US Army aiming to counter Chinese ‘threat’ with Indo-Pacific security expansion, top official says
- Task forces to be set up in the Indo-Pacific will focus on non-conventional warfare realms such as cyberspace over the next two years
- Aim is to counter China’s military activities in the region and bolster alliances with regional partners, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy says
The United States Army will set up task forces focused on cyber warfare and other non-conventional domains in the Indo-Pacific over the next two years, as part of the Pentagon’s effort to counter China’s military activities in the region and bolster alliances with regional partners, Washington’s top army official said on Friday.
Two so-called multi-domain operations (MDO) units would be established in the financial years of 2021 and 2022, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said, and would focus on the realms of intelligence, information, cyber, electronic warfare and space, known in the military as “I2CEWS”.
Emphasising that “presence does not have to lead to conflict”, McCarthy said that an increased army presence in the region “with modernised weaponry, nestled alongside our counterparts, changes the calculus and creates dilemmas for potential adversaries”, as he singled out China as an emerging “strategic threat” to the US.
Currently, if conflict with a “great power competitor occurred”, the US would be unable to easily strike strategic locations and safely flow in troops, said McCarthy, who formerly served in Afghanistan.
Freedom of navigation operations are important but fall short of producing the same effect as having boots on the ground.
Offering a solution to converging multiple domains of warfare, MDOs would create an “asymmetrical advantage” for the US, he said.