US Army's new warfighting guidance plans for a prolonged fight along the First Island Chain

The US Army has told its forces to prepare for a prolonged fight along the First Island Chain, the line of islands that includes Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, and to be ready to act on the first day of a conflict in the Western Pacific, USNI News reported on Friday. The direction comes from the service's new operational warfighting guidance, titled How the Army Fights.

The document was released on 7 October. In its foreword, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army vice chief of staff who is also serving as acting chief of staff, wrote that the American homeland is no longer a sanctuary and that peer adversaries can disrupt the Army's ability to generate and project combat power before its units reach the fight, according to the Association of the United States Army. The guidance builds on a 19 August letter to the force known as The Army Azimuth and organises land power around four operational elements: convergence, strike, close battle and endurance.

According to USNI News, the guidance acknowledges that the People's Liberation Army can field significant counter-intervention frameworks, the anti-access and area-denial networks meant to disrupt American forces as they move toward the Western Pacific from the continental United States. The document says the Army will counterbalance what it calls the pacing threat by improving its warfighting infrastructure across the region, because China's ability to deploy quickly demands land power options that do not depend on long deployment timelines.

Inside the First Island Chain, the Army wants hardened command and control, in-theatre logistics and adequate munition reserves. Its forces are meant to be postured to fight from day one using pre-positioned stocks able to support high-intensity combat. A new concept called Total Army Power Projection Equipment, which replaces the designation Army Prepositioned Stock, is intended to keep both rotational and forward-deployed units supplied from the start of a war.

From those forward forces and stocks, the Army plans to field multi-domain task forces armed with long-range missiles, their own air defences, and cyber and electronic warfare tools to disrupt China's anti-access and area-denial networks. The guidance also treats Army watercraft, uncrewed surface vessels and drones as an important way to resupply the joint force across the long distances of the Pacific.

Further back, in the Second Island Chain, the service intends to build hardened fuel and munition nodes to support the formations deployed forward. The guidance names forward-based engineering, medical and air defence units as the means of keeping those distribution networks running.

Parts of the plan are already visible. USNI News said elements have been rehearsed in the Army's Pathways exercise series across the Western Pacific since 2018, and that the service's newest long-range cruise and hypersonic missiles, including the ground-based Mid-Range Capability that fires SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles, are assigned to Indo-Pacific Command. A presentation at the Army's annual AUSA meeting this week showed US Army Pacific logistics and warehousing sites in Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Singapore and Guam.

The guidance is also candid about a gap. It acknowledges an operational challenge in the capacity and volume of long-range strike munitions the Army would need against ground and maritime targets in the Western Pacific, USNI News reported.

Beyond the Pacific sections, AUSA reported that the guidance says robotics, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence and counter-drone capabilities must reach units at scale, with command and control and sustainment that keep pace. It also says the Army must train and certify its formations for the four operational elements and secure forward posture, access and partnerships before any conflict begins.