Army task forces ‘centerpiece' for deterring China: INDOPACOM boss
The service's task forces are the 'centerpiece' of how the joint force denies Chinese military access to key areas, said Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual Land Forces Pacific conference in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Paparo said such units, combined with the Army's firepower, enable land forces to contribute fires that counter China's military aggression in the region.
Multidomain task forces are growing and shaping exercises overseas
'We're facing a profoundly consequential moment here in the Indo-Pacific and, accordingly, the world,' Paparo said.
In a call with media before the event, Army Gen. Ronald Clark, head of U.S. Army Pacific, further framed the use of the task forces.
'What we have developed over time through the joint force is the capability to flip the script if you will that land forces can provide access to air and maritime capabilities on the land,' Clark said.
Units such as the multidomain task force, or MDTF, of which the Army has two operational in the region and is building a third, are 'not easily targetable,' dispersed, easy to camouflage and dominate in time and space for targeting, Clark said.
Paparo pointed specifically to the Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, and its recent use in the Valiant Shield military exercise in Palau.
PrSM's long-range strike capability, coupled with midrange strike capabilities from maritime assets such as the Tomahawk cruise missile and long-range hypersonic weapons at the strategic layer, creates a deterrence posture across the region.
PrSM is being used to give even tactical units a beyond 500-kilometer strike, putting them in the strategic fires ranges, Army Times previously reported.
Lockheed Martin is currently fielding the Increment 1 version of the PrSM, which has a range of at least 500 kilometers, according to the company. Increment 2 is a land-based, anti-ship seeker. Increment 3 adds lethal payload options, while Increment 4 seeks to push existing ranges beyond 1,000 kilometers.
Meanwhile, the Hawaii-based 3rd MDTF is slated to receive a Typhon midrange missile launcher battery, Defense News reported in March.
The Lockheed Martin-built system, consisting of a vertical launcher that uses the Navy's Raytheon-built Standard Missile-6 and Tomahawk missiles, can strike targets between 500 to 2,000 kilometers. The system has a battery operations center, four launchers, prime movers and modified trailers.
The 3rd MDTF plans to add hundreds of soldiers to the formation over the next 18 months as it seeks to fill the 2,000-soldier formation. The ultimate configuration will include a headquarters and four battalions, including a long-range precision fires battalion and a sustainment battalion, Defense News previously reported.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
20 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump's Vietnam Deal Shows China Tariffs Won't Fall Much Further
President Donald Trump's new trade deal with Vietnam sends a clear signal about where US tariffs on Chinese goods might ultimately land, as talks between Washington and Beijing continue following their recent truce. Chinese goods currently face tariffs of around 55%, a level expected to remain through August. But under the latest Vietnam agreement, the US will slap a 20% tariff on Vietnamese exports to the US and a steeper 40% levy on goods deemed to be transshipped — the latter targeting a well-worn backdoor used by Chinese exporters since the first China-US trade war to dodge American tariffs.
New York Post
28 minutes ago
- New York Post
DOJ Antitrust chief is betting American tech will beat China
Gail Slater, Donald Trump's head of antitrust, is tasked with a formidable agenda that requires precision: Foster a business-friendly environment that lets tech companies stay big enough to compete with China while ensuring they don't become excessively dominant. 'It's about enforcing antitrust robustly in a way that works for all Americans … that's my starting point,' Slater, 53, told me in her first interview since taking on her role as Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice a little over 100 days ago. Slater took over a serious docket of cases that includes suits against Google, in regards to search and ad tech; Apple, for its smartphone market dominance; Visa, in relation to debit card payment processing; and Live Nation/Ticketmaster and its live entertainment business. 4 Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division Gail Slater tells me the crux of her job is 'enforcing antitrust robustly in a way that works for all Americans.' Bloomberg via Getty Images While she won't comment on the status of those cases, she's been a key advisor urging Trump to stay the course on antitrust enforcement — despite tech companies' efforts to sway him. (When I asked how frequently she discusses agenda with President Trump, she told me, 'We get a lot of signals from the White House in the form of Executive Orders.') Slater is deeply committed and believes aggressive antitrust enforcement can benefit consumers in countless ways — even on seemingly unrelated issues. 'Speech and the censorship of speech can be downstream of [tech companies] market power,' she noted. Not everyone on the right agrees with her. Some Republicans, like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), believe the US government should tread lightly with tech companies. They worry that too much regulation could unintentionally give China a dangerous advantage when it comes to artificial intelligence. 4 While tech titans, like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg (far left) and Google's Sundar Pichai (center in glasses) have cozied up to the Trump Administration, they aren't immune to regulation. AP But Slater feels antitrust efforts could actually give the US a leg-up. 'Companies competing against one another innovate. That's the free market at its finest,' she explained. 'We can win the AI race against the Chinese without becoming like China… we will win the global race to AI the American way.' Bringing cases against massive companies can cost millions, making Slater's job — at a time when everyone in the federal government is under the gun to cut costs — especially challenging. 'The big tech cases alone are a huge, huge lift, both from a human resource standpoint, a scale standpoint when it comes to documents and experts and how we put those cases on a trial,' Slater said. This story is part of NYNext, an indispensable insider insight into the innovations, moonshots and political chess moves that matter most to NYC's power players (and those who aspire to be). Her efforts, she said, have to be 'low resource, high return on investment things.' And even though she is focused on ending unfair monopolies, she's also trying to implement as many pro-business policies as she can. On the front end, Slater is now allowing early terminations to the (previously) mandatory 30-day waiting period for mergers to close on deals the DOJ deems benign. Since taking the helm, she has granted 58 of 322 filings, worth $71 billion. 'In particular, we are taking settlements in merger cases where the previous administration took none,' she said. 4 Gail Slater is now allowing early terminations to the (previously) mandatory 30-day waiting period for mergers to close on deals the DOJ deems benign REUTERS At the back end of deals, she has embraced the use of consent decrees — allowing parties to resolve competitive overlaps by divesting assets to qualified buyers, a practice the prior administration largely avoided. 'We listened hard to concerns that Wall Street and others had about the policy of the prior administration on deal flow,' she told me of efforts to simplify rules where she can. 'We inherited a historic docket and we want to be responsible stewards of that, But we're also setting [the agenda] by fixing the merger review process to make it more transparent, to make work better for deal makers.' Slater, who is soft-spoken, jokes 'this is me raising my voice' when talking about the efforts they've already made to cut over-regulation. She has also teamed up with the Federal Trade Commission to eradicate what she describes as 'useless' regulations. 'We opened up a docket and we said to anybody interested with expertise in the area, tell us the regulations that you're aware that are hindering competition — and the ways in which that could be fixed. Because we want to support free market competition,' Slater said. 'That's the goal here.' 4 In a Truth Social post, Donald Trump made it clear that fighting Big Tech is a key priority for Slater. Donald J. Trump / Truth Social Another tool is using amicus briefs to strategically influence federal court cases, like they have done in Texas v. BlackRock — a high-profile antitrust lawsuit where states allege major investors like BlackRock colluded to reduce coal production, raising energy prices. She said it is a way of supporting American companies and administration policies with relatively inexpensive but high-impact interventions. Slater, who was born in Dublin and studied at Oxford, moved to the US in 2003 and worked as a trial attorney at the FTC for a decade. She held positions at the Internet Association, Fox Corporation, Roku and, during the first Trump administration, the National Economic Council, before advising JD Vance on antitrust issues while he was an Ohio senator. She's excited moving beyond the cases left to her by her predecessor. 'A priority for me is health care,' she told me. 'We're looking to set a positive agenda around drug pricing and health care more broadly. Send NYNext a tip: nynextlydia@
Bloomberg
31 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
US Removes Curbs on China Chip Design Software Following Deal
The Trump administration has lifted export license requirements for chip design software sales in China, implementing a trade deal to ease some restrictions on essential technologies. Three leading semiconductor software providers — Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems and Germany's Siemens — were told by the Commerce Department that they no longer need to seek licenses for business in China. Under the agreement finalized last week, Washington allowed China-bound shipments of EDA software, a key tool for the semiconductor industry, as well as ethane and jet engines, provided Beijing honors its pledge to speed export approvals for critical minerals. While Beijing and Washington may be upholding their truce for now, China is also wary about what's happening elsewhere: US efforts to forge deals that could isolate them from global supply chains. The US is pushing major trading partners in Asia and Europe for commitments to counter what Washington sees as China's unfair trade practices. President Donald Trump's tariff agreement with Vietnam is an example, placing higher levies on goods deemed to be 'transshipping' — where components from China and other nations are routed through Vietnam or subject to minimal final assembly before being exported to the US. Bloomberg Economics said the deal risks provoking retaliatory steps from China. A senior Chinese official said he was 'optimistic' about the future of his nation's ties with the US, one of the most upbeat comments from Beijing in recent weeks about a relationship upended by Trump's trade war. Both Chinese and Americans are hoping for a 'friendly, good' relationship, and politicians are expected to heed the will of the people, Liu Jianchao, head of the Communist Party's International Department, said. Liu said war between China and the US was 'unimaginable,' while highlighting Taiwan and the South China Sea as possible flashpoints.
