New Army multi-domain task force to be stationed in the Pacific

The Army’s newest Multi-Domain Task Force will be located somewhere in the Pacific region, the service’s top officer revealed Thursday.

“It’s going to be tied to U.S. Army Pacific [but] the final stationing decision is still to be made,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville told the Defense Writers Group Thursday. “It really depends on what it looks like.”

The first MDTF was stood up in 2017 to support the Pacific theater. A second was established in 2021 for the European theater.

The Department of Defense’s fiscal 2023 budget request, released Monday, would resource the creation of a third unit.

It is expected to conduct electronic warfare and cyber operations and support exercises and experimentation.

McConville mentioned Hawaii as one location where it might be stood up initially.

The U.S. military is looking to beef up its warfighting capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region to compete with China, which the Pentagon has labeled its “pacing challenge.”

The Army is aiming to have five MDTFs, but reaching that goal will “take some time,” McConville said. He did not say where a fourth or fifth multi-domain task force might be stationed in the future.

The concept of multi-domain operations is central to the service’s transformation efforts, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said earlier this week at a defense conference hosted by The Hill.

“It’s not just about the traditional warfighting domains of air, land and sea. You now have space, you have cyber, you have information” operations, she explained. “The Multi-Domain Task Force … 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.”