Land Forces in the Pacific
Building a More Integrated Network of Armies for Strategic Deterrence
This week I have been in Honolulu. You might think me boring, but I have not been to a single beach nor gone for a swim! Instead, I have been attending the 2024 Land Forces in the Pacific conference (LANPAC), which is organised by the Association of the U.S. Army and co-hosted by the U.S. Army Pacific command.
The conference brings together army chiefs, staffs, academics and many others from across the Pacific to discuss contemporary strategic issues, war fighting and readiness concepts, through the lens of ground operations. It also explores how to expand and deepen the existing range of relationships across the many different armies of this massive portion of the earth’s surface.
I also had the opportunity to speak during the conference. I was part of a panel that explored Russian, Chinese and North Korean approaches to multi-domain operations, and how their respective ways of war might impact on stability in the Indo-Pacific. It was a terrific session to discuss how our potential adversaries might seek to target the different strategic and tactical vulnerabilities of land forces in our region.
Over the course of the three days of the conference, it became clear that there were several themes emerging in the strategic development of land power in the Indo-Pacific. It is these themes that will be the focus of the rest of this article. They are as follows:
Strategic thinking about the Indo-Pacific must embrace the ‘green’ as well as the ‘blue’.
No NATO but a deepening mesh of relationships is developing.
Ukraine lessons are relevant but need to be interpreted for the different contextual elements of the Indo-Pacific region.
Embracing the Green and the Blue
A large proportion of war games and think tank documents about contingencies in this region are focussed on maritime operations or long range aviation activity. This is important given how much of the region is covered in water! But it an incomplete conceptual model for military affairs in the Indo-Pacific region.
The region also contains a key archipelagic area that connects that Indian and a Pacific oceans, as well as many smaller islands and two continents. And it goes without saying that if war is ultimately a political activity, it is on the land where people and their political leaders live. Military operations must embrace a robust approach to influence friendly populations and governments as well potential adversaries, all of which are based on the land.
Land forces have the best ‘finger tip’ feel of what is actually going on the ground across the region with people, partner military organisations and governments, whether in peace and in war.
Three key functions define the overall mission of land forces in the Indo-Pacific region.
First, land forces provide for an enduring presence. Unlike a maritime or air platforms, ground-based forces can deploy and remain in an area over long periods of time. Persistence, during which relationships with security partners and local populations can also be built, is an important characteristic of land forces.
Second, armies exist to operate on the land but also FROM the land. Land forces have an accelerating capacity to project force from the land into other domains. While this might encompass various tiers of air, missile and drone defences, it now includes long-range maritime and land strike capabilities which include the Typhon and PrSM strike missile systems. The launch platforms for these weapons - trucks - are also very low signature, especially compared to most air and naval platforms. And, each of these systems is accompanied by sensors. These land-based, long-range kill webs comprise an integral component of joint offensive and defensive systems in the region.
But the long-range capabilities of armies extends beyond the sensor-shooter networks. It also extends to projection capabilities such as the littoral watercraft that the Australian and US armies are developing. And this long-range capability includes strategic communications and logistics capacity that is essential to the long-range projection of capabilities in other domains.
As such, the final function is that only land forces are able to fully integrate multi-domain operations. All other forces operate from the land, whether it is from airfields, ports, ground stations for space capability, or in joint headquarters. It is the armies of the region that provide much of the support and security for these.
None of this is to propose that armies are more important than other service capabilities. It does reinforce however that multi-domain operations in the Indo-Pacific must incorporate ALL the domains. And while many individual services have multi-domain concepts, these must evolve into joint concepts where forces and capabilities from each service can naturally integrate and work together across a large swathe of the earths surface.
Land operations and the strategic application of land power cannot be overlooked in strategic and operational planning for engagement, deterrence and war fighting operations across the Indo-Pacific.
A Deepening Web of Relationships
The political context of the Indo-Pacific differs from Europe in many ways, but perhaps one of the most important is that there is no politico-military alliance like NATO. And, to be quite pragmatic, it is extraordinarily unlikely that such an alliance will come into being. But a deepening mesh of relationships is being formed among like-minded nations and military institutions, particularly land forces across western and south-west Pacific areas.
Conferences like LANPAC are an important platform for discussing strategic issues among the army leaders and staffs of many nations from the region. The LANPAC format is a relatively recent innovation but over the past decade it has become a forum for building collective understanding, trust and will. Many of army chiefs who spoke at the conference spoke of a desire for even deeper multi-layer security cooperation between different armies.
But there is also a wide range of subordinate activities that occur to get into the detail of aligning operating procedures, digital command and control networks, logistics, projection capabilities and command philosophies. The recent Exercise Pozieres March, hosted in Brisbane by the 1st Australian Division, brought together Canadian, Japanese, Australian and American fighting divisions under a Corps construct.
Perhaps the key foundation for this deepening web is the three key US alliances in the region: US-Japan; US-Korea and US-Australia. Upon these three important relationships is built an array, or a web, of other relationships through the region and these are expanding and deepening quickly.
Combined exercises are a crucial mechanism for building and enhancing this network of land force relationships. For example, Exercise Talisman Sabre began as a US-Australia only joint exercise. Over the past decade this exercise - as well as others held across the region such as Exercise Yama Sakura - has expanded to include several new nations, many of who had not previously work together or practiced some of the high level war fighting skills which are now a focus of these activities.
Perhaps the best illustration of the trajectory of integration between different nations was an example provided by the Australian Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Simon Stuart. He showed a photo of a live fire exercise of five artillery batteries conducted on Exercise Talisman Sabre in 2023. Encompassing capabilities from the US Army and Marines, Korea, Japan and the Australian Army, the live fire activity featured digitally integrated batteries for coordination and synchronisation of fires. It was, as General Stuart put it, just one example of where the armies of the region working together are “more than the sum of their parts”.
Finally, the importance of training together outside of major combined exercises was emphasised as a key enabler in building this more capable web of strategic land force relationships. To paraphrase a couple of senior army leaders, training together ensures efficiency in the use of ground force training resources while building and sustaining a persistent connection in order to deter aggression in the region.
Ukraine Lessons: Indo-Pacific Filter Required
Most speakers during the conference referred in some way to the war in Ukraine, and what can be learned from the past 27 months of conflict there. As might be expected, there was a wide array of different ‘lessons’ that were put forward including, but not restricted to, logistics, adaptation capacity, strategic planning, leadership, long range strike, use of drones, and command and control.
As I have written here and elsewhere during this war, there are many lessons that can be taken from the war in Ukraine. But my sense is that in many cases, the lessons from Ukraine are being quoted at conferences like LANPAC without sufficient analysis of the very different context of the Indo-Pacific region. We need to take the lessons from Ukraine and then examine them through the various ‘filters’ which differentiate the regions of the Pacific from Eastern Europe.
Key areas of difference which must be considered include the following:
Geography and distance.
Terrain, vegetation and weather.
Civil infrastructure capability and density.
Political environment (no NATO).
Capability of potential adversaries.
This might seem obvious, but every lesson from the war in Ukraine needs to be viewed through these different Indo-Pacific filters. Such analysis is probably less mature than it should be among the different armies of this region. This will need to change quickly.
Moving Forward Quickly
Strategic land power network based on networking and respect for each other, whose most important mission is “no war”. As such, it is a key deterrent against aggression of China, North Korea and Russia. Must defend against those who have a strategic posture for conquest.
General Flynn, LANPAC 2024
Many of the discussions that took place at LANPAC were unimaginable a decade ago. Whether it was the national policy of respective participants, the institutional orientation of different armies or the recognition of the threat posed by potential adversaries, these were inhibiting factors in the strategic discussions about the application of land forces in the Indo-Pacific region.
All of these inhibitions appear to have been significantly reduced or have fallen away entirely over the past few years. Driven largely by the aggressive posture of China and North Korea, and brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine and the lessons from the conflict, regional armies are rethinking their roles and investing in different, more agile and lethal capabilities as part of a strategic deterrence posture.
And these armies are increasingly doing this in collaboration with others. This developing network of land force relationships, that extends across thousands of kilometres, is becoming a crucial mechanism for military forces to mitigate against the ‘tyranny of distance’ that characterises the Indo-Pacific region.
Land, sea, air, EW and space capabilities across the region are all transforming rapidly. This is resulting in a shift to a mix of exquisite, few and crewed with cheap, massed and uncrewed capabilities in regional land forces. It is also giving small states the some elements of military power that were only able to be deployed in previous eras by large powers. Maritime strike from the land is a key example.
This means that regional military organisations, particularly land forces, must continue to improve their ability to work together to pose an enhanced deterrent against aggression and ‘prevent war’ in the Indo-Pacific region. Many of the armies in the region appear to be on an accelerated trajectory, collectively, to achieving this.
Lots of good news in this post.
An important forum showcasing some important new capabilities.