Which practice helps exploit gaps in A2/AD and maintain tempo?

• A. Always operate in a single, fixed route.
• B. Ignore deception and dispersion.
• C. Maintain tempo, use deception, dispersion, secure routes, and cross-domain coordination.
• D. Engage in frontal assaults across all domains.

Answer: (C)

Maintaining tempo means driving rapid, coordinated actions to press opportunities as gaps in anti-access/area denial open, so you stay ahead of the enemy’s ability to react. To exploit those gaps effectively, you combine several interrelated practices. Deception helps mislead the adversary about where and when you’ll appear, delaying their ability to reinforce or concentrate fires where you’re not actually present. Dispersion reduces susceptibility to massed fires and sensors, making it harder for the defender to detect and lock onto a single, decisive target. Securing routes ensures you have reliable, protected pathways through contested areas so movement and maneuver aren’t forced into bottlenecks. Cross-domain coordination brings together effects from air, sea, land, space, cyber, and information operations in a synchronized way, so when a gap opens, you can strike with complementary capabilities from multiple domains at the same time, amplifying your impact and keeping pressure on the defender.

In contrast, sticking to a single fixed route reduces flexibility and predictability, ignoring deception and dispersion leaves you vulnerable to misdirection and concentrated fires, and frontal assaults across all domains tend to meet the strongest lines of A2/AD, wasting tempo and inviting countermeasures. The integrated approach of tempo plus deception, dispersion, secure routes, and cross-domain coordination best exploits gaps and maintains momentum.