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The\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0Army\u2019s new draft strategy for 2025 to 2040 expects enemies to attack ever more lethally in multiple domains \u2014 land, sea, air, space, and online \u2014 while blurring the distinction between peace and war. To meet these foes, the\u00a0strategy<\/a>\u00a0says, the Army of the future must be much more mobile, with small teams that can fight like today\u2019s large units \u2014 and do it in every domain of warfare,\u00a0simultaneously.<\/p>\nThe Army\u2019s Training and Doctrine Command, or\u00a0TRADOC<\/span>, creates guides that the Army uses to draft field manuals and train troops for tomorrow\u2019s fights. On Monday, they released a\u00a0draft of their newest \u201cconcept document\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that lays out the Army\u2019s best guess about the enemy of the future. Titled \u201cMulti-Domain Battle: Evolution of Combined Arms for the 21st Century, 2025-2040,\u201d it repeats one key point over and over again: Adversaries will make life as difficult as possible for\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0troops by not declaring themselves to be the enemy, or, as the concept puts it, by \u201ccombining regular and irregular forces with criminal and terrorist enterprises to attack the Joint Force\u2019s vulnerabilities while avoiding its\u00a0strength.\u201d<\/p>\n That idea is not entirely new. The world got a great glimpse of what modern, blended warfare looks like when thousands of\u00a0little green men<\/a>\u00a0invaded Ukraine\u2019s Crimean peninsula in\u00a02014.<\/p>\n \u201cAdversaries have blurred the distinction between actions \u2018below armed conflict\u2019 and \u2018conflict,\u2019 enabling the achievement of strategic military objectives short of what the\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0traditionally considers \u2018war,\u2019\u201d the document\u00a0says.<\/p>\n The concept goes on to describe four other reasons the Army cannot successfully fight wars the way it has in the\u00a0past:<\/p>\n 1. The exponential speed of information technology.\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0forces can\u2019t assume that they will have the best phones, drones, or computer hardware on the battlefield. As computers get smaller, cheaper, and more widely available,\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0tech advantages will\u00a0disintegrate.<\/p>\n 2. Warfare will be much more urban. Some 60 percent (conservatively<\/a>) of the Earth\u2019s population will live in cities in 2030, many in megacities with populations of more than 10 million. This is where adversaries will try to engage\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0forces, not in open fields or deserts where today\u2019s Army and it senormous battle vehicles have the\u00a0advantage.<\/p>\n 3. The internet will be a key aspect of the battlefield, not just in terms of trading cyber attacks with enemy hackers but in the need to constantly and expertly shape global opinion about the conflict. Troll armies spreading fake news and disinformation, coupled with enough social-media traffic to overwhelm open-source analysts, could \u201ccomplicate the [Army\u2019s] ability to gain and maintain an accurate, up-to-date, intelligence-driven understanding of the situation, as well as control of the information environment,\u201d the document\u00a0says.<\/p>\n 4. Every bad guy becomes The Joker. The Army sees a rise of \u201cSuper-empowered individuals and small groups\u201d who can \u201cuse access to cyberspace, space, and nuclear, biological, radiological, and chemical weapons of mass effects to change the battlespace calculus and redefine the conditions of conflict resolution.\u201d Read that to mean: lone wolves and minescule teams with the power to rival many of today\u2019s\u00a0nation-states.<\/p>\n Even the spread of personal phones and the internet of things will make\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0troops easier targets. \u201cUnmanaged signatures will become a critical\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0vulnerability<\/a>\u00a0because the adversary\u2019s forces will increasingly possess the ability to find and attack\u00a0U.S.<\/span>and allied forces at strategic, operational, and tactical distances simultaneously,\u201d the document\u00a0says.<\/p>\n To fight in this environment, the Army will move toward smaller, much more versatile, and more capable formations \u2014 somewhat like today\u2019s special operations forces that can embark on a wide variety of missions. These \u201csemi-independent\u201d formations won\u2019t just be tasked with winning territory and holding it. They\u2019ll have to do everything from flying drones (and defending against them) to shooting missiles deep into enemy territory (and getting the targeting data to do it) to outflanking the bad guys in cyberspace. And they\u2019ll have to do it with less protection. \u201cFormations must maneuver semi-independently, without secured flanks, constant communications with higher headquarters, and continuous lines of communications,\u201d the document\u00a0says.<\/p>\n The \u201csemi-independent\u201d part is key. The Army still sees these smaller groups as connected to a much larger whole \u2014 perhaps even more so \u2014 but that doesn\u2019t mean a return to large tank\u00a0formations.<\/p>\n Nor does it mean that every tiny, mobile, Swiss-Army-knife formation will also carry an enormous missile battery. Rather, little teams will have to be able to access capabilities like drones and fire support from somewhere, but the capabilities themselves will likely be shared \u2014 similar to how people use\u00a0Uber.<\/p>\n This idea of small, nimble, loosely connected nodes in sprawling networks fits well with what other services\u2019 leaders\u00a0have described<\/a>\u00a0as the future of the Navy and the Air Force. It\u2019s a future where every nodes become smaller, and where connections grow in number even as connectivity itself is\u00a0challenged.<\/p>\n