Strengthening the Phalanx: Layered, Comprehensive, and Distributed Air and Missile Defense in the Indo-Pacific

December 29, 2023 Carl Rehberg, Herbert Kemp

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 cannot still defeat large numbers of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial systems.

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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. This report develops such a concept and applies it to the defense of Guam.

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Moving Pieces: Near-Term Changes to Pacific Air Posture

November 18, 2022 Carl Rehberg, Josh Chang

The threat to U.S. and allied air facilities in the Indo-Pacific region is increasing. Current air force posture is vulnerable to adversary first strike due to insufficient posture resiliency—the ability of deployed forces to survive, operate, and regenerate under adversary attack. The recently announced decision to replace the permanent F-15C Eagle squadrons at Kadena Air Base with a rotational deployment only reduces the effectiveness of U.S. Indo-Pacific air forces in the event of a conflict. Defense planning in recent years has outlined recommendations to improve the defense of both facilities and others in the region, but these recommendations have only been partially implemented at best.

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In Moving Pieces: Near-Term Changes to Pacific Air Posture, 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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Five Priorities for the Air Force’s Future Combat Air Force

January 22, 2020 Mark Gunzinger, Carl Rehberg, Lukas Autenried

The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) calls for increasing the capacity, lethality, and survivability of the joint force in future contested threat environments. CSBA’s report recommends five priorities for the USAF’s combat air force (CAF) that support these objectives. In addition to growing the size of the CAF to support future combatant commander requirements, the report recommends the Air Force accelerate its acquisition of stealth F-35As, procure a larger overall inventory of next-generation B-21 bombers, and field unmanned aircraft and weapons that would increase the CAF’s survivability and ability to operate over long ranges. The report also recommends the Air Force maintain its ability to generate combat sorties from increasingly resilient basing postures in the Indo-Pacific and Europe. Doing so will require the Air Force to rapidly disperse its forward combat air forces, counter missile attacks on its theater operating locations, and reduce its reliance on vulnerable theater runways and base infrastructure. The report concludes additional resources, including a significant increase in acquisition funding over the next decade, is needed to address the growing gap between the Air Force’s combat capabilities and requirements of the 2018 NDS.

An Air Force for an Era of Great Power Competition

March 29, 2019 Mark Gunzinger, Carl Rehberg, Jacob Cohn, Timothy A. Walton, Lukas Autenried

The report summarizes insights and recommendations developed during a CSBA study of the U.S. Air Force's future aircraft inventory. As required by the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, the report proposes a force planning construct and associated force structure necessary for the United States to support the 2018 National Defense Strategy. This construct would require the Air Force to size and shape its future force to sustain strategic deterrence, defend the U.S. homeland, and be prepared to defeat major acts of aggression by China and Russia as part of the Joint Force.

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The report recommends creating a future aircraft inventory that would be more lethal and better able to operate in future contested and highly contested environments compared to today's force. It also advises the U.S. Air Force to develop and field this force over the next fifteen to twenty years instead of attempting to reach a specific inventory target by 2030.

Significantly increasing the size of the Air Force's aircraft inventory to reach an objective force by 2030 would require it primarily to procure aircraft that are in production now or are about to enter production. This could reduce funding to develop new weapon systems and create significant gaps in capabilities that would be needed beyond 2030.

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Air and Missile Defense at a Crossroads: New Concepts and Technologies to Defend America’s Overseas Bases

October 3, 2018 Mark Gunzinger, Carl Rehberg

Mark Gunzinger and Carl Rehberg address how DoD could take advantage of mature technologies to develop higher capacity and more cost-effective air and missile defenses for its overseas bases. It assesses the potential for a layered, distributed defense that integrates multiple new non-kinetic and kinetic systems to defeat salvo attacks.

Air and Missile Defense at a Crossroads: New Concepts and Technologies to Defend America’s Overseas Bases

October 3, 2018 Mark Gunzinger, Carl Rehberg

Mark Gunzinger and Carl Rehberg address how DoD could take advantage of mature technologies to develop higher capacity and more cost-effective air and missile defenses for its overseas bases. It assesses the potential for a layered, distributed defense that integrates multiple new non-kinetic and kinetic systems to defeat salvo attacks.

Inconsistent Congress: Analysis of the 2024 Defense Budget Request

October 17, 2023 Travis Sharp

After increasing the Department of Defense (DoD) budget in real terms during seven of the past eight fiscal years, Congress has now pivoted toward restraining spending by passing the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. Approved in early June as part of the debt ceiling deal, the law imposes a liberating limit on defense. It unshackles defense spending from parity with nondefense spending but still caps military budgets at or near current spending levels for the next two fiscal years while brandishing the threat of a lowered defense cap and potential sequestration if Congress delays in passing full-year appropriations for any budget account.

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In Inconsistent Congress, CSBA Senior Fellow and Director of Defense Budget Studies Travis Sharp explores two scenarios facing defense planners during these uncertainties. One, "frozen topline," would involve Congress failing to pass full-year appropriations for both fiscal year (FY) 2024 and FY 2025, triggering two years of sequestration. The other, "abrupt cut," would involve Congress passing full-year appropriations matching the Fiscal Responsibility Act's cap but failing to do so for FY 2025, triggering one year of sequestration. Should either of these scenarios occur, Sharp indicates that sequestration-triggered spending cuts would exceed the savings that could be generated by cutting programs that legislators often identify as likely candidates for cost reduction.

Instead, Sharp analyzes congressional adjustments to the president's defense budget requests dating back to FY 2016. He finds that Congress demonstrates a programmatic orientation towards procurement spending over other purposes, often allocating procurement funds to legacy weapons systems, then assessing the impact of this orientation on innovation and readiness in defense. Moving forward, Sharp provides recommendations for the best path forward for Congress and the Pentagon, looking at both near-term planning and long-term education of defense priorities as they relate to budget.

This report is the 38th in a series of annual budget analyses published since 1983 by CSBA and its predecessor organization, the Defense Budget Project.

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Deterrence by Detection: A Key Role for Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Great Power Competition

April 14, 2020

Thomas G. Mahnken, Travis Sharp, Grace B. Kim

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In an era of renewed great power competition, one of the most significant challenges the United States and its allies face is the need to deny China or Russia the ability to launch opportunistic acts of aggression against an ally or partner in the Western Pacific or Eastern Europe. There is increasing concern among defense policymakers in the United States and its allies and partners that China and Russia are developing the ability to launch aggression rapidly against states on their periphery under the cover of increasingly capable reconnaissance-strike networks. With limited warning, Beijing or Moscow could exploit their time-distance advantage to seize allied territory before the United States and its allies could respond, thereby creating a fait accompli that would be difficult to reverse after the fact.

In CSBA’s latest study, Deterrence by Detection: A Key Role for Unmanned Systems in Great Power Competition, CSBA President and CEO Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken, Research Fellow Travis Sharp, and Senior Analyst Grace Kim propose a new operational concept to deter Chinese and Russian aggression, one that uses a network of existing non-stealthy long-endurance unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to maintain real-time, persistent situational awareness in key geographic areas in the Western Pacific and Eastern Europe. The authors argue that real-time situational awareness is critical to countering the twin challenges of sub-conventional gray zone aggres­sion and a conventional fait accompli gambit promptly and effectively.

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