US Army capabilities integration chief talks multidomain ops

By: Jen Judson

WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Eric Wesley is the new Army Capabilities Integration Center director and the first director to guide the center's efforts under the purview of the brand-new Army Futures Command, as opposed to Training and Doctrine Command, where the center lived since its inception.

ARCIC will be responsible for the development of future operational and war-fighting concepts that align and inform the service's major modernization priorities that Futures Command is tasked to develop in a new and rapid way. In an unprecedented method, concept and capability development will be formed in parallel.

In a wide-ranging interview with Defense News, Wesley discussed how the Army is evolving its major operational concept — Multidomain Operations 1.5 — and how ARCIC will continue to align modernization strategy with the concept as the Army heads toward a fully modernized force by 2028 — one that can provide overmatch against peer adversaries.

When are you coming out with the new version of the Army's Multidomain Operations concept (MDO 1.5)? Will it be at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference?

We're teasing it out. What we're going to do is deliver all of the principles and tenets of this new concept, and then you'll see the signed version within 30 days of that.

Why is getting the MDO concept right so critical?

I'll say upfront this is the most fundamental rewrite of an operational concept since AirLand Battle that was published in 1982.

Concepts are critical, particularly at a point in time when you see the world's dynamics fundamentally shift in a way that you've got to, in many ways, reconfigure or redesign and modernize your army.

What has changed in the world that requires multidomain operations?

I'd say there are a number of things. But if there's a word that you want to remember in terms of identifying the challenges we face within the pacing threats, it is the word “standoff.”

And what [our adversaries] have invested in are things that mitigate against the United States and our partners and allies' strengths. We're very good at close combat, and they've watched us over the last 30 years or so. And when you give the United States and our coalition partners and allies time to build up against it, usually the outcome is preordained based on ability to get into position and conduct operations the way we like to conduct them. So recognizing that, they've invested in what we oftentimes refer to as anti-access, area denial capabilities, which serendipitously came parallel with our withdrawal from the continent of Europe and the Korean Peninsula over the last 30 years.

Fll article: https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2018/10/08/us-army-capabilities-integration-chief-talks-multidomain-ops