Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 82

via undersea vehicles. To facilitate rapid objective
area movement, assaulting land warfare forces must
utilize a new generation of smart, light, armed, and
all-terrain vehicles. Those ground-forces mobility
attributes are consistent with current Department of
Defense (DOD) strategic guidance for a lean, agile,
flexible, and ready force.2 But at the BCT level and
below—where fighting happens—existing land
warfare forces tactics, techniques, and procedures
(TTPs) must be adapted and new ones created to
overcome A2/AD’s effects on force security, movement, intelligence, signal, fires, and logistics. These
counter-A2/AD TTPs will be different from the
permissive condition ones found in counterinsurgency environments.
Lighter units will need to know they are supported in tough A2/AD conditions and that those
supporting them understand the mechanics and possess the required expertise. Likewise, BCT systems
and equipment must be purpose-built with the rigors
of the A2/AD fight in mind. For example, land
warfare forces will require integrated, survivable,
self-healing tactical and strategic communications;
rapidly responsive high-speed joint force fires; and
secure, fused national-to-tactical multisource intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Overall,
in winning an A2/AD fight, each service has much
to offer, but no single service can establish the conditions to win that fight. Now, in the years before
the A2/AD confrontation America will need to win,
service chiefs and combatant commanders must
understand A2/AD, the role of land warfare forces
in mitigating A2/AD, and joint force vulnerabilities
and dependencies. This ensures the best survivable
capabilities are developed and once delivered, put
into place as the enabling matrix on which to fix
counter-A2/AD TTPs and concepts of operations

Countering A2/AD—Why Land
Warfare Forces Matter?

Land warfare forces are vital in prevailing against
A2/AD because at the end of the day, not every
adversary A2/AD capability of consequence can be
mitigated through air force or naval means. Even
in A2/AD warfare, with all of its anticipated and
appropriate emphasis on technological strength,
much warfighting will remain to be done as it has
always needed doing: boots on ground at eyeball
level.
80

Land Warfare Competencies for
A2/AD Environment
• Combined Arms
• Force Protection
• ISR
• Air & Missile Defense
• Cyberspace Operations
• Space Operations Support
• Logistics
• PSYOP/Information Operations

Mission Areas
Reconnaissance
Raids
Seizure
Figure 1: Countering A2/AD

Figure 2 provide s some granularity regarding
mission areas specifically designed to overcome
critical A2/AD adversary capabilities the joint force
will encounter in the fight’s initial conditions and
throughout subsequent entry operations. Behind this
vision is the imperative of gaining strategic freedom
of action by specific tactical counter-A2/AD actions
across a widespread denied battle space in every
domain. Against that backdrop, land warfare forces
are not an invasion or long-term occupation force,
or utilized as the vanguard of a nation-building
effort; even “kicking in the door” comes later. Early
land warfare force employment against A2/AD is
about tailored BCTs and slices of BCTs that enter
the neighborhood to shape its places for the joint
force subsequently to kick in the doors to the key
houses, which themselves constitute key opponent
targets.
How can land warfare forces best prepare for
counter-A2/AD missions? The best way is to
develop and integrate BCT TTPs within joint force
concept of operations—leveraging land warfare
November-December 2013

• MILITARY REVIEW