US Multi-Domain Operations – War by Additional Means

May 23, 2022 (Brian Berletic - New Eastern Outlook) The United States has clearly transitioned militarily several times throughout its history, from the Cold War preparing to fight the Soviet Union using massive maneuver warfare to using the military that existed at the end of the Cold War to decimate the Iraqi army in the 1990’s, to shifting to a “small wars” force fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years.

As the “War on Terror” began to fade, America’s need to pivot again to large scale conflict with peer or near-peer competitors was driven by the reemergence of Russia as a global power and the rise of China upon the global stage. In many ways the last 20 years of “small wars” was a failed attempt to encircle and contain these two competitors.

What emerged from the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) was the concept of “multi-domain operations.” Laid out in a seminal 2018 paper titled, “The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028,” US military planners would articulate the perceived threat:

In a new era of great power competition, our nation’s adversaries seek to achieve their strategic aims, short of conflict, by the use of layered stand-off in the political, military and economic realms to separate the U.S. from our partners. Should conflict come, they will employ multiple layers of stand-off in all domains–land, sea, air, space and cyberspace–to separate U.S. forces and our allies in time, space, and function in order to defeat us.

 To meet this threat, US military planners claim:

The central idea in solving this problem is the rapid and continuous integration of all domains of warfare to deter and prevail as we compete short of armed conflict. If deterrence fails, Army formations, operating as part of the Joint Force, penetrate and dis-integrate enemy anti-access and area denial systems; exploit the resulting freedom of maneuver to defeat enemy systems, formations and objectives and to achieve our own strategic objectives; and consolidate gains to force a return to competition on terms more favorable to the US, our allies and partners.

To achieve this, the US military is standing up what it calls “Multi-Domain Task Forces.” The 2018 paper would explain:

In 2017, the Chief of Staff of the Army (CSA) directed the design and testing of Multi-Domain Task Forces (MDTFs) as forward stationed formations able to execute aspects of MDO. Designed to deliver long-range precision joint strike as well as integrate air and missile defense, electronic warfare, space, cyber, and information operations, the MDTF operates across all domains, the EMS, and the information environment in both competition and conflict to provide the Joint Force and coalition with new capabilities to enable the defeat adversaries’ anti-access and area denial strategies. Given its capability to compete and provide an initial penetration, the MDTF, as a forerunner to other multi-domain formations now in development, is the essential first step to realizing an MDO capable Army by 2028.

MDTFs are slated to be positioned in Asia vis-a-vis China as well as in Europe vis-a-vis Russia.

Multi-Domain Operations Extends Far Beyond the US Military

The US essentially seeks global primacy by pursuing regional primacy within various US military commands. Unlike other nations who divide their own sovereign territory into multiple areas of responsibility, the US divides the entire planet into “commands” including Northern Command (NORTHCOM), Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), Africa Command (AFRICOM), European Command (EUCOM) which includes all of Russia, Central Command (CENCOM) which covers the Middle East and Central Asia, and Pacific Command (PACOM) which encompasses all of Asia including China as well as Australia and New Zealand.

NYT: FBI Hatches Terror Plots

NYT reports in 2012 FBI's habit of fabricating terror attacks to make high-profile arrests - now Boston suspects' family claims sons were led every step of the way by the FBI. 

April 21, 2013 (LD) - In an April 2012 New York Times article titled, "Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.," it is revealed that many of the high-profile terror attacks foiled by the FBI, were in fact fabricated from start to finish by the FBI itself. The article states:

The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested. 

The report would also reveal that a fabricated, then foiled attack in Portland in 2010, even included a van and an inert bomb parked next to a real crowd of thousands during the city's annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony:

When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust.

Indeed, the only missing ingredient separating Portland from Boston, was the FBI's decision of what to fill the 55-gallon drums with. (For more details on other FBI cases, see: FBI's History of Handing "Terror Suspects" Live Explosives)

"Contractors" at Boston Marathon Stood Near Bomb, Left Before Detonation

(Photos) Seen across street after blasts talking with FBI bomb squad. Who were they? What were they and the FBI doing?

April 19, 2013 (LD) - What appear to be private contractors, wearing unmarked, matching uniforms and operating an unmarked SUV affixed with communication equipment near the finish line of the Boston Marathon shortly after the bomb blasts - can be seen beforehand, standing and waiting just meters away from where the first bomb was detonated. The contractor-types had moved away from the bomb's location before it detonated, and could be seen just across the street using communication equipment and waiting for similar dressed and equipped individuals to show up after the blasts.

Image: An already widely distributed photo showing the contractor-types on the bottom left, just left of where the bomb was placed and detonated. The men are wearing matching, unmarked uniforms, large black bags, and appear to be waiting, separately, and "behind" the rest of the crowd. In the upper left corner, a wooden structure forming one half of a temporary photography "bridge" over the finish line can be seen and serves as a useful reference when establishing the contractor-types' position in other photos.

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A Counter-Color Revolution in Thailand?

4 questions about Thailand's political chaos & major protests planned next week against Wall Street-backed client regime.

November 17, 2012 (AltThaiNews) - The current government in Thailand is the result of foreign-backing, two-failed color revolutions in 2009 and 2010, and the building of a substantial populist-based voting bloc that doubles as a bizarre "red shirt" personality cult fashioned out of Communist ideology, but built around a Wall Street-backed billionaire.

The ruling Peua Thai Party (PTP) is currently led by Yingluck Shinawatra, but only symbolically so. PTP's campaign slogan in 2011 was literally "Thaksin thinks, Peua Thai does," referring to the real leader of PTP, Yingluck's brother Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin is currently living in self-imposed exile, evading 2 arrest warrants and a 2 year jail sentence for corruption. In true third-world nepotist style, he has been ruling for several years by proxy through a menagerie of siblings, cousins and relatives-in-law.

After a year back in power, infighting within its ranks, growing disappointment over its policies, and suspicion over its real political objectives, it appears that the Thai establishment is preparing for its first attempt to remove the PTP regime from power. To explain the background of this political crisis, and the greater geopolitical implications for both Asia and the Pacific, four questions have been asked and answered. 

Image: As mentioned in a myriad of foreign media publications, Thaksin's proxy party ran with the slogan, "Thaksin thinks, Peua Thai does." As Peua Thai faces charges that a convicted criminal was directly involved in their election campaign, many of the exhibits used against them in court will be of their own design and impossible to deny.

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