“There’s a need in the near-term to defend against all of those [Chinese missile] threats from a 360-degree standpoint, and if the answer is Aegis, I’m ready to support it,” the presumptive head of Indo-PACOM told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The head of INDOPACOM, Adm. Davidson, and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. Hyten, seem receptive to a new Army role in long-range strike.
Balancing security and access to data are critical to providing users with trustworthy, reliable data for real-time decisions.
Taiwan may be targeted for annexation by 2027, Adm. Phil Davidson said, and Guam will have to be vigorously defended in a Pacific War.
If confirmed by the Senate, Adm. John Aquilino and Vice Adm. Samuel Paparo will enter their jobs amidst increasing competition in fleet size, precision missiles, hacking, & espionage.
The report, delivered to Capitol Hill on Monday, sketches out the ask for the 2022 budget and in the years out to 2027, envisioning a long-range plan that Indo-Pacom commander Adm. Phil Davidson first introduced last year.
“China has a profound advantage in ballistic missiles against the United States,” he said. “They also have a profound advantage in ground-launched cruise missiles. We have to get into that offensive force game as well.”
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
Toyko has put the breaks on its Aegis Ashore program, and there are reports its support for the Global Hawk buy may be soft.
By 2026, Adm. Philip Davidson said, the US will need additional air and missile defenses on Guam to counter a growing Chinese threat.
The National Defense Strategy called the Indo-Pacific the DoD's priority theater. “But all of us also recognize that strategy is budget and budget is strategy, and the budget numbers have not supported, to date, the Indo Pacific’s role as the primary theater.”
Creating an Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative with a $6.09 billion investment in 2021 would boost air and missile defense, fund rotational forces and prepositioned stocks, modernize joint training ranges across the region, and ramp up information and influence operations.
“Tactical operating system” for warfighters has evolved to provide more situational awareness of the battlefield.
The bold new Pacific plan "is designed to persuade potential adversaries that any preemptive military action will be extremely costly and likely fail," Adm. Philip Davidson writes.
"For its backbone," Adm. Davidson said, "we need a joint -- joint -- network of training ranges capable of meeting the exercise, experimentation, and innovation objectives of the new warfighting concept."
Adm. Davidson pushed back against reports that the US might pull a brigade out of South Korea amid stalemated burden-sharing talks.
US military leaders from across the Pacific are speaking with one voice about what the US needs to do in the region, and what the Chinese aren't doing.