How should a forward-stationed Multidomain Command in an allied nation—using Japan as a primary example—organize for competition, crisis, and conflict, assuming it must maintain its current bilateral roles, perform its traditional service component responsibilities, and simultaneously conduct multidomain operations?
To answer this, it is necessary to examine the broader command relationship implications of Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO). Long-range, cross-domain, precision effects allow the military to operate more widely and routinely across the seams of traditional operations and into increasingly active and congested domains. As the military invests in and fields these advanced capabilities, what changes are required across the DOTMLPF-P (doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy) framework to integrate a specific service component's operations into battlespace and domains historically dominated by other services?
Within this multidomain organizational structure in forward-deployed environments like Japan, how might changing capabilities create new interservice dependencies or opportunities for collaboration? What are the critical interdependencies that must be defended and exploited between the domains? Ultimately, what changes to core service functions and command relationships are necessary to balance these competing bilateral and multidomain requirements while optimizing Joint interoperability and warfighting at the operational level?
- Corrado, Maj. Salvatore A., "Communicating in a Degraded Environment: Command and Control during Contested Operations," AFGC thesis, 2025, 49 pgs.
- JADO requires a critical reexamination of traditional "supported" and "supporting" command relationships. Corrado points out that under current doctrine, a supporting commander lacks the authority to rearrange the priorities of their supporting efforts across different lines of operation. This rigid structure is inadequate for JADO in a contested environment where rapid reprioritization is necessary. To address this, Corrado argues that supporting commanders must be granted the authority to adjust priorities dynamically in response to evolving battlefield conditions, and tactical-level commanders must be allowed to integrate cross-domain operations locally to avoid creating exploitable delays.
- Narbutovskih, Maj. Nicholas T., "Command in Complexity: Scaling Trust for Effective Joint All Domain Operations" Over the Horizon blog post, June 2020.
- Smith, Andrew, USAF, "Convergence within SOCOM – A Bottom-Up Approach to Multi Domain Operations" Over the Horizon blog post, April 2020.