The U.S. Army’s latest concept document, The Army in Multi-Domain Operations – 2028, seeks to push the Army squarely into the twenty-first century. In many ways, it seeks to do for the future force what AirLand Battle did for the Army a generation back, setting a new vision for itself in a period of both technologic and geopolitical change. And yet, a review of the Army’s history of modernization, especially the periods between World War I and World War II and following the Vietnam War, warns that Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) will fall short of that vision if the Army doesn’t take three key actions.

First, the Army needs to lead a doctrinal renaissance focused on its role in great power competition. History is full of inflection points that inspire analysis into how and why militaries around the world adapted to changes in the strategic environment. The 2018 National Defense Strategy provides a contemporary inflection point by shifting the nation’s security focus towards great power competition. The existing Joint and Army doctrine for expanding the competitive space can be found in publications that discuss security cooperation. As the Army considers how to transition the MDO concept into MDO doctrine, it must first rewrite Field Manual 3-22: Security Cooperation, so as to more explicitly define how the Army contributes to great power competition.

Second, the Army needs to create the twenty-first century version of the National Training Center and elevate its establishment at or near the top of an updated modernization priority list. Prior to World War II, the Army conducted the Louisiana Maneuvers, which provided the opportunity to evaluate new equipment, new concepts of operation, and the people that would lead the rapidly growing Army. Similarly, and in concert with the development of AirLand Battle doctrine following the Vietnam War, the Army established the National Training Center in the Mojave Desert as the place where it could iterate and experiment with its new weapon systems and AirLand Battle doctrine. One of the Army’s eight cross-functional teams, the Synthetic Training Environment represents the twenty-first century equivalent of such efforts.

Third, the Army needs to dedicate a brigade-level experimental task force to Army Futures Command. The MDO concept presents the Army with an opportunity to think far more deeply about its force structure and avoid the fate of past militaries that failed to adapt faster than their adversaries. In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen makes recommendations for large organizations trying to adapt to disruptive change. New technology and concepts enable both sustaining and disruptive innovation, and large organizations must experiment appropriately to take advantage of both. The Army cycles back and forth between conducting experimentation internal to deployable units and dedicating a unit solely to experimentation. Doing the latter at the brigade level will demonstrate how serious the Army is in addressing disruptive technologies, and help to prevent it from becoming the next example in a long military history of a forces failing to adapt to disruptive change.