Army Doctrine Update: Understanding Combat Operations

Off Topic Guild
, , ,
1

Concise Summary:
ADP 3-0, “Operations,” outlines the Army’s operational concepts, doctrine, and procedures to guide commanders in conducting operations across a spectrum of conflicts. The document emphasizes the importance of flexible and adaptable operations based on understanding and responding to enemy capabilities. It introduces the concept of “the battle rhythm” as a key element of successful execution. Key features include:

  • A clear articulation of Army operational concepts, emphasizing maneuver warfare principles and combined arms integration.
  • A framework for planning and conducting operations in diverse environments, including urban, mountainous, and open terrain.
  • Emphasis on information dominance and the use of intelligence to enhance decision-making during operations.
  • Guidance on integrating various military assets, such as airpower, space capabilities, and cyber forces, into joint and combined operations.

The publication provides updated and revised guidance to ensure that the Army remains prepared for current and future operational environments. It aims to equip commanders with the necessary tools and knowledge to effectively conduct operations in a dynamic world.

Key Points:

  • Here are five key points extracted from the provided text:.
    • The document, “ADP 3-0,” outlines operational procedures for the Army and replaces a previous version published in July of.
    • The publication is currently available to the public and does not have any distribution restrictions.
    • ADP 3-0 focuses on operations within the context of military doctrine.
    • This edition of ADP 3-0 was published in March of.
    • The document is intended to serve as a guide for all Army personnel regarding operational procedures.

Archive Links:
12ft: https://12ft.io/https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN43323-ADP_3-0-000-WEB-1.pdf
archive.ph: https://archive.ph/https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN43323-ADP_3-0-000-WEB-1.pdf

Original Link: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN43323-ADP_3-0-000-WEB-1.pdf

User Message: Doctrine update:
ADP 3-0: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN43323-ADP_3-0-000-WEB-1.pdf
FM 3-0: https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN43326-FM_3-0-000-WEB-1.pdf

B

For more on bypassing paywalls, see the post on bypassing methods

2

Matrix reply from Sac:

  1. What are Multidomain Operations (MDO), and why are they the Army’s operational concept?
    Multidomain Operations are the Army’s operational concept for addressing peer threats like Russia and China, which possess capabilities that cannot be easily countered by single-domain or sequential actions. MDO involves building advantages over time by attacking multiple decisive points across all five domains (land, maritime, air, space, and cyberspace) and in the physical, information, and human dimensions. The goal is to fracture the coherence of threat operational approaches by breaking up their interdependent systems and formations, thereby creating opportunities for defeat.
  2. What are the Army’s four strategic roles, and how do they contribute to national objectives?
    The Army has four primary strategic roles: shaping operational environments, countering aggression during crisis, prevailing during large-scale combat, and consolidating gains on land for the joint force. These roles contribute to national objectives by preventing conflict through engagement and security cooperation, protecting U.S. interests and allies during crises, defeating enemies in armed conflict, and ensuring lasting success by establishing conditions for a stable strategic environment.
  3. What is “setting the theater,” and why is it a critical Army capability?
    “Setting the theater” encompasses the broad range of continuous activities the Army undertakes to establish conditions for the successful execution of operations within a theater of operations. This includes developing relationships with allies and partners, pre-positioning equipment, ensuring access, and building necessary infrastructure like ports and airfields. This capability is critical as it enables joint force freedom of action and supports offensive, defensive, stability operations, and defense support of civil authorities.
  4. How does the Army define and approach “combined arms” in the context of multidomain operations?
    Combined arms is the synchronized and simultaneous application of arms (warfighting functions) to achieve an effect greater than if each element was used separately or sequentially. In MDO, combined arms extends beyond traditional integration of ground forces to include joint and multinational capabilities across all five domains and the information and human dimensions. This integrated approach creates multiple dilemmas for the enemy and is essential for achieving relative advantages.
  5. What is the significance of “consolidating gains,” and what does it entail?
    Consolidating gains is an integral and continuous part of armed conflict, crucial for transforming temporary operational success into enduring strategic outcomes. It involves activities to make any tactical or operational gains sustainable and to set the conditions for a stable strategic environment, allowing for the transition of control to legitimate authorities. Army forces deliberately plan for consolidation throughout all phases of an operation, recognizing it as essential for achieving national objectives.
  6. What is the Army’s perspective on threats and hazards in the operational environment?
    The Army views threats as any combination of actors, entities, or forces with the capability and intent to harm U.S. forces, national interests, or the homeland. Peer threats possess roughly equal combat power and can challenge the joint force across multiple domains. Hazards are conditions that can cause harm or mission degradation, such as disease or extreme weather. Commanders must continually identify, monitor, and assess both threats and hazards to mitigate their impact on operations.
  7. How does the Army integrate with unified action partners in multidomain operations?
    Army forces conduct MDO as part of the joint force and in unified action, which involves synchronizing, coordinating, and integrating military activities with those of governmental and nongovernmental entities. This includes other U.S. government agencies, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations. Integrating with unified action partners is essential for achieving unity of effort and leveraging diverse capabilities to achieve common objectives across multiple domains.
3

Matrix reply from Sac:

ADP 3-0 articulates the Army’s operational doctrine for multidomain operations. It sets the foundation for developing other principles, tactics, techniques, and procedures detailed in subordinate doctrine publications and constitutes the Army’s view of how to conduct prompt and sustained operations across multiple domains.
Defense support of civil authorities (DSCA) are tasks executed in the homeland and U.S. territories when directed. It is performed to support another primary agency, lead federal agency, or local authority in response to requests for assistance for domestic emergencies, law enforcement support, and other situations.
A threat is any combination of actors, entities, or forces that have the capability and intent to harm U.S. forces, national interests, or the homeland. An enemy is a party identified as hostile against which the use of force is authorized. An adversary is a party acknowledged as potentially hostile to a friendly party and against which the use of force may be envisaged.
Multidomain operations, as described in the preface of FM 3-0, represent the Army’s capstone doctrine that describes how Army forces contribute landpower to the joint force and integrate joint capabilities into operations on land to achieve military objectives and fulfill policy aims, particularly focusing on large-scale combat operations.
The three broad categories of strategic relationships within the joint competition continuum are cooperation, competition below armed conflict, and armed conflict. These categories describe the relationship between the United States and another strategic actor relative to a specific set of policy aims.
According to FM 3-0, Army forces understand an operational environment through three dimensions: the human dimension (characteristics of populations and relevant actors), the physical dimension (terrain, weather, infrastructure), and the information dimension (the information environment and cyberspace).
In the context of maritime environments, Army forces assist maritime forces with sea control by projecting power ashore to neutralize threats or control terrain in the landward portion of the littorals. Additionally, Army long-range fires, attack aviation, air and missile defense, and cyberspace capabilities contribute to local and regional maritime superiority.
The three types of BCT are the infantry BCT, the armored BCT, and the Stryker BCT. Depending on the tactical situation, these organizations are augmented with additional Army and joint capabilities such as intelligence, aviation, fires, protection, or sustainment to accomplish their missions.
The primary purpose of Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) is to provide advisors to conduct worldwide Security Force Assistance (SFA) operations. These operations aim to develop the capacity and capability of foreign security forces and their supporting institutions in support of theater security cooperation objectives, ultimately strengthening allies and building lasting partnerships.
Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore (JLOTS) operations are a key enabler to combat operations in maritime environments because they allow heavy forces to be moved from ship to shore when there are no modern deep-water ports available or when ports are unusable due to damage or capacity limitations. This provides strategic flexibility for the joint force.

4

Matrix reply from Sac:

NotebookLM generated study
Glossary of Key Terms
Air Defense Artillery (ADA): Army forces that provide protection against enemy air and missile attack.
Antiaccess (A2): Action, activity, or capability, usually short-range, designed to limit an enemy force’s freedom of action within an operational area. (JP 3-0)
Area Denial (AD): Action, activity, or capability, usually short-range, designed to limit an enemy force’s freedom of action within an operational area. (JP 3-0)
Army Doctrine Publication (ADP): A publication that contains fundamental principles and overarching guidance on how the Army conducts operations and other activities.
Army Techniques Publication (ATP): A publication that provides detailed procedures and techniques for implementing Army doctrine.
Brigade Combat Team (BCT): A combined arms organization that is the Army’s principal tactical warfighting headquarters. There are infantry, armored, and Stryker BCTs.
Combatant Commander (CCDR): A commander in charge of a unified or specified combatant command.
Competition Continuum: A joint doctrine construct that describes the strategic environment in terms of three broad categories of strategic relationships: cooperation, competition below armed conflict, and armed conflict.
Convergence: The rapid and continuous integration of capabilities in all domains, the electromagnetic spectrum, and the information environment that optimizes effects to achieve objectives. (ADP 3-0)
Cyberspace Domain: The interdependent networks of information technology infrastructures and resident data, including the Internet, telecommunication networks, computer systems, embedded processors and controllers, and relevant portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. (ADP 3-0)
Decisive Point: Key terrain, key event, critical factor, or function that, when acted upon, enables commanders to gain a marked advantage over an enemy or contribute materially to achieving success. (JP 5-0)
Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA): Tasks executed in the homeland and U.S. territories to support another primary agency, lead federal agency, or local authority.
Domain: A physically defined portion of an operational environment (land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace) requiring a unique set of warfighting capabilities and skills. (ADP 3-0)
Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS): The range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation from zero to infinity.
Enemy: A party identified as hostile against which the use of force is authorized. (ADP 3-0)
Field Manual (FM): An Army publication that describes tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Force Projection: The ability to project military power outside of one’s own territory. (FM 3-0)
Hazard: A condition with the potential to cause injury, illness, or death of personnel; damage to or loss of equipment or property; or mission degradation. (ADP 3-0)
Homeland Defense: The protection of U.S. sovereignty, territory, domestic population, and critical infrastructure against external threats and aggression, as well as those threats that transcend national borders.
Joint Force: A force composed of significant elements, assigned or attached, of two or more Military Departments that operate under a single joint force commander. (JP 1, Volume 1)
Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore (JLOTS): The process of moving military equipment and personnel from ship to shore without the use of conventional port facilities.
Joint Operations Area (JOA): A geographical area defined by a joint force commander in which a joint task force conducts military operations.
Landpower: The ability—by threat, force, or occupation—to gain, sustain, and exploit control over land, resources, and people. (FM 3-0)
Littoral: The landward part of the area extending from the high water mark to the limits of inland waterways and the seaward part from the low water mark seaward to the high seas. (JP 3-0)
Maritime Domain: The oceans, seas, seabed, bays, estuaries, islands, coastal areas, rivers and littorals and the airspace above and the water below. (JP 3-32)
Multidomain Operations: The Army’s operational concept to prevail in competition and conflict by the synchronized employment of all of our capabilities (organic and joint) across the five domains (land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace) and the information environment to defeat adversary layered standoffs and achieve the commander’s objectives. (FM 3-0)
Operational Approach: A description of the broad actions the force must take to transform current conditions into the desired end state. (FM 3-0)
Operational Environment: The aggregate of the conditions, circumstances, and influences that affect the employment of capabilities and bear on the decisions of the commander. (JP 3-0)
Operational Framework: A cognitive tool used to assist commanders and staffs in clearly visualizing and describing the application of combat power in time, space, purpose, and resources. (FM 3-0)
Peer Threat: An adversary or enemy with capabilities and capacity to oppose U.S. forces across multiple domains worldwide or in a specific region where they enjoy a position of relative advantage.
Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, and Integration (RSOI): Those activities that transition deploying forces into an operationally ready force capable of meeting the commander’s mission requirements.
Security Force Assistance (SFA): Activities undertaken to generate, organize, train, equip, rebuild, and advise or mentor foreign security forces and their supporting institutions.
Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB): A specialized unit whose core mission is to conduct security force assistance operations.
Space Domain: The area above the altitude where atmospheric effects on airborne objects become negligible.
Stability Operation: An operation conducted outside the United States in coordination with other instruments of national power to maintain or re-establish a secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastructure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief. (ADP 3-0)
Strategic Environment: The global environment in which the U.S. President employs all elements of national power (diplomatic, informational, military, and economic).
Threat: Any combination of actors, entities, or forces that have the capability and intent to harm United States forces, United States national interests, or the homeland. (ADP 3-0)