FM 3-0 OPERATIONS (2022. 10. 1.)

Description

The United States Army has always served to protect the Nation and preserve the peace. Historically, this has always meant preparing for and, when necessary, fighting and winning our Nation’s wars. The Army must always be ready to fight and win. In this era of great power competition, the Army must always campaign aggressively to protect our national interests. We are living in very challenging times. There is not a time in recent history that is so potentially dangerous. Russia, our acute threat, is conducting an unprovoked war on the sovereign country of Ukraine. Our pacing challenge, China, with an economy nearly equal in size to ours, is building a world-class military to challenge us and threatening its neighbors, including Taiwan. As we focus on China and Russia, we cannot take our eyes off our other persistent threats: North Korea, Iran, and violent extremists. In addition, we are still dealing with the challenges of COVID and unprecedented natural disasters throughout the country. Despite all these challenges and threats, we continue to advance in the Army’s greatest transformation in over 40 years, as we pivot from decades of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism to large-scale combat operations.

Every 40 years the Army experiences a major transformation. In 1973, the Arab–Israeli War drove Army senior leaders and General Don Starry to relook the lessons learned in that conflict to counter the Soviet Union. Those efforts resulted in what we know today as Air-Land Battle. In 1991, the Army and the joint force executed that doctrine with great efficacy in OPERATION DESERT STORM, quickly liberating Kuwait. We are at a similar inflection point with lessons learned coming in from the 2nd Nagorno-Karabakh War and the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War. These lessons have and continue to shape our transformational war fighting concept of multidomain operations. Multidomain operations started as an operating concept, and now we are solidifying it into doctrine. This concept is shaping the Army and transforming our people, readiness, and modernization efforts to meet current and future challenges and define the Army of 2030.

FM 3-0 demonstrates the first principles of speed, range, and convergence of the cutting-edge technologies needed to achieve future decision dominance and overmatch against our adversaries. It reflects the vital role the Army plays as the force that joint force commanders need to hold critical terrain, assure allies and partners, defeat the most dangerous enemies in close combat anywhere in the world, and consolidate gains to achieve enduring strategic outcomes for the Nation. Two critical elements of multidomain operations, space and cyberspace capabilities, have been employed by Army forces for more than two decades, but never during conflict with opponents capable of effectively contesting the U.S. joint force in space or cyberspace. Air and maritime capabilities have long enabled successful operations on land, but it has been decades since air-ground integration and close cooperation between land and naval forces have been effectively challenged by a threat.

FM 3-0 remains rooted in the principles of war and reinforces the offensive mindset. It provides a simple definition of multidomain operations that applies at all echelons. The new operational environment model helps leaders visualize the five domains and understand their interrelationship through the physical, information, and human dimensions. FM 3-0 introduces new tenets and imperatives and provides an operational framework that helps echelons better organize forces in terms of time, space, and purpose. It describes operations in the context of competition, crisis, and armed conflict. It also addresses the unique considerations for applying landpower in maritime environments and the unique demands of, and requirements for, combat leadership. Success demands competent leaders who apply doctrine with judgment. Therefore, I challenge you all to learn and then assess doctrine during training and operations. Engage about it in professional discourse and make it better. That is how the Army will fight and win in the future.

People first, winning matters, and we remain Army strong!