FORT MOORE, Ga. – Standing in front of a group of junior officers and future company commanders, the 4th Infantry Division’s Deputy Commanding General for Maneuver Brig. Gen. Buddy Ferris, is sharing years of operational and combat experience while posing the question, “How do you take multi-domain operations as a concept and apply it to the real world? How do you train it?”
These questions and many others were the topic of twelve break-out sessions and numerous command team presentations during the Maneuver Center of Excellence’s yearly Maneuver Warfighter Conference held this week at Fort Moore, Georgia. The theme for this year’s conference is “Maneuver Transformation in Contact,” an initiative with the goal that asks how the Army can modernize and evolve in an uncompromising, rapidly changing, and lethal operational environment.
“The concepts have changed because the conflicts changed. We have to evolve to meet the threat we’re facing,” Ferris said. “With all that transformation over the years on both the materiel side and the doctrinal side, we come back to large-scale combat operations.”
Ferris and co-presenter, 4th ID Command Sgt. Maj. Alex Kupratty, centered their presentation on the tactical effects of multi-domain operations for large-scale combat operations, and were explicit to say that with all the transformation the Army has seen in the past 30 years of air-land battle and counter-insurgency operations, one thing hasn’t changed – the nature of conflict.
“We’re talking about scale. We’re talking about the ability to affect large formations,” said Kupratty. “We’re training for depth, endurance, agility, and convergence. How do you have the endurance when you are taking thousands of rounds and casualties a day? How do you converge all the capabilities available from joint and international forces who are eager to train?”
Multi-domain operations require all the unique elements and capabilities from joint force partners from across the Department of Defense and international partners. As a concept it sounds easy, but Kupratty says, no, it’s tough to integrate land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace elements.
“Whether it’s taking an integrated air defense system out 100 kilometers that allow an Apache squadron to get in so they can support an artillery battalion, so they can turn off the power with a cyber-attack – it’s all converging these lethal elements for success,” Kupratty said.
As the U.S. Army’s marquee multi-domain operations division, 4th ID is uniquely positioned on Fort Carson, Colorado, near multiple Air Force and Space Force command elements to synchronize joint capabilities into training exercises. Implementing multi-domain operations, however, is not without its challenges and complexities.
“The technical stuff isn’t where we found friction,” Ferris said. “Friction was found in talking, supplying, and resupplying. That is where we learned we need to keep getting better. Bring joint and international partners together and work on the fundamentals, such as communication.”
Junior platoon leaders and future company commanders in the audience at the conference focused their questions for 4th ID. leadership on multiple topics from lessons learned to integration of new technologies at every level of command formations.
Ferris communicated his goals and lessons learned for multi-domain operations to junior leaders: “This year is an opportunity to improve; to fail miserably, so that we can continue to grow. So, when that two-way live fire training comes, we’re ready.”
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