July 14, 20196 yr Listened to this podcast: https://warontherocks.com/2019/07/net-assessment-is-america-poised-to-lose-the-next-war/ and read this article it discussed. Not a short read but not onerous either: https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/CNAS+Report+-+ANAWOW+-+FINAL2.pdf My TLDR summary: The way the Joint Team fought in the 90s and 2000s for Desert Storm, Kosovo, OIF, etc... MOB establishment, unrestricted overflight rights, piece by piece threat/enemy destruction, etc... will not work in potential conflicts with Russia, China. A new approach will be required to dissuade aggression, defeat if required and allow options for favorable escalation/cessation of hostilities. Worth a read IMO, from an AF perspective it seems the AF to support this New American Way of War needs greater range, greater self-deployment capability along with a dispersed/austere basing capability. This would mitigate the reliance on safe, relatively close MOBs as Russia/China would not allow those sanctuaries to exist or function in a potential conflict within reasonable range of the conflict, enable faster surging for to Deter and React if aggression appears imminent or occurs and presents the enemy with a much harder targeting problem by proliferating tactical assets to unexpected or changing temporary locations. He mentions several times hard choices and giving up on assumptions, ideas, paradigms that will not work or don't apply in a Great Power Conflict, to me this sounds like (in relation to Airpower) the classic Destroy the Enemy's Will / National Capability to Fight vs. Destroy the Enemy's Forces. The Strategic (conventional) vs. Tactical. Equally applicable to other services in shaping their Capabilities Portfolios. I'm not 100% convinced he's wrong, putting aside our personal preferences and biases, is it time to reforge the AF to meet this growing threat? More Strategic and less Tactical - thoughts?
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