Secretary of the Army says it will have significant role in Asia as China tensions mount

The Indo-Pacific region may be a vast area covering much of the Pacific and Indian oceans, but that doesn’t mean the land-oriented U.S. Army will be on the sidelines in any future conflict with China, the service’s senior civilian leader said Thursday.

Massing combat aircraft and assets on static military bases in a war zone doesn’t make sense when an enemy can destroy them with long-range artillery and missile strikes. That’s why the U.S. Air Force has adopted “Agile Combat Employment” (ACE) as a combat doctrine, rapidly shifting smaller numbers of fighter jets and operating in an austere environment.

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said the modern battlefield is becoming “increasingly transparent” and noted that the military service she leads will have a part to play in future Air Force ACE missions. 

“It is increasingly difficult to hide, and this is one of the drivers behind the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept,” she said during a talk at the Stimson Center think tank. “We have to disperse [and] we have to be more mobile.”

Despite hot wars involving U.S. allies in Ukraine and the Middle East, much of the long-range planning at the Pentagon involves East Asia and how to contain and control a rising China bent on overturning the U.S.-backed order in the region that has prevailed since the end of World War II.

She said China has erected an extensive system to deny U.S. and allied military forces easy access should a crisis erupt in hot spots, such as Taiwan, Japan or the Philippines. The People’s Liberation Army doctrine deploys “thousands” of rockets and missiles to prevent any encroachment into areas it claims control over, she noted.

“We’re not going to be able to mass many, many fighter jets in one particular place because it’s too rich of a target,” Ms. Wormuth said.

Army air defense units in the Indo-Pacific must move as rapidly as their Air Force counterparts to keep them under a protective watch. One of the biggest challenges is simply capacity — the Army does not now have enough firepower to accomplish all the missions it has been assigned.

Ms. Wormuth said the Patriot missile defense system is probably the most sought-after weapon in the U.S. Army’s arsenal, leading to particular shortages.

“Our Patriots, for example, are probably our most stressed force element in the U.S. Army. They are in huge demand,” she said. “We use Patriots to protect our forces in the Middle East. We have a finite number of Patriot batteries.”

The Army must balance its air defense obligations in the Indo-Pacific region with its mission to protect U.S. troops in the Middle East. Ms. Wormuth said much of that comes down to managing finite resources.

“The Army has had a very flat budget for the last years,” she said. “It also comes down to manning those pieces of force structure.” 

While the Army has recruiting challenges across the board, convincing potential recruits to become air defense soldiers has been particularly difficult, officials said.

“When you sign up to go into that particular area, you’re going to be busy. You are deploying and you’re away from your family more often than almost anyone else in the United States Army,” Ms. Wormuth said. “Those are the things we’re going to have to work through.”

Even as the Army stakes its claim on combat responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific region, Ms. Wormuth said she and her top generals are paying close attention to the ongoing fighting between Ukraine and Russia. One lesson of the war: It is becoming increasingly difficult in the age of surveillance drones to hide from the enemy on a modern battlefield.

“We have to disperse and we have to be more mobile,” she said. “We’ve really been focusing on shrinking the size of our command post footprint and being able to set it up and take it down more quickly.”

Only a few years ago, a command post in the field for an Army brigade would likely consist of anywhere from five to seven military vehicles, large military tents, and an extensive “antenna farm” nearby to allow communications with subordinate units.

“Now, you’d see maybe two Humvees with just a handful of soldiers. The ‘antenna farm’ would be displaced quite a distance away,” Ms. Wormuth said. “You’d be able to set up that command post in 15 minutes and take it down in 15 minutes.”

Battlefields are being deployed by both sides in the Ukraine war for reconnaissance and for directly attacking enemy troops.

“As a direct result of what we’re seeing in Ukraine, in our budget that will come up next spring, you’ll see a significant increase in investment in unmanned aerial systems and counter-[drone] land warfare capabilities as well.”