A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times – An Instant New York Times Bestseller: A Pentagon Insider's Tumultuous Years Under President Trump

by Mark T. Esper

The doctrine I learned as a West Point cadet and Army officer was called AirLand Battle. The Army developed it to defeat the Soviets on the battlefields of Europe. To this day I can still cite its key tenets. I wanted that same understanding and emphasis in our professional education for today’s force. AirLand Battle stood the test of time and was still a credible and effective doctrine, but we needed something new. The simple fact that AirLand Battle only dealt with two domains—air and land—and today’s military was operating in five—air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace—was evidence enough that new doctrine was needed if we were to prevail on the modern battlefield against the Chinese and Russians. General Milley agreed. He grew up in the Army with AirLand Battle as well. Together we pushed the Army in 2018 to move forward with a new concept based on Multi-Domain Operations, which would become the centerpiece of the effort he and the Joint Staff would begin leading to establish a new war-fighting doctrine for all of the DoD. I was pleased to learn later that the DoD approved version 1.0 of the Joint Warfighting Concept in June 2021.