WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army’s $178 billion budget blueprint for fiscal year 2023 supports a third Multi-Domain Task Force, a flexible unit at the center of the service’s modernization efforts.
The third task force will be similar to the two already up and running, Army executives said at a March 29 briefing, and will conduct electronic warfare and cyber operations. It will also aid military experiments and exercises.
Exactly where the task force will be located has not been decided, officials said.
The Army plans to construct five total Multi-Domain Task Forces.
The first was established in 2017 in Washington state and has since focused on the Indo-Pacific, including China. The second, in Europe, was greenlit in September 2021 with an eye toward Russia. It included an intelligence, cyberspace, electronic warfare and space detachment.
The initial MDTF venture was experimental — meant to test and flesh out the Army’s multi-domain operations concept — but the program has evolved to be more active and operational.
“One of our new formations that we’re developing is called the Multi-Domain Task Force,” Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said March 30 at the Future of Defense Summit. “It is designed to be able to bring together not just the traditional kinetic effects, but also to be able to leverage information, cyber and space.”
Other task forces are expected to focus on global response and the Arctic. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville on March 9 said there “is always a possibility that we could put a Multi-Domain Task Force up in Alaska, with the capability to provide long-range precision effects and long-range precision fires,” among other things. “I see a lot of things happening in the Arctic as a competitive zone. We think we’re going to be competing for that.”
Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo earlier this year said the service was “looking at making sure that we fill the needs of cutting-edge formations in the Army, like our Multi-Domain Task Forces,” according to Defense News.
Colin Demarest was a reporter at C4ISRNET, where he covered military networks, cyber and IT. Colin had previously covered the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration — namely Cold War cleanup and nuclear weapons development — for a daily newspaper in South Carolina. Colin is also an award-winning photographer.
