ADP-3-19 FIRES Warfighting Function Download

Introduction to Fires 31 July 2019 ADP 3-19 1-3 peer threat uses various methods to employ their instruments of power to render U.S. military power irrelevant. Five broad methods, used in combination by peer threats, include:  Information warfare.  Preclusion.  Isolation.  Sanctuary.  Systems warfare. Threats will employ information warfare throughout competition and conflict to gain an advantage in the information environment and achieve their objectives. Adversaries and enemies employ lethal and non- lethal fires as part of their overall information warfare effort. Information warfare is a broad category that may include activities such as cyberspace operations, perception management, deception operations, EW, physical destruction, and operations security. Threats will combine all of these with other effects to overwhelm friendly forces and give themselves a position of relative advantage within the information environment. During competition, friendly forces must be prepared to employ fires to counter adversary information warfare with our own information operations. Military information operations during operations to shape and prevent must be incorporated into a whole of government approach at the strategic level. Friendly forces must also use operations to shape and prevent to develop enemy targets and a plan to create a broader range of effects against those targets if competition escalates to conflict. Threats preclude to keep something from happening by taking action in advance. Peer threats will preclude a friendly force's ability to shape the OE and mass and sustain combat power. Anti-access (A2) and area denial (AD) are two examples of preclusion activities. The enemies’ integrated air defense systems and integrated fires command is employed using their sensor-to-shooter networks. Threats will conduct A2 activities by employing long-range capabilities to prevent an enemy force from entering an operational area. Threats will conduct AD activities through shorter range actions and capabilities to limit friendly force freedom of action within an operational area to the point that their mission is severely limited or unachievable. The joint force employs fires to defeat A2/AD capabilities to allow entry and building of combat power within the operational area. They may also employ fires to defeat A2/AD activities to allow joint force freedom of action. Peer threats will attempt to isolate friendly forces in all domains and the information environment to force friendly forces to culminate prior to accomplishing their mission. Examples of enemy operations to isolate include disruption of friendly communications, deception operations, operations to separate allies diplomatically, or operations to physically fix units. The threat will employ their fires in an attempt to isolate friendly units. In large-scale combat operations, peer threats will attempt to isolate tactical forces to prevent their mutual support, allowing the defeat of friendly forces in detail. Commanders create effects with fires that remove the threat’s ability to isolate by destroying, disrupting, or otherwise defeating the threat’s means to isolate friendly forces. Threats employ political, legal, and physical boundaries to create sanctuary for a portion of their forces, protecting them from action by the friendly force commander. Sanctuary can pose particular challenges to the employment of lethal fires to create effects against critical enemy assets. Sanctuary may also pose challenges to the creation of nonlethal effects in cyberspace and the information environment. Commanders must either expand their operational area to include the sanctuary, cause the target to move out of sanctuary, or mitigate the risk from the system in sanctuary. Like us, peer threats view the battlefield, their own instruments of power, and an opponent's instruments of power as a collection of complex, dynamic, and integrated systems composed of subsystems and components. They will employ systems warfare to identify and isolate critical subsystems or components that give friendly forces the capabilities necessary to accomplish their mission. Their integrated fires complexes and air defense systems represent a significant systems warfare capability. To counter these tactics, commanders must examine their own systems to identify potential vulnerabilities that the enemy may attempt to exploit and develop plans to protect those vulnerabilities. Commanders must also analyze adversary and enemy systems, identifying critical vulnerabilities and applying resources against them. For a more detailed discussion of the OE and threats, see ADP 3-0 and FM 3-0.