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Begin New Search Topic Armed Forces Political Geography United States of America Content Type Special Report Publication Year within 25 Years Publication Year within 1 Year

1. Abrogating the Visiting Forces Agreement: Its Effects on Philippines’ Security and Stability in Southeast Asia

Author:
Renato Acosta
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
During much of 2022, the defense and security alliance between the United States of America and the Philippines, anchored on and reinforced by the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT, teetered on the brink of collapse. Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte brought relations to the brink through attempts to scuttle the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). This move would only embolden Chinese challenges to Manila’s territorial integrity and its aspirations to dominate Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. While the Duterte administration recited parochial reasons to terminate the VFA, pundits from the security and diplomatic sectors viewed Duterte’s attempts as a pretext to steer the Philippines towards China under his own brand and definition of an independent foreign policy. During his term, Duterte reiterated that President Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials were his friends. He also publicly declared that the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG), a northeastern section of the Spratly Islands, was already in physical control and possession of Beijing due to the unchallenged presence of its military and maritime militia vessels there. Given these statements, Duterte has constantly received criticism over his defeatist stance towards China.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Politics, Armed Forces, and Instability
Political Geography:
China, Philippines, Southeast Asia, Asia-Pacific, and United States of America

2. Raising AUKUS’s Second Pillar: Integrating Uncrewed and Other Emerging Technologies into the Australian Defence Forces

Author:
Bryan Clark and Dan Patt
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is aggressively pursuing a diverse array of uncrewed air, surface, and undersea systems to address capability gaps in today’s force and exploit emerging opportunities in new technology. Thus far, these efforts have yielded a few programs that have transitioned into operational use, consisting predominantly of uncrewed air vehicles (UAV) that support intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations. ADF concepts tend to constrain uncrewed system use cases by treating them as extensions of crewed platforms or units, such as the Royal Australia Air Force (RAAF) Ghost Bat program.1 These manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) concepts generally exploit the systems-level characteristics of uncrewed vehicles to provide crewed units with greater reach or persistence, as figure 1 summarizes. Because they do not carry human operators, strategists can consider even relatively expensive uncrewed vehicles attritable, and forces may lose these vehicles to combat or other exigencies with little regret.2 Uncrewed systems can operate for extended periods in severe environments or circumstances, such as space. And without human operators, uncrewed vehicles can be less expensive than their manned counterparts due to fewer requirements for life support, protection, live training, or multi-mission capability.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Science and Technology, Armed Forces, Alliance, and AUKUS
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Australia, and United States of America

3. Fighting into the Bastions: Getting Noisier to Sustain the US Undersea Advantage

Author:
Bryan Clark and Timothy A. Walton
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Airpower enthusiasts concluded after World War I that “the bomber will always get through.”1 Fast, high-flying aircraft seemed to hold a decisive edge over air defenses and offered commanders the assurance they could attack targets deep inside an opponent’s territory. But airpower advocates’ spirits were quickly dampened during World War II by the advent of interceptor fighters, radar-guided artillery, and electromagnetic warfare (EW), which together demonstrated that bombers could be stopped—often with devastating results. Air forces adapted, adding escort fighters, radar jammers and decoys, and higher-altitude bombers to sustain their ability to strike behind enemy lines. During the Cold War, this move-countermove competition continued. New surface- and air-launched missiles targeted bombers, and countries developed specialized aircraft and weapons to suppress and destroy enemy air defenses or use stealth to avoid detection and targeting altogether. Today, the US submarine force faces a similar challenge. The US fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) has long been considered an asymmetric advantage against potential adversaries like the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia, which lacked robust and effective anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities. Relying on this advantage, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has increasingly relied on SSNs to compensate for the impact of improved air defenses on the ability of bombers and strike fighters to execute attacks.2 However, the unfailing ability of US SSNs to reach their targets is eroding as emerging technologies and weapons proliferation combine in new approaches to ASW that could neutralize America’s undersea advantage. During the last decade, the PRC and Russian Federation began fortifying their undersea defenses in the South and East China Seas and Arctic Ocean, respectively. Leveraging geographic constraints, US adversaries have instrumented these bastions with networks of fixed and mobile acoustic and non-acoustic sensors, complemented by aircraft and ships capable of pouncing on contacts or deploying dense mine barriers.3 Improved adversary defenses could degrade or defeat US undersea operations, preventing US submarines from conducting critical missions such as sinking a Chinese invasion fleet or tracking Russian ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). To sustain its offensive undersea advantage, the US Navy will need to take some lessons from air warfare and begin supporting submarines with systems designed to suppress or destroy enemy undersea defenses. This imperative will fundamentally shift the paradigm for US submarine operations from “alone and unafraid” to “it’s all about team.” Moreover, the emergence of new generations of capable long-range active sonars will demand that the US undersea force increasingly rely on jamming and deception to counter enemy sensors, much as their counterparts already do above the water. The US submarine force will need to learn how to use noise, rather than avoid it. The Navy should pursue four lines of effort, outlined below, to sustain its offensive undersea advantage. Except for features to be incorporated into the next-generation nuclear-powered attack submarine, the SSN(X), the concepts and capabilities proposed in this report leverage mature or maturing technologies and can be fielded within five years. Implementing these recommendations will require the US Navy to refine its use cases for offensive undersea warfare to use available uncrewed vehicle technologies, rather than continue pursuing purpose-built systems that may take a decade or more to be fielded.4
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security, Armed Forces, Navy, and Maritime
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

4. Unalone and Unafraid: A Plan for Integrating Uncrewed and Other Emerging Technologies into US Military Forces

Author:
Dan Patt and Bryan Clark
Publication Date:
08-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
During the Cold War, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) led global research and development (R&D) and in the process created what are now commonplace technologies, including the internet, precision weapons, and the global positioning system. However, since then the DoD has struggled to incorporate new advancements as initiatives to transform the force or implement a new offset strategy have failed to substantially change the US military’s design or capability development processes. In large part, the DoD’s adoption difficulties result from the center of technological innovation shifting from governments to the private sector, increasingly making the military a technology customer rather than a creator. This is the case with artificial intelligence (AI) and uncrewed systems, which are already upending long-standing approaches to modern warfare. The challenge of integrating these new technologies, many of which are commercially derived, therefore provides a good case study for how the DoD could reform its processes and organizations for innovation. To that end, this study evaluates how the US military could realize more timely development, deployment, and integration of relevant uncrewed systems, and illustrates its proposed methods using examples from the US Navy. The Navy and DoD will need the operational advantages that AI-enabled uncrewed vehicles could offer. Against a resident major power like the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the US military cannot continue to rely on its historical dominance to deter and defeat aggression. Instead, the DoD will need to attack the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) strategy of system destruction warfare by fielding a force that is less predictable, more adaptable, and increasingly resilient. Uncrewed systems could enable such an approach by unlocking the operational innovation of US servicemembers, who could—like their counterparts in Ukraine today—use uncrewed systems to grow the variety of tactics and effects chains that they can employ, which could undermine PLA planning and concepts and afford US forces the capacity to sustain a protracted conflict. The ability of uncrewed systems to provide resilience and adaptability depends on scale. A small fleet of vehicles cannot be simultaneously applied against multiple mission threads or effects chains and will lack the capacity to support extended operations. Uncrewed systems can enable scale by foregoing robust self-defense and focusing on a narrow set of functions to lower their cost and complexity. These limitations will require that uncrewed systems be combined with other uncrewed systems and crewed platforms in systems of systems (SoS), which could exacerbate the US military’s long-standing struggles to integrate forces between and within each service branch. Realizing the benefits of uncrewed systems will therefore demand that the DoD establish routinized processes for integrating new mission threads and SoS. Otherwise, the US military services will only be able to field individual uncrewed systems that replace crewed platforms in existing use cases. US military services are already attempting to improve their ability to integrate SoS through initiatives in experimentation, rapid acquisition, digital interoperability, and Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). However, as this report describes for the US Navy, these efforts tend to focus on long-term service objectives rather than near-term operational problems and use a top-down process of systems engineering to guide requirements for future capabilities. This traditional approach assumes that the US military has the time to develop new systems and retains a substantial technological edge over its rivals, but neither condition is likely to endure in the context of the US-PRC competition. To bring uncrewed systems into the force more quickly and gain the resulting operational advantages, the DoD will need to flip its traditional acquisition approach and adapt US military tactics or mission threads so they can integrate uncrewed systems that are available today. This bottom-up method of “mission integration” contrasts with the DoD’s predominant approach of systems engineering and reflects best practices emerging in commercial manufacturing or distribution, where the fastest and most effective way to assimilate robotics is to adjust the organization’s workflow as opposed to developing robots that replace humans in existing workflows.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Armed Forces, Emerging Technology, and Military
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, South Asia, North America, and United States of America