FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (March 6, 2023) — A subject matter expert on the Army’s new capstone operations doctrine, Field Manual 3-0, visited Fort Leonard Wood this week to introduce the new material to leaders here.
Lt. Col. Eric Gilge, chief of operational-level doctrine within the U.S. Army Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, conducted briefings on the 280-page document for junior to mid-level leaders here on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Digital Training Facility — FM 3-0 was published in October to coincide with the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting and exposition in Washington, D.C.
“(The team that authored FM 3-0) are going from installation to installation, conducting training on what the new doctrine has in it,” Gilge said. “We can’t necessarily capture all the ideas, but certainly we give enough that you come away with an understanding of the basic concepts — the core concepts within the doctrine — so that knowledge can then be used to train students, Soldiers and leaders here at Fort Leonard Wood, as well as other installations across the Army.”
The new doctrine establishes as the Army’s operational concept what’s called multidomain operations, which is defined in the document as “the combined arms employment of joint and Army capabilities to create and exploit relative advantages that achieve objectives, defeat enemy forces, and consolidate gains on behalf of joint force commanders.”
The Army’s focus is on large-scale combat operations against adversaries able to contest the joint force across the five domains – land, air, maritime, space and cyberspace — and three dimensions — physical, information and human, Gilge said.
“We published the last version of FM 3-0 back in 2017, which captured a lot of the ideas as far as a shift to large-scale combat operations as our primary focus within our capstone doctrine,” Gilge said. “Changes to the strategic environment really drove the need for us to look at our doctrine to incorporate some of the ideas that were validated from the concept of multidomain operations and bring them into doctrine.”
Upon the initial publishing of FM 3-0, Gen. Gary Brito, who took over as commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command in September, commented on the value of timely and effective doctrine. Brito encouraged every Army leader to read, understand and use its concepts in training, education and worldwide operations.
“Doctrine shapes our thinking about operations and is foundational for integrating all modernization efforts in support of the Army,” he said. “The TRADOC team is committed to building the Army of 2030 down to the Soldier level through training, education and exercising our foundational operations doctrine.”
Before FM 3-0’s 2017 iteration, the Army had three significant operational concepts going back to the early 1980s — AirLand Battle, Full Spectrum Operations and Unified Land Operations. Gilge said this latest doctrine represents a maturation of capstone concepts.
“It impacts everybody, just because it does drive the operational concept of multidomain operations,” he said. “It’s meant to drive the doctrine throughout the entire Army, so it really does shift the way we look at fighting, the way we fight and the way we train for potential conflicts.”
The new doctrine was a two-and-a-half year process from start to finish, Gilge said.
“We did multiple drafts,” he said. “We got feedback. We’d then revise it, push it out again. We did that multiple times, so that we could give the best product that had the best ideas collaboratively from the entire Army.”
For more information on Army doctrine and to access associated resources, visit the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate website.
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About Fort Leonard Wood
Fort Leonard Wood is a thriving and prosperous installation that has evolved from a small basic training post more than 80 years ago to a premier Army Center of Excellence that trains nearly 80,000 military and civilians each year.
Fort Leonard Wood is home to the U.S Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence and three U.S. Army schools: the U.S. Army Engineer School; U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear School; and the U.S. Army Military Police School. In addition to training engineer, CBRN and military police specialties for the Army, Fort Leonard Wood also provides gender-integrated in-processing and Basic Combat Training for new Soldiers.
Fort Leonard Wood also hosts and trains with the largest Marine Corps Detachment and Air Force Squadron on any Army installation as well as a large Navy construction detachment.
More information about Fort Leonard Wood is at: https://home.army.mil/wood/index.php/about/mission