In the 2018 National Defense Strategy, dynamic force employment describes the priority of maintaining the capacity and capabilities for major combat, while providing options for proactive and scalable employment of the Joint Force. It allows the Joint Force to develop a wide range of options and quickly deploy forces for emerging requirements while maintaining readiness to respond to contingencies.
Global Operating Model
In the 2018 National Defense Strategy, a four-layer global operating model was established with the contact, blunt, surge, and homeland. The global operating model describes how the Joint Force will be postured and employed to achieve its competition and wartime missions.
The four layers are designed to:
Help us compete more effectively below the level of armed conflict (Contact Layer)
Delay, degrade, or deny adversary aggression (Blunt Layer)
Surge war-winning forces and manage conflict escalation (Surge Layer)
Defend the U.S. homeland (Homeland Layer)
Between 2015 and 2019 the Naval Service developed a series of maritime concepts: Distributed Maritime Operations, Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment, and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations. These concepts fully align with the global operating model, and call for naval capabilities to provide advantage to a joint campaign by creating integrated, mobile, and tailorable “all domain” naval formations capable of operating across the competition continuum.
Competition Continuum
Rather than a world at either peace or at war, the competition continuum describes a world of enduring competition conducted through a mixture of cooperation, competition below armed conflict, and armed conflict.