One Enemy, One Strategy

The 2026 National Defense Strategy resolves the ambiguity the Transformation Initiative leaves obscured. China stands as the pacing threat and the Indo-Pacific stands as the decisive theater. U.S. strategy in this region pursues a specific objective: maintaining a favorable military balance so China remains unable to dominate the region and veto American access to the world's economic center of gravity. Geography, operations, and measurement define strategic clarity.

The Army's transformation investments address the key operational problems China presents in this theater. Long-range fires counter access denial. Distributed posture survives opening strikes. Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) operates through disruption. Field Manual (FM) 4-0, Sustainment Operations, describes contested logistics. Mobile formations reduce signatures. Separate programs and disconnected doctrine prevent these pieces from functioning as one response.

Coherence requires explicit organization around defeating China's operational system. The Transformation Initiative measures transformation by inputs rather than effects when coherence is absent. Resources scatter across competing programs when no unified threat drives prioritization. Execution fragments across services and commands when integration remains optional rather than mandatory. Strategic clarity demands organizing transformation around one enemy and one strategy.

China's Operational Sequence in the Indo-Pacific

China maintains persistent observation through satellites, space-based sensors, cyber access, and fused intelligence across the theater. Every U.S. base, forward deployment, and concentration of forces enters a targeting cycle the moment it emits, moves predictably, or stays in place long enough to be located and tracked.

China's core operational approach follows from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) dominance. Compressing time between observation and fires defines China's theory of victory through integrated strike systems across air, missiles, cyber, and space domains. Speed becomes the weapon. Satellite imagery triggers targeting which triggers automated command networks. Command networks trigger synchronized strikes designed to destroy forward U.S. presence, degrade air defense, and sever command links before the U.S. can generate a coherent response.

Once the initial strike concludes, China sustains dominance through layered air defense systems and long-range missiles. Ports, airfields, logistics hubs, and theater command nodes face systematic risk, with coverage extending across the Indo-Pacific to deny U.S. reinforcement, resupply, and operational freedom. Arrival in theater becomes the beginning of an access problem rather than the resolution of one.

China pursues disruption of U.S. command authority through multiple vectors. Cyber operations sever command networks. Anti-satellite strikes blind space-based communications. Information operations create uncertainty in the joint force. Breaking the link between commanders and their units can leave forward forces disconnected from theater strategy and unable to coordinate response.

China sustains operations from its mainland where logistics flow from interior lines and industrial capacity enables sustained production and replacement. U.S. forces sustain operations at distance through extended supply lines across contested seas. Geography creates a structural advantage for China that time, distance, and sustained operations only amplify.

The Army's Counter-Framework

The Army has constructed pieces that directly counter each operational step China would pursue. Assembly into an integrated response appears incomplete. Coherence means organizing these pieces into a visible system where each investment demonstrates its role in defeating China's approach.

The Pacific Deterrence Initiative funds distributed and resilient basing across clustered hubs and nodes rather than concentrated bases. Infrastructure, logistics, and prepositioning spread throughout the Indo-Pacific. Command nodes organize as hardened, hidden, redundant, and dispersed systems that reduce vulnerability to enemy sensing and long-range fires.

Destroying one node in an opening strike leaves others operational so forces continue functioning. Distributed posture enables survival of the initial strike and maintains U.S. capacity for response. Forward bases concentrate vulnerability; distributed networks preserve capability.

Army concepts directly link mobility, signature reduction across physical and electronic domains, dispersed nodes, obscuration, and deception to survivability against enemy ISR and fires. Mobile formations establish complexity for targeting because they present moving rather than static targets. Signature reduction from thermal emissions to electronic signatures to vehicle profiles renders formations harder to distinguish from background noise or decoys.

Sustained displacement and frequent movement deny China the persistent contact needed to cue fires with sufficient accuracy for targeting. Static signatures invite targeting. Mobile formations with reduced signatures generate complexity and uncertainty for an adversary attempting to locate, track, and destroy them. Operational movement becomes a survival strategy when ISR dominance surrounds the battlefield.

China denies access through layered air defense and long-range missiles directed at U.S. entry points into the theater. Long-range precision fires such as Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) and Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) address anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems from distance. LRHW development targets defeating A2/AD capabilities. Ground forces engage air defense, logistics nodes, and command centers that threaten access without requiring air superiority or geographic proximity.

Access through contested A2/AD zones requires more than long-range strikes. Army doctrine treats sustainment as a contested operation across all domains. FM 4-0 establishes distributed sustainment nodes, lean stocks, mobility, signature reduction, and rapid displacement as core concepts. Destroying one logistics node preserves supply through others rather than collapsing the entire supply chain.

Forward forces maintain sufficiency through distributed reserves rather than relying on centralized, contractor-dependent logistics chains. The Joint Tactical Autonomous Aerial Resupply System (JTAARS) extends distributed logistics by delivering supply to forward forces through unmanned systems when manned ground movements face sustained threat from A2/AD fires. Resupply continues despite disruption because it operates through redundant pathways and autonomous systems. Contested logistics sustain forces through contested access zones.

Deployment and reinforcement remain contested from the homeland through the theater. Time and distance compound the access problem at every stage. Long-range fires open corridors. Contested logistics sustain forces through them. U.S. forces establish operations in zones China attempted to deny through A2/AD.

China targets command links through cyber operations, anti-satellite strikes, and information operations. Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) operates across transport, integration, data, and application layers with built-in redundancy. Degradation of some layers preserves function through others. Cyberattacks sever links, anti-satellite strikes deny communications, and electronic warfare jams frequencies. Networks continue functioning through redundancy and degraded-mode procedures.

NGC2 prototyping emphasizes communications resilience, shared data architecture, and training for operations during attack, interference, disruption, and degraded conditions. Mission command requires sufficient information flow to enable subordinates to understand intent and execute decisions within that intent when direct communication becomes unreliable or severed. Command authority persists through degradation rather than collapsing when connectivity fails. Forces retain decision authority even under systematic attack on command systems.

Sustained operations depend on replacing losses. Russia's experience in Ukraine demonstrates what occurs when replacement fails to keep pace with losses. After three years of war, Russian recruitment cannot keep pace with losses, resulting in declining unit strength, reduced combat effectiveness, and a military machine grinding down despite industrial capacity. Force degradation accelerates when attrition exceeds regeneration.

The Defense Department's industrial partnerships address surge production, but defense-industrial vulnerabilities run deep. U.S. control of critical inputs proves limited. Surge capacity remains constrained by workforce and manufacturing base capacity. Current doctrine fails to define what "sustainable attrition rate" means against China or what consumption levels trigger full industrial mobilization.

Transformation exposes an unanswered strategic question rather than a failure in transformation itself. Without explicitly organizing transformation around defeating China, strategic concerns remain hidden in budget justifications and industrial policy rather than visible as problems demanding resolution. Coherence brings these questions into strategic view where they can be addressed.

Why Coherence Shapes Capability

The six counter-functions described above represent capabilities the Army possesses. Integration determines whether transformation generates strategic effect. Without coherence, without explicit organization around China's operational system, strategic effectiveness disperses across three dimensions.

Measurement becomes impossible when transformation organizes around generic capability rather than defeating a specific threat. Counting "Are we fielding more drones?" differs fundamentally from measuring "Can drones reduce China's ISR dominance enough to open access corridors?" One counts inputs while the other measures strategic effect. Transformation becomes a metric of procurement rather than a measure of strategic success when coherence is absent. The Army fields systems but remains unable to determine whether those systems generate the effects necessary to defeat China's operational approach.

Resource prioritization becomes arbitrary when investments scatter across competing programs without showing how they work together. Distributed basing, NGC2, long-range fires, JTAARS, and mobile formations each proves individually sound. Without demonstration of how they function as an integrated response to China's sequence, they compete for budget on equal footing. Each service, command, and program manager fights for relevance independently.

Competition produces underfunding across the board because no single investment becomes demonstrably non-negotiable. Coherence forces prioritization by showing what components must function together to generate decisive effect against a unified threat. Resources concentrate where they matter most to defeating China rather than scattering across disconnected initiatives.

Execution diverges from strategy when forces train in isolation and services plan independently. Units develop expertise in their domains without understanding how their capabilities contribute to defeating China's integrated operational approach. Navy and Air Force plan their theaters separately. Logistics operates independently of command and control planning. Each service perceives its piece rather than the whole.

China operates as an integrated system across all domains, with each component supporting the others toward unified objectives. U.S. forces respond with disconnected pieces. Organizational fragmentation prevents strategic coherence even when doctrine and leadership demand it. Showing what must work together becomes insufficient if organizational structures prevent integration.

Current service budgets flow through separate appropriations. Training pipelines develop service-specific expertise. Command structures separate by domain. Theater commanders exercise authority over air and naval components but face constraints on ground forces. Structural barriers prevent integration even when doctrine demands it.

Achieving coherence requires reorganizing how the military funds transformation, how it trains forces, and how it structures command authority at the theater level. Separate funding streams produce separate strategies. Service-specific training produces service-specific solutions. Fragmented command authority produces coordinated responses rather than integrated operations. Organizational change faces administrative difficulty and institutional resistance.

Reorganization remains essential because China operates as one system while the U.S. remains fragmented across services. Without forcing integration through explicit organizational change, coherence remains aspirational rather than operational. Strategic clarity demands more than publishing doctrine: it demands restructuring the institutions that execute strategy.

Conclusion

The 2026 National Defense Strategy identifies China as the pacing threat and the Indo-Pacific as the decisive theater. The Army's transformation investments address the operational problems China presents. Scattered across doctrine updates, budget justifications, and force structure decisions, these investments lack a visible framework showing how they work together.

Coherence requires organizing transformation explicitly around defeating China's operational system. Step-by-step alignment shows what China intends to accomplish and what the Army builds to counter each step. Measurement transforms from procurement counts to strategic effect. Distributed posture enables survival of the opening strike. Mobility and signature reduction enable operations despite ISR dominance. Long-range fires and contested logistics open and sustain access into denied zones. NGC2 resilience preserves command authority through disruption. Industrial capacity regenerates losses at rates matching China's capacity to inflict them.

Organization around defeating China transforms how the military prioritizes resources, structures commands, and defines success. The Transformation Initiative requires an enemy not to create strategy, but to assemble and communicate the strategy that exists in pieces across the force. Coherence provides that enemy and generates the strategic clarity that transforms institutional initiatives from aspiration into operational reality.

Michael Carvelli is an Army officer who writes on strategy, operational planning, protection, and engineering. He has written on large-scale combat operations for Real Clear Defense, Modern War Institute, Small Wars Journal, War on the Rocks, Military Review, and Parameters.

The views expressed are his own and do not represent those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

image: U.S. Army Green Berets assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), prepare for MRZR night movement during Exercise Diesel 26 at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, Feb. 26, 2026. The 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) Green Berets participated in Exercise Diesel 26 to assess how Special Operations Forces integrate into the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) architecture while operating in austere, communications-contested environments. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Rhianna Ballenger)