Enabling Maneuver – Imagining the Next Chapter in Armored Warfare

Small Wars Journal | Joshua Suthoff

The United States Army Armored Brigade Combat Team faces severe survivability threats from cheap drone proliferation and long-range precision fires across the Air Ground Littoral up to 40 kilometers behind the contact line. Integrating heavy platforms like Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles alongside robotic systems and counter-uncrewed aerial protection offers a viable operational framework for heavy armor in potential Indo-Pacific conflicts.

Establishing localized Reduced enemy Drone activity Areas suppresses uncrewed airborne threats, restoring operational depth and enabling combined arms formations to dislocate adversaries through mobile maneuver rather than positional attrition. While ongoing European combat in Ukraine highlights the vulnerability of static heavy formations, seizing and holding contested island terrain against China remains an inherently ground-centric task. Rightsizing heavy brigade structures and leveraging autonomous wingmen ensures armored forces preserve decisive lethality, magazine depth, and sensor integration, guaranteeing that ground maneuver remains the central enabler of joint operational success across future multi-domain battlefields.

Comment

The conceptualisation of Reduced enemy Drone activity Areas (RDOAs) shifts the doctrinal role of the Armored Brigade Combat Team from a primary breakthrough element to a multi-domain signature suppressor. By integrating organic electronic warfare and mobile counter-uncrewed aerial systems directly into M1A2 Abrams and M2A4 Bradley hulls, heavy formations create localized sensor suppression zones. This tactical transition implies that future armoured manoeuvre depends less on passive armour thickness than on actively shaping the electromagnetic spectrum along the contact line. Consequently, operational survival in high-density sensor environments requires ground formations to continuously cycle between electronic obfuscation and rapid physical displacement.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If establishing a Reduced enemy Drone activity Area fails to adequately suppress pervasive uncrewed reconnaissance during a cross-domain assault, which operational mechanism can heavy armoured formations rely upon to prevent immediate targeting by long-range precision fires?

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