ABOUT THE REPORT

One of the most critical operational challenges the United States is likely to confront in a future conflict, particularly in the Indo-Pacific theater, is the threat of massed precision-guided air and missile attacks on overseas ports, bases, and other vital facilities. DoD has invested significant resources to defend against ballistic missile attacks on the United States, as well as its forward bases and forward-operating forces. However, it still cannot defeat large numbers of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial systems.

Integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) plans still rely on defensive interceptors that cost too much, deliver too little, and do not sufficiently address the growing threat of complex salvo attacks.

Alternative approaches should include layered, comprehensive, and distributed IAMD concepts that address the full spectrum of threats. Specifically, new concepts should be built around concentric rings: an outer ring that can detect and engage hostile targets far beyond the range of ground-based defensive systems located at or near a threatened base; an inner ring that can protect the area immediately surrounding that base; and a close-in ring that provides point defense against specific targets on that base. Strengthening the Phalanx develops such a concept and applies it to the defense of Guam. 

ABOUT THE REPORT

Weapons do not conduct military operations in isolation from one another, and yet the U.S. defense community devotes considerable attention each year to individual platforms. The time spent appraising specific weapons is understandable, given the huge investments and cutthroat politics surrounding these projects, not to mention the defense budget boiling everything down to line items, but is misplaced in a strategic context. 

In Evaluate Like We Operate, Senior Fellow Travis Sharp and Research Fellow Tyler Hacker propose that the defense community should instead evaluate weapons in terms of networked force packages, or NFPs, a middle layer above individual weapons systems and below battle networks and force structure. As the title indicates, this approach closely mirrors how the U.S. military actually employs these weapons systems and will become crucial as future force structures incorporate attributable drones, loitering weapons, and unmanned munition carriers that blur the lines between platform and weapon. Sharp and Hacker provide two illustrative analyses of the NFP approach, first applying it to the operational advantages of next-generation munitions and then reassessing the cost-effectiveness of advanced fighter aircraft by incorporating mission-level cost avoidance. The authors conclude with possible additional areas where the NFP approach could illuminate operational advantages and cost savings, as well as implementation strategies to overcome organizational and political resistance. By embracing the NFP approach, DoD will leverage an enduring U.S. advantage–openness to rigorous analysis, even if contrarian–to compete more effectively against China and Russia.

On Tuesday, September 19, 2023, CSBA’s Katherine Kjellström Elgin and Eric Edelman will discuss forthcoming research that examines the future of the Russian military by analyzing the Russian military’s propensity to reform. Based off a study of history and characteristics of the Russian military, the research suggests that the Russian military that emerges after the war in Ukraine is unlikely to be a significantly different force than before. That does not mean that it will not be a threat – but because reform is only likely to occur under narrow conditions, the Russian military is unlikely to drastically reshape in the medium- to long-term. Instead, the Russian armed forces will likely look similar to the Russian armed forces we see today, even if there are major reform programs announced

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In May 2022, the “Quad” nations — the United States, Australia, Japan, and India — announced the creation of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) to monitor illegal fishing, humanitarian crises, maritime security, marine conservation, and related issues in the region. IPMDA’s most significant activity involves disseminating unclassified data collected by commercial satellites to improve the common operating picture of participating nations and bolster information sharing across regional fusion centers, including in India, Singapore, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu.

In Extending Deterrence by Detection, authors Travis Sharp, Thomas G. Mahnken, and Tim Sadov argue that providing IPMDA with a small fleet of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) would bolster the quality and quantity of intelligence it produces. Moreover, integrating UAS into IPMDA would improve both peacetime and potential wartime surveillance of the South China Sea, where China has concentrated the bulk of its antagonistic maritime activities. 

Crucially, the author's analysis provides a framework for assessing the value of long-endurance UAS operations, including measuring ISR collection importance in the region and optimal flight paths for UAS operating from Guam or the Philippines. This report includes the methodology used to establish the framework and plot the optimal flight paths, offering applications in the South China Sea and beyond. Using this framework, the authors conclude that in the short term, IPMDA could utilize contractor-owned, contractor-operated (COCO) aircraft to provide significant ISR value relative to its cost, especially if the Quad splits the bill among its member countries and/or with partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

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The United States (U.S.) provision of weapons to Ukraine over the last year has raised critical questions about the overall supply of Western munitions and the ability of the weapon industrial base to meet the munitions demands of contemporary conflict. Although war in Ukraine has focused the world’s attention on the munitions issue, a survey of previous U.S. strike operations reveals that the U.S. has struggled to meet PGM demands in nearly every major campaign undertaken since their adoption. Looking to the future, simply producing and procuring more PGMs may not be enough to satisfy the requirements of a near-term great power conflict given current fiscal, industrial, and political constraints.

In Beyond Precision, CSBA Research Fellow Tyler Hacker examines five potential conflict scenarios in the Indo-Pacific region to highlight essential PGM types and identify capability and capacity gaps in the current U.S. PGM portfolio. Finding both insufficient on-hand inventories and inadequate production capacity, Hacker explores several approaches the United States could take to maintain its precision-strike advantage. He also challenges current assumptions about munitions production and consumption and assesses how U.S. strategy may need to adapt depending on conflict duration, operational objectives, and other scenario variables. Finally, Hacker provides near and long-term recommendations to maintain the U.S. precision-strike advantage well into the future.

ABOUT THE REPORT

In the long-term competition between the United States and China, the competitive edge will be decided not only by who more effectively fields current capabilities and strategies, but also by which state's techno-security system can most effectively develop and field new technologies for strategic, dual-use, and defense applications. Although both states recognize the need to prevail in the techno-security competition, the two have drastically different approaches to defense innovation and defense industrial policy. 

In The Decisive Decade, authors Tai Ming Cheung and Thomas G. Mahnken contend that the long-term techno-security competition between the United States and China hinges upon how both states organize, mobilize, and incentivize their respective innovation sectors and industrial economies.  Cheung and Mahnken offer a comprehensive analysis of both systems, including a detailed assessment of China's defense industrial transformation in recent years and how recent global events have affected the defense industrial bases in both states. The authors conclude with a diagnostic net assessment of the U.S. and Chinese techno-security systems, judging that although the U.S. system is better organized and structured for long-term competition than China’s to be successful the United States cannot be complacent and must take urgent action to improve the performance of its system.

'The New Makers of Modern Strategy' is the essential next installment of the definitive work on strategy and those who have shaped its theoretical development and practice from antiquity to the present. With contributions from an esteemed group of scholars and practitioners, this volume examines classical and contemporary strategic themes, with special attention to the Cold War and post- 9/11 periods. The authors review the timeless elements of strategic thought and lessons from history while exploring the significant changes brought by modernity. They assess the contributions of strategic thinkers across time and space.

About the report: 

For the past three decades, Chinese leadership has closely studied the United States’ power projection capabilities and concept of operations. Consequently, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has tailored its anti-access/area denial approach and air defenses to prevent the United States from leveraging its current strengths. A short- or medium-range concept of air power is unlikely to be successful for power projection or deterrence in the Western Pacific, and a change in direction for the U.S. Air Force is likely necessary. 

In Air Power Metamorphosis: Rethinking Air Force Combat Force Modernization, Dr. Christopher Bowie proposes a series of shifts to adapt to the changing geostrategic environment. He outlines how to reshape the Air Force over the next 15 years to increase its long-range power projection, even in a scenario where funding levels remain flat. Bowie suggests using the Air Force’s newest aircraft, the B-21 stealth bomber, as the focus of power projection, explaining how the B-21 can fulfill a wide variety of missions and offering tradeoffs to increase B-21 production rates. He demonstrates that the plan carries risks, but historically, the Air Force has been able to mitigate those risks and make the most of its platforms. Bowie concludes with a potential path forward and what force structure attributes the Air Force would have in 15 years if it chooses this course of action.

This definitive study of the crucial decisions made from 1949 to 1950 draws on newly available Chinese-language sources to explore the navy-building process, early sea battles, and contested offshore landing operations that have had a lasting effect on the PLAN. Dr. Yoshihara details how Chinese leaders adapted the stratagems and tactics they had developed over years of revolutionary struggle on land for use at sea. The book will be of use to U.S. policymakers and scholars, placing contemporary Chinese naval development in historical context and providing insight into potential future developments.

A moderated Q&A followed Dr. Yoshihara's presentation.

Order Mao's Army Goes to Sea here.

In this publication, the authors explore how, following nearly two decades of counterinsurgency in the Greater Middle East, the United States Department of Defense finds itself looking to the Cold War for lessons on how to adapt to the operational challenges presented by China and Russia. To modernize its platforms, doctrine, and force structure to compete with and defeat 21st-century great power competitors, the military services and the Department of Defense as a whole are seeking to promote conceptual, organizational, and technological innovation within the U.S. armed forces.

The authors reflect upon the lessons from Cold War era innovation and find that several factors play a crucial role in innovation, including recognition of the threat environment, senior-leader sponsorship and support, innovators and their advocates and networks, and organizational culture. Additionally, military innovation typically occurs in three stages: speculation, experimentation, and implementation. Should these elements of innovation be missing or insufficient, failure can occur in any of these three stages, as well as during employment on the battlefield. These ingredients and phases combine to yield a framework for diagnosing innovation in historic and contemporary military organizations. The authors then apply this framework to contemporary innovation efforts in both the individual military services and the Department of Defense as a whole. The study examines the relative success of these innovation efforts and suggests four possible outcomes based on the pace of service-level innovation efforts compared to defense-wide innovation efforts. Finally, the authors offer potential operating options for each outcome.

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In this publication, Senior Fellow Toshi Yoshihara surveys Chinese histories of the Pacific War to discern lessons that mainland analysts have drawn from the ocean-spanning struggle. He examines the extensive Chinese-language literature on the great battles at Midway, Guadalcanal, and Okinawa and pinpoints the operational insights that Chinese strategists have gleaned from them. The selected campaigns involved warfighting that will feature prominently in a future Sino-American conflict: carrier air warfare, contested amphibious landings, expeditionary logistics, and electronic warfare.

Yoshihara finds that Chinese analysts, including those affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), have scrutinized the Pacific War. Their historical accounts of the war at sea explicitly draw lessons for the future of Chinese warfighting, including warfare in the information age, modern amphibious operations, land-based maritime strike, and expeditionary logistics. Yoshihara uncovers in these analyses tantalizing hints of the PLA’s deeply held beliefs about warfare, and of the PLA’s enduring weaknesses that it is seeking to reverse. By looking at the Pacific War through Chinese eyes, Yoshihara argues, the policy community can better appraise Beijing’s evolving views of potential great power wars in the Indo-Pacific.

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In this study, authors Carl Rehberg and Josh Chang propose a new framework for air posture resilience in the Indo-Pacific theater. Rehberg and Chang use Okinawa and Guam as case studies for this new framework, analyzing recent plans and implemented changes to posture on both islands and their current force posture. They then recommend a series of options the U.S. can implement by 2030. Although posture resiliency must constitute the right mix of passive and active defenses, it also requires more emphasis on an understudied element to enhance the survivability of force posture in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command: force structure capabilities for counterstrike. Force posture and posture resiliency call for bold leadership from DoD et al. to implement and accelerate meaningful options now and in the near term to enhance crisis and structural stability. These options will assure U.S. allies and partners, deters adversaries, focus on operational plan execution, and improve warfighting effectiveness. The time to act is now.

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General Howie Chandler transitioned from military service following duty as the Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force in March 2011 after over 36 years of distinguished service. As the second highest ranking officer in the Air Force, he formulated Air Force policy and guidance for over 680,000 Active-Duty, Guard, Reserve and Civilian Airmen. He was responsible for organizing, training, and equipping Air Force personnel for worldwide operations. General Chandler presided over the Air Staff and served as a voting member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Requirements Oversight Council, reviewing major Department of Defense programs. He led and was responsible for resourcing decisions involving the Air Force's $120 billion budget as Chair of the Air Force Council. General Chandler’s assignments as a general officer covered 14 years and included Commander, Pacific Air Forces; Air Component Commander, U.S. Pacific Command; Air Force Headquarters Director of Operations; Commander, Alaskan Command and Eleventh Air Force; Director of Operations for Air Combat Command during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom; Air Staff Director for Operational Plans; NATO Chief of Staff for Allied Air Forces Southern Europe during the Air War over Serbia; and Commander of the 56th Fighter Wing, the Air Force's largest fighter wing. He served overseas in Japan, Saudi Arabia and Italy. General Chandler was a career fighter pilot with more than 3900 hours of flying time in the F-15C/E, F-16C, and T-38. A complete military biography is available at: www.af.mil/information/bios/index.asp.

CSBA hosted a webinar discussion on CSBA’s latest publications, Arming America’s Allies, by Eric Edelman, Josh Chang, and Tyler Hacker; and Rings of Fire, by Eric Edelman, Chris Bassler, Toshi Yoshihara, and Tyler Hacker. We were delighted to have Congressman Mike Gallagher, the representative of Wisconsin’s 8^th Congressional District, as a guest commenter on the monographs. Rep. Gallagher was a United States Marine Corps intelligence officer and has a Ph.D. in government and international relations along with deep expertise in the topics addressed in the two studies.   

In the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper indicated that he believed it would be useful to deploy conventional intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the Indo-Pacific region. But it is not yet clear that allied or partner governments in either this region or in Europe would be willing to host such capabilities on their territory. In addition, the United States has tested and fielded a variety of systems that could bolster its long-range strike capabilities but lacks a clear path for how the various service initiatives might contribute collectively to a broader precision-strike complex.

In Arming America's Allies: Historical Lessons for Implementing a Post-INF Treaty Missile Strategy, Eric Edelman, Josh Chang, and Tyler Hacker revisit episodes from the Cold War, including the Korean War and Euromissile Crisis, to posit what role INF missiles could play in U.S. alliances and partnerships in this new era in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Although NATO's relationship with "the nuclear umbrella" is commonly discussed, the authors note that it "was not born a nuclear alliance but became one in the wake of multiple strategic shocks." The story is similar for the United States in the Indo-Pacific; the Korean War, the 1958 Taiwan crisis, and decolonization in Indochina all rapidly affected the strategic landscape. Nor were these nuclear agreements free of complexities both domestically and abroad. The authors conclude that the controversies surrounding missile deployments abroad during the Cold War closely resemble the controversies of today and offer relevant lessons as the United States develops a new conventional deterrence posture.

Developed as the result of a dedicated multi-year research and analysis effort, the China SCT represents a unique analytical capability that allows users to explore Chinese defense investments as well as the costs associated with various defense options. Using a relative cost approach to estimate China’s military investments, the China SCT allows users to simulate investments in and divestments from a broad portfolio of People’s Liberation Army capabilities, allowing users to construct alternative future force structures within budgetary constraints. 

To mark the launch of the China SCT, CSBA held a special Zoom webinar featuring the report’s authors, a demonstration of the tool’s capabilities, and remarks by ADM Philip S. Davidson, USN (ret.), former Commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command.

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The report examines Baltic deterrence and defense requirements in the context of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The war has provided an opportunity to understand the implications for NATO stemming from Russia's demonstrated willingness to use large-scale military force against another European nation, reassess pre-war assumptions concerning putative Russian military effectiveness, and to draw preliminary observations about Russian and Ukrainian combat performance. These observations help inform analysis about major aspects of defense of the Baltic region, with an emphasis on the key roles of precision-guided weapons. The authors conclude with a series of recommendations for the Baltic states, for NATO, and for the United States to enhance deterrence and defense in eastern Europe, with emphasis on the Baltic region.

AGENDA

Introduction:

Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken, President and CEO, CSBA

Amb. Kristjan Prikk, Estonian Ambassador to the United States

Mr. Kusti Salm, Permanent Secretary, Estonian Ministry of Defence

Authors’ Discussion:

Jan van Tol, Senior Fellow, CSBA

Dr. Chris Bassler, Senior Fellow, CSBA

Dr. Katherine Kjellström Elgin, Fellow, CSBA

Tyler Hacker, Analyst, CSBA

Remarks:

Amb. Kristjan Prikk

Mr. Kusti Salm

Audience Q&A