PACKED AND READY: LARGE-SCALE DEPLOYMENTS REQUIRE PREPARATION
LT. COL. ALEX BEDARD
MAJ. SHARON WHEELOCK
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, commanding general of I Corps and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, last spring released his vision for how I Corps operates as the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s operational U.S. Army headquarters.
Despite the creation of interior lines in the Indo-Pacific area of responsibility by employing land power below the level of armed conflict, a large contingent of I Corps forces remains at home station throughout a given year recovering, training and posturing for future missions. Massing combat power at decisive points begins before forces ever enter the theater. When the transition to crisis or conflict occurs, forces at home station must be ready to deploy at a scale potentially not seen by the U.S. Army in over 20 years.
This potential magnitude of deployment operations requires competencies that atrophied over two decades of focus on the global war on terrorism.
No Sanctuary
As the Army continues to pivot toward large-scale combat operations, a key aspect of multidomain operations complicating deployments is the understanding that the homeland is no longer a sanctuary. Adversaries, domestic disturbances and natural disasters will contest the deployment of U.S. forces. The Army’s existing official program for promoting deployment readiness, the Command Deployment Discipline Program, is insufficient to address the gap in competencies of deployment operations and the challenges of a contested homeland.
https://www.ausa.org/articles/packed-and-ready-large-scale-deployments-require-preparation
