Commander Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Phil Davidson meets with Japan’s Minister of Defense Tarō Kōno

WASHINGTON: As the Biden administration weighs how to manage China, Indo-Pacific Command has crafted a $27.3 billion plan to buy new missile defense systems, place radar and missile defense systems on the ground, launch satellites and build state-of-the-art training ranges across the region.

The report, delivered today to Capitol Hill, sketches out the budget for the 2022 budget and in the years out to 2027, envisioning a long-range plan that Indo-Pacom head Adm. Phil Davidson first introduced last year. A copy of the Executive Summary was obtained by Breaking Defense.

The plan for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative includes $4.6 billion in 2022, which the document points out is “two-thirds the amount spent on the European Defense Initiative in FY20 ($5.9B).”

The document tells lawmakers that the US “requires highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the First Island Chain, featuring increased quantities of ground-based weapons. These networks must be operationally decentralized and geographically distributed along the western Pacific archipelagos using Service agnostic infrastructure.” 

Davidson plans to formally roll out the report at an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institure on Thursday, at a time when the Biden administration is putting together it’s 2022 budget. The final DoD topline is expected to come in around $740 billion, roughly the same as the 2021 and 2020 budgets, meaning hard choices will have to be made within the Pentagon about where to allocate resources.

At the top of the admiral’s acquisition priority list is a $1.6 billion Aegis Ashore missile defense system in Guam, something he has long said is his No. 1 priority. 

Next is a $197 million “Tactical Multi-Mission Over-the-Horizon Radar” to be placed in Palau to detect and track air and surface targets. The Pentagon has forged a closer relationship with the small island nation in the Philippine Sea, which provides a strategic location coveted by Pentagon planners as the US looks to expand its footprint in the region.

The document also includes $2.3 billion to build and launch “a constellation of space-based radars with rapid revisit rates to maintain situational awareness of adversary activities” which could feed into Aegis Ashore and the Palau systems. Davidson is also looking for $206 million for “specialized manned aircraft to provide discrete, multi-source intelligence collection requirements” across the region, along with $3.3 billion for “highly survivable, precision-strike fires” that can support troops on the ground, ships at sea and aircraft from distances greater than 500km.

Davidson previewed some of the report today at an AFCEA conference in Hawaii. “We must convince Beijing that the costs to achieve its objectives by military force are simply too high,” he said, while calling for major investments in multi-domain training ranges spread across the region where the US and allies could train together, and integrate operations.

The indications so far are that the Biden administration will take a tough stance with Beijing, with the military playing a major role in the strategy.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told senators last month, “China is the top priority,” and pledged to publish a new National Defense Strategy in 2022, updating the 2018 version. That report, produced by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, is considered a landmark in American strategy and re-oriented Washington’s focus on a rising China.

“There is no doubt” China poses the “most significant challenge of any nation state to the United States,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month. “We have to start by approaching China from a position of strength, not weakness.”

The report breaks down the priorities Joint Force Lethality; Force Design and Posture; Strengthen Allies and Partners; Exercises, Experimentation, and Innovation; and Logistics and Security Enablers.

The 2021 NDAA included $6.9 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative over two years, with just $2.2 billion of that coming in 2021, placing the onus on the Biden administration to not only continue the effort, but grow it.

That would be a downpayment on the longer-range plans through 2027 and beyond to build out infrastructure and reallocate where US troops – particularly Marines – are stationed around the region. The goal is to disperse troops across multiple locations on multiple islands, providing the Chinese military with a range of hard to find targets, ensuring any one strike wouldn’t only impact a small part of the force.

“The U.S. and our allies must develop locations that provide expeditionary airfields for dispersal and ports for distributed fleet operations,” the report says. “Ground forces armed with long-range weapons in the First Island Chain allow USINDOPACOM to create temporary windows of localized air and maritime superiority, enabling maneuver. Additionally, amphibious forces create and exploit temporal and geographic uncertainty to impose costs and conduct forcible entry operations.”

These basing realignments and temporary facilities would run about $2 billion in 2021, and $6.6 billion between 2023 and 2027 according to the estimates.

During his speech on Monday, Davidson also stressed the need for the US to partner with allies in the Indo-Pacific region, and include them in efforts to push information and intelligence between armed forces. 

“We are developing an integrated architecture to horizontally expand data sharing among like-minded nations through the use of information fusion centers in South Asia and South East Asia, as well as in Oceania,” he said. “These fusion centers will combine and analyze sensor data from aircraft ships and maritime picture between the US, our allies and our partners to improve our collective surveillance of potential illegal fishing trafficking activities and transnational threats.”