TP525-3-1

TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1
Multiple Options. This concept adds set the theater and shape security environments as core
competencies to emphasize the Army’s role in providing options to joint force commanders
across the range of operations to include large scale combat operations, limited contingencies,
security force assistance, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response. This concept also adds
special operations as an Army core competency to highlight the Army’s ability to provide
dynamic combinations of conventional and unconventional forces. The concept calls for
regionally engaged Army forces to establish a global landpower network, shape security
environments, and prevent conflict. Although there are political costs and sensitivities associated
with the employment of U.S. ground forces, the presence or arrival of credible Army forces
demonstrates U.S. resolve and commitment to partners and adversaries. Army forces provide
combatant commanders with the ability to compel outcomes without the cooperation of the
enemy. It is for these reasons that this concept emphasizes the Army’s ability to impose our
nation’s will on an enemy by force as essential to deterring war and preserving options short of
war. This concept also emphasizes the Army’s critical role in establishing stable environments
to consolidate gains and achieve sustainable outcomes.
Multiple domains. Army operations are inherently cross-domain operations. U.S. forces
depend on and complement joint efforts in the land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace
domains to enable operations on land. Because joint force freedom of movement and action
across all domains are increasingly challenged by elusive land-based threats, this concept
emphasizes Army operations to gain, sustain, and exploit control over land, to deny its use to the
enemy. Future Army forces help ensure access through joint forcible entry operations with
combined arms units that possess the mobility, firepower, and protection to defeat the enemy and
establish control of land, resources, and populations. Future Army forces will support joint force
freedom of movement and action through the projection of power from land across the maritime,
air, space, and cyberspace domains. To assure allies, deter conflict, and compel determined and
elusive enemies, the concept introduces a tenet of simultaneity, emphasizing the need for Army
forces to extend efforts beyond the physical battleground to other contested spaces such as public
perception, political subversion, and criminality.
Multiple partners. American military power is joint power. How combatant and joint force
commanders combine land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace capabilities gives U.S. forces a
competitive advantage over enemies and adversaries. Army forces contribute to joint force
mission accomplishment by providing foundational capabilities that permit effective integration
of military, interorganizational, and multinational efforts. It is the need to integrate these efforts
of multiple partners on land, in contested and dangerous environments and in response to crises
in the homeland or overseas, which requires Army forces to integrate the efforts of others and
project national power.
Developing the Future Force. The Army Operating Concept is the start point for developing
the future force. As the historian Sir Michael Howard observed, “No matter how clearly one
thinks, it is impossible to anticipate precisely the character of future conflict. The key is to not
be so far off the mark that it becomes impossible to adjust once that character is revealed.” The
tenet of innovation challenges us to anticipate changing conditions to ensure that Army forces
are manned, trained, and equipped to overmatch enemies in order to seize, retain, and exploit the
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