Traditionally, the perception of a country's military power is based on the assessment of the size of its forces, the number and quality of its equipment, and the training, even the seasoning, of its personnel.
And it is true that with a few exceptions, the French remember it at Agincourt, this approach made it possible to effectively assess the balance of power, and therefore the power gradient.
Thus, during the Cold War, NATO bet on technological power and a more efficient air force to compensate for the marked surplus of Soviet armored weapons and its satellite countries.
But certain significant historical events have demonstrated that a doctrine in perfect harmony with technological reality and forces trained to respect this doctrine could represent the determining element of a conflict.
This was the case in 1940, when Nazi Germany deployed its Blitzkrieg against the Franco-British coalition, although they were much better armed, sweeping away the resistance of the two greatest European military powers in a few weeks.
This doctrine allowed the forces engaged in Operation Barbarossa in 1941 against the Soviet Union to gain the advantage over forces that were much more numerous, and fielding more tanks, often more efficient than German tanks.
It was only with the adaptation of Soviet doctrine, notably thanks to the growing political weight of General Zhukov, future winner of Stalingrad, and the strategic errors imposed by Adolf Hitler, that the Soviet Union managed to reverse the balance of power at from 1942.
Until recently, the United States had little need to be particularly innovative in terms of doctrine for the employment of the armed forces. The combination of the country's economic and technological power, and the indisputable experience of its armed forces, were enough to make it the undisputed leader in terms of world military power, especially since the disappearance of the Soviet Union.
But in recent years, Washington has faced an unprecedented situation with the rise of Chinese power, since for the first time, the United States is facing a country that can potentially equal and even exceed its industrial and technological capabilities, at least in the not-so-distant future.
It was therefore necessary, at the Pentagon, to imagine a solution to maintain operational ascendancy over such an adversary. The answer is a doctrine, referred to in English as “All-Domain Capacities”, a doctrine which was first tested on a large scale at the end of September 2020, on the occasion of Valiant Shield 2020 exercise.
Concretely, the new American doctrine is based on a global and unified communication and command architecture bringing together all the actors on the battlefield, whether or not they are present on the ground, so as to minimize communication delays. and decision, and thus act faster and much better than the adversary, taking advantage of all the means available at every moment to support the maneuver.
This is, in itself, a real revolution in the conduct of operations across the Atlantic, which until now respected a very strict and relatively hermetic organization chart, with decision-making nodes often penalizing on the ground.
The new US doctrine will jointly make it possible to give more decision-making latitude to actors deployed on the ground, while allowing higher echelons to control engagement and alter it so as to be able to apply a more global strategy.
One of the objectives of this approach is to reduce order validation times which have, on several occasions, seriously penalized the operational management of operations in the field in recent years.
In addition, this doctrine being inter-army, it will harmonize, accelerate and extend interactions between the units of each of the US Armies and potentially allied armies deployed in the battlefield environment.
A spectacular demonstration was made a few weeks ago by the US Air Force and its new Advanced Battle Management System or ABMS, carried by the thunderous Will Roper, in shooting down a supersonic aerial target mimicking a cruise missile using an M109A6 Paladin SPG interconnected to the system, and equipped with a new hypersonic guided shell.
In this demonstration, the ABMS made it possible to detect, identify, engage and destroy the target in just a few seconds, while each action was carried out by a different actor. According to Will Roper, by applying the classic procedures used in the US armies, it would have taken several minutes to obtain the firing order, a delay incompatible with a supersonic target.
The implementation of the new All-Domain Capacities doctrine is not exempt from numerous difficulties, both technological and operational. Firstly, it will be necessary to heavily densify, standardize and secure all of the armies' interconnected systems, which naturally represents a colossal effort on the scale of an armed force as large as that of the United States.
In addition, it will be necessary to modify an innumerable number of systems, in order to give them the ability to intervene within the new system in a secure and efficient manner. This is notably the reason why the United States became involved in the deployment of a satellite galaxy of unparalleled magnitude until then, satellite communication remains the most reliable and discreet today.
But the technological aspect is far from being the only obstacle to the implementation of such a doctrine, the operational aspect is just as much. Indeed, it will be a question here of reorganizing the intervention of the actors and the provision of “services” at the different levels of engagement, in what could be described as logical battlefields, without saturating the system. nor saturate the command's decision-making capabilities.
Indeed, the excess of requests and information leads to the appearance of a phenomenon called infobesity, which slows down or even alters the decision, which would cancel out all the benefits expected by the new doctrine.
To avoid this, it is necessary not only to train operators, but also to have systems in place to analyze, organize and enhance multiple information in order to effectively provide decision-makers with assimilable and relevant information at the right time.
It goes without saying that this new doctrine is based, in large part, on new information technologies, and in particular on the increased use of Artificial Intelligence, which is not devoid of vulnerabilities.
In addition, before being fully operational, it will be necessary to carry out a large number of exercises, in order to assess all of its potential, but also its weaknesses, which will require several more years, and perhaps decades. before being fully operational.
However, we see that the American Armies are determined not to waste time in procrastination and superfluous speculation, to have as soon as possible, if not all the expected functionalities, at least the first bricks likely to quickly provide first operational advantages.
This is also a break with the management observed in major US defense programs in recent decades, characterized by excessive ambitions, reckless spending, and negligible operational results.
The fact remains that the new American doctrine has already generated initiatives across the world, while certain countries had, for their part, already progressed in a similar approach for several years. In fact, it may seem risky to think that the simple existence of this doctrine will be enough to overcome a traditional balance of power that is too unfavorable.
And if many appreciate and abuse convenient “force multipliers” to present a degraded situation in a more favorable way, we must keep in mind that, often, the main criterion in a balance of power is strength.
In this area, we should not forget the experience acquired during, for example, the Korean War, when the Chinese forces, more rustic, less trained, and less efficient than the American forces, pushed the latter back until the end. 38ᵉ parallel simply because of their overwhelming numerical superiority.