Get Smart on the new Field Manual (FM) 3-04!

By LTC Julie A. MacKnyght

Article published on: July 1, 2025 in the Aviation Digest July-September 2025 Issue

Read Time: < 11 mins

In an impressive formation, Black Hawk helicopters conduct a multi-ship movement to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. U.S. Army photo by SGT Jeff Harris.

The new Field Manual (FM) 3-04 is finally out!

The revision kicked off just over 2 years ago. We’ve been foreshadowing some of the changes for the past year plus, so some of this may be familiar to our readers. Now, it’s finally official! Knowing time is our most limited resource, this article (a companion to the official change brief ¹) addresses the big rocks to the updates, so our branch can get a good running takeoff.

First, what hasn’t changed:

Army Aviation exists to support the ground force commander. The sacred trust that has existed since our inception drives how we fight, and this iteration of FM 3-04, “Army Aviation,” (Department of the Army [DA], 2025c) highlights how aviators, first and foremost, need to be “maneuverists.” We are, after all, a maneuver branch; we must understand Army tactics as they are fought on the ground, so we can best support them from the air. As such, we need to understand the doctrine—the terms, symbology, and the so-what behind them—the rest of the Army uses. We can’t afford to only focus on the aviation tactics and technical aspects we use for the flying part.

One example of this actually shows up on our Aircrew Training Manuals,² which were recently updated on their biannual cycle. The task “Perform Actions on Contact” was significantly updated from what most of us have known and committed to memory for the past several decades. Change ruffles feathers, but the reason was that FM 3-90, “Tactics,” published in May 2023, updated the Army’s treatment of Actions on Contact,³ streamlining and standardizing them; thus, we must properly nest.

So, what else has changed?

Overall, terminology has been streamlined and updated to what was, up until 6 days before final release, the “new” FM 3-0, “Operations,” which had been published October 2022. But, FM 3-0, and its parent doctrine, Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 3-0, were both updated and published 21 March this year (DA, 2025a; DA, 2025b)! The spirit of those books has not changed, but there have been some terminology updates. You might notice some discrepancies between FM 3-0 cited definitions in the new FM 3-04 and the actual new FM 3-0 (or ADP 3-0, which assumed proponency back for many of them). Please defer to the 2025 FM 3-0 or ADP 3-0 definitions in these cases.

Field Manual 3-04 did update aviation-focused terminology, however. Most notable:

- Air Ground Operations (AGO)⁴ was rescinded. We⁵ were originally going to streamline it, but ultimately decided that it was redundant to combined arms, which are “the synchronized and simultaneous application of arms to achieve an effect greater than if each element was used separately or sequentially” (DA, 2025b, p. 44). Aviation will now nest at the Army level.

- Manned Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T)⁶ was updated to, “The synchronized employment of Soldiers, manned and unmanned air and ground vehicles, robotics, and sensors to achieve an objective” (DA, 2025c, p. 5). There was vigorous debate about whether to keep it or toss it. In the end, we decided that the concept was viable but needed significant expansion of scope and applicability to all Army branches. Field Manual 3-04 serves as a bridge to bring MUM-T into the current era of transformation, and we expect the Combined Arms Center to assume proponency (and significantly streamline⁷ it) in the future.

Figure 1. “Binned” categories of the seven core competencies (Field Manual 3-04, DA, 2025c; Army Aviation Change Brief, DOTD, 2025, p. 6).

- Attack terminology was heavily streamlined. No more “against enemy forces in close friendly/out of friendly contact,” which has stymied even seasoned doctrine nerds for years trying to speak from memory. To align with FM 3-0’s focus on an operation’s time, space, and purpose, aviation attacks are described as close attacks and deep attacks. So if an attack is designed to close with and destroy enemy forces in a current battle or engagement, it’s a close attack.⁸ If an attack is designed to preclude the enemy from bringing to bear a capability against us in a future battle, it’s a deep attack.⁹ Deep operations, and thus deep attacks, are inherently joint; Army Aviation will not be conducting them unilaterally!

New term alert!

As aviators, the term FARP (forward arming and refueling point) is so second-nature, we’ve turned it into a verb, a la “we’ll FARP at [insert-gas-station-brand-here].” But how often do we go back and look at the definition? Per Joint Publication (JP) 3-09.3, “Joint Close Air Support” (2019, validated 2021), a FARP is “a temporary facility, organized, equipped, and deployed, to provide fuel and ammunition necessary for the employment of aviation maneuver units in combat” (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2021, p. GL-10). Large-scale combat does not lend itself to “points” or “facilities,” especially when aviation sustainment nodes are a high-value¹⁰ target to the enemy.

Units experimenting at home station and the combat training centers led to the new concept—and thus term—of an area for forward arming and refueling (AFAR).¹¹ The formal definition is “a temporary site developed to increase survivability, equipped with the proper resources, and deployed as far forward, or widely dispersed, as tactically feasible to provide fuel and ammunition necessary to sustain aviation maneuver units in combat” (DA, 2025c, p. 12). On the ground, it is very similar to a position area for artillery (PAA),¹² about which FM 3-90 notes, “Commanders assign PAAs for terrain management and for locations where individual artillery systems can maneuver to increase their survivability” (DA, 2023c, p. A-11). Thus, AFARs allow our FARP personnel and equipment to adapt to the tactical situation, while still giving aircrews predictability in terms of general location. The techniques and procedures used by FARP personnel in an AFAR also allow much quicker setup and teardown, further improving survivability.

What are our core competencies?

I asked this question to various professional military education classes for several years, ranks ranging from CW2-CW5, MAJ-COL, and unless students had recently come from a combat training center or similar assignment, this question stymied a large proportion of us. To be fair, they have been rather verbose, and if I teased out the question, “what does aviation provide the ground force?” folks usually could get to the spirit of our seven core competencies. However, this should be core knowledge (thus, the name) ingrained on the heart of every aviator, as well as every ground commander who needs to know how we can assist.

Figure 2. The seven aviation core competencies (Field Manual 3-04, DA, 2025c; Army Aviation Change Brief, DOTD, 2025, p. 7).

To this end, FM 3-04 “bins” the seven core competencies into four easy to remember categories: SEE (SENSE), STRIKE, MOVE, and EXTEND (Figure 1) (DA, 2025c, p. 16). SEE, with the nuance of SENSE based on how technology is rapidly expanding the ways we can detect the enemy,¹³ speaks to reconnaissance and security, two bread and butter enabling tasks14 Army Aviation has excelled at for generations. STRIKE speaks to attacks, which we innately think of as offense, but could be defensive as well. MOVE speaks to all the ways we move troops and their gear: air assault, air movement, and aerial evacuation. EXTEND is the one people most confuse, as it speaks to extending command and control—or in the future, the network—not so much to extending everything else (the other competencies address extending operational reach or the range of fires, for example) (DA, 2025c, p. 28).

SEE (SENSE), STRIKE, MOVE, and EXTEND did not replace the core competencies, they only bin them into an easy way to remember—and more importantly, communicate them to the ground force—what it is we exist to do. We did, however, streamline most of them to aid in the more detailed memorization as follows:

The competencies (Figure 2) focus on the why as much as the what, which is why we don’t simply call numbers one and two “reconnaissance” and “security,” or number three “attack.” The reason number three is written as “destroy, dislocate, disintegrate, or isolate enemy forces” is because those are the defeat mechanisms per FM 3-0,¹⁵ and the old alliterative list of D-words was doctrinally obsolete¹⁶ anyway. The defeat mechanisms are not tasks and are generally used by division and above to develop operational and strategic approaches to defeat enemy forces; using them in our core competency highlights how aviation is a division and higher level maneuver element. Field Manual 3-04 contains verbiage to ensure they are used properly,¹⁷ so don’t let your S-3 use these in a mission statement (unless it’s “destroy,” which dual-hats as a tactical mission task)!

Competency six was streamlined to cover both aeromedical evacuation (AE,¹⁸ which is distinguished from medical evacuation [MEDEVAC],¹⁹ since MEDEVAC can be via ground or air) and casualty evacuation20 (CASEVAC), which we expect to take on a much larger role in large-scale combat across all Army branches. As with the other two “MOVE” competencies, we expect our lift aircraft to rarely return from a mission empty, whether backhauling expended supplies/trash, equipment, or personnel (wounded or just needing to relocate). Additionally, we removed the reference to personnel recovery (PR) in the competency name, since PR is a responsibility of all commands, not just aviation. Any support we provide to PR is already nested under one of our other competencies, so removing PR from the label is not removing it from our list of possible missions!

Other general updates to FM 3-04 include:

- Reducing the previous task force focus, instead emphasizing a CAB’s alignment with its assigned divisions.

- Removing “team” terminology and symbology (e.g., no more scout weapons team or attack weapons team, in favor of discussing platoon or company maneuver.

- Updating the reconnaissance and security sections to align with FM 3-90 (DA, 2023c) and FM 3-98, “Reconnaissance and Security Operations” (DA, 2023b) updates.

- Removing all references to the RQ-7 Shadow UAS.

- Expanding the maritime section.

- Expanding the discussion on sustainment, to include a more refined discussion on aviation maintenance and the challenges the expected operating environment will bring.

- Adding Appendix C, Special Operations Aviation, describing organization, functions, core activities, employment considerations, and joint operations (DA, 2025c, pp. 127 to 130).

So, what did we miss?

Because of all the research, collaboration, and due diligence at all levels of command that go into producing doctrine, it is a long process and can move slower than the pace of change in the force. Additionally, terms used by senior leaders evolve, especially in this current time of rapid transformation. Lastly, sometimes, no matter how many eyes review a book, we still miss something! So it is with FM 3-04; in addition to the terminology updates brought by the new ADP 3-0 and FM 3-0, three known errata exist.

- FM 3-04’s Foreword contains the phrase, “air-ground littoral,” which was growing as a concept 9 months ago when it was written. As of early March 2025, it is no longer encouraged. The current substitute is “upper tier of the land domain.”

- Paragraph 1-115 (p. 25) cites the rescinded term, “Information Operations” (IO). The joint community replaced it with “Operations in the Information Environment” in JP 3-04, “Information in Joint Operations” (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2022, p. x). The Army’s ADP 3-13, “Information,” replaced it with “Information Activity” (DA, 2023a, p. GL-5), and FM 3-13, “Information Operations,” (DA, 2016) is currently under revision. We are not yet aware of any current Army doctrine that addresses what to call the working group formerly known as the IO working group.

- The Problem, Plan, People, Parts, Tools, Training, and Time (P4T3) Goof: Chapter 4 (para. 4-6 and 4-7) cites the originally proposed, but formally rejected, update to the beloved “P4T3” acronym as “P5T3.” When drafting this chapter, we had many discussions about whether priority should be its own separate phase, since it so heavily impacts the plan of maintenance actions to maintain the unit’s mission. Ultimately, we determined that priority would be included and discussed as part of the problem phase, which impacts the rest of P4T3 in what we expect to be a resource-constrained combat environment. Thus, when we decided to retain P4T3 as-is after all, we forgot to double back and remove the experimental P5T3 mentions.

We also did not capture, on purpose, any of the force design update (FDU) changes, as during the final command review of FM 3-04, the FDU was not yet approved. We knew even once it was approved, it would take time for the dust to settle. We did not want to further delay FM 3-04’s release. Thus, we plan an update in the near-future to address it. This update will also address approved, but not yet doctrinally codified, updates in parallel with the Fires Center of Excellence (FCOE) regarding the entity formerly called the ADAM/BAE:

- The air defense airspace management (ADAM) cell is leaving the airspace management business and rebranding as the ADSE: Air defense support element.

- The brigade aviation element (BAE) is modernizing to increase focus on airspace and divert certain personnel elsewhere (e.g., the aviation MAJ).

- Because Army operations now focus on the division and not the brigade combat team/brigade, and because there is a large gap currently in Army and aviation doctrine on the roles of aviation staff sections at higher echelons (e.g., G-3 Aviation), the BAE will be renamed the air ground integration element (AGIE). It will be applicable at brigade, division, and corps levels.

- The AVCOE and FCOE are coordinating for the future ADSE/AGIE doctrinal publication, but terminology throughout aviation doctrine will have to be updated as well.

Army Transformation Initiative

It’s a good thing we didn’t delay publishing to address the FDU in FM 3-04, as there have been significant senior leader decisions since, which will greatly affect our branch. The next version to be published will address those once the Aviation Enterprise has had a chance to analyze all the impacts.

Impact Aviation Doctrine!

As with any of our publications, please give us feedback! To ensure it becomes a formal part of the next revision, submit it on a DA Form 2028,²¹ “Recommended Changes to Publications and Blank Forms,” to the Doctrine Team at usarmy.novosel.avncoe.mbx.doctrine-branch@army.mil. Tell us what you like, so we retain it, and where else we goofed, so we can correct it. If your unit has been experimenting with local best practices you think should be codified into doctrine as a tactic, technique, or procedure (TTP)²² we need to know about that as well! The DOTD’s Tactics Branch²³ can work in-depth with your unit to assist with validating it from concept into doctrine.

Suggestions that are time-sensitive and high-impact may be worked into the Aviation Branch Operations Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)²⁴ as a bridge until the next doctrinal update is published, so don’t think that just because it’s a slow process, it’s not worth bringing up. Finally, another avenue to clarify aspects of any aviation doctrine or publication is the Doctrine Outreach channel on the AVCOE LSCO LPD MSTeams.²⁵ The files section has the latest aviation doctrine products, as well as aviation and Army doctrine change briefs and other pertinent references, to help you in your maneuverist studies.

Above the Best, and Scouts Out!