Army experts stressed the importance of joint doctrine and technology for the U.S. military, NATO and its allies to successfully operate in multidomain operations during the 2025 LANDEURO Symposium in Wiesbaden, Germany, July 17, 2025.
"A strong United States military and a strong NATO is not just a European deterrent, but a global deterrent," said Army Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter, commander, 56th Theater Multi-Domain Command, Mainz-Kastel, Germany. "What we do in this theater of operations, it's exportable anywhere. That should concern our adversaries."
Communication among the U.S. military, NATO and its allies, along with the industrial base, is important, said Harald Manheim, head of defense digital, cyber and managing director, Airbus Defense and Space, Germany. Manheim served in the German Air Force with the MIM-104 Patriot air defense system.
"We need to know each other to create and build trust," Manheim said. "It's easier if you know each other, if you know the capabilities. It's a fascinating world when you enter industrial sites and armament industry across the world. The Europeans are releasing more budgets. We're ramping up. For those of you seeking jobs after your military careers, join us, because we need the best experts from artificial intelligence to mechanical engineering in the vast understanding of the customers."
He said NATO and U.S. allies want to prepare the forces on the battlefield of today and tomorrow with the best technology and capabilities.
Carpenter said if conflict breaks out in Eastern Europe, everything will be contested globally.
"There's not a single thing that 56 theater multidomain commands can do to stop anti-access area denial subsurface in the Western Atlantic," he said. "Everything is contested. It's not just the military. It's not just the joint force across the different 32 nations and partners who join us. It's commercial. It's industry. It's sparking the industrial base and understanding that in order to sustain ourselves to win the fight after the fight. We need commercial industry to assist us with that."
He said it's not just a military effort. It's a national effort across all 32 nations and the partners who join the U.S. military.
Doctrine
Doctrine plays a big role in human and procedural interoperability in this military effort, said Richard Creed Jr., director, Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate, Mission Command Center of Excellence, Combined Arms Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The West Point graduate served 32 years as an armor officer and strategist.
Creed said because of this, his directorate is continuously updating U.S. Army doctrine that focuses on multidomain operations, combined arms, including space, cyber, electronic warfare, air defense and more. This, in turn, shapes the joint doctrine for the U.S. military and the NATO doctrine. The doctrines influence operations and training.
And with the proliferation of technology at a faster and faster pace, the operational environment is changing, which influences doctrine, he said.
"We really started updating Army doctrine in 2014, thinking about how the Army is going to fight differently," Creed said. "There was an initial multidomain battle concept and futures concept developed and socialized across the Army from top to bottom. We published the concept in 2018."
He said as the concept develops into doctrine, the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate worked with joint force experts to ensure the language was in a form people use every day in terms of training, developing leaders and in determining materiel requirements.
"If you don't know how you're going to fight, how do you know what you want to fight with?" Creed said.
Though the updated doctrine published in 2022, the war in Ukraine kicked off, and the Army, along with the other U.S. military service branches, NATO and its allies saw an evolution of warfare.
"The war in Ukraine evolved and other things were going on in the world. The Army was focused globally," Creed said. "We published an updated version of FM30 March 2025 and since then, we've been taking notes and have realized that there's even more things we need to change the next time around, and it will not take three years before we do it again."
He said one of those steps is as NATO updates its doctrine, Creed's team will emphasize the importance of the land forces portion being congruent with the Army's operational concept.
"We work together and train together every day over here in Europe," he said. "We have meetings all year, discussing how we're going to fight better together. Let's use the same words and make sure those words have the same meaning."
Technology
Manheim said the current need on the battlefield is a bridge between existing systems to link them together for more of a multidomain, legacy world of systems.
"We also need to massively produce ammunition and upgrade legacy systems," he said. "Software-defined defense may be the future vision. We need speed, interoperability and combat mass communications integrated across the alliance."
Multidomain
Carpenter leads a theater asset that works with the other U.S. military services, NATO and coalition partners.
"As the multidomain command in Europe, we tackle some very complex problems," he said. "Within the larger, global anti-access aerial denial effort, that's defeating adversary integrated air missile defense as well as their integrated fires complex capabilities. It's an extreme challenge."
He said repetitive exercises oriented exclusively on warfighting and regional plans allow soldiers in his command to develop leadership, expertise and build the architecture needed to win the fight. It also helps them harvest theater and national intelligence, conduct target development, maintain custody of targets and work with interagency partners to layer effects for increased success.
"We need to find, fix and finish for the theater," Carpenter said. "We establish convergence in depth. If we get it right, we create windows of opportunities for the Air Force from the ground, and we create opportunities for the alliance with follow-on operations to create an experience for our adversary that completely overwhelms them. Repetition breeds mastery."
His command has many exercises, including Dynamic Front, a theater-wide kill web data execution with 16 different nations in five different countries.
Carpenter echoed Creed's comment on the importance of the Army, other service branches, NATO and the partner nations speaking the same language.
"There's language barriers and differences in doctrine, how someone may describe a task, the outcome, how they describe an effect they want to achieve," he said. "It can add complexity to what is already a complex warfighting requirement."
With combined arms maneuvers, layering effects to achieve a strategic outcome, the reality is that in warfighting, intelligence collection, the kinetic and nonkinetic effects come from many different sources, Carpenter said.
These sources could be U.S. military, NATO, partners, interagency or civilians. Open-source intelligence comes from many different medians in many different forms.
"The question is, are we able to, with our warfighting language, paint a picture for a commander so they can make risk-informed decisions?" he said.
As part of the Army Transformation Initiative, the 56th Artillery Command and 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force combined into the 56th Multi-Domain Command.
Having a command that provides real-time targeting information; a command-and-control center that provides detailed planning, execution and assessments during current fighting and exercises; a field artillery headquarters; fuel artillery brigades across NATO; and inbound information advantage detachment will provide layered effects to the NATO and multidomain mission, Carpenter said.
"It's an exciting time with technology and the innovation that's going on right now in our Army and in Europe," he said. "It's our job to have the leader development programs, the training programs, to build the architecture and to build the processes."
If his team builds these processes and programs, then when the new technology arrives in Europe, they will be able to employ them rapidly and decisively at the point of need.