The 3rd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery Regiment, based out of Fort Drum, New York, has been stood up as the Strategic Fires Battalion aligned with Europe.

While for day to day administration purposes the unit is aligned with the 10th Mountain Division that resides at Fort Drum, the Strategic Fires Battalion is the kinetic core of the Europe-focused 2nd Multi Domain Task Force, under the Germany-based 56th Multi-Domain Command.

“As we activate 3rd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery Regiment today, we reaffirm our commitment to readiness, innovation and to our allies and partners abroad”, is the important point made by Col. Jeffrey Pickler, 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force Commander. There is not a publicly disclosed program for when the unit will begin to make rotational deployments to Europe, but “3-12 is looking forward to participating as a unit and adding additional capabilities with the 56th MDC-E in future theater-level exercises”.

In July 2024, the White House had issued a joint statement with Germany promising the Long Range Fires Battalion would “begin episodic deployments” in Germany in 2026 but it’s not clear at this stage if this is still current. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has much changed Germany’s perception of the INF Treaty-busting Long Range Fires Battalion: when first announced in 2021 it was seen as likely that Berlin would oppose stationing the unit in its territory.

By 2024 sentiments had well and truly changed and Germany is now, as we reported earlier this year, actively planning to procure TYPHON batteries of its own from the US.

The Strategic/Long Range Fires Battalions are composite units at the heart of the whole Multi Domain Task Force concept as launched several years ago. Each battalion combines a HIMARS battery armed with GMLRS and Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) with, as fielding of the new systems progresses, a TYPHON Strategic Mid-range Capability with TOMAHAWK and SM-6 missiles, and a DARK EAGLE hypersonic boost-glide missile battery.

The formation of 3-12 marks the ongoing progress of a plan that has been running for several years and is expected to eventually result in 5 Multi Domain Task Forces.

The 1st MDTF is headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA and aligned to the US Army Pacific. It was activated in 2017. Its Long Range Fires Battalion is the 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment.

The 2nd MDTF was activated on September 16, 2021, at Clay Kaserne in Wiesbaden, Germany, as the Europe-theatre formation. As announced in December 2023, however, most of the 2nd MDTF will be stationed, day to day, in the US rather than in Germany, with Fort Drum, N.Y. being the home for 1,495 soldiers and personnel from Task Force’s Long-Range Fires Battalion (LRFB), Brigade Support Battalion (BSB), and Air Defense Battalion.

The 3rd MDTF was activated in September 2022 at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, obviously again with a Pacific-theatre focus. Its Long Range Fires Battalion is 1st Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment.

The 4th MDTF is to be stationed at Fort Carson, CO, but focused on the Indo-Pacific theater, and is to be fully operational by FY2027.

The 5th MDTF is to be stationed at Fort Bragg, NC, and will be a “contingency” formation, not initially tied to a specific theatre. The 5th MDTF is to be fully operational by FY2028.

While HIMARS is more or less readily available, the fielding of TYPHON and DARK EAGLE will obviously be more gradual.

The 1st and 3rd MDTF have in theory received both their TYPHON and DARK EAGLE batteries, although it must be noted that both TYPHON batteries formed so far are resident at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA.

The 2nd MDTF is expected to get its TYPHON battery during 2026.

The 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF) at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA was the first LRFB to form and has been very active with its TYPHON battery over the last 2 years, deploying the system to the Philippines and Australia, for example. In July 2025, from Australia, TYPHON successfully live-fire engaged a target ship at sea.

TYPHON production and fielding is more advanced than that of the DARK EAGLE hypersonic missile, however on 17 December, the US Army activated Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, 3d Multi-Domain Task Force, as the second hypersonic unit.

In the past few days, during an informal briefing with press present, Lt. Gen. Francisco Lozano, Director of Hypersonic, Directed Energy, Space and Rapid Acquisition, told Defense Secretary Hegseth that DARK EAGLE can hit “mainland China from Guam”, which puts the weapon’s reach in the 3,500 km range, up from earlier comments that had given “at least 1,725 miles” (2,775 km).

He was also heard providing some interesting indications about the warhead, saying it contains “under 30 pounds” of explosive, which is very little, less than that found on an AIM-120 AMRAAM. He went on stating that the explosive is just to get its “projectiles out”, and that effects are delivered on an area the size of a parking lot, with lethality coming primarily from speed.

From these comments it would appear that DARK EAGLE is intended as an area-attack weapon loaded with a warhead with multiple inert projectiles using kinetic energy to achieve target destruction. This would make it more similar to the AW warhead for GMLRS than to other cruise/ballistic missiles carrying large amounts of HE.

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