This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. The U.S. Army is the Nation's principal land force organized, trained, and equipped for prompt and sustained combat on land. Today's adversaries have studied how the U.S. Joint Force prefers to operate and adapted to develop capabilities that contest our operations on land, at sea, in the air, in space and cyberspace, as well as the electromagnetic spectrum. Enemies and adversaries operate beyond the physical battleground on battlegrounds of information, perception, political subversion, and criminality. Defeating future enemies that possess advanced capabilities calls for land forces operating as part of integrated joint teams that conduct simultaneous and sequential operations across multiple domains and on multiple battlegrounds and contested spaces. Army forces must be prepared to operate consistent with the concept of multi -domain battle, fighting and winning across all contested spaces creating temporary windows of superiority across multiple domains.
TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-5, The U.S. Army Functional Concept for Maneuver Support (AFC-MS), describes maneuver support required capabilities to conduct joint combined arms operations and multi-domain battle as described in TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1, The US. Army Operating Concept: Win in a Complex World and the Multi-Domain Battle: Combined Arms for the 21st Century white paper. Complementary and reinforcing maneuver support forces shape terrain, enable expeditionary maneuver, establish base camps, mitigate obstacles and hazards, and protect the force, populations, and resources. Maneuver support forces include engineering, military police, explosive ordnance disposal, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear units. Maneuver support capabilities, however, are not limited to specific branches and include a broad range of capabilities necessary to fight, preserve freedom of action, consolidate gains, and win in armed conflict.
The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is one of the most dangerous trends that effect future conflict. Weapons of mass destruction capabilities and technologies will increase risk to missions, forces, and civilian populations at home and abroad. Army forces must minimize vulnerabilities associated with chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield explosive hazards, and mitigate adversary capabilities to deploy or employ these weapons against the U.S. and mission partners during joint combined arms operations. Maneuver support forces provide the expertise and capabilities necessary to protect the force and accomplish the mission.