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Expanded Maneuver In Future Warfighting
by David Vergun, DOD News
August 2, 2021
To deter China and Russia from possible
future aggression, the Defense Department has come up with a concept
known as "expanded maneuver" Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten,
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated at the National
Defense Industrial Association's Emerging Technologies Institute.
He said expanded maneuver involves understanding how adversaries
can operate in all domains and how to stop them while protecting DOD
and coalition forces, he said, noting there are four functional
battle areas within expanded maneuver.
The first involves
contested logistics. The last time logistics from the U.S. to
overseas locations were contested was World War II in the Pacific
and European theaters of operation, he said.
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Army Pvt. Nathan Kipp, left, and
Army Cpl. Morgan Long, with the Michigan Army National
Guard's 156th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, set up signal
communications during annual training at Fort Custer
Training Center, Augusta, Michigan on June 21, 2021. (U.S. Air
Force by Master Sgt. David Eichaker, Michigan Air National Guard)
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Logistics is
really difficult to do in a contested environment, he said. Fuel,
munitions and other materiel doesn't just show up magically on a
remote Pacific island.
"Contested logistics has been an area
of rich study, rich conversation, and we're changing our entire
logistics approach because of it," he said.
Joint fires is
the second functional battle area. In the joint warfighting concept,
fires come from all domains and from all services with no
restrictions, Hyten said.
The
idea for this concept is that the adversary can't figure out where
fires are coming from, and they have no way to defend themselves
against that, he said.
"That's a purely aspirational
requirement, but I hope everybody can see that if you could do that
you would change the equation on any future battlefield," he said.
"Now, you have to figure out what is affordable, what is
practical, what can you do, where can you bring it from, who can
have it. All those kinds of things you have to be able to work out
but you should never limit yourself as you begin a concept with what
you don't think you can do. So, fires need to come from everywhere,
all domains, all services, kinetic and non-kinetic," he said.
The third element is joint all-domain command and control.
Command and control links everything together and allows a commander
to understand exactly what's going on in the battlespace, he said.
Data has to flow everywhere, he said. "The goal is to be
fully connected to a combat cloud that has all information that you
can access at any time, any place … to be able to act quickly on
that."
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U.S. Air Force pilots assigned to the 120th Fighter Squadron
break away after refueling their fighter aircraft while
participating in exercise Amalgam Dart 21-01, over Thule,
Greenland on June 17, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman
Mira Roman, Air National Guard)
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However, access to
data might be denied in a threat environment, he said.
"So,
you have to figure out how to operate once again with mission
command — things that we learned as young lieutenants — how to
operate with real centralized control but decentralized execution
when you're disconnected."
The fourth is information
advantage. This involves connecting systems and people seamlessly
with each other and enabling interoperability across the joint force
and with allies and partners, he said.
The Joint Requirements
Oversight Council is heavily invested and involved in making this
all work and enabling the services to move faster in that direction,
he said.
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