As the United States looks forward to the twin challenge of rebuilding its forces within fiscal constraints and ending the priority focus on land campaigns, the Pacific clearly is the dominant strategic reality. How can the Pacific with its vast dimensions and many strategic players provide the stimulus for effective restructuring of American and Allied forces.
By leveraging some of the new platforms coming on line and replacing older, costly and stove-piped platforms and systems, a new scalable force structure can be built. And at the heart of doing so will be the inclusion of allies and US forces within a modular scaleable structure.
The strategy is founded on having platform presence. By deploying assets such as USCG assets, for example, the NSC, or USN surface platforms, Aegis, LCS or other surface assets, by deploying sub-service assets and by having bases forward deployed, the US has core assets, which if networked together through an end the stovepipe strategy, significant gains in capability are possible.
Scalability is the crucial glue to make a honeycomb force possible, and that is why we see a USN, USMC, USAF common fleet as a crucial glue. And when “Aegis becomes my wingman” or when “the SSGN becomes the ARG fire support” through the F-35 C4ISR D systems a combat and cultural revolution is both possible and necessary.
Two other key elements are basing and weaponization. Basing becomes transformed as allied and U.S. capabilities become blended into a scalable presence and engagement capability. Presence is rooted in basing; scalability is inherently doable because of C4ISR enablement, deployed decision-making and honeycomb robustness.