Military

Multi-Domain Battle:Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century

Multi-Domain Battle: The Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century describes how U.S. ground forces, as part of the Joint Force and with partners, will operate, fight, and campaign successfully across all domains—space, cyberspace, air, land, maritime—against peer adversaries in the 2025-2040 timeframe.1 Multi-Domain Battle is an operational concept with strategic and tactical implications. It deliberately focuses on increasingly capable adversaries who challenge deterrence and pose strategic risk to U.S. interests in two ways. First, in operations below armed conflict, these adversaries employ systems to achieve their strategic ends over time to avoid war and the traditional operating methods of the Joint Force. Second, if these adversaries choose to wage a military campaign, they employ integrated systems that contest and separate Joint Force capabilities simultaneously in all domains at extended ranges to make a friendly response prohibitively risky or irrelevant. In this context, the Multi-Domain Battle concept describes how U.S. and partner forces organize, practice, and employ capabilities and methods across domains, environments, and functions over time and physical space to contest these adversaries in operations below armed conflict and, when required, defeat them in armed conflict. Although it recognizes the unique capabilities and roles of the Services, the concept seeks a common and interoperable capability development effort to provide Joint Force Commanders complementary and resilient forces to prosecute campaigns and further the evolution of combined arms for the 21st Century.