Defense Secretary Mark Esper is greeted b Indo-Pacific Commander, Adm. Philip Davidson in Hawaii.

WASHINGTON: The head of Indo-Pacific command told Congress he wants to spend $20 billion to more fully disperse troops and advanced weaponry across the Pacific, build up missile defense systems, and create a network of joint training ranges stretching from California to Japan.

The classified proposal, delivered yesterday to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, aims to pump major resources into truly making the Pacific region the Pentagon’s number-one priority, as it’s supposed to be according to the National Defense Strategy. An unclassified version of the provocatively titled report, “Regain the Advantage,” was obtained by Breaking Defense.

Indo-Pacom chief Adm. Philip Davidson previewed his emerging needs during a speech at a naval conference in San Diego earlier this month, but the details and the price tag have not previously been reported. 

The $20 billion, Davidson notes, is only 80 percent of what Washington has spent on the European Defense Initiative since 2014 to do many of the same things he wants to do. DoD’s request for EDI in fiscal ’21 is $4.5 billion.

The reference to EDI is hardly an accident, as analysts have pointed out for the last several years that while Pentagon leaders say “China, China, China,” the military continues to push billions into Europe, while failing to bless the Pacific theater with the same level of attention.

Davidson’s plan “provides the necessary resources to implement a strategy of deterrence by 2026,” the report says, and a represents a “pragmatic and economically viable approach for implementing the [National Security Strategy] and [National Defense Strategy] based on a vision for a Free and Open Indo-Pacific.”

Those documents, of course, identify China as the United States’ biggest global competitor and place an emphasis on the Pacific theater. They serve as a reminder to Congress of the strategies that military and civilian leaders have struggled to follow.  

Over the past several months the Pentagon has deployed over 10,000 new troops to the Middle East, where it has also been operating two aircraft carriers for the past several weeks. In the Pacific there are two carriers, but the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Roosevelt remain at pierside in Japan and Guam, respectively. The Reagan is undergoing repairs and refit and the Roosevelt struggles with a COVID-19 outbreak.

Adding to the mismatch between strategy and operational reality, Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced the movement of destroyers, Littoral Combat Ships, and P-8 surveillance planes to Southern Command yesterday, in a curiously-timed effort to interdict drug traffickers coming from Central and South America. A defense official told me the White House pushed the plan on Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the Navy, and some of the ships will likely come from San Diego, further depleting the assets Davidson can pull from.

The Numbers Game

The report breaks the effort down into five segments: Joint Force Lethality; Force Design and Posture; Strengthen Allies and Partners; Exercises, Experimentation, and Innovation; and Logistics and Security Enablers.  

Investments would equal $1.6 billion in the fiscal 2021 budget submitted earlier this year, and $18.4 billion between 2022 and 2026.

The biggest funding recommendation falls under the Joint Force Lethality line, which represents $5.2 billion over the five-year projection, including investments in 360-degree air and missile defense systems, long-range precision fires, and ground- and space-based radars. Up top is what Davidson identifies as “my number one unfunded priority,” the Homeland Defense System-Guam.

The system would provide a 360-degree air missile defense capability, and eventually, “will provide the opportunity to provide long-range precision strike capability into the First Island Chain” dominated by China.

Davidson also wants to move offensive weapons forward, calling for “highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the First Island Chain, featuring increased quantities of allied ground-based weapons.” Those systems require support from naval, air, space and cyber assets, including long-range radar capabilities, and would operate dispersed along small islands and archipelagos throughout the Western Pacific.

His vision here aligns with the emerging doctrine coming from the Marine Corps and Navy, who are looking to disperse smaller, faster, more deadly assets further afield in the Pacific, staying away from large bases and adopting a more fluid approach to operating in the region.

Davidson also mentions investing roughly $1 billion on long-range precision fires, including the Navy’s Maritime Strike Tomahawk, the Air Force’s Joint Air-Surface Standoff Missile with Extended Range, the Army’s Cross Domain Army Tactical Missile System, and the Marine Corps’ HIMARS. 

The admiral’s call for a more widely dispersed offensive punch close to areas claimed by China falls squarely within the emerging Marine Corps’ approach to the Pacific, enshrined in a new force structure report released this week by Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger.

Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger, whose service is part of the Navy Department, told reporters yesterday he’s looking to remake the Corps to allow his forces to operate around the first island chain, “inside adversaries weapons ranges,” while being supported by some of the systems Davidson mentions.

“What we have to do is transition now to a lighter footprint, more expeditionary, more in support in littoral environments, to give us the eyes and ears forward,” he added.

This all goes toward the $5.1 billion Davidson wants to invest in force design programs to build a networked force across the region so different weapons systems can converge on a threat from air, sea, and land to “create the virtues of mass without the vulnerability of concentration,” the report states. “This is accomplished by distributing forward-deployed forces across the breadth and depth of the battle space that balances lethality and survivability.” 

That means pushing troops away from massive bases that provide irresistible targets to Chinese missiles, and spreading them out to confuse and frustrate an adversary that tries to deliver a knockout blow, and forcing Chinese forces to defend themselves at multiple points against a variety of potential threats.

“Forward-based, rotational joint forces are the most credible way to demonstrate U.S. commitment and resolve to potential adversaries,” the report says.

Finally, Davidson has his eyes on securing about $1 billion to build an over-the-horizon radar in Palau and the Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii, which could track ballistic missiles, and about $2 billion for “a constellation of space-based radars with rapid revisit rates” to keep track of adversary activities on land, sea, and air.

A request for $20 billion in new funding, equal to over $3 billion a year for the next six years, wouldn’t seem bold in the last few years. But with Pentagon officials bracing for flat or declining defense budgets in coming years, and the unwillingness of Congress and the Pentagon to fund an existing Indo-Pacom program that would do much of what is asked in this new document, it’s unclear where this lands.

In a recent article, Randy Schriver, former assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific affairs in the Trump Administration, and Eric Sayers, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former advisor to Indo-Pacific Command, called on Washington to take its commitment to the region seriously.  

The Pentagon and Congress should view this “not as a basic budget exercise but a broader strategic opportunity to message the U.S. commitment to the region,” they wrote. “The message the European Deterrence Initiative has sent NATO and Russia should be the same signal we want to send our Asian allies and partners as well as those in Beijing who have grown confident of their military capabilities.”