- The US Army has been wargaming in the Indo-Pacific, preparing for what a future war might look like.
- It faces challenges in navigating and fighting in the vast, geographically diverse region.
- The Army's recent training in Hawaii helps it adapt to and prepare for those issues.
In a future war in the Indo-Pacific, the US Army could find itself navigating vast oceans, scattered islands, and thick jungles just as it did during World War II, and that's forcing the Army to think carefully about what readiness looks like.
"The ability to train in this terrain is really a critical enabler to enhance and drive our warfighting readiness," US Army Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commander of the 25th Infantry Division out of Hawaii, told Business Insider. It allows troops to interact with "the tyranny of distance and the geography" in real time.
These are two of the biggest issues the Army has to face in the Pacific, a tense region which is home to several adversarial nations, including the Pentagon's "pacing challenge" China.
At the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center exercise in Hawaii earlier this month, the training's biggest iteration yet, over 10,000 personnel from across the joint force and from US international allies and partners wargamed a fight against a top adversary.
JPMRC is unique in its scale and goals. Troops also rotate through Alaska in the winter, helping soldiers adapt to frigid Arctic temperatures and warfighting in a truly unforgiving environment.
In each case, the training prioritizes preparing the Army to be flexible in its future fighting, as the Pacific, the Pentagon's priority theater, is defined by a range of environments.
The drills also allow the Army to work out any issues in its readiness, from how to transport troops across the region to remaining hidden from the enemy and sustaining its forces. "It is really hard to replicate that other than just training here in the region," Evans said.
The Army faces various dilemmas when it comes to moving around the region. JPMRC allows personnel to integrate with joint partners and international allies to solve those problems, resulting in operations such as a long-range maritime air assault involving around 300 soldiers traveling to seize an airfield 200 miles away in the dead of night or the 11th Airborne Division jumping into Hawaii after flying out of Alaska.
Evans called the multinational cooperation one of the most important components of the training, as it allows the Army to work closer with allies, such as Japan and the UK, to improve interoperability at multiple levels, like planning and executing missions and personnel-to-personnel communication.
USARPAC's commanding officer, Gen. Charles Flynn, previously told BI that "persistent state of partnering" with allies is "the greatest counterweight" against China's "aggressive" and "insidious" behavior.
Meeting challenges
Getting soldiers to where they need to go, especially in an archipelago environment, requires stealthiness. Evans explained that nighttime operations remain a top priority for the Army, and JPMRC allows soldiers the opportunity to develop that "perishable skill."
At night, soldiers "are less observable," Evans said, adding that "nighttime enhances protection" and gives them "the ability to hide amongst the noise."
In places like the Philippines, the Army practices moving soldiers and equipment around, studying road networks and the environment to understand how they can be leveraged or constrain operations.
JPMRC also lets soldiers test new assets and weapons and adapt to future warfare problems, such as electronic warfare, which has become a major component of the war in Ukraine. Evans said the Army was taking lessons from the conflict, including how to handle the sensor and surveillance threat.
"We understand that the ability to be small and undetectable in the electromagnetic spectrum is a task that we have to train more fulsomely on," he noted, "and that our ability to move and shoot and protect has got to be integrated into everything that we do."
One of the biggest dilemmas the Army faces in the Pacific is sustainment, or keeping supplies moving, assets ready to go, and vehicles fueled across a challenging environment.
It was US Army Gen. John Pershing who said during World War I that "infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars," but in the Pacific, vast swaths of ocean, islands, and other terrain challenges make logistics a headache.
"Sustainment is one of the things that we are focusing on in this training because of the disparate nature of the region," Evans explained. "We have to be able to resupply the formations that we have spread out across the Pacific, and we're challenged with the tyranny of distance, and we're challenged, quite frankly, with the geography."
The Pacific is a predominantly maritime domain. To adapt to that, the Army has focused on how it can take advantage of maritime or air assets to move between islands and how it can maintain its operational tempo.
"Every time we send a C-17 or we put equipment on a vessel to move as part of this exercise, we are getting a repetition that enhances overall readiness," the general said.