rapid developments in the environment. Amid the implementation of this change, senior leaders have also acknowledged that the Army is already “really busy,” with many across the force concerned that their units’ operational tempo will likely be the biggest derailer of modernization. Nevertheless, the scale of transformation expressed in this initiative cannot be accomplished in a lab or in a moment of operational pause. Additionally, as the US Army optimizes its force structure, top-heavy formations must right-size their organizations to enable, not encumber, the small units that will drive this transformation.

US Army Pacific is an example of a command leaning forward into this multidomain transformation imperative, applying new organizations, technologies, and concepts even as Army units and activities are dispersed across thousands of miles of the Indo-Pacific region. While the transformation in contact period of modernization describes the timeframe between now and 2027, units designated as part of “transformation in contact 2.0” in the Indo-Pacific are in contact with more than just a closing time window. Through campaigning, the key to this transformation is their persistent contact with an adversary, with the environment, and with partners.

Setting the Theater: Preconflict Maneuver in the Indo-Pacific

Over the past decade, nations in the Indo-Pacific region witnessed an increasingly audacious China expanding joint military activities around Taiwan and aggressively pursuing military modernization. Beijing is moving closer to General Secretary Xi Jinping’s capabilities development milestones for a military that can support China’s unification of Taiwan by 2027. Collectively, these efforts normalize China’s presence in the Indo-Pacific region, further shaping perceptions of inevitability, and set conditions for reunification on Xi’s terms. Uncontested, one can assess that China will achieve this goal below the threshold of armed conflict and in line with China’s strategic aim of winning without fighting, which will come at a great cost to the Indo-Pacific region and United States’ national interests.

While experiments and tests conducted in the continental United States may be necessary to support more distant transformation windows, they do little to reestablish deterrence in the region. The distances associated with the Indo-Pacific region make rapid response by units out of contact exceptionally challenging, with the throughput of our power projection stations underprepared to rapidly deploy forces at the scale required of this theater. China pays most attention to those capabilities with the immediate ability to impose costs and produce more rapid kill chains than those of its adversaries, thus presenting a credible impact on Beijing’s own objectives in the region.

It follows that the US Army is introducing more long-range missiles and unmanned drones into formations, some of which are already operating in the Indo-Pacific region today. Decisive application of land power onto key terrain during campaigning provides commanders options in crisis and a consistent reminder of this credible deterrence to the adversary. Put simply, combat-credible capabilities are in positions relevant to the fight and must persist in Xi’s mind, not in a distant training environment.

Deterrence through Dilemma: Shaping in Plain Sight

While campaigning supports the positioning of new technologies, transformation during campaigning is not just about delivering new stuff into priority theaters. Effective transformation efforts in the Indo-Pacific region must demonstrate a comprehensive undertaking across multiple fronts while shaping the operational environment.

If the value of land forces is that they can operate geographically dispersed, they must be able to move and function in the environment. At the small-unit level, units identify what works and what does not work, allowing them to iteratively improve and learn faster than they would in any other environment. Should the Army choose to ignore the lessons from those persistently (rather than episodically) campaigning in theater, the service will continue a costly path of delivering capabilities that are logistically burdensome and unable to contribute to the future fight.

Equally important as geographic dispersion is that these units are also technologically linked. Units in contact must build interior lines that link them all through a single unified network, which is appropriately the number one priority in transformation. This is why, as the network is the foundation for all warfighting capabilities, units in the Indo-Pacific region are building and continuously operating on a persistent, always-on network.

All forward network-focused experimentation efforts must advance the development of the Army’s ability to support a protracted fight while informing the wider Army modernization enterprise. Several US Army command post exercises focus on optimization of force structure, but only those experiments that involve command and control of live formations in theater with adequate dispersion will appropriately inform and drive these decisions. While previous iterations of Project Convergence dipped its toe into the Indo-Pacific region, recent efforts are going all in with forward experimentation and leave-behind capability for real-world operational use. The US Army, along with other military branches, continues to emphasize the importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable decision-making. It is relatively simple for cyber and operational data teams to develop algorithms in home stations, but placement on key terrain with connection to the right sensors, shooters, and command nodes along with access to the right data sets is necessary to defend networks and enhance joint kill webs.

Only when executing in theater while continuously building the network—which the US Army will use to train, rehearse, experiment, and (if necessary) fight—can the US Army transform at the scale and speed relative to the nation’s pacing threat. Furthermore, the introduction of new tactics and technologies in the backyard of the pacing threat forces China to continually rethink its strategic calculus.

Regional Recalibration: Partners in Contact

In the Indo-Pacific region, transformation efforts are not limited to the US Army. Other US military branches—though longstanding players in the region—are far from defenders of the status quo. In the summer of 2025, the US Air Force will deploy nearly three hundred aircraft spread across twenty-five locations during Resolute Force Pacific, which will stress the service’s Agile Combat Employment concept using new technologies and theater-level experimentation efforts. Lead-up exercises to this event have also integrated US Navy surface vessels and US Army land-based fires. The Navy-led exercise Valiant Shield 24, once limited to a series of unilateral joint rehearsals spread across the Second Island Chain (Guam, Marianas islands, and Palau), for the first time ever expanded to include partner nations with execution throughout the First Island Chain (Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines) testing Distributed Maritime Operations in contested locations. This exercise is unlikely to ever return to a unilateral event contained to the Second Island Chain. The US Marine Corps, undergoing its own force design transformation efforts, is also employing prototype systems in the Indo-Pacific region within major joint exercises. If key players in the US Army elect not to participate, they will miss out on the limited number of joint rehearsals left before the transformation in contact window closes.

Over a dozen partnered nations in theater are also recalibrating their defensive postures, restructuring their forces, and forging new alliances in response to the rising challenges posed by an increasingly aggressive China. Campaigning puts the United States alongside allies and partners. Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, and the Philippines have all shifted focus onto the most prescient threat in the Indo-Pacific region and have begun their own transformation efforts to support multidomain operations. Learning from one another helps advance our own tactics and technologies while further contributing to the build of enduring interior lines. If the US Army is not signaling commitment by operating side by side with partners, we forfeit the competitive advantage necessary to operate and win in this theater.

Transforming the Army Now for the Future

To ensure the continued lethality of the US Army, it must transform, not just change, where the transformation effects are iterative, yet not incremental. The resulting transformation must be profound, organization-wide, and disruptive. The transformation must fundamentally reorient the organization (in strategy, structure, and processes) so drastically that it can never return to its previous state. The US Army’s transformation largely stagnated during the post-9/11 wars and global counterterrorism focus. The redoubled emphasis on transformation, combined with a shift in focus to China as the pacing threat means that formations in the Indo-Pacific region, like the Army corps and division, function very differently than they did a decade ago. But that is not enough. The corps and division in 2027 should look and operate differently than they do in 2025. More important than the doctrine and technology that develops in that time are the organizations and the application of that doctrine and technology in theater.

US Army senior leaders must maximize time during campaigning to exercise multidomain combat operations at scale. They should prioritize and pay attention to experiments in the Indo-Pacific region, which, due to the complexity associated with distances and extreme environmental conditions, will inform all other efforts. Small units must maximize this experimentation in the environment to validate and invalidate concepts, identify what works, and divest what does not work, which includes a focus on only the training necessary to fight and win. Every exercise is an opportunity to identify facilities and storage locations for prepositioned stocks and leave-behind equipment. During the acquisition process, as Army units attempt to get lighter and leaner, these units must contemplate what they can actually transport around the battlefield with consideration for universal mobility standards (e.g., the twenty-foot equivalent unit). Industry and bureaucracies take a long time to change, but the nature of war can change instantly. While US Army leaders are adjusting acquisition processes, units must not accept the status quo. Transformation in contact cannot simply be a buzzword; it must define a bias towards action.

The US Army will forfeit its right to critique the next fight in the Indo-Pacific region if it is not adequately preparing and deploying lethal, combat-credible formations and capabilities today. It cannot only provide color commentary on the next fight from the wrong side of a seven-thousand-mile wet gap crossing, talking about what could have and should have been. And it cannot deploy untested capabilities at the time of need and find its soldiers digging foxholes on the island of irrelevancy. The Army is on the precipice of a major shift, where ceding key terrain is not an option. At echelon, senior leaders must drive the necessary transformation efforts to maintain the service’s legacy as the most ready and lethal army on the planet.

Lieutenant Colonel Ben Blane’s most recent position was as the commander for the Army’s first long-range fires battalion as part of the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. He holds an undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy and graduate degrees from Columbia University and John Jay College. He has multiple deployments and experience throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Lee is an Indo-Pacific foreign area officer for HQDA G-3/5/7. He holds an undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy and graduate degrees from Columbia University and UCLA.

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, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Staff Sgt. Brandon Rickert, US Army