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Joint Force Quarterly 73 (2nd Quarter, April 2014)
No full texthttps://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/jfq-full-issue/1040/thumbnail.jp
A Strategic Vision and a New Management Approach for the Department of the Navy’s Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) Portfolio
No full textThis paper considers the Department of the Navy Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) program holistically. The underlying premise, that will be expanded on here, is that the Department is not doing a good enough job of strategically managing its RDT&E portfolio and that, at least partly as a result, the Department is spending too much and taking too long in getting new technology-driven capabilities into the hands of our warfighters. The goal of this paper is to identify a workable RDT&E process that better enables the Department of the Navy to identify, develop, and maintain the capabilities of our warfighters as notably the most advanced in the world.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/defense-tech-papers/1003/thumbnail.jp
A Time to Tweet, as Well as a Time to Kill: ISIS’s Projection of Power in Iraq and Syria
No full textOn June 29, 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or the Islamic State),1 a Sunni jihadist group with the capability of a paramilitary, established an Islamic caliphate. With 10,000 militants, the group took territory and achieved a goal that rival terrorist group al Qaeda has pursued for decades. Yet how did a group with relatively few fighters accomplish so much?https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/defense-horizons/1007/thumbnail.jp
Joint Force Quarterly 72 (1st Quarter, January 2014)
No full texthttps://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/jfq-full-issue/1041/thumbnail.jp
The U.S. “Rebalance” and Europe: Convergent Strategies Open Doors to Improved Cooperation
No full textThe U.S. strategic “rebalance” to the Asia-Pacific region has captured the attention of our
European allies and partners. When the strategy (initially described as a “pivot to Asia”) was articulated in late 2011 and early 2012, European reactions were diverse. Some governmental officials, nongovernmental experts, and media commentators voiced concern that the strategy signaled at best a diminishing U.S. interest in European security affairs, or at worst a deliberate U.S. policy of disengagement from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/inss-strategic-perspectives/1026/thumbnail.jp
A Low-Visibility Force Multiplier: Assessing China’s Cruise Missile Ambitions
No full textChina’s military modernization is focused on building modern ground, naval, air, and missile forces capable of fighting and winning local wars under informationized conditions. The principal planning scenario has been a military campaign against Taiwan, which would require the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to deter or defeat U.S. intervention. The PLA has sought to acquire asymmetric “assassin’s mace” technologies and systems to overcome a superior adversary and couple them to the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems necessary for swift and precise execution of short-duration, high-intensity wars.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/books-and-book-chapters/1010/thumbnail.jp
“Not an Idea We Have to Shun”: Chinese Overseas Basing Requirements in the 21st Century
No full textChina’s expanding international economic interests are likely to generate increasing demands for its navy, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), to operate out of area to protect Chinese citizens, investments, and sea lines of communication. The frequency, intensity, type, and location of such operations will determine the associated logistics support requirements, with distance from China, size and duration, and combat intensity being especially important drivers.
How will the PLAN employ overseas bases and facilities to support these expanding operational requirements? The assessment in this study is based on Chinese writings, comments by Chinese military officers and analysts, observations of PLAN operational patterns, analysis of the overseas military logistics models other countries have employed, and interviews with military logisticians. China’s rapidly expanding international interests are likely to produce a parallel expansion of PLAN operations, which would make the current PLAN tactic, exclusive reliance on commercial port access, untenable due to cost and capacity factors. This would certainly be true if China contemplated engaging in higher intensity combat operations.
This study considers six logistics models that might support expanded PLAN overseas operations: the Pit Stop Model, Lean Colonial Model, Dual Use Logistics Facility, String of Pearls Model, Warehouse Model, and Model USA. Each model is analyzed in terms of its ability to support likely future naval missions to advance China’s expanding overseas economic, political, and security interests and in light of longstanding Chinese foreign policy principles. This analysis concludes that the Dual Use Logistics Facility and String of Pearls models most closely align with China’s foreign policy principles and expanding global interests.
To assess which alternative China is likely to pursue, the study reviews current PLAN operational patterns in its Gulf of Aden counterpiracy operations1 to assess whether the PLAN is currently pursuing one model over the other and to provide clues about Chinese motives and potential future trajectories. To ensure that this study does not suffer from faulty assumptions, it also explicitly examines the strategic logic that Western analysts associate with the String of Pearls Model in light of the naval forces and logistics infrastructure that would be necessary to support PLAN major combat operations in the Indian Ocean. Both the contrasting inductive and deductive analytic approaches support the conclusion that China appears to be planning for a relatively modest set of missions to support its overseas interests, not building a covert logistics infrastructure to fight the United States or India in the Indian Ocean.
Key findings: There is little physical evidence that China is constructing bases in the Indian Ocean to conduct major combat operations, to encircle India, or to dominate South Asia. China’s current operational patterns of behavior do not support the String of Pearls thesis. PLAN ships use different commercial ports for replenishment and liberty, and the ports and forces involved could not conduct major combat operations. China is unlikely to construct military facilities in the Indian Ocean to support major combat operations there. Bases in South Asia would be vulnerable to air and missile attack, the PLAN would require a much larger force structure to support this strategy, and the distances between home ports in China and PLAN ships stationed at the String of Pearls network of facilities along its sea lines of communication would make it difficult to defend Chinese home waters and simultaneously conduct major combat operations in the Indian Ocean. The Dual Use Logistics Facility Model’s mixture of access to overseas commercial facilities and a limited number of military bases most closely aligns with China’s future naval mission requirements and will likely characterize its future arrangements. Pakistan’s status as a trusted strategic partner whose interests are closely aligned with China’s makes the country the most likely location for an overseas Chinese military base; the port at Karachi would be better able to satisfy PLAN requirements than the new port at Gwadar. The most efficient means of supporting more robust People’s Liberation Army (PLA) out of area military operations would be a limited network of facilities that distribute functional responsibilities geographically (for example, one facility handling air logistics support, one facility storing ordnance, another providing supplies for replenishment ships). A future overseas Chinese military base probably would be characterized by a light footprint, with 100 to 500 military personnel conducting supply and logistics functions. Such a facility would likely support both civilian and military operations, with Chinese forces operating in a restrictive political and legal environment that might not include permission to conduct combat operations. Naval bases are much more likely than ground bases, but China might also seek to establish bases that could store ordnance, repair and maintain equipment, and provide medical/mortuary services to support future PLA ground force operations against terrorists and other nontraditional security threats in overseas areas such as Africa. A more active PLA overseas presence would provide opportunities as well as challenges for U.S.-China relations. Chinese operations in support of regional stability and to address nontraditional security threats would not necessarily conflict with U.S. interests and may provide new opportunities for bilateral and multilateral cooperation with China. Long-term access to overseas military facilities would increase China’s strategic gravity and significantly advance China’s political interests in the region where the facilities are located. To the extent that U.S. and Chinese regional and global interests are not aligned, the United States would need to continue to use its own military presence and diplomatic efforts to solidify its regional interests. A significantly expanded Chinese military presence in the Indian Ocean would complicate U.S. relations with China and with the countries of the region, compel U.S. naval and military forces to operate in closer proximity with PLA forces, and increase competitive dynamics in U.S.-China and China-Indian relations. Finally, if some of the countries of the Indian Ocean region and elsewhere agree to host PLA forces over the long term, their decision will imply a shift in their relations with the United States, which may ultimately need to rethink how it engages and interacts with these countries.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/china-strategic-perspectives/1012/thumbnail.jp
The Defense Acquisition Trilemma: The Case of Brazil
No full textBrazil is a puzzling new player in the global system. Emerging as a complex international actor, it has come to be seen as a significant economic competitor and dynamic force in world politics.1 But transformational changes in the economic and political realms have not been accompanied by advances in military power. While Brazil has entered the world stage as an agile soft power exercising influence in setting global agendas and earning a seat at the economic table of policymakers, its military capacity lags. The national security strategy announced under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2008 intended to redress this power gap. President Dilma Rousseff ’s 2011 White Paper—so detailed that it is called a “White Book”—provides the conceptual roadmap to achieve a new military balance. But military modernization is still a work in progress.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/strategic-forums/1028/thumbnail.jp
Targeted Killing of Terrorists
No full textThe struggle against terrorism—more specifically, the effort to prevent terrorist attacks—has raised difficult legal and policy issues including so-called targeted killing, or the killing of specific individuals because of their involvement in terrorist organizations and operations. As we shall see, this form of targeted killing involves domestic and international legal authorities and policy and prudential issues. A substantial number of countries confronting what they consider to be terrorist attacks and threats engage in targeted killings. Each has to resolve questions about authorities and prudence because, while terrorists are always criminals, they also may be lawful military targets. The dual character of terrorists leads to the conclusion that, as a matter of policy, a state should weigh the totality of the circumstances and conclude that no other action is reasonable to prevent a terrorist attack before engaging in the targeted killing. Careful analysis in advance may preempt problems later.https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/strategic-forums/1026/thumbnail.jp