HONOLULU—That U.S. Army leaders would extol the importance of land forces, even in a theater dominated by water, is as predictable as the Pacific tides. But for a naval aviator to do so? That’s a bit more surprising.
“Yes, the region is named after oceans, but human beings live on the land,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Sam Paparo said at the Land Forces Pacific conference here earlier this month, echoing an expression common among U.S. Army Pacific leaders before highlighting the Army’s key role in artillery, theater-wide sustainment, missile defense, and more.
Any discussion of military power in the Indo-Pacific would be incomplete without invoking the so-called pacing challenge to illustrate just what these land forces may find themselves up against. And unlike a decade ago, when most military leaders would studiously avoid uttering the word “China,” no one here was playing coy anymore. But through keynotes, panels, and one-on-one interviews with leaders, a general consensus was clear: though everyone hopes war never comes, the military is ready for the fight.
“We still remain confident in our ability to prevail, and we should make no mistake about that,” Paparo said. “Deterrence is our highest duty…and deterrence is that combination of capability and will and your would-be adversary’s knowledge of that, that demonstrates to them that the cost, the potential cost of aggression far outweighs the benefits.”
Transforming in contact
The Army and the Marine Corps are both amid transformation, although the Corps’ Force Design is several years ahead of the Army’s Transformation in Contact initiative. And while Force Design is more overtly focused on preparing for conflict with China, both services acknowledge that the battlefield of the future will be much different than those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lt. Gen. James Glynn, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific, said the Marines’ efforts had “moved beyond design into what I would label as realization,” but one of the biggest lessons so far is that, “in this era, with near-peer-level competition, it’s a constantly changing environment. And so while we’ve heretofore labeled it as transformation, I think it’s going to be a process of kind of dynamic change over time.”
For U.S. Army Pacific, that transformation requires units to continue to perform their missions while simultaneously testing new equipment and providing feedback “to create change faster—and the circle of change is rotating pretty quickly,” said U.S. Army Pacific command Gen. Ronald Clark.
Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane is the commander of I Corps, composed of 60,000 soldiers based in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington state. But with 40-some exercises a year across the Indo-Pacific, there are always some troops deployed to partner nations: Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and more. The campaign of exercises, called Operation Pathways, helps “build readiness in the environment we’re going to operate in,” McFarlane said—and also allows them to watch China “very closely.”
First Corps includes one of the first three infantry brigade combat teams tapped for the TiC initiative, which McFarlane called “a huge opportunity” that is “bringing about change to divest from outdated technology and invest in the technology we need to ensure we can dominate on the battlefield today.”
Maj. Gen. Charles Lombardo, commander of the South Korea-based 2nd Infantry Division, doesn’t have one of the original three TiC brigades, but it hasn’t stopped his soldiers from also working to transform. They recently stood up a small unmanned systems unit, and have also taken lessons from the Ukraine conflict about survivable command posts, he said, and as they work closely with the South Korean military, have also been able to take advantage of some of their technology during training.
“Every training event is a rehearsal. Every exercise is an experimentation… and I think we’re taking all those kinds of opportunities to get better,” Lombardo said.
Growing partnerships
The dozens of partnerships that land forces are building and maintaining throughout the region are a critical piece of the deterrence puzzle, leaders said. That focus on partnerships was illustrated by the panoply of military uniforms on display at LANPAC—more than a dozen—as well as the variety of accents in keynotes and panels.
In April, U.S. Army Pacific’s deputy commander for homeland affairs, Maj. Gen. Lance Okamura, told Defense One that every partnership would be critical in the event of war with China.
“When push comes to shove, during conflict or crisis, we want our partners to choose us over our opponents, our adversaries,” Okamura said. “More importantly, when there’s time when we’re in dire need of assistance, we definitely want their assistance.”
The Army is building those partnerships not just through active-duty participation in exercises, but also through the National Guard’s state partnership program.
“When you start to see Idaho National Guardsmen in Cambodia; Washington Guardsmen in Thailand [and] Malaysia; Oregon in Vietnam and Bangladesh…it affects the Chinese Communist party’s decision-making cycle,” he said.
The significance of those relationships has already been proven in Cambodia, which expelled U.S. military forces in 2017—including Navy Seabees who were doing humanitarian-assistance projects throughout the country—ostensibly in exchange for China’s help in building a port. But Phnom Penh maintained its longstanding partnership with the Idaho National Guard, “and it’s because of that relationship that we’re back in Cambodia,” Okamura said.
The guard is also planning to send a Stryker brigade combat team from Washington for an exercise in Southeast Asia in 2027—the year Chinese president Xi Jinping set as a deadline for the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to take Taiwan.
“We definitely want to showcase to our opponent in 2027 that if you misbehave, there may be potential consequences. We’re trying to deter,” Okamura said.
The Army National Guard is also preparing for what happens if that deterrence fails, its commander, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Stubbs, told Defense One, because “if we’ve got a fight out here, we’ll fight as a total Army”—not just the active-duty force.
Stubbs visited Hawaii and Guam in April to get a feel for the “priority theater,” to visit with the National Guard in both locations, and to talk about ways to better integrate the Guard into training and exercises in the region.
After touring the Hawaii National Guard’s joint operations center and the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s operations center, Stubbs said he had a new appreciation for the “significant complexity” and isolation that would make responding to a conflict or crisis here “orders of magnitude more difficult” than on the mainland.
“You think about all the assets and the infrastructure on this island that have to be defended, and then you think about everything as you move farther to the west that has to be defended, and there is a significant place for the Army in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.
Back at LANPAC, McFarlane said he’s seen a change in the level of engagement and number of partner nations involved in exercises, as countries large and small keep a wary eye on China.
During McFarlane’s first Operation Pathways, as a Ranger in 1996, “we parachuted into Cobra Gold” and did “small level, squad-level combined training” to help the American troops understand the jungle. Last year, more than a dozen countries participated in a “multinational forces headquarters command-post exercise where we were sharing and building proficiency across those different partners with cyber and space capabilities, as well as building warfighting proficiency at the higher-level staff.”
The interoperability “has really come a long way,” he said. “If you think about deterrence, just the number of countries that are going to multilateral exercises versus bilateral provides an aspect of deterrence. As China sees the Greater Pacific region, like-minded nations working together as we improve interoperability…and then demonstrating our capabilities together…operating as an integrated force, which is unstoppable, versus operating in a fragmented force, which is vulnerable.”
“The connective tissue of the joint force”
For Clark, the necessity of land forces in the Indo-Pacific is clear. “Land forces are decisive. Land forces guarantee sovereignty, security, full stop,” he told Defense One.
“Our adversary is very different than what we faced over the past 20-plus years. He’s developed an anti-access/area-denial network designed to fix our air and maritime assets and to put them at risk. They will not allow us to build combat power at our own time and choosing…so our mission, our responsibility, is to understand that, correct and attempt to neutralize their ability to impact our other domains.”
For Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and U.S. Forces Korea, “land power is the connective tissue of the joint force.”
“You can control the skies, you can control the seas, but ultimately, you must control the ground to win and to achieve any lasting security,” Brunson said. “Our forces build the operating environments that air and maritime forces depend on.
And for Paparo, while each service is important to success and to deterrence, “fires is the capability from the Army and the land forces that I most treasure in this region,” and “protection and integrated missile defense” are “absolutely critical as well.”
“The challenges we face in the Indo-Pacific are formidable but not insurmountable,” he said. “The Army’s contribution to the joint functions are transformative and inspiring. But we all must do more. … and we need to do it now.”
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