Latest news with #INDOPACOM
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
US Army tailoring Pacific commands for Multi-Domain force
The U.S. Army in the Pacific has begun working through how it will build two Multi-Domain Commands in the theater to oversee and direct the service's Multi-Domain Task Force units as it continues to expand and refine its presence as part of an overall effort to deter China's increasing aggression in the region, Gen. Ronald Clark, U.S. Army Pacific commander, told Defense News. The new Multi-Domain Commands are coming as part of the Army's new transformation initiative. According to an Army execution order issued in May, the service plans to build four. Indicative of the Army's desire to continue to prioritize building up capability in the Pacific theater, two will be focused there: Multi-Domain Command — Pacific and Multi-Domain Command — Japan. Two others, Multi-Domain Command — Europe and Multi-Domain Command — Army, are taking shape, as well. The Army is working on sizing the force for the commands 'in a way that's different,' Clark said in a Friday interview. With the rise of the MDTF capability in the Pacific, 'the authorities associated with that, in some cases are to the [Indo-Pacific Command] commander and above,' Clark said. 'So, to be able to ensure that we have the authorities associated with the right level of command and the staffs associated with the tasks required to plan, synchronize, train those assets, a two-star level headquarters is where that will reside.' The service's first MDTF was experimental, but since then the Army has operationalized that first unit and will ultimately build four more. The Army established the initial unit at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state around 2018. U.S. INDOPACOM theater exercises, with MDTF participation, helped inform the Army's Multi-Domain Operations warfighting concept, which has now evolved into doctrine. The Army stood up the second MDTF in Europe in 2021 and the third in Hawaii in 2022. A fourth MDTF will also be devoted to the Pacific, and a fifth, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will be able to deploy rapidly as needed. All five MDTFs will be established by 2028. The units are designed to operate across all domains — land, air, sea, space and cyberspace — are equipped with the Army's growing capabilities, such as the Precision Strike Missile, the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon and the Mid-Range Capability Missile. MDTFs will also have units devoted to the critical sourcing of intelligence across domains and spectrums and information sharing with the joint force to enable targeting. The MDTF units' presence in the Pacific in recent years have been credited with effective deterrence. For instance, the MRC resident with the 1st MDTF has drawn the ire of China since being deployed to the Philippines as part of the last two cycles of U.S. Army exercises with the country. Recent assessments through exercises and warfighter experimentation have shown the need to operationalize such commands and create a higher level of command authority for the MDTFs, according to Clark. The new commands are 'additive to what we currently have in the Indo Pacific and in U.S. Army Pacific, so with that comes additional tasks and funding,' Clark said. The Army's fiscal 2026 budget request reflects some additional funding in order to execute the establishment of the commands. The 1st and 3rd MDTF will fall under the Multi-Domain Command — Pacific, and the 4th MDTF will be associated with Multi-Domain Command — Japan. According to the Army's execution order for the transformation initiative, the Pacific command combines the 7th Infantry Division headquarters with the 1st and 3rd MDTFs. The command in Japan combines U.S. Army Japan's headquarters with the 4th MDTF. 'The Multi-Domain Task Force is a theater-level capability,' Clark said. 'It has inherent capabilities ... cyber, space, electronic warfare, long-range precisions first, it's ability to be able to conduct integrated air and missile defense in its own defense and in a point defense kind of way, those capabilities ... go beyond an area of joint area of operations.' MDTFs are commanded by colonels,'which is great,' Clark said, but adding they will now plug into a two-star command structure that can report to U.S. Army Pacific, for example. 'We need to up-gun the level of staff and command,' he said.
RNZ News
04-06-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
NZ soldiers leave for Southern Hemisphere's leading military exercise
File photo. New Zealand Defence Force personnel and vehicles in 2023. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone New Zealand soldiers are leaving for the Southern Hemisphere's leading military exercise, the first since the government announced ramped up defence spending. The 35,000-strong exercise Talisman Sabre is a bilateral Australia and US military exercise with 17 other nations taking part. The Defence Force is sending about 700 personnel to northern Australia. Ahead of new defence funding the NZDF is taking some light armoured vehicles over 20 years old, which are likely vulnerable to the latest killer drones. Meanwhile, the Australians will be field-testing an uncrewed machine-gun double-track, and the Americans will be shooting precision missiles and deploying space-age data networks. Talisman Sabre aligns with US efforts to build a vast network of sensors and shooters across the Indo-Pacific, called Combined Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control (CJADC2). The Defence Force said a key goal is to be able to integrate its capabilities into Australian and US command relationships. The objective was to prepare, project and exercise NZDF capabilities integrated into the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and INDOPACOM - America's largest military command in the Indo-Pacific. That included command and control (C2) elements. INDOPACOM has recently deployed precision missiles that can be fired from land against naval targets, in the Philippines near a strategic chokepoint south of Taiwan. Talisman Sabre has become a testing ground for new missiles and drones. Australia is poised to co-produce missiles for the US, and Defence Minister Judith Collins has said New Zealand would get missiles, though Budget 2025 had no funding for that. Defence consultant and NZDF veteran Josh Wineera said Talisman Sabre was uniquely large Down Under and allowed the partners real-world "benchmarking of tactics and capabilities". "It will be really interesting to see whether the capabilities intended to be purchased still fit neatly into what the Australians are doing because that's what the Defence Capability Plan is about," he said. However, the partner countries were confronted with US networking goals aiming to step up warfighting to "fibreoptic" speed. "Because of this being automated, and it's in the information space where decisions and sensors are acting so quickly, this will be a real challenge, I think, for those decision-making levels to make sure that sovereignty is not being compromised," said Wineera. File photo. New Zealand Defence Force Bushmaster vehicles. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone The first 150 New Zealand military personnel leave on Thursday for the exercise which rins from 13 July to 4 August. They are taking several new Bushmasters, but also some Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) that in 2003 were given a 25-year lifespan, and were yet to be revived under the $12 billion defence capability plan with new turrets and networked comms. The military exercise is also drawing in AI companies, such as Virginia's billion-dollar that said it was going along to "help military forces act faster by updating AI models in real-time, improving coordination between sensors and shooters". The Australian military said the exercise was to build combined joint warfighting capabilities. At Talisman 2023, the Australians tested their field drone, ironically called an armoured "personnel" carrier, the M113AS4. The carrier runs autonomously but requires a human to aim and shoot its gun. It is expected to feature again this time in experiments majoring in human-machine-integration, or HMI as the Pentagon has dubbed it. All sorts of drones, but especially aerial ones, have dominated Ukraine's war with Russia since 2022. The exercise in northern Australia is the biggest ever, and the stakes are higher than ever, too. The Pentagon states that Talisman "reflects US, allies' commitment to Indo-Pacific". This is at a time when the Trump Administration's relations with Europe's NATO members are under huge strain, and US commanders have repeatedly stressed fears of a growing conventional and nuclear threat from China. America sees itself in a race to bring advanced technology, and its allies, on board its evolving battlefield network, though even before Trump began his second term, some lawmakers expressed concern the Pentagon had bitten off more than it can chew with the scale of CJADC2. "We seek to network our efforts across domains, theatres, and the spectrum of conflict to ensure that the US military, in close cooperation with the rest of the US government and our Allies and partners, makes the folly and costs of aggression very clear," Joe Biden's Deputy Secretary of Defence Dr Kathleen Hicks in 2022 . Joint exercises like Talisman Sabre tap into US$2 billion annual funding from within US$17 billion 'Pacific Deterrence Initiative'. The NZDF is already active in two cornerstone Combined Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control (CJADC2) efforts - the US Army's Project Convergence Capstone, and the US Navy's Project Overmatch, which NZ signed on to in February. The government said it was usual to sign on like this, unannounced to the public. Several dozen New Zealand personnel went to Convergence's annual exercise in March in the Mojave Desert, looking to identify "potential experimentation", newly released OIA documents showed. The records mentioned experiments with targeting sensors and electromagnetic warfare, and ensuring NZ Army software could "effectively interface" with partners. Two capability demonstrations had "particular relevance" to NZDF - but these were blanked out. Wineera said Project Convergence and Talisman Sabre gave insight about autonomy of decision-making. "Some of our legal staff need to be thinking about all of that flow that's happening at the same time, to ensure that our New Zealand contribution sticks within what would be our national rules of engagement." The Project Convergence records also showed the NZDF was so strapped for resources there was talk of having to pull out, but that then it would the miss out as it did not have these capabilities itself. The technology at hand includes, for example, Maven, a software system from Palantir that in recent US Army tests was 100 times faster than the most efficient targeting team in the Iraq war. One US unit working with this, known as Shadow Operations Centre, is linked to the NZDF. "We are partnering with Australia and New Zealand Battle Labs to connect" to the Combined Federated Battle Laboratories Network in 2025, Shadow Operations Centre said last year. File photo. A New Zealand Defence Force LAV driving through the bush. Photo: NZDF Resources for more exercises like Talisman Sabre are on their way. Budget 2025 made millions more available for them, alongside millions more for advanced technology or upgrading old tech though there was no mention in it of new turrets for the LAVs. Some amounts were not specified, but $80m over four years was set aside for overseas deployments, $11m for interoperability and $8m for increasing engagement with security partners overseas. "It can be expected that as new capabilities prioritised in the DCP are released in time, these would be incorporated into future iterations of Talisman Sabre as our contribution to this important multinational, multi-domain exercise grows," the NZDF said in a statement. As for taking the LAVS along, "regardless of future programmes the LAVs are still a key combat vehicle for the NZ Army and form a crucial part of the NZ Army's current combat system", it said. Twenty of the LAVs were sold to Chile for just under $1 million each two years ago. A recent online discussion of the LAVs said they had some limited uses but were very vulnerable to the type of drones now common in the Ukraine-Russia war, including one that can hit 110kmh and destroy a tank. Six Bushmasters heading to Talisman Sabre have had their comms upgrade completed, Defence said. The project to upgrade all 43 Bushmasters has been delayed, and Budget 2025 signalled operational savings of $13m from "rephasing" the project.
Miami Herald
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Satellite Image Shows US Air Power Buildup at Island Base Near Iran
New satellite images showed U.S. forces increasing their air power at an Indian Ocean base that could be a staging point for any attack on Iran, according to an open source intelligence analyst. Newsweek has reached out to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) for comment. Ongoing activity at the Diego Garcia airbase, a strategic operating location for both the U.K. and British armies, comes amid tensions with Iran over its nuclear program. Although nuclear talks continue, President Donald Trump has threatened military action if diplomacy fails to produce a new agreement on curbs that could prevent it obtaining nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Iran has ramped up its military buildup, threatening U.S. targets in the region in the event of any attack. The U.S. Air Force has recently augmented its aerial refueling capabilities at Diego Garcia, deploying additional KC-135 Stratotankers to the strategic Indian Ocean base, according to satellite imagery shared by open-source intelligence analyst MT Anderson on X. A recent deployment of F-15 fighter jets adds to a growing U.S. military buildup at Diego Garcia, where four B-52 bombers and a contingent of six B-2 stealth bombers operate. In March, satellite imagery showed the deployment of C-17 cargo planes as well as KC-135 refueling tankers. The remote airbase, over 2,000 miles away from Iran, hosts Space Force operations and is a key port for U.S. Navy vessels, including nuclear submarines, and shelters a Sealift Command Prepositioning Ship Squadron. Tehran has yet to unveil a platform capable of reaching that range, but as a significant missile power, it continues to make strides in expanding long-range capabilities. The status of Diego Garcia has recently been in question and the subject of heated political debate with Britain signing an agreement last week to had sovereignty of the contested Chagos islands - of which it is a part - to Mauritius. Britain says that the agreement will ensure the future of the air and naval base and allow its contimued use by the United States. Commander Matthew Comer, Indo-Pacific Command spokesperson, told Newsweek earlier: "We have multi-layered defense systems on Diego Garcia that ensure the security and protection of our personnel and equipment." Beyond Iran, the continued U.S. buildup at Diego Garcia signals broader power projection with a potential view to threats in the Red Sea, activity by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen and China's growing naval reach in the Indian Ocean. Related Articles Russia Attacks Trump's Golden Dome ProjectIran Unveils Next-Level Warfare Drones Amid Tensions With Show New US Missiles Sent to China's DoorstepIran Threatens Strike on Israel as US Talks Hang in Balance 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Miami Herald
22-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Chinese Satellites Capture US Bombers and Jets at Island Air Base
A Chinese commercial satellite company has released an image of U.S. aircraft at the Diego Garcia air base, amid tensions between Washington and Tehran over nuclear negotiations. Newsweek has reached out to the U.S Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) for comment. New satellite imagery has confirmed the U.S. deployment of F-15 fighter jets to Diego Garcia, in addition to an increase in the number of bombers at the Indian Ocean base. Diego Garcia-roughly 2,000 miles from Iran-would serve as the military launchpad in the event of a confrontation escalated by failed nuclear diplomacy. U.S. Air Force jets at the Diego Garcia base were recently captured in a satellite image by MizarVision's Airspace service. The Chinese company bills itself as an AI-driven provider of geo-business intelligence. The image was highlighted by the open-intelligence GEOINT X account. The U.S. and Iran have bolstered military buildups as President Donald Trump threatened Iran with military action if it rejects a new nuclear deal, after unilaterally withdrawing from the 2015 accord in his first term. B-52 bombers arrived at the remote base earlier in May, joining a contingent of six B-2 stealth bombers already deployed there. Disagreement over uranium enrichment remains a key obstacle to reviving diplomacy between the longtime foes. The U.S. says it's concerned about enrichment levels capable of producing nuclear weapons while Iran claims its nuclear program is peaceful. The fidelity of Chinese commercial satellite imagery underscores Beijing's growing ability to monitor U.S. military deployments globally and in near real time, as it weighs support for Tehran's nuclear interests in the face of Western pressure. U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said: "We cannot allow even 1 percent of an enrichment capability…Everything begins from our standpoint with a deal that does not include enrichment." Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, according to The Associated Press: "I have said it before, and I repeat it again: uranium enrichment in Iran will continue-with or without an agreement." China's Foreign Ministry said in April: "China appreciates Iran's commitment to not develop nuclear weapons, respects Iran's right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and supports Iran in conducting dialogue with all parties, including the United States, and in safeguarding its legitimate rights and interests through consultation and negotiation." American and Iranian representatives are scheduled to meet in Rome on Friday for a fifth round of nuclear talks. Related Articles Democratic Rep.: To Safeguard America's Future, We Need To Safeguard Taiwan's | OpinionChina Censors Broadcast After News Anchor's Big MistakeUS Stealth Jet Carrier Patrols Waters Near ChinaHow China's Online Army Helped Beijing Fight US Tariff War 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Epoch Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
From Balikatan to Taiwan: Why Firepower Beats Perfection
Commentary Balikatan 2025—the largest Indo-Pacific exercise in years—sent a clear message: the United States is preparing for a major regional fight. With anti-ship missile strikes, island defense scenarios, and Japanese ground forces participating, it was the most complex iteration yet. But exercises don't win wars. Firepower does. The Pentagon must face a hard truth: victory in the next conflict won't come from flawless, gold-plated systems. It will come from what we can deploy quickly, at scale, and under fire. Ukraine's Lesson: Volume and Speed Win Ukraine is showing the world how high-intensity warfare works in the 21st century. Their battlefield success hasn't come from perfect weapons. It's come from fielding what's ready—drones, loitering munitions, commercial communications tools, and artillery. Not because they're the best. Because they're available. Quantity wins. Mass drone strikes and heavy artillery have been more decisive than boutique precision systems. Speed wins more. The systems that arrived early—regardless of sophistication—changed the fight. Iteration matters. Ukraine's ability to adapt and repurpose tech in real time has saved lives and shifted momentum. While Western procurement measures in years, Ukraine adapts in weeks. That's the pace of modern war. INDOPACOM's Edge Will Come Early—or Not at All The Indo-Pacific is not Ukraine. Distances are longer. Logistics are harder. But the principle holds: the side that delivers effective firepower first will dominate the fight. A Taiwan Strait war wouldn't be measured in months. It would be decided in days. The U.S. won't have time to surge exquisite assets across the Pacific—or build new ones mid-conflict. Related Stories 5/8/2025 3/22/2025 If we're still waiting for 'perfect' systems to arrive, we'll lose the initiative. And possibly the war. Balikatan 2025 rehearsed island defense, long-range fires, and distributed C2. But behind the scenarios is a sobering question: do we have enough munitions, drones, and comms gear to fight for real? Buy What We Can Use Now Defense acquisition must evolve—fast. It's not just about improving the process. It's about buying the right things, at the right speed, and in the right quantity. Ukraine has repurposed commercial drones and Starlink terminals into ISR, targeting, and command tools. They didn't wait for five-year procurement cycles. They found what worked—and fielded it immediately. INDOPACOM should do the same. Especially when the opening days of conflict may define the next decade of global stability. Fix Procurement Before It's Too Late To prepare for a potential fight in the Indo-Pacific, we need to prioritize three things in acquisition: speed, scalability, and survivability. Here's what that looks like: 1. Fund what's fieldable now. Buy off-the-shelf drones, comms, loitering munitions, and ISR tools that can deploy immediately. 2. Build surge capacity before a crisis. Ukraine ran out of munitions fast. We can't. Stockpile and pre-position across the Pacific now. 3. Cut procurement timelines in half. If it takes five years to field, it won't help in Taiwan. Fast-track authorities must become the norm. 4. Empower those at the front. In Ukraine, warfighters influenced what got procured. We should embed their feedback into acquisition decisions. This isn't about throwing out the system—it's about adjusting it to meet the timeline of modern conflict. Balikatan's Warning Shot Exercises like Balikatan matter. They expose where we're falling short. And if we can't deliver munitions, drones, or comms gear quickly in peacetime, how will we do it under fire? Ukraine is already showing the answer: get adaptable systems to the field, in volume, now. The U.S. cannot afford to learn that lesson the hard way in INDOPACOM. Perfection Is a Peacetime Luxury The next war won't be won by the most beautiful system. It'll be won by the one that arrives first, hits hard, and keeps working. We must shift from a procurement mindset built for long-term savings to one optimized for near-term victory. As Balikatan winds down and strategic focus stays fixed on China, we should ask: are we building to win a contract—or to win a war? In the Indo-Pacific, we may only get one chance to get it right. From Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
