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How the Army FightsWhat's new in the US Army's October 2026 operational warfighting guidance, and what formations can learn from it

12 Nov 20268 min readSource: HTAF, US Army, Oct 2026 (PDF, 46 pp)Confidence: high

In brief

  1. HTAF is guidance, not doctrine, signed by the Vice Chief of Staff. It turns the Army's top-level strategy into warfighting guidance for the force and moves the Army from a decade of building lethal tactical formations to proficiency at the operational level of war.
  2. The central change is four operational elements of land power: Convergence, Strike, Close Battle and Endurance. Each is assigned to specific headquarters levels, and the Army will organise, man, train, and equip around them.
  3. It introduces 11 new terms, or gives existing ones a firmer meaning.
    Show the 11 terms and what they mean
    Land power
    Control of land, resources and people, exercised with the Marines, special forces and allies, not by the Army alone.
    Operational manoeuvre
    The Army's main job: turning tactical wins into strategic outcomes.
    Convergence vs synchronisation
    Every level times its actions together (synchronisation). Only corps and theatre HQ combine all domains into one effect (Convergence).
    Contestable transparency
    Being seen by the enemy is not inevitable. It can be fought over and denied.
    Endurance as co-equal
    Sustainment, protection and industry count as much as the fighting elements.
    Homeland not a sanctuary
    Home bases, ports and rail links can be attacked before forces even deploy.
    Assured force projection
    Being able to deploy and sustain forces on time despite enemy interference.
    Strategic support area
    Bases, ports, depots and factories at home, now treated as part of the battlefield.
    TAP2E replaces APS
    Stocks stored forward are renamed and widened to cover all equipment, munitions and supplies held forward.
    Focused modernisation
    New equipment goes to part of the force first, not to the whole Army at once.
    Experimentation vs innovation
    Top-down testing decides what to build. Bottom-up ideas from soldiers fix today's problems.
  4. It commits the Army to concrete actions:
    • Corps and theatre HQs redesigned to run operations across all services, and tested as joint task forces (HQs that command forces from several services).
    • Combat brigades made more mobile and better equipped.
    • Long-range strike widened beyond rocket artillery to drones, aviation and loitering munitions.
    • Regional support commands resourced to keep forces supplied while under attack.
    • Home bases hardened so they can launch forces in wartime.
    • The defence industry rebuilt to surge production in war.
    • Modernisation money focused on four priorities (see section 1).

Theatre HQ is the Army's top headquarters for a whole region, such as US Army Pacific. HTAF calls it the "theatre army". It commands all Army forces in that region and supports the joint commander there. Below it come corps, then divisions, then brigades.

1What HTAF is, and why now

HTAF is signed by General Christopher C. LaNeve, 40th Vice Chief of Staff. It sits beneath the Army's top-level strategy paper, which sets the Army's strategic direction. HTAF turns that direction into warfighting guidance for the force.

Relationship to MDO
Multidomain Operations remains the Army's capstone operational doctrine. HTAF describes MDO at the operational level of war.
Fit with joint doctrine
Designed to fit within the US military's all-services warfighting concept and joint operations doctrine, so the Army's approach matches how the whole force fights.
Where the money goes
Modernisation funds are focused on four advantages: rapid deployability (enables all four elements), low-cost optionality (enhances Strike), operational and tactical mobility (essential to Close Battle, with the Army rejecting slow, heavy platforms that present static targets), and fleet simplification (makes Endurance possible). The Army will prioritise rapid procurement of only the Army's most critical systems, leveraging competitive multi-vendor sourcing, and the divestment of legacy equipment will be accounted for with the repurposing of legacy equipment sustainment dollars.
Tactical units
Though aimed at the operational level, brigades and EABs will orient their training, exercises, and plans around the four elements.
Measure of success
Whether the Army can deliver the operational outcomes this framework requires across the four operational elements.
"We have built lethal tactical formations. We must now bring greater institutional weight to the operational level."HTAF · Foreword

Tactical success alone is not enough. HTAF frames the change with three historical cases:

1950s

Pentomic Division

Warning

Formations built around the promise of novel technology rather than the enduring realities of combined arms manoeuvre.

1970s–80s

AirLand Battle

The model HTAF copies

A coherent, threat-driven doctrine should precede and dictate capability development and force structure. HTAF will replicate this approach.

Post-9/11

Counter-insurgency era

Warning

The peril of optimising for immediate conditions at the expense of the core combined arms proficiency required to fight a peer threat.

2The four elements

The Army's contribution to the Joint Force is operational manoeuvre: linking tactical actions in time and space to reach strategic goals, so commanders can bypass enemy strong points, mass effects, and strike where the adversary is most vulnerable. It is delivered through four interdependent elements.

Theatre HQ Corps Division Brigade & below Convergence Strike Close Battle Endurance Integrates Shapes deep Decides Sustains + enabling commands SET CONDITIONS SET CONDITIONS DELIVER DECISIVE OUTCOMES

Theatre HQ is the Army's top headquarters for a whole region, such as US Army Pacific (the document's "theatre army"). The elements are inherently interdependent and gain power when functioning together.

Convergence

Theatre HQ · Corps

Creates and exploits positions of advantage through the deliberate synchronisation of all-domain effects.

The physical and non-physical capabilities and networks of sensors, command nodes and weapon systems employed against the enemy. The primary integrator of operational manoeuvre.

Strike

Division to theatre HQ

Degrades and destroys enemy systems through offensive lethal and non-lethal fires at range.

Sensors, targeting, mass and precision fires, non-lethal effects and C2 networks. The deep operational shaper.

Close Battle

Division and below

Closes with, dislocates, destroys, or defeats enemy forces in contact through echeloned manoeuvre of combined arms land power.

Combat forces, direct and indirect fires, and command and control. Establishes land and population control. Always the decisive element of land power.

Endurance

Theatre HQ · Corps · Enablers

Postures, protects, and projects combat power over time, distance, and contested conditions through resilient sustainment and force generation.

Soldier health, logistics, transport, security, counter-UAS, air and missile defence, cyber defence, force projection, resilient infrastructure.

New term

What is Convergence?

Convergence is the deliberate combining of effects from every domain (land, air, sea, space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum) so that together they create an advantage that no single domain could. It links sensors, command nodes and weapons across services into one network aimed at the enemy.

It is not the same as synchronisation, which means timing actions together and happens at every level. HTAF reserves Convergence for corps and theatre HQ, because only they have the reach, authority and staff to integrate all domains. Lower formations exploit the openings it creates.

What is new here

The four elements are a new vocabulary that sits above the warfighting functions and assigns operational responsibility by echelon. Strike is more than the execution of the Fires warfighting function; Close Battle is more than simply a series of tactical actions. The Army will organise, man, train, and equip around the four elements and concentrate resources on the capabilities essential to them.

3Learnings from modern war

The judgements about contemporary conflict on which the construct rests.

All theatres

Nowhere is safe, and no domain is owned

Modern war features the acceleration and democratisation of precision lethality. Weapons reach farther, operations unfold faster across every domain, and persistent observation makes concealment and surprise increasingly difficult. Superiority in any domain is contested.

China's People's Liberation Army is named as the pacing threat (the adversary the Army measures itself against), to be addressed with the same institutional focus that the Cold War generations brought to the Soviet Army.

Ukraine

Stalemate does not make manoeuvre obsolete

After the initial weeks of fighting, each side lost its ability to manoeuvre, and the conflict became a fight of yards rather than miles. Claims that this proved manoeuvre obsolete mistake tactical destruction for operational and strategic success.

Long-range fires degrade enemy networks at range, but standoff alone rarely compels the enemy to surrender. Only ground manoeuvre can seize what the enemy holds and secure it against the enemy's will. HIMARS strikes on Donbas depots severely weakened Russia's ability to generate offensive fires but did not displace Russian forces from occupied lands.

Gaza

Standoff alone cannot clear a dug-in enemy

Operations after October 2023 highlight the challenges of dense urban and subterranean combat. Advanced sensors and precision strikes proved insufficient to defeat a dug-in network. Deliberate combined arms manoeuvre was required to clear and secure terrain. The demands: munitions depth and land forces capable of resolving what standoff alone cannot.

Own force

Two decades of habits must be unlearned

Rotational deployments produced units that rarely had to manoeuvre under a contested sky, mask their electromagnetic signatures, or sustain high-tempo operations without contractor support. The approach cannot rest on outdated assumptions of joint domain supremacy.

Technology

Autonomy at scale, but people still decide

Robotics, autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and counter-unmanned capabilities must reach formations at scale, with command and control and sustainment that keep pace. Yet autonomous systems enable Soldiers to destroy and disrupt, but they can never replace the human judgement, leadership, and physical presence of Soldiers required to control the land and consolidate gains.

4What changes, by element

Convergence

  • Theatre and corps HQs must be purpose-built to continuously synchronise capabilities across multiple domains, echelons, and the Joint Force. That capacity cannot be assembled after the fight begins; it must be designed into the headquarters from the start.
  • They require validation as joint task forces with demonstrated proficiency in executing Convergence and Endurance, and continuous rather than episodic convergence.
  • Operationalising Convergence requires AI-enabled data fabrics and edge-computing nodes capable of pairing any sensor to the optimal cross-domain shooter in real time.

Strike

  • The Army is moving beyond sole reliance on rocket artillery, leveraging combat aviation brigades, one-way attack drones, and modular launched systems to diversify and scale lethal Strike options.
  • Divisions and higher will remain the synchroniser of Strike, while distributed sensors and shooters empower subordinate formations to participate directly in the strike network.
  • Strike formations employ mobility, rapid dispersion, concealment and deception to survive, and need protection from massed missiles and one-way attack drones.
  • Long-range precision fires capacity and munitions volume inside the First Island Chain are required.

Close Battle

  • Our brigade combat teams are converting to brigades of increased capability and tactical mobility. They are optimising for rapid dispersion, survivability, and massing precision effects.
  • Divisions are the primary unit of action for Close Battle and must be resourced and equipped to succeed.
  • Manoeuvre platoons and companies require organic lower-tier defensive fires to defeat autonomous threats and enhance survivability.
  • We prioritise Soldier training as the foundation of Close Battle. We train to out-think and out-fight the adversary with or without sophisticated technology.

Endurance

  • Pervasive sensing makes traditional, centralised sustainment hubs and linear distribution corridors easy to detect and strike, necessitating decentralised supply nodes and redundant delivery routes.
  • Theatre HQs must integrate emerging capabilities, including autonomous surface vessels, distributed additive manufacturing, and resilient, low-signature power generation.
  • The organic industrial base must actively expand and generate the surge capacity required to sustain the munitions consumption and platform attrition rates of modern interstate warfare.
  • Installations become hardened platforms, and force generation will shift from a readiness cycle to a wartime campaign.

Capabilities the elements demand

Autonomy

Formations are actively integrating unmanned systems into combined arms teams with a goal of delivering autonomous platforms capable of sensing, deciding, and acting at machine speed.

AI-enabled sensing and decision

Decisive cognitive advantage: delivering actionable clarity to Soldiers and commanders in seconds and minutes rather than hours.

Command and control

The Army's current communications architecture remains overly reliant on vulnerable space-based links. It must build resilient, transport-agnostic network architectures.

Munitions

A deliberate balance between high-end precision weapons and affordable mass. Magazine depth and sustained production capacity are no longer mere industrial considerations; they are decisive operational requirements.