USNI News – The U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division, one of the service’s most frequently deployed units throughout the Indo-Pacific, received its first High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems this week, a move that the unit said will increase their effectiveness in the region.

Naval News – The loading of what the U.S. Army described as a “credible, land-based maritime strike capability” onto a vessel for the first time is a crucial step for the Typhon Missile System’s future deployment in coastal and amphibious operations across the Indo-Pacific.

CIMSEC – Alongside Marine Corps stand-in forces and U.S. special operations forces, Army forces can help secure key terrain in maritime Asia. Land force integration is essential to preventing war and winning the long-term strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific.

The War Zone – The U.S. Army is already interested in scaling down its new Typhon ground-based missile system, if possible, to help make it easier to deploy and operate. The service only sent Typhon, which currently uses large tractor-trailer launchers to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-6 multi-purpose missiles, overseas for the first time to the Philippines earlier this year.

The War Zone – During the Valiant Shield exercise, the missile was fired from an unmanned launcher against a ship with the help of a high-endurance balloon and drone.

The War Zone – Now both MH-6s and MH-60s from the 160th SOAR have been seen in the blue camouflage amid a shift in focus to high-end Pacific operations.

Modern War Institute – The ability of the MRC to strike a maritime target today and HIMARS maritime-strike technology of the future, paired with the organic deep sensing of the ERSE company, are complementary capabilities that enable the Army to answer Admiral Harris’s call to action: to be relevant in the future fight in the Indo-Pacific region, the Army needed to be able to sink ships. The collective deployment of these systems and formations during Operation Pathways is a testament to the sense of urgency behind the Army’s transformation as well as the all-domain interdependencies of the joint force that come together on the land through the creation of joint interior lines. These new systems and formations will later participate in Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) training, another signature effort for US Army Pacific, which enhances the training with a free-thinking adversary and overarching scenario within an already challenging operational environment. Forward deployment of combat-credible forces through Operation Pathways, creation of enduring interior lines for the joint force, and the addition of complexity to training through JPMRC: this is transformation in contact for the Army in the Indo-Pacific.

Modern War Institute – The US military should socialize and then introduce a Reforger-style exercise in the Indo-Pacific region to assess and improve its own ability to rapidly deploy theater-level military capabilities in the event of a major conflict and to serve as a form of strategic messaging.

War on the Rocks – As Gen. Omar Bradley is credited as saying, “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.” Unfortunately, when it comes to how the American defense community plans for and talks about the future of competition and conflict in the Pacific, it isn’t measuring up to Bradley’s metric. For instance, at the Army’s annual meeting, the secretary of the Army gave a powerful speech on how “we have got to ask the tough questions and make the hard decisions on what our force needs to fight in the future.” Yet, there was no mention of “logistics,” and the only discussion of “sustainment” was of barracks repair.

CNN – China has accused the United States of “stoking military confrontation” with the recent deployment of a powerful missile launcher capable of firing weapons with a range of up to 1,600 kilometers to exercises in the Philippines.

The War Zone – The Army’s Typhon system, which can fire Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles, is in the Philippines for its inaugural Indo-Pacific deployment.

USNI News – Last week, the Army stood up its second Typhon battery at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., based on launchers used on Navy guided-missile warships. Delta Battery is the latest missile unit to join the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force’s (MDTF) Strategic Fires Battalion.

1945 – James Holmes writes that a friend serving in the U.S. Army asks: how can army leaders get their message about the army’s role in Pacific strategy to “resonate” with their sea-service counterparts?

War Zone – The U.S. Army says it has now successfully fired Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles from its new ground-based launchers.

Modern War Institute – The commanding general of US Army Japan recently persuasively argued that as part of the joint force’s “contact layer” on the frontier of the Pacific in the first island chain, Japan is the ideal location to station a US Army multidomain task force.

War Zone – The U.S. Army has an ambitious scheme for a new surveillance aircraft to pick out ground targets at extended ranges.

War on the Rocks – When people look at maps of the Indo-Pacific region, often they see a lot of blue and very little green. They see the massive Pacific Ocean with tiny islands speckled throughout. Closer to the Asian continent, they see archipelagos and island chains with large seas and bays with strategic straits cutting throughout. When national security professionals view the region in this way, they tend to discount landpower in favor of air and sea. While those domains are central to Indo-Pacific security, we see the region through a different lens.

1945 – James Holmes writes that a couple of weeks back the U.S. Army released the latest in the family of strategy documents to issue forth from the armed services, alongside such directives as the U.S. Marines’ Tentative Manual for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and the sea services’ Triservice Maritime Strategy. Titled Army Multi-Domain Transformation, this “Chief of Staff Paper” from General James McConville makes it official: the army is back in the sea-power business.

Naval News – Two U.S. Army M142 6×6 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) flew from Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany, on Thursday, November 19, 2020, aboard two U.S. Air Force Special Operations Forces (SOF) Commando II MC-130Js, the stretched version of the venerable C-130, and the HIMARS fired their rockets off the coast of the Black Sea that same day. 

Breaking Defense – Instead of picking a single missile to be its thousand-mile Mid-Range Capability, the Army has chosen to mix two very different Navy weapons together in its prototype MRC unit: the new, supersonic, high-altitude SM-6 and the venerable, subsonic, low-flying Tomahawk.

Naval News – The concept of 155mm tracked Self-Propelled Howitzers (SPHs) acting as mobile coastal artillery isn’t particularly new; however, the reality of implementing this concept recently got much better with new advances in GPS precision-guided rocket-assisted projectiles and Hypervelocity shell technology.

– USNI News – The Army is developing long-range hypersonic and intermediate-range anti-ship weapons as key components of its emerging strategy in the Western Pacific.

– War Zone – The operation saw Air Force C-17s laden with airborne troops fly thousands of miles across the Pacific to raid Andersen AFB.

– New York Times Magazine – C.J. Chivers writes that the Pentagon’s failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan left a generation of soldiers with little to fight for but one another.

– USNI Proceedings – A work of fiction by August Cole on future armored combat.