Armys

On Thursday, U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) stood up a new command to speed up reaction times and sustain operations within the anti-access/area denial environments of the Pacific. To help achieve that goal, the commander of this new unit told TWZ he wants to be able to saturate any future adversary with so many drones they have trouble operating. 

“We have learned, particularly looking at Ukraine, there really is no sanctuary area that is protected from observation and potential targeting,” Maj. Gen. Bernard J. Harrington told us during a media roundtable to introduce his new command. It’s called the 7th Infantry Division Multi-Domain Command – Pacific (7th ID MDC-PAC). Headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, it combines the 7th Infantry Division and the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF). The idea is to merge the maneuver capabilities of the 7th ID’s two Stryker brigades with the long-range sensing, fires, cyber, space, electronic warfare, and information capabilities of the MDTF.

The new unit was created as the U.S. still struggles to be on the leading-edge of modern drone warfare, especially when it comes to the lower-end segment of this broad capability set, a deficit we have frequently highlighted. This is a concern top Army officials have acknowledged to us.

US Army Historic Pivot: 7th Infantry Division Becomes Multi-Domain Command – Pacific

“As we look at our employment of drones,” Harrington proffered, “we are looking at a host of not just traditional sense-and-strike drones, but how do we couple that — utilizing an adaptive and agentic C2 [command and control system] — to long-range one-way attack, to be able to overwhelm potential adversarial systems by a volume that is connected from our sensor drone all the way to our long-range one-way attack drone.”

Harrington was referring to an AI-driven system that can make and execute decisions on its own — routing data, repositioning sensors, matching targets to shooters — without requiring a human to manually approve each step. He later described it as being a “soldier-on-the-loop, not in-the-loop” system, meaning that a human monitors and can override the system’s actions.

You can read all about how AI will enable the future of lower-end drone warfare in our deep dive here.

In another lesson from Ukraine, as well as conflicts in the Middle East, Harrington wants to be able to use decoy drones to “confuse and potentially deceive an adversary.” The goal is to “deplete potential magazine depth.”

We saw this play out in Ukraine, where Russian mass barrages typically use decoy drones to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, confuse its sensors and force the expenditure of valuable air defense munitions. Ukraine eventually responded in kind, with its own decoy drones, to achieve the same effects.

The need for the U.S. to develop a vast arsenal of long-range one-way attack drones that can also serve as decoys to consume enemy effectors is a topic TWZ has addressed in the past.

You can see one of the Russian decoy drones in the image below.

Harrington added that he is also looking at electronic warfare drones “to help isolate, and then enable other drones to be effective. So when we look at the family of systems, it is not just one role for any one of our drones — it’s how do they pair together, and then how do we get sensor to shooter most effectively to target any adversary appropriately.”

Harrington declined to say what kinds of drones the new command aims to field, though it should be noted that U.S. Central Command recently used Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) kamikaze drones, a design reverse-engineered from the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, in the war against Iran. It was the first time those drones were used in combat.

“There are a host of drones that we are using from multiple vendors, and really what we’re looking at is how do we start bridging the gap — because I would say with the multi-domain task force, we got to a point for the first time that I’ve seen where we could now engage farther than we could sense,” he posited. “So we have worked very, very closely with several vendors in order to close that distance.”

A key to making this all work is getting these drones into the hands of troops to see how these systems actually function across the wide range of environments where the Army operates in the Pacific.

“We’ve got Arctic steppe in Alaska and the high north that are going to require a different type of drone and different types of employment than you would have in a jungle environment in Hawaii or Malaysia, which is different than a desert environment in the Australian Outback,” USARPAC commander, Gen. Ronald Clark, told us.

“It’s challenging, but we’re dealing with the best and brightest that we have — our young troopers out there are very comfortable with having technology in their hands, and very comfortable with giving feedback associated with what works and what does not, because their buddies’ lives depend on it,” Clark posited. “It’s literally a responsibility that every soldier takes on and takes very seriously.”

“The other thing I’d add is the distances we have to operate,” Clark noted. “For instance, if you drew a box that was 2,000 nautical miles in each direction and started in Cambodia — went east to the Philippines, south to Indonesia, and then back west to Malaysia, and then back to Cambodia — that box is roughly the same size as the box you would draw if you placed it over Western Europe, from the UK to Finland to Turkey to Spain.”

Interestingly, the officials leading this effort declined to name a specific adversary and there was no mention of China at all, even though that nation is the primary pacing threat of the service and by far the biggest challenge in the region.

“The multi-domain command Pacific is not tied to a specific adversary, and it’s not tied to a specific location,” Clark explained when asked about threats from North Korea. “It’s a capability that we have built to counter any threat from any adversary, so it’s not necessarily focused on a specific part of the region or a specific adversary.”

As we noted earlier in this story, this new command is being set up as the Army has struggled to catch up to drone warfare developments abroad. China has invested heavily in lower-end drone warfare at the infantry level up to long-range one-way attack drones. The country’s capacity to mass produce all types of drones rapidly on gigantic scales remains a real concern, too. This is not lost on U.S. Army leadership.

“We are behind on long-range sensing and long-range launched-effect strike,” Maj. Gen. James (Jay) Bartholomees, commanding general of the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, told us last year at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) annual symposium. “We absolutely need to build this capability quickly. We need to test it in our region; we also need to work with our allies and partners to do the same.”

The Army, it seems, is still trying to figure this all out.

Given that 7th ID MDC-PAC is essentially only a day old, there is a long way to go before the Army can draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of this concept. There are still many unknowns regarding what kind of drones the division has and is seeking, how many they need and the timelines for procurement. Regardless, setting up a new unit concentrating on melding drone warfare with the maneuver capabilities of Stryker brigades is a clear indication that the Army realizes it has to change how it operates to succeed in a Pacific fight.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The United States army announced last month that it would raise the maximum age at which Americans can enlist from 35 to 42 years to expand its pool of eligible candidates amid recruiting challenges in recent years.

An updated version of US Army Regulation 601–210, dated March 20, outlined the changes, including the elimination of rules requiring anyone with a single conviction for marijuana possession or drug paraphernalia to obtain a waiver to enlist.

Government data shows that while the US army has met its recruitment goals over the last two years, it fell short in 2022 and 2023 and has consistently failed to meet targets for the Army Reserve, shortcomings that analysts have attributed to several possible factors.

The new age limit was announced during the US-Israel war on Iran, towards which young people have expressed widespread opposition.

Here’s what you need to know about the changes.

When does the regulation go into effect?

The updated version of Army Regulation 601–210 officially takes effect on Monday, April 20.

What has the military said about the changes?

The US army announced updated enlistment regulations on March 20, with the changes scheduled to take effect one month later on April 20 and applying to the Regular Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard.

The maximum enlistment age is raised from 35 to 42, and previous restrictions requiring anyone with a single conviction for possession of marijuana or drug paraphernalia to obtain a waiver to enlist are done away with.

Do these changes apply to the whole US military?

The changes announced in March are specific to the US army.

The military news outlet Stars and Stripes reported that those changes bring the army into greater alignment with the maximum enlistment age of other branches of the military, such as the Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and Space Force, which accept enlistees in their early 40s.

The maximum enlistment age for the US Marines is 28.

What factors explain the change?

While the US army did not comment on the reasons for the increase, data from the US Army Recruiting Command show that the army has struggled with recruitment challenges.

While the army met 100 percent of its recruitment goals in 2025 and 2024, it missed its target by about 23 percent in 2023 and 25 percent in 2022.

That data also shows that the army has fallen short of recruitment targets for the Army Reserve for the last six years in a row.

The average age of army recruits has risen in recent years to 22.7, up from 21.7 in the 2000s and 21.1 in the 2010s, according to the military news outlet Army Times, citing data from a US army spokesperson.

The US Army Recruiting Command has attributed such challenges to issues such as changes in the labour market, limited awareness about military service, and a lack of qualified young people due to issues such as obesity, drug use, and mental health issues.

A 2018 poll listed concerns over possible injury and death, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), separation from family and friends, and other career interests as top reasons offered by young people for not joining the military.

Does the change have to do with the war in Iran?

Analysts have been discussing the possibility of raising the enlistment age for years as a means of addressing recruiting challenges, with a 2023 research report from the RAND Corporation, a US think tank, calling “older youth” a “crucial, largely untapped, yet high-quality pool of potential recruits”.

While the military has not suggested that the change is linked to the US-Israel war on Iran, where US President Donald Trump has previously said he could deploy ground troops, some social media users were quick to note the timing of the announcement.

Some in the online community joked that older supporters of the war would now be available to enlist.

“They raised the enlistment age to 42,” one X user said in response to a video of the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro praising Trump’s decision to attack Iran. “Why are you still here?”

Surveys have found that younger people are more likely to oppose the US war on Iran than those aged 65 and up, and polls in recent years have found that young people are more generally sceptical of US intervention abroad than older generations.

A 2024 Pew Research Center poll found that people between the ages of 18 and 29 were the only age bracket in the US who viewed the military more negatively than positively, with 53 percent saying the military had a negative effect versus 43 percent who said it had a positive effect.

How many people are currently in the US military?

According to the Pew Research Center, the US military has about 1.32 million active members. The US army accounts for the largest share, with nearly 450,000, while the US Navy is second with more than 334,000.

The Air Force has more than 317,000, the Marines more than 168,000, the Coast Guard nearly 42,000, and the Space Force nearly 9,700.

Data from the US Army Recruiting Command shows that about 80 percent of recruits in the Regular Army were men in 2025.

Black and Latino recruits also make up a larger share of army recruits than their percentage of the population, each making up about 27 percent of recruits while comprising 14 percent and 20 percent of the general population, according to data from the 2024 census.

White people made up about 40 percent of US army recruits, while about 57 percent of the general population.