The United States and its Indo-Pacific allies and partners were conducting the largest army exercise in the region as the American ground forces prepared for fighting island warfare.
The exercise, which began on Monday, was executed by the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division and the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) in the Pacific Ocean. It spanned from Alaska in the north to Hawaii in the center and Palau in the west.
The mission of the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division is to forward-posture ready forces in the Indo-Pacific region to deter adversaries. JPMRC provides realistic training that simulates the region’s challenging terrains, including jungle and archipelagic environments.
Foreign participating units came from Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Maldives, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and the United Kingdom. During the JPMRC 25-01 exercise, military forces will conduct multi-domain training to prepare for future operations.
The military drill came as the U.S. Army Pacific, a component of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, released a theater army strategy last month. It called for achieving “positional advantage with decisive land power” to win strategic competition and to prevail in war.
Tech. Sgt. John Linzmeier/U.S. Air National Guard
General Charles Flynn, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific, said the Indo-Pacific is the most consequential theater for the country’s enduring security and prosperity, where the Chinese military and its associated militias are “a threat that we must confront.”
In an article published by the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings in February, the general argued that his units could threaten China’s critical capabilities by positioning a network of land-based fires on key terrains within the first island chain in the Western Pacific Ocean.
The island chain, which extends southward from Japan’s mainland and its southwestern archipelago to Taiwan and the Philippines, is a U.S. defense concept that seeks to leverage allied or friendly territories to contain the Chinese navy in the region during a conflict.
The U.S. Army traces its roots of fighting island warfare back to the Pacific War during World War II when soldiers and the U.S. Marines participated in the “island hopping” campaign that seized islands in the region from Japanese control.
The military strategy, also known as leapfrogging, avoided frontal attack, bypassed island strong points, and isolated and cut off the enemy’s supply lines. In the meantime, some islands were seized and used for projecting power in large-scale combat operations.
This year, the U.S. Army demonstrated its island warfare capabilities by deploying Multi-Domain Task Forces. They provide precision fires against China’s anti-access/area denial networks, which aim to defeat U.S. naval and air forces in the Western Pacific Ocean.
Anti-access is designed to prevent U.S. forces from entering a designated area, while area denial aims to limit U.S. forces’ freedom of action. China employs long-range precision strike systems to deter American military intervention in the event of a conflict.
In what it called a “historic first,” the First Multi-Domain Task Force of the U.S. Army Pacific deployed the Mid-Range Capability missile system to the Philippines in April. The system, also known as the Typhon, can fire two types of anti-surface and -air missiles.
Two months later, the Third Multi-Domain Task Force, another unit under the U.S. Army Pacific, participated in a sinking exercise in Palau, an island country in the Western Pacific Ocean. It engaged a moving maritime target with its long-range fires.
In July, the First and the Third Multi-Domain Task Forces participated in another sinking exercise with the Japanese army during the Rim of the Pacific maritime drill in Hawaii.
“From a strategic and tactical perspective, there are many ways the Army could support, enable, and sustain a networked, multi-domain combat force in the Pacific,” Kris Osborn, the President of Warrior Maven—the Center for Military Modernization, wrote last year.
Osborn referred to weapons applications such as the Army’s rockets, missiles, and artillery operated from naval platforms. This could improve land-attack options in coastal regions and islands and extend deployment reach in “island hopping” operations.
