Mapping the Third Offset: Australia, the United States and Future War in the Indo-Pacific

Mapping the Third Offset: Australia, the United States and Future War in the Indo-Pacific PDF Author: Brendan Thomas-Noone
Publisher: United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney
ISBN: 1742105009
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
The United States is facing multiple challenges to sustaining its military-technological edge in the Indo-Pacific: The proliferation of advanced missiles, submarines, satellites and other technology has raised the costs and risks for the United States in a regional conflict. Access to advanced technology and innovation has spread, raising the importance of the private sector in maintaining military superiority but also generating new centres of technological progress.The United States’ current defence strategy and capabilities are increasingly economically unsustainable, and its defence budget is stagnating due to political polarisation in Congress. The Third Offset is a set of strategies that aims to bolster US conventional military power by mobilising innovation, new technologies and institutional reform: The United States is placing ‘bets’ on a series of new technologies, from artificial intelligence to hypersonic weapons, that will allow its military to project force in contested environments. Some of these technologies will, in theory, allow for more economically sustainable military operations and capabilities. Reforming US defence institutions to prioritise innovation, and seeking ways to take advantage of new technologies in the private sector, are attempts to embed and sustain US military advantage. The direction of the Third Offset, and its success or failure, should inform Australia’s strategic outlook. Canberra should seek to expand engagement with the Third Offset, particularly through the following institutional aspects: A United States-Australia Defence Technology Workshop should be established to generate new ideas around Indo-Pacific technological trends, investment and new military concepts. Canberra should explore the possibility of hosting, or jointly funding, an international Defence Innovation Unit Experimental Office, providing strategic coordination on technological developments, resourcing and opportunities for Australian defence firms. Australia needs to expand its engagement with the United States on the testing, exercises and simulations that will form new Third Offset military concepts.

Mapping the Third Offset: Australia, the United States and Future War in the Indo-Pacific

Mapping the Third Offset: Australia, the United States and Future War in the Indo-Pacific PDF Author: Brendan Thomas-Noone
Publisher: United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney
ISBN: 1742105009
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
The United States is facing multiple challenges to sustaining its military-technological edge in the Indo-Pacific: The proliferation of advanced missiles, submarines, satellites and other technology has raised the costs and risks for the United States in a regional conflict. Access to advanced technology and innovation has spread, raising the importance of the private sector in maintaining military superiority but also generating new centres of technological progress.The United States’ current defence strategy and capabilities are increasingly economically unsustainable, and its defence budget is stagnating due to political polarisation in Congress. The Third Offset is a set of strategies that aims to bolster US conventional military power by mobilising innovation, new technologies and institutional reform: The United States is placing ‘bets’ on a series of new technologies, from artificial intelligence to hypersonic weapons, that will allow its military to project force in contested environments. Some of these technologies will, in theory, allow for more economically sustainable military operations and capabilities. Reforming US defence institutions to prioritise innovation, and seeking ways to take advantage of new technologies in the private sector, are attempts to embed and sustain US military advantage. The direction of the Third Offset, and its success or failure, should inform Australia’s strategic outlook. Canberra should seek to expand engagement with the Third Offset, particularly through the following institutional aspects: A United States-Australia Defence Technology Workshop should be established to generate new ideas around Indo-Pacific technological trends, investment and new military concepts. Canberra should explore the possibility of hosting, or jointly funding, an international Defence Innovation Unit Experimental Office, providing strategic coordination on technological developments, resourcing and opportunities for Australian defence firms. Australia needs to expand its engagement with the United States on the testing, exercises and simulations that will form new Third Offset military concepts.

Averting Crisis: American Strategy, Military Spending and Collective Defence in the Indo-Pacific

Averting Crisis: American Strategy, Military Spending and Collective Defence in the Indo-Pacific PDF Author: Ashley Townshend
Publisher: United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney
ISBN: 1742104738
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
America no longer enjoys military primacy in the Indo-Pacific and its capacity to uphold a favourable balance of power is increasingly uncertain. The combined effect of ongoing wars in the Middle East, budget austerity, underinvestment in advanced military capabilities and the scale of America’s liberal order-building agenda has left the US armed forces ill-prepared for great power competition in the Indo-Pacific. America’s 2018 National Defense Strategy aims to address this crisis of strategic insolvency by tasking the Joint Force to prepare for one great power war, rather than multiple smaller conflicts, and urging the military to prioritise requirements for deterrence vis-à-vis China. Chinese counter-intervention systems have undermined America’s ability to project power into the Indo-Pacific, raising the risk that China could use limited force to achieve a fait accompli victory before America can respond; and challenging US security guarantees in the process. For America, denying this kind of aggression places a premium on advanced military assets, enhanced posture arrangements, new operational concepts and other costly changes. While the Pentagon is trying to focus on these challenges, an outdated superpower mindset in the foreign policy establishment is likely to limit Washington’s ability to scale back other global commitments or make the strategic trade-offs required to succeed in the Indo-Pacific. Over the next decade, the US defence budget is unlikely to meet the needs of the National Defense Strategy owing to a combination of political, fiscal and internal pressures. The US defence budget has been subjected to nearly a decade of delayed and unpredictable funding. Repeated failures by Congress to pass regular and sustained budgets has hindered the Pentagon’s ability to effectively allocate resources and plan over the long term. Growing partisanship and ideological polarisation — within and between both major parties in Congress — will make consensus on federal spending priorities hard to achieve. Lawmakers are likely to continue reaching political compromises over America’s national defence at the expense of its strategic objectives. America faces growing deficits and rising levels of public debt; and political action to rectify these challenges has so far been sluggish. If current trends persist, a shrinking portion of the federal budget will be available for defence, constraining budget top lines into the future. Above-inflation growth in key accounts within the defence budget — such as operations and maintenance — will leave the Pentagon with fewer resources to grow the military and acquire new weapons systems. Every year it becomes more expensive to maintain the same sized military. America has an atrophying force that is not sufficiently ready, equipped or postured for great power competition in the Indo-Pacific — a challenge it is working hard to address. Twenty years of near-continuous combat and budget instability has eroded the readiness of key elements in the US Air Force, Navy, Army and Marine Corps. Military accidents have risen, aging equipment is being used beyond its lifespan and training has been cut. Some readiness levels across the Joint Force are improving, but structural challenges remain. Military platforms built in the 1980s are becoming harder and more costly to maintain; while many systems designed for great power conflict were curtailed in the 2000s to make way for the force requirements of Middle Eastern wars — leading to stretched capacity and overuse. The military is beginning to field and experiment with next-generation capabilities. But the deferment or cancellation of new weapons programs over the last few decades has created a backlog of simultaneous modernisation priorities that will likely outstrip budget capacity. Many US and allied operating bases in the Indo-Pacific are exposed to possible Chinese missile attack and lack hardened infrastructure. Forward deployed munitions and supplies are not set to wartime requirements and, concerningly, America’s logistics capability has steeply declined. New operational concepts and novel capabilities are being tested in the Indo-Pacific with an eye towards denying and blunting Chinese aggression. Some services, like the Marine Corps, plan extensive reforms away from counterinsurgency and towards sea control and denial. A strategy of collective defence is fast becoming necessary as a way of offsetting shortfalls in America’s regional military power and holding the line against rising Chinese strength. To advance this approach, Australia should: Pursue capability aggregation and collective deterrence with capable regional allies and partners, including the United States and Japan. Reform US-Australia alliance coordination mechanisms to focus on strengthening regional deterrence objectives. Rebalance Australian defence resources from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific. Establish new, and expand existing, high-end military exercises with allies and partners to develop and demonstrate new operational concepts for Indo-Pacific contingencies. Acquire robust land-based strike and denial capabilities. Improve regional posture, infrastructure and networked logistics, including in northern Australia. Increase stockpiles and create sovereign capabilities in the storage and production of precision munitions, fuel and other materiel necessary for sustained high-end conflict. Establish an Indo-Pacific Security Workshop to drive US-allied joint operational concept development. Advance joint experimental research and development projects aimed at improving the cost-capability curve.

Global Trends 2040

Global Trends 2040 PDF Author: National Intelligence Council
Publisher: Cosimo Reports
ISBN: 9781646794973
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Asia-Pacific Rebalance 2025

Asia-Pacific Rebalance 2025 PDF Author: Michael Green
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442259175
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
In 2015, Congress tasked the Department of Defense to commission an independent assessment of U.S. military strategy and force posture in the Asia-Pacific, as well as that of U.S. allies and partners, over the next decade. This CSIS study fulfills that congressional requirement. The authors assess U.S. progress to date and recommend initiatives necessary to protect U.S. interests in the Pacific Command area of responsibility through 2025. Four lines of effort are highlighted: (1) Washington needs to continue aligning Asia strategy within the U.S. government and with allies and partners; (2) U.S. leaders should accelerate efforts to strengthen ally and partner capability, capacity, resilience, and interoperability; (3) the United States should sustain and expand U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region; and (4) the United States should accelerate development of innovative capabilities and concepts for U.S. forces.

The Future of Warfare in 2030

The Future of Warfare in 2030 PDF Author: Raphael S. Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781977402950
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
This report is the overview in a series that seeks to answer questions about the future of warfare, including who might be the United States' adversaries and allies, where conflicts will be fought, and how and why they might occur.

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons PDF Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786252961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

Winning a Future War

Winning a Future War PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Between 1919 and 1941, the U.S. Navy transformed itself from a powerful if unsophisticated force into the fleet that would win a two-ocean war, from a fleet in which the battleship dominated to one based on carrier strike groups. The great puzzle of U.S. naval history is how this was accomplished. Well-known naval analyst Norman Friedman trenchantly argues that war gaming at the U.S. Naval War College made an enormous, and perhaps decisive, contribution. For much of the inter-war period, the Naval War College was the Navy's primary think tank. War gaming was the means the college used to test alternative strategies, tactics, evolving naval aviation, and warship types in a way that the Navy's full-scale exercises could not. The think tank perspective taken by this book is a new way of looking at the inter-war Naval War College and the war games that formed the core of its curriculum. Although the influence of both the Naval War College's gaming and of the college itself declined after 1933, most of the key decisions shaping the wartime U.S. Navy had already been taken. The two most important ones were on the role of naval aviation and the form the U.S. war plan against Japan ultimately assumed. As shown here, U.S. naval commanders successfully applied the lessons learned from war gaming to victorious operations in World War II

Research Handbook on Warfare and Artificial Intelligence

Research Handbook on Warfare and Artificial Intelligence PDF Author: Robin Geiß
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1800377401
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
The Research Handbook on Warfare and Artificial Intelligence provides a multi-disciplinary exploration of the urgent issues emerging from the increasing use of AI-supported technologies in military operations. Bringing together scholarship from leading experts in the fields of technology and security from across the globe, it sheds light on the wide spectrum of existing and prospective cases of AI in armed conflict.

Tech Wars: US-China Technology Competition and What it Means for Australia

Tech Wars: US-China Technology Competition and What it Means for Australia PDF Author: Brendan Thomas-Noone
Publisher: United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney
ISBN: 1742104932
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description
Technology is now the defining element of the Trump administration’s self-professed “strategic competition” with China. Washington is highly attuned to the long-term consequences and links between scientific progress, technological adaptation and national power in burgeoning US-China competition. Policymakers are attempting to balance efforts to maintain the open and global foundations of US and allied research and development systems, while deterring those that abuse its accessible and integrated nature. While President Donald Trump has been highly inconsistent on technological issues, Congress and the executive branch have slowly moved forward in executing the 2017 National Security Strategy and protecting what it termed the US National Security Innovation Base. Congress and the Trump administration have embarked on a ponderous — and at times heavy-handed — effort to protect America’s technological advantage across multiple domains and through actions by several branches of government. Congress has expanded the powers of the Committee of Foreign Investment to review non-controlling investments in technology companies. New export controls are being rolled out which feature vastly more expansive definitions of “foundational” and “emerging” technologies, broadening their scope and potential reach. The Department of Justice has launched a major criminal justice campaign labelled the “China Initiative”, with the goal of prosecuting technology theft and enforcing existing regulations in every US state. Draft bills indicate the likely expansion of Congressional reform to halting the flow of US government funds flowing to overseas partners also involved in joint high-tech research and development (R&D) with China, affecting third parties like Australia. Australia will be significantly affected by Washington’s unravelling of the US-China technological relationship, owing to its deep enmeshment with America’s scientific infrastructure. To navigate these changes in the national interest, Canberra must consider the following. Australia will face growing pressure to limit its science and technology interaction with China in critical dual-use fields in order to maintain technological collaboration with the United States in some emerging technologies, and may even be required to adopt restrictive export control policies. Australian research by universities, defence industry, business and government agencies will be seriously impacted by the United States’ expanded export control reform. Canberra should continue to lobby US policymakers on solutions, such as providing exemptions under the National Technology and Industrial Base framework. As the global technological ecosystem becomes more nationalised, securitised and difficult to navigate for industry and governments alike, Australia should implement a national research and development strategy that builds its own technological ‘counterweight.’

Strategic assessment 2020

Strategic assessment 2020 PDF Author: Thomas F. Lynch III
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780996824958
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description