According to the highest-ranking officer in the Air Force, the Air Force and Army must first figure out how to ensure the defense of small outposts in the Pacific before a major Air Force operational plan can be successful.
The Air Force’s strategy to increase its survivability and mobility, known as Agile Combat Employment, calls for increasing the number of its bases in the Indo-Pacific and reducing its reliance on the few major airfields it already has in the sprawling region. Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said he would be more confident about the Air Force’s progress in building its ACE strategy “if we had, frankly, a more robust active base defense, and that’s one of the issues we’ve been working with the Army on, and that’s something the (Defense) Department has adopted as a joint requirement.”
Traditionally, the Army has deployed and manned air defense systems such as Patriot and THAAD at its facilities, but these systems are likely too expensive for the Pentagon to deploy at multiple small island bases throughout the region. And while the Army and Air Force work together, the branches have different responsibilities and priorities for defending air bases.
“If we can’t deploy them everywhere, we want to be able to choose where we deploy them. That means they need to be mobile enough to not just be fixed. That’s part of the cleverness that has to come into play here, as well as the ability to move quickly,” Allvin told reporters on Wednesday. “The old things like stealth, obfuscation and deception are still alive and well, we just need to adapt them to the 21st century context.”
Allvin referred questions about specific capabilities to the Army, but said the Air Force is in discussions with the Army to see if the solutions they are developing meet the Air Force’s needs. The Pentagon is experimenting with new, less costly methods of intercepting enemy missiles, such as directed energy solutions, but it remains to be seen how soon these developments can be deployed on a large scale.
“There has been a dialogue and an understanding between the Army and the Air Force and (the Office of the Secretary of Defense) that we will work together on development. I haven’t signed a (memorandum of understanding) yet, but there is an understanding nonetheless, and the Army is figuring out how to implement this for air bases. They also have their own for their maneuver elements. But they are pursuing some areas specifically with us to support agile combat operations,” Allvin said.
The US must also defend its bases in the Pacific against non-kinetic threats such as cyber attacks and electronic warfare, Allvin said. This requires other protective measures.
