{"id":4921,"date":"2026-05-24T00:28:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T00:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/?p=4921"},"modified":"2026-05-24T00:28:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T00:28:20","slug":"multi-domain-command-europe-pushes-the-boundaries-of-next-gen-warfare-at-arcane-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/?p=4921","title":{"rendered":"Multi-Domain Command – Europe Pushes the Boundaries of Next-Gen Warfare at Arcane Thunder"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This April marked the beginning of the fourth iteration of Multi-Domain Command \u2013 Europe\u2019s premiere exercise, Arcane Thunder, happening simultaneously at Fort Irwin, California, and throughout the European theater. The lessons learned by the Pershing Soldiers in California\u2019s high desert will shape the future of large-scale combat operations.<\/p>\n

Multi-Domain Command \u2013 Europe is one of three units established within the past five years, charged with combining the five fingers of the Army\u2019s air, land, sea, space, and cyber capabilities into a fist, capable of destroying any target.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThe opening salvo of the next fight will not be something that comes out of an ammunition supply point,\u201d says Maj. Guglielmo, Operations Officer for Multi-Domain Command \u2013 Europe and lead planner for Arcane Thunder 26. \u201cIt is going to be something more in the domains, literally, that we operate in here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The MDC-E\u2019s primary role is creating anti-access and area denial (A2\/AD), the strategy by which the U.S. military restricts enemy movement and prevents adversaries from deploying forces into a theater of operations throughout the battlefield. For MDC-E that means supporting U.S. Army European Command in reinforcing NATO\u2019s eastern flank against Russian incursion should the need arise.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What Multi-Domain Command \u2013 Europe brings to the fight that a combined arms unit wouldn\u2019t is the capability to sense the enemy at extreme ranges and create opportunities for the unit\u2019s long-range fires battalions to engage those targets. Fixed wing UAVs serve as the unit\u2019s swiss army knife of sensing and detecting, capable of carrying electromagnetic or explosive payloads if necessary, while high-altitude balloons (HABs) capable of floating near the top of the Earth\u2019s exosphere for more than a year at a time monitor signals in the electromagnetic spectrum from hundreds of miles away.<\/p>\n

Capabilities within all domains of warfare employed by the MDC-E work in concert to \u201cbring the fight as deep as possible,\u201d says Guglielmo. \u201cThe Army wide is trying to make sure that it has as innovative and as advanced technology as possible to provide the warfighter that advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Arcane Thunder tests the scale at which those capabilities can be employed through the formation of Multi-Domain Company Teams (MDC-Ts).<\/p>\n

\u201cMulti-Domain Company Team is a company size element that combines multiple disciplines outside of its organic structure to create multiple options for a commander to affect things on the battlefield,\u201d says Guglielmo.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch like using combined arms to create multiple dilemmas, a MDC-T can do the same thing,\u201d says Guglielmo. \u201cInstead of tanks and artillery, you have an extended range sensing asset, a kinetic element, and a space element all working in concert together to accomplish whatever the combatant commander needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responsible for testing the employment of the MDC-T concept are the Soldiers of MDC-E\u2019s Extended Range Sensing and Effects (ERSE) Company, commanded by Capt. Garrett Murray. Drone operators, electronic warfare specialists, and tactical space operations specialists merged into one unit to detect targets at extreme ranges and destroy them.<\/p>\n

ERSE company and the rest of the MDC-E team have been tasked with answering the question of how to take these capabilities and integrate them with the ground force, says Murray.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still building the foundations,\u201d says Murray. \u201cEveryone knows the exact roles that we fill. There\u2019s not much question besides how do we change up the tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re making those steps during this exercise now that we\u2019re coordinating with a long-range fires unit,\u201d says Murray. \u201cThe next step, once we continue through experimentation and developing our capabilities is, now we need to start working on synchronizing with the maneuver force.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deciding upon what technologies to incorporate into the Army\u2019s warfighting functions is an enduring effort throughout the force known as Transforming in Contact, focused on delivering new technologies into the hands of Soldiers so that they can experiment, innovate, and be ready to fight on a modern battlefield. Leading the charge at Multi-Domain Command \u2013 Europe is Maj. Don Duong.<\/p>\n

Maj. Duong\u2019s call sign is \u201cCTO\u201d. He\u2019s the Multi-Domain Command\u2019s Chief Technology Officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s\u2026 new position that\u2019s reflective of where the Army and the military\u2019s been going in terms of the acknowledgement that the pace at which new capabilities and technologies are entering into the marketplace and the warfare domains are quickly outstripping traditional procurement pathways,\u201d said Duong.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re focused on trying to find current emerging and future capabilities aligned against what the MDC concept of employment and mission sets are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arcane Thunder puts that concept into practice. Soldiers operating between Mainz-Kastel, Germany and Fort Irwin, Texas, employ emerging technologies across multiple training scenarios, stress-testing what the industry has to offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing with multi-domain reconnaissance is something that\u2019s quite different from how traditional Army reconnaissance has been done at the tactical level,\u201d says Duong. \u201cWe\u2019re developing the doctrine, the procedures and the capabilities to execute reconnaissance at extended distances. That hasn\u2019t been considered in the past at the tactical level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything we do here will inform the direction that the Army takes with regard to multi-domain reconnaissance and then how we can converge or layer all these different effects together to create an effect or multiple dilemmas on adversary forces,\u201d says Duong.<\/p>\n

By MSG John Healy<\/em><\/p>\n

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This April marked the beginning of the fourth iteration of Multi-Domain Command \u2013 Europe\u2019s premiere exercise, Arcane Thunder, happening simultaneously at Fort Irwin, California, and throughout the European theater. The lessons learned by the Pershing Soldiers in California\u2019s high desert will shape the future of large-scale combat operations. Multi-Domain Command \u2013 Europe is one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-army"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4923,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4921\/revisions\/4923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}