{"id":22072,"date":"2019-03-27T15:46:29","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T15:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2019\/03\/27\/this-new-army-unit-could-help-the-us-win-the-next-cold-war\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T02:07:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T02:07:39","slug":"this-new-army-unit-could-help-the-us-win-the-next-cold-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/digital-show-dailies\/global-force-symposium\/2019\/03\/27\/this-new-army-unit-could-help-the-us-win-the-next-cold-war\/","title":{"rendered":"This new Army unit could help the US win the next Cold War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. \u2015 In January, the Army took a step forward in its march toward the Multidomain Operations<\/a> concept, standing up the first unit designed specifically to integrate land, sea, air, space and cyber capabilities across the services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dubbed the Intelligence, Information, Cyber, Electronic Warfare and Space battalion \u2015 nicknamed I2CEWS<\/a> \u2015 the Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington-based unit is playing a key role in U.S. Army Pacific\u2019s Multi-Domain Task Force, and a second iteration has been approved for U.S. Army Europe as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe reality is all formations will have to become multidomain, or they\u2019ll be irrelevant in the future,\u201d Gen. Robert Brown<\/a>, the head of USARPAC, said Wednesday at the Association of the U.S. Army\u2019s Global Force Symposium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin toast as they taste a food, during a visit to an exhibition during the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2018.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A unit like I2CEWS is the first step to linking conventional units with those capabilities, but it\u2019s likely the Army will transition to a mix of conventional and multidomain brigade combat teams, for instance, before making the full conversion to universal multidomain units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t exactly know what kind of capabilities that will involve, but we know you\u2019re going to have to have certain capabilities,\u201d he said. \u201cCounter-[unmanned aerial systems], that\u2019s a given.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Army\u2019s task force is halfway through its four-year plan, Brown said, but the ultimate goal is an operating concept that allows the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps to coordinate against a threat where necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, an adversary\u2019s ship trying to evade attack by a Navy submarine might skirt into the shallow waters around one of the Pacific Ocean\u2019s 25,000 islands, where the surface vessel could be taken out by a land-based Army missile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho would want to go against that?\u201d Brown said, when they know that the U.S. military is working in total sync from all directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hopefully no one, he added, because multidomain operations could be as much a deterrent as a dominant force for decisive action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trick will be smoothing out a procedure for that kind of operation, and figuring out who is in charge of making the final decisions and taking accountability for the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the four services will have to work together to align their processes and networks, either by modifying what they currently have or starting over with new technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to fight through the tendency to have a single-service solution, which is kind of the way we\u2019ve all grown up,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n\n\n\t