The U.S. Army aims to play a pivotal role in deterring China and keeping its forces at bay in the event of a conflict by bringing in increased firepower, cutting-edge tech and boosting interoperability with Indo-Pacific allies and partners, according to the service's regional deputy commander.
“The army can now hold planes and ships at risk in places that potential adversaries didn't account for,” Lt. Gen. Joel Vowell, the U.S. Army Pacific’s (USARPAC) deputy commanding general, told The Japan Times in a recent interview when asked about the service’s role in a regional conflict — including a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan.
For nearly two decades, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been systematically planning, training and building the forces it believes are required to invade self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing views as a breakaway province.
China has been increasing the PLA’s budget to modernize and expand its cyber, missile, aerial, naval and amphibious assault capabilities in recent years. All of these would play key roles in not only attacking Taiwan but also in trying to keep the U.S. and allied forces at bay, a concept known in military parlance as “anti-access/area denial,” or A2/AD.
But Vowell said the U.S. is looking to exploit a weak point in Beijing’s strategy.
“An A2/AD network is built to deter and defeat ships, planes and platforms, but it does not account for distributed land forces in the region,” he said.
This, he added, is the type of threat the U.S. Army, as well as the land forces of partners and allies, will pose to any adversary force. “We will have a deterrent effect that's hard to detect, hard to track, hard to find and that’s getting increasingly harder to kill.”
Crucial to success, Vowell noted, will be the ability to deploy cutting-edge weapons across all domains in a way that's dispersed, easily camouflaged and that allows U.S. forces to be on the move, so that they cannot be targeted at any one time and place.
“Gaining positional advantage matters,” he said.
“If Army soldiers have these capabilities forward or in closer proximity to any potential adversary, then we can hold them at risk in their command and control, in their fires, their air defense, sustainment, movements and platforms in ways that they had not accounted for,” Vowell added.
To achieve this, and to maintain a robust logistics network, Washington’s regional alliances will remain crucial, the deputy commander said, adding that many of the U.S. equipment deployments have come at the request of allies and partners.
“When we develop capabilities to help solve problems for and with our partners, we usually get an invitation to try to train, test and innovate some of this stuff, be it South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Australia and other places,” he noted.
This includes mid-and long-range missile systems, including for air defense.
“If we are asked by a (partner or allied) country ... to practice our long-range fires architecture, then sure we'll work to bring those in,” Vowell said.
“That's what we did with the Philippines,” he added. “It was so good they asked us to stay around a bit and do more training with their missile and artillery battery personnel and some others.”
If Japan and South Korea were to make similar requests, “we would definitely consider that,” he said.
Some of these deployments have already made international headlines, particularly as the Pentagon appears to be using exercises to de facto deploy key weapons to the Indo-Pacific amid growing tensions with China.
This includes last year’s dispatch of the Typhon Mid-Range Capability missile system to the Philippines for training exercises. The weapon, which can fire both Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles and SM-6 air defense missiles, has remained in the country since, prompting repeated demands by Beijing that it be removed.
The Pentagon has also kept the U.S. Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS), an advanced mobile anti-ship missile platform, in the country following joint drills this year.
At the same time, the army has been resorting to disruptive and emerging technologies to gain an asymmetric advantage in the region.
For instance, it is experimenting with artificial intelligence as a force multiplier by using tools that can enhance decision-making, optimize joint force operations and enable autonomous operations, provided there is always a human in the loop when it comes to offensive power.
The army has also tested microwave-based directed energy weapon systems designed to counter drone swarms while fielding units that can 3D-print equipment parts as well as entire weapons such as drones directly on site.
These and other systems have all been deployed and tested in the region by elements of the U.S. Army’s new Multi-Domain Task Forces (MDTFs).
The service has been setting up MDTFs that can operate across all warfighting domains — land, air, sea, space and cyberspace. Three such formations have already been established in strategically significant locations worldwide, with the army planning two more over the next two to three years.
For several years now some MDTF elements have been invited to Japan to work with the Ground Self-Defense Force on testing, and in some cases experimenting, with capabilities the latter may not yet field.
Plans about whether to station an MDTF in Japan have also long been rumored.
Vowell, who headed U.S. Army Japan from 2021 to 2023, said that while such ideas are currently under consideration, Tokyo has yet to grant approval.
“It's definitely up to the government of Japan if they want to host the stationing of a Multi-Domain Task Force,” he said.
“If we have long-range missiles that are inside the potential A2/AD bubble of Russia, North Korea or China, they would be there to help defend Japan,” he said.
The aim, however, is not to move a lot of the U.S. Army forward, Vowell said. “This isn't 1968 when we had ... about four times as many soldiers in Korea and Japan as we do today. We are not looking to do that.”
“What we need is to have presence, and we need to have access and influence with our partners and allies to help them defend their sovereignty,” he said, adding that the goal is to have “stronger and more resilient partnerships.”
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