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1. Buy Before You Build: A Decision Framework for Purchasing Commercial Space Services

Author:
Peter Cunniffe, Megan Lewis, and Bryan Clark
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
A recent wave of private investment in space creates new opportunities for government agencies to benefit from commercial innovation. Leaders of national security space acquisition organizations regularly express their intention to first buy commercial space capabilities and build government space systems only when they must.1 However, achieving greater use of commercial space services requires overcoming barriers that have thus far prevented the government from fully benefiting from private sector funding and creativity. This report assesses the increasingly wide range of commercial space services available to government agencies, identifies obstacles hindering greater use by the US government, and makes recommendations for overcoming them.2 While the report focuses on the US government use of commercial space services, its analysis and recommendations are relevant for governments of other space-faring nations.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Space, and Investment
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

2. 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

3. Campaigning to Dissuade: Applying Emerging Technologies to Engage and Succeed in the Information Age Security Competition

Author:
Bryan Clark and Dan Patt
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) presents the United States with its most comprehensive economic and security rival since Great Britain during the nineteenth century. Starting in 2018, US defense strategies have highlighted the threat that the PRC poses to US allies, and successive presidential administrations and Congresses responded by increasing defense budgets to expand US military capability and capacity. Despite these efforts, numerous assessments now show that modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has eroded—and in some missions overcome—US military superiority. Absent large and politically fraught increases in defense spending, continued expansion and improvement of today’s US force are unlikely to regain broad overmatch against the PLA in the Western Pacific. Instead, the United States will need new strategies and operational concepts to deter PRC aggression. Recognizing this imperative, the 2022 US National Defense Strategy (NDS) attempted to move in a different direction from its predecessors through two new lines of effort called “campaigning” and “integrated deterrence.” However, in unclassified documents and speeches by defense officials, both the essence of integrated deterrence and the mechanism of campaigning remain unclear. 1 Emerging technologies offer the US military a way to put these new concepts into action, sustaining its ability to prevent conflict and gaining an upper hand in the strategic competition with China despite the PLA’s “home team” advantages. The United States remains the world leader in operational and technological innovation, as evidenced by decades of advancements in networking and computing—marked recently by the rapid commercialization of artificial intelligence (AI). Building on the 2022 NDS, this report proposes a strategy for campaigning that would exploit information technologies to dissuade China from pursuing acts of aggression against allies such as Taiwan. The primary objective of the proposed campaigning model is to shape PRC government decision-making, especially that of the PRC military, in ways that are conducive to long-term regional stability and prosperity. A whole-of-government effort like that implied by the 2022 NDS would be the most effective form of campaigning because it could exploit the PRC government’s numerous vulnerabilities, from its appalling record on human rights to its loss of economic momentum and its growing demographic challenges. However, this report focuses on actions the US military can take by itself or with allied militaries to dissuade future PRC aggression. In the proposed approach, campaigning is an ongoing sequence of probing, signaling, adapting, and acting by the US military and intelligence community, coupled with and informed by instrumentation of the information environment. In addition to demonstrating US resolve, campaigning should enable the US to estimate competitor habits, preferences, and fears. These estimates would guide future campaigning activities and inform US force planners regarding a competitor’s uncertainty and areas of concern. Armed with increasing insight about adversary beliefs, campaigning actions would aim to shape an opponent’s preferences and priorities away from violent paths to their goals and toward scenarios that are more aligned with US interests. In offering an approach to dissuasion, this report diverges from the strategy of deterring war primarily through threats of denial or punishment. This construct has dominated US defense strategy since the Soviet Union collapsed because conventional dominance enabled the US military to credibly stop or reverse an act of aggression and nuclear weapons provided the capability to impose existential punishment. Today, the PRC’s status as a peer competitor makes denial and punishment less credible. The US government will instead need to prevent conflict before it becomes imminent.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Economics, Science and Technology, Strategic Competition, and Emerging Technology
Political Geography:
China, North America, Asia-Pacific, 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

5. Regaining the High Ground Against China: A Plan to Achieve US Naval Aviation Superiority This Decade

Author:
Bryan Clark and Timothy A. Walton
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps face growing challenges ranging from China and Russia to regional threats such as Iran and North Korea, all of whom seek to undermine their neighbors’ stability and revise geopolitical relationships in their favor. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn, each of these potential adversaries continued to improve its military capabilities, especially the number and reach of precision missiles able to strike U.S. allies and slow or prevent intervention by U.S. naval forces. Supported by commercial and military surveillance networks in every domain, weapons located on adversary territory are capable of threatening U.S. and allied ships, troop formations, and aircraft hundreds of miles away. U.S. naval aviation risks sliding into irrelevance unless Navy and Marine Corps leaders embrace organizational and investment changes that would enable more effective operational concepts against peer adversaries. To support the approaches, naval air forces will need greater reach, adaptability, and capacity, which this study proposes to address by changing the composition of carrier air wings and repurposing aircraft based ashore or on surface combatants and amphibious ships. Rebalancing naval aviation primarily involves force management, supported by additional procurement or modification of existing aircraft and payloads. This contrasts with prevailing Navy and Marine Corps plans, which sustain the existing force with minimal improvements while prioritizing development of next-generation capabilities. Not only does this approach fail to address the urgent nature of Russian and Chinese threats, but it also perpetuates the Navy’s expectation that revolutionary new capabilities will fix problems that demand tactical, organizational, or adaptive technical solutions. That strategy failed to deliver in the cases of the Littoral Combat Ship, Zumwalt-class destroyer, and Ford-class carrier. The F/A-XX program for a sixth-generation air superiority fighter-even if successful-is unlikely to transform naval aviation but could consume resources needed to address peer adversaries during the next decade. The shortfalls facing naval airpower against the People’s Republic of China are significant, but not insurmountable. Analysts have pronounced the death of the aircraft carrier several times since the end of World War II, but by exploiting its adaptability and mobility U.S. naval forces could remain relevant against peer opponents despite the emergence of long-range sensor and precision weapon networks. However, achieving the reach and capacity necessary to counter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific will depend on carriers focusing on the mission only they can do sustainably and at scalelong-range counter-air and strike warfare. Navy and Marine Corps leaders have an opportunity to substantially improve the ability of maritime airpower to influence events in the Indo-Pacific. However, rebalancing naval aviation will require overcoming cultural, organizational, and programmatic hurdles. As described in this report, the necessary changes are possible and affordable, but only if naval leaders embrace the urgency of their challenges and do not continue to hope they can continue to push their problems-and solutions-out into the future.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Armed Forces, Military Affairs, Navy, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

6. Can the U.S. Regain Battlefield Superiority against China? Applying New Metrics to Build an Adaptable and Resilient Military

Author:
Bryan Clark, Dan Patt, and Timothy A. Walton
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Organizational behavior is driven by metrics and measurements, which can compel change more effectively than a flurry of management directives from the C-suite. With Pentagon leaders calling for new ways of building and fighting the force, the time has come to re-examine some of the US military’s fundamental metrics and assess how they could better incentivize the characteristics needed for future combat.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security, Armed Forces, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

7. Building a Team for Next Generation Air Dominance

Author:
Bryan Clark and Dan Patt
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
US air and naval forces face contested environments over wider areas than ever before. Opponents fighting near their home territory can use long-range surface-to-surface missiles and air defense systems—enabled by a combination of commercial or military satellites and airborne sensors—to threaten US or allied airfields, ships, and aircraft thousands of miles away, as depicted in Figure 1.1 By showing they can slow or prevent US intervention in their regions, aggressors like the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, and Iran hope they can convince neighbors to accept their demands for access, influence, or territory. And if coercion proves unsuccessful, these revisionist powers could employ long-range precision weapons as part of a military offensive to achieve their objectives. Although formidable, long-range weapon and sensor complexes like that of the PRC would not be impenetrable. For example, countermeasures and stealth capabilities could degrade the ability of enemy sensors to target and communicate the location of US ships or aircraft, and self-defense systems could prevent small attacks from being successful. As Figure 1 suggests, against the larger strikes likely to be mounted during war, US ships, aircraft, and bases could also be positioned farther from enemy missile batteries to shrink weapon salvos to within US units’ defensive capacities.3 However, reducing their detectability and attacking from longer ranges would reduce the number and intensity of effects US ships or aircraft could generate. Consequently, adversary leaders may have greater confidence in their ability to win a war on acceptable terms.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Armed Forces, Military Affairs, and Air Force
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

8. Learning to Win: Using Operational Innovation to Regain the Advantage at Sea against China

Author:
Bryan Clark, Timothy A. Walton, and Trent Hone
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The US Navy has spent the last decade attempting to pivot from efficiently maintaining the post–Cold War peace to effectively preventing and fighting a war against China or Russia. The circa-2000 Navy faced pervasive low-end threats from terrorists, insurgents, and regional opponents; today it is up against great power adversaries who used the past twenty years of relative stability to modernize and expand their fleets. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is now larger than its American counterpart and is narrowing the US Navy’s capability advantages.1 Russia’s Navy, while smaller than that of the United States or China, boasts some of the most capable submarines in the world and hypersonic missile-equipped frigates.2 Proliferation of computing, sensing, material, and countermeasure technologies has leveled the playing field for military capability development. Building faster, more precise, stealthier, or smarter ships, aircraft, and weapons than opponents⎯the US Navy’s playbook since the Cold War⎯will no longer yield substantial or persistent advantages. The Navy will need to continue pursuing improved capabilities, but regaining and maintaining an edge against Chinese and Russian forces will depend as much or more on the US fleet establishing new operational concepts and tactics that exploit its strengths and its enemies’ vulnerabilities.3
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Navy, Maritime, and Innovation
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

9. Rocket’s Red Glare: Modernizing America’s Energetics Enterprise

Author:
Nadia Schadlow, Brayden Helwig, Bryan Clark, and Timothy A. Walton
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Energetic materials are critical chemicals that release huge amounts of energy in a very short amount of time. Energetics come in three main forms: explosives, which create the lethal effects in warheads; propellants, which produce thrust for missiles and rockets; and pyrotechnics, such as fireworks, which illuminate or mark targets for military and civilian applications. Nearly every weapon on the modern battlefield, from small arms to missiles to munitions, relies on some form of energetic materials. Improvements in energetics can offer significant benefits on the battlefield. In some cases, better compounds can boost the range of missiles by 40 percent or more—allowing the targeting of an adversary from a safer distance—while also improving lethality and decreasing munition size. These advantages can help the US military realize many of its operational concepts, such as those developed to counter the People’s Republic of China (PRC). China’s armed forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), aims to prevent the US military from operating near its shores by fielding thousands of anti-ship missiles. This concept is often referred to as an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy. If China’s leaders act on their stated intention to invade the island of Taiwan, denying the PLA this objective would require large numbers of long-range, precision-guided munitions fired from outside the A2/AD “bubble,” coupled with other platforms that could penetrate the PLA’s defenses with powerful munitions. These types of US responses depend on energetics and the munitions that use these compounds. Since the end of the Cold War, however, the industrial base for munitions has grown increasingly brittle as innovation and investments in energetics have stagnated. Although the United States developed key compounds like CL-20—one of the world’s most powerful non-nuclear explosives—in the late 1980s, the US military still overwhelmingly uses the same energetic materials it deployed during World War II.1 Moreover, recent assessments of the industrial base have found that the DoD imports roughly a third of its energetic materials from foreign sources, with a significant portion of these sourced from China or other countries.2 For instance, one expert we spoke with stated that most trinitrotoluene (TNT) in the explosive fill of common US bombs comes from foreign sources. Other challenges include an aging network of twentieth-century production facilities, a broken business model that discourages innovation and investment, a shrinking workforce, and stifling regulations.
Topic:
National Security, Weapons, Supply Chains, and Military
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

10. Resilient Aerial Refueling: Safeguarding the US Military’s Global Reach

Author:
Timothy A. Walton and Bryan Clark
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The US military’s aerial refueling enterprise is a critical component of its ability to project power globally in defense of American interests. As the US military adopts new concepts to enhance its lethality and gain decision advantage, aerial refueling is increasingly necessary to enable a more distributed and dynamic force. However, with an aging inventory of tanker aircraft and stiff budgetary headwinds, it is an open question whether the US Air Force is capable of fielding the aerial refueling force that the nation needs. This study assesses the current and programmed US aerial refueling enterprise and has found that it likely would be unable to support US strategy and operational concepts at scale against peer adversaries such as the People’s Republic of China. However, the US military could address these shortfalls and improve the operational resilience of its aerial refueling enterprise by adopting new concepts, capabilities, capacities, and posture.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security, Science and Technology, and Military Spending
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America