The success of the entire strategic enterprise—from joint reception and staging to sustaining multidomain operations—will depend on the ability to establish, protect, and maintain ports, airfields, strategic and operational lines of communication, logistics nodes, and forward operating positions rapidly. Given that many of the military’s core construction, engineering, and sustainment capabilities reside in the reserve components, how can the Department of War synchronize strategic policy, Joint logistics, and engineering efforts to open, set, and sustain the theater for a protracted Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) scenario, particularly in the Indo-Pacific?
To effectively accomplish this, how can the military integrate emerging technology and develop innovative solutions to assist its service component commands in the preparation of the theater? Additionally, how can planners use digital tools during integrated planning to ensure timely and complete recommendations to senior leaders to address complex strategic challenges that span multiple theaters to address limited resources, timelines, decision points, and authorities across combatant commands?
Ultimately, research should provide actionable recommendations that bridge the gap between engineering, logistics, and strategy, ensuring the Joint Force can deploy, fight, and win without culminating prematurely.
- Aguon, LTC Romaine M., "Strategic Readiness: Accelerating USARPAC's Theater Logistics through Military Pre-Positioning," AWC SSP, 2024.
- This paper directly addresses the preparation of the theater for Army service component commands by exploring how Military Prepositioned Equipment (MPE) can accelerate the establishment of theater logistics in the Indo-Pacific. To assist in setting the theater, the Army Materiel Command and Army Futures Command are developing innovative strategies to streamline logistics, secure communication lines, and enhance the survivability of dispersed formations. The research emphasizes that employing MPE alongside innovative operational concepts (like Operation Pathways) allows the Army to rapidly deploy, distribute, and regenerate equipment. By strategically positioning these assets closer to potential conflict zones, the Army can reduce its reliance on vulnerable strategic airlift and ensure the right equipment is available for combatant commanders across the vast theater.
- Albertsen, Lt. Col. Danzel, "Agile Manufacturing: An Air Force Necessity," AWC SSP, 2020.
- This paper details how the Army can integrate emerging technology to develop innovative solutions for theater preparation by utilizing "advanced manufacturing" and 3D printing in remote locations. By printing vehicle parts, medical tools, and equipment on-demand at forward operating bases, the Army can dramatically reduce the logistical footprint and storage space required to sustain operations. This technological integration directly assists service component commands by bypassing bureaucratic delays in the traditional supply chain, ensuring that units have the necessary materials to quickly set and sustain the theater in response to operational demands.
- Andresen, Maj. Jonathan S., "How US Military Forces Have Utilized Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Improve Operations and Mission Effectiveness," AFGC thesis, 2023.
- This paper explores how the Army is integrating emerging technologies to prepare its forces and sustain operations across the spectrum of conflict. Specifically, the Army is partnering with industry to develop predictive logistics models and autonomous vehicles that can automatically forecast demand and deliver critical medical supplies to the "point of need" without requiring human-initiated requests. Additionally, the Army uses AI-driven simulation training, such as the Constructive Machine-learning Battles with Adversary Tactics (COMBAT) system, which generates adaptive red-force models to force units to develop new tactics. By utilizing machine learning for predictive supply chains and advanced tactical training, the Army enhances its multi-domain readiness and ensures its component commands are tactically prepared to shape the operational environment.
- Dens, Maj. David, "Virtual Reality Inclusion in Army Combined Arms Training Centers," ACSC RTF, 2019.
- This paper explains how the Army can use the emerging technology of the Synthetic Training Environment (STE) and Virtual Reality (VR) to prepare its forces for complex theater challenges before deployment. By leveraging these digital tools in Combat Training Centers, Army planners and leaders can practice flexible command structures and test new capabilities in a globally networked, simulated war environment. This allows the Army to seamlessly train for Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) across different domains and services, optimizing learning efficiency and ensuring that leaders are prepared to address complex strategic challenges regarding command, control, and coordination once in the actual theater.
- Ervin, LTC Darius D., "Mission Command and the Intelligence Commander: In Chaos Lies Opportunity," AWC SSP, 2020.
- This paper illustrates how Army planners and commanders can use digital tools and integrated planning models, such as the Sustainable Readiness Model (SRM), to ensure timely recommendations to senior leaders regarding limited resources and force disposition. By establishing a "push environment" where intelligence data and readiness metrics are shared vertically to higher echelons like USARCENT and CENTCOM, Army intelligence battalions can synchronize collection requirements and efficiently manage assets to support theater contingency operations. This decentralized but digitally integrated approach allows the Army to provide a concise articulation of the unit's vision, risks, and requirements to senior leaders, effectively balancing risks across combatant commands.
- Fuller, Lt. Col. Nicole, "Global Integration: An Impetus to Restore Lost US Military Advantage," AWC SSP, 2019.
- This paper addresses how military planners can use digital tools and integrated planning to tackle complex strategic challenges that span multiple theaters, limited resources, and varying authorities across combatant commands. It explains that the Department of Defense is shifting to a "Global Integration" construct, which utilizes Globally Integrated Planning and a common intelligence and operations picture to synchronize activities and resources across Geographic Combatant Commands. By participating in strategic-level exercises to test operational concepts within this networked command and control structure, planners can provide senior leaders with the shared understanding necessary to make resource-informed decisions at the "speed of relevance" against threats that cross regional boundaries.
- Griffith, Lt. Col. Timothy, "Strategic Readiness: An Assessment Methodology," AF Fellows (Kennedy), 2021.
- Addresses how Army planners can use digital tools to manage limited resources across multiple theaters by proposing an AI-powered Strategic Readiness dashboard. The paper notes that assessing massive datasets like Time-Phased Force Deployment Data (TPFDD) across various Combatant Commands is currently a latent and resource-intensive process. By applying artificial intelligence to synthesize and visualize this global force management data during integrated planning, planners can provide senior leaders with immediate, actionable recommendations, allowing them to dynamically course-correct strategies, adjust deployment timelines, and optimally align limited resources against complex global challenges.
- Hancock, Maj. Nicholas, "Marines Maintaining the Modernization Momentum," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- Answers the question by highlighting the Army’s Digital Transformation Strategy and initiatives like Project Convergence, which integrate emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence, unmanned vehicles, and data fabrics—into multi-domain operations. To assist its service component commands in theater preparation, the Army is utilizing digital tools like the Mission Partner Environment to fluidly exchange voice, video, and data across coalitions. By leveraging these expeditionary network capabilities, Army planners can rapidly gather and distribute information up and down the chain of command, enabling timely decisions and giving senior leaders the confidence needed to delegate authorities to tactical units in contested environments.
- Kerrigan, Maj. James, "From Theoretical to Practical: Moving Artificial Intelligence into the Warfighter's Toolkit," AFGC thesis, 2024.
- This research touches on specific digital tools for planners, citing the Army’s Automated Planning Framework as an existing AI-enabled tool that, alongside forthcoming Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) systems, merges previously stove-piped data to dramatically increase battlefield awareness. Kerrigan notes that leveraging artificial intelligence for rapid target recognition and decision-support allows military planners to evaluate capabilities and provide comprehensive, real-time recommendations to senior leaders. Integrating these digital tools enables the military to optimize the speed and efficiency of its decision-making processes, ensuring that limited resources and authorities are effectively managed to meet complex contingencies.
- Kohl, Maj. Matthew B., "The Perfect Staffer: Using Machine Learning to Streamline Operational Staff's Planning Efforts," AFGC thesis, 2024
- Focusing on the Joint Planning Process (JPP) used by Army and joint staffs, this paper demonstrates how integrating digital tools can ensure timely and complete recommendations for senior leaders facing constrained timelines. The author argues that incorporating supervised Machine Learning (ML) during mission analysis and the Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (JIPOE) helps staffs synthesize massive amounts of intelligence data that would otherwise overwhelm human analysts. By automating the identification of intelligence anomalies and accurately predicting future impacts, ML allows planners to build a transparent, comprehensive understanding of the operational environment, ultimately giving commanders the rapid, data-driven courses of action needed to allocate limited resources effectively.
- McLamb, Capt. Elizabeth E., "Integrating Artificial Intelligence to Joint All-Domain Command and Control for the 2030 Fight," SOS AUAR, 2020.
- Explores how integrating AI into the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) network equips planners to deliver timely and complete recommendations for strategic challenges. The paper details how digital tools like AI-powered Course of Action (COA) generators can filter millions of data fields at machine speed to develop thousands of potential COAs, automatically accounting for varying target combinations, platforms, delivery methods, and resource limitations. Through this human-machine teaming, planners can rapidly weigh the pros, cons, and second-order effects of these options against a commander's intent and acceptable risk, presenting senior leaders with prioritized recommendations much faster than traditional planning processes allow.
- Woodruff, LTC Robert, "Soldiers, Satellites and Space: How Strategic Competition is Reliant upon This Interdependency," AWC SSP 2022.
- This paper answers how the Army can integrate emerging technology to prepare the theater and support operations across combatant commands by detailing the synergy between Soldiers and space capabilities. It highlights experiments like Project Convergence 21, where the Army utilized a mesh Software-Defined Waveform and Low- and Medium-Earth Orbit satellites to significantly extend communications and enable rapid force projection. Furthermore, it explains how Army planners can use these integrated space-based capabilities and artificial intelligence to feed a Common Operating Picture (COP) to the Global Integrator and Combatant Commands, enabling Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) to simultaneously converge strategic and tactical resources across all domains.
- Young, Maj. Ryan H., "Hiding in the White Noise: Special Operations Logistics in the Pacific," ACSC EL 2023.
- Specifically focuses on the physical aspect of "setting the theater" by examining the Theater Army's role—specifically the 8th Theater Sustainment Command—in preparing the Indo-Pacific region for conflict. To assist service component commands and overcome the vulnerabilities of traditional large-scale bases, the paper suggests implementing innovative logistical solutions, such as establishing a distributed mesh network of sustainment, securing bilateral agreements, and utilizing expeditionary contract support. It emphasizes that setting the theater requires out-of-the-box thinking, such as shifting Army Prepositioned Stocks (APS) to at-sea logistics sites on fast ferries dispatched to randomized coordinates, providing the force with resilient, untargetable support.
- Zapata, Maj. Miguel, "Joint All-Domain Strategist Multi-Theater Wargame Tool," ACSC JADS 2024.
- This research answers how military planners can use digital tools during integrated planning to address complex strategic challenges spanning multiple theaters. The paper introduces a digital wargaming and operational planning platform that provides comprehensive Order of Battle visualization, GIS mapping of critical terrain, and a centralized workflow that converts strategic plans into executable actions. By integrating databases and automating routine administrative tasks, this digital tool allows planners to overcome limited timelines and focus directly on strategic decision-making and operational effectiveness. Furthermore, the planned integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) into this tool will offer tailored, dynamic scenario planning that can rapidly respond to evolving threat landscapes across multiple geographic combatant commands.