The Onion Analogy

Understanding Multi-Domain Operations

By Master Sgt. Brandon C. Johnson

Sergeants Major Course, Class 75

April 11, 2025

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The term multi-domain operations (MDO) often confuses Soldiers when discussed at the operational and direct leadership level. For MDO to be successful, NCOs at all levels must better understand the concept and how it applies to all domains: land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace.

During the 2024 Fires Symposium, Lt. Gen. Milford H. Beagle, commanding general, Combined Arms Center, described the “how” behind MDO with near-peer adversaries in large-scale combat operations (LSCO) (U.S. Field Artillery Association, 2024a). He used the simple analogy of an onion. (No, it isn’t the same onion layers scheme from the movie Shrek — but like an ogre or an onion, there are layers to MDO.)

The onion analogy describes necessary MDO defensive operations. It also has an offensive relationship of understanding, detecting, seeing, and hitting the enemy. Units maximizing the offensive and defensive comparison in this analogy will be more prepared for the next war.

Knowing the analogy is not enough. However, understanding the detailed concepts of the onion will allow NCOs at all levels to better comprehend MDO — and equip them to prepare their Soldiers and advise commanders in their decision-making.

Don’t Be Understood

To not be understood by our enemy, we must understand MDO and how to prevent their awareness of friendly forces. We must know MDO and recognize the gaps to fight in a noncontiguous (land that is not connected and does not share a border) environment. It is vital that NCOs learn about MDO to ensure their Soldiers can fool the enemy and not allow their formations to be understood in this complex environment.

Military forces have long used deception techniques. Our ability to deceive the enemy enables U.S. forces to surprise and outfight a hostile force. In his widely accepted 2,500-year-old teachings, Sun Tzu stated, “all warfare is based upon deception” and “rapidity is the essence of war; take advantage of the enemy’s unreadiness” (Fowler & Nesbit, 1995).

Deception includes concealment of capabilities, disseminating false information, and achieving tactical surprise. Practicing Operational Security (OPSEC) at the junior level is key to ensuring our forces are not understood by the enemy.

OPSEC is the process of controlling critical information and indicators of friendly force action on military operations while incorporating countermeasures to reduce the risk of adversaries exploiting vulnerabilities (Department of Defense, 2016). Concealing our capabilities as they appear and evolve in the coming years as we modernize is a key factor in ensuring we are not understood.

Conceal and Reveal

Hiding our intent and capabilities limits the enemy’s understanding of our forces. The 1st Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF) achieves this goal through its conceal-and-reveal strategy. “The decision to conceal or reveal information is a constant push and pull between advantages and disadvantages that inform risk,” the Army notes in doctrinal publication Information (ADP 3-13) (Department of the Army [DA], 2023a).

Enemies can use these aspects to derive information from organizational activities. In the foreword to ADP 3-13, Beagle writes, “creating and exploiting information advantages is the business of all commanders, leaders, and Soldiers” (DA, 2023a). Leaders must be comfortable accepting risk when designing operations to inform or influence enemy forces.

With a deeper understanding of MDO, NCOs can better advise commanders on risk acceptance. Any organization can implement a conceal-and-reveal strategy. As the Army modernizes, NCOs should advise commanders to adopt similar policies to prevent adversaries from understanding their units’ capabilities until commanders choose to reveal them.

Practical applications include limiting organizational social media pages, targeting news articles after operations, or purposefully feeding information or misinformation to the adversary in all domains used by U.S. entities.

It’s a joint strategy, not one specific to the Army. Navy Capt. Alex Campbell noted that the Replicator, an aerial autonomous capability, has “a critical conceal-and-reveal strategy in place. … We aim to prevent our adversaries from gaining insight into the intricate details of the systems intended for widespread deployment across the INDOPACOM [Indo-Pacific Command] region” (Wilson, 2024).

Conversely, our near-peer adversaries are trying to do the same thing. They aim to understand us and our capabilities. Once they know them, they can figure out how to detect our forces.

Don’t Be Detected

Soldiers at the tactical level need to know the basics of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), thermal (heat), and acoustics (noise), as well as how to conceal their signatures. NCOs must incorporate training on basic concepts into the battle rhythm, including false battle positions, deception obstacles, dispersion, emission control, noise discipline, and the role of social media discipline at the tactical level (DA, 2025).

Detection entails the enemy using their capabilities to find our forces through EMS, thermal radiation, or acoustics. NCOs who better understand these detection principles can advise commanders on how to employ their forces and make the proper recommendations for changes in doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, or facilities (DOTMLPF).

One significant change is reducing command posts’ (CP) size and signature. Large structures create immense signatures the enemy can quickly detect and destroy. An example of why these structures need size reduction comes from the first year of the current war in Ukraine. In eight months, Ukraine destroyed dozens of CPs and killed 1,500 Russian officers by detecting and targeting their colossal CPs (Beagle et al., 2023).

Russia was wildly ineffective in not being detected, leading to being seen and hit by Ukraine. If our forces don’t learn from this and adjust the size and capabilities of our CPs, they will find themselves in the same situation in the next war.

However, contrary to popular belief, there are more than materiel solutions to enable leaders in MDO. The newest equipment or CP is only a small part of remaining undetected or detecting the enemy. There are solutions where NCOs have the highest impact on the educational and training base.

Changing Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) and training Soldiers in a multi-domain environment should be at the forefront. Mobile or size-reduced CPs can happen now. NCOs don’t have to wait for materials.

If changes don’t occur, detection through EMS, heat, or noise will eventually happen. If Soldiers are detected, it could only be a matter of seconds before they are seen.

Don’t Be Seen

Although there are many similarities between not being detected and not being seen, they are different. Not being detected is specific to the EMS. Not being seen relates to capabilities outside EMS, such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance — or being seen by the human eye.

Avoiding being seen by the enemy on the battlefield is not a new concept, but the response time in a near-peer threat is much quicker and more deadly. Our adversaries can conduct long-range precision fires with a massive artillery arsenal and similar offensive capabilities in the space and cyberspace domains.

The tenet of agility in MDO entails moving forces and adjusting their activities more quickly than the enemy (DA, 2025). Not being seen involves techniques in cover and concealment and keeping a higher tempo than the enemy. Units must adopt TTPs to enforce mobility. Organizations of all echelons, from squads to divisions, must be mobile to increase agility and decrease the likelihood of being seen.

CPs, as mentioned, must be smaller and mobile. Transitioning large tents filled with computers to a small three- to four-vehicle modular system is the future of CP warfighting (Beagle et al., 2023).

Swapping large structures for mobile vehicles with similar capabilities can increase agility. However, they can also hide more effectively through cover and concealment from enemy scouting efforts, potentially deceiving the enemy as just a squad element. However, it could be a battalion command post preparing for an offensive attack.

NCOs must recommend their formations leave the tents in their sheds and begin practicing fighting on the move during their next collective training event. Gone are the days of comfortable, coffee-filled, complex, and colossal CPs that lack flexibility. Once seen by near-peer adversaries, they can be hit in minutes.

Don’t Be Hit

Not being hit is the core of our onion. Like our deep sensing, collection, and targeting capabilities, our adversaries can hit our forces once they are seen. We must protect our maneuver forces with a robust, layered defense system through all air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace domains.

Our adversaries will work to consolidate gains to destroy our forces, the core of our onion. Consolidating gains entails setting conditions before armed conflict for sustained operations (DA, 2025).

Our near-peer competitors have prepared us for the environment of war in the most recent decades. While our forces have focused on a two-front counterinsurgency war, our adversaries have set conditions during the competition period for a significant conflict (Wilson, 2022).

China built artificial islands, expanding its reach in the Indo-Pacific, and made significant movements to create a robust system of sensors and shooters, an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) network. Other competitors, like Russia, use similar network zones in Crimea, Kaliningrad, the Kola Peninsula, and the Kuril Islands as a maritime blockade (Vershinin, 2020).

These A2/AD networks pose a significant capability gap for maneuver commanders during conflict. Senior NCOs at the division and corps level must understand the protection warfighting function and advise commanders how to not “get hit” when they are inevitably detected and seen by the enemy.

Offensive Onion

The U.S. Army uses a sizable part of its budget, time, and energy to avoid getting hit. These capabilities receive the most attention from air defense, security, and other protection functions, such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN).

Offensively, we must understand, detect, see, and hit our enemy. The Army’s Tactics field manual (FM 3-90) states, “Units find the enemy through aggressive information collection activities that provide commanders with timely, detailed, and accurate intelligence” (DA, 2023b). Army leaders must use this intelligence to know the enemy, detect them through the space and cyberspace domain, and quickly hit them.

Col. Pat Moffett, commander, 2nd MDTF, said we must give commanders the ability to have “a symphony of fires across all domains” — fires in both the kinetic and non-kinetic sense, both mass and precision (U.S. Field Artillery Association, 2024b). Like us, our enemy is agile, and their fires occur across all domains. If seen, the enemy will hit and kill our Soldiers.

MDO in Recent LSCO

The recent conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia provided lessons on the importance of the first onion layer (“don’t be understood”). While COVID-19 captivated much of the world’s interest, the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War was taking place with minimal global attention.

During the decades between the First and Second Nagorno-Karabakh Wars, Azerbaijan built an army prepared for LSCO in MDO — spending more than 24 billion dollars (Antal, 2022). Meanwhile, Armenia remained stagnant and static, using its time to build upon archaic Soviet-era battle positions and trench warfare.

Azerbaijan concealed its capabilities from Armenia until it was too late for it to adapt. Applying MDO capabilities, Azerbaijan created an asymmetric advantage (possessing a distinct edge by exploiting vulnerabilities rather than relying on direct confrontation) over its enemy, controlling the entire war. Armenia failed to understand its enemy and was quickly understood due to its inability to adapt to a changing environment. The result: It lost the conflict in less than two months.

Suppose NCOs at all levels know to increase their understanding of the enemy, like Azerbaijan. Conversely, suppose they know how to decrease the enemy’s understanding of their capabilities. Armenia failed the onion analogy. They did not make any significant upgrades to fight in an MDO between the First and Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Thus, they were easily understood, detected, seen, and hit by Azerbaijan.

Transversely, Azerbaijan was able to conceal its advances in MDO, using TTPs and new equipment to conceal its forces and protect itself from being hit by Armenia’s outdated technology.

Conclusion

U.S. Army NCOs at all levels of leadership must take lessons from recent conflicts — such as the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the War in Ukraine — and organizations like the 1st MDTF operating in competition with U.S. adversaries to implement TTPs within their organizations and prepare for large-scale conflict.

Leaders should use the onion analogy to help explain the defensive and offensive measures necessary during MDO and ensure we win subsequent wars against near-peer adversaries and preserve Soldiers’ lives.

References

Antal, J. F. (2022). Seven seconds to die: a military analysis of the second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the future of warfighting. Casemate.

Beagle, M. H., Slider, J., & Arrol, M. (2023). The graveyard of command posts: What Chornobaivka should teach us about command and control in large-scale combat operations. Military Review. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/May-June-2023/Graveyard-of-Command-Posts/

Department of Defense. (2016). Operations Security (JP 3-13.3). https://media.defense.gov/2020/Oct/28/2002524944/-1/-1/0/JP%203-13.3-OPSEC.PDF

Department of the Army. (2023a). Information (ADP 3-13). https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN39736-ADP_3-13-000-WEB-1.pdf

Department of the Army. (2023b). Tactics (FM 3-90). https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN38160-FM_3-90-000-WEB-1.pdf

Department of the Army. (2025). Operations (FM 3-0). https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN43326-FM_3-0-000-WEB-1.pdf

Fowler, C. A., & Nesbit, R. F. (1995). Tactical deception in air-land warfare. Journal of Electronic Defense. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A17620824/AONE?u=anon~d04d4eff&sid=googleScholar&xid=1b45fe4a

U.S. Field Artillery Association. (2024a, May 29). LTG Milford Beagle — Fires Symposium 2024. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/951599647

U.S. Field Artillery Association. (2024b, June 11). Offensive & Defensive Fires in MDO — Fires Symposium. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/956508321

Vershinin, A. (2020). The challenge of dis-integrating A2/AD zone: How emerging technologies are shifting the balance back to the defense. National Defense University Press. https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2106488/thechallenge-of-dis-integrating-a2ad-zone-howemerging-technologies-are-shifti/

Wilson, C. L. (2022). Embracing the Future of a Multidomain Army. NCO Journal. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives/2022/December/Embracing-the-Future-of-a-Multidomain-Army/

Wilson, J. (2024). Pentagon’s replicator initiative advances with first tranche systems selected, second phase in stealth mode. military.news. https://military.news/pentagon-s-replicator-initiative-advances-with-first-tranche-systems-selected-second-phase-in-stealth-mode/

 

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