Shielding the Sword

The dramatic changes in the strategic environment since the end of the Cold War have led to significant changes in US military strategy. US military strategy is now dependent on the ability to project power rapidly anywhere in the world. The strategic environment has also seen the proliferation of new, asymmetric threats such as ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs. When armed with nuclear, chemical, or biological warheads, these weapons pose a serious threat to US power projection capabilities, especially if they are used to deny access to a theater of operations. The Air Force is restructuring its forces to provide the geographic CINCs with airpower that is lighter, leaner, and more lethal. The new Expeditionary Air Force will consist of ten Air Expeditionary Forces; packages of aerospace power that can be tailored to meet the CINCs' requirements and available within 48 hours. The Air Force is currently taking a "blue only" approach to this endeavor, at its peril. The USAF currently has no organic self-defense capability against ballistic missiles, and limited capability against cruise missiles. Instead it relies on the CINCs to assign US Army Air Defense Artillery for its air base air defense. Designed in the 1970's for defense of ground forces in Europe, US Army Patriot is not a logistically light asset and has a limited capability to intercept ballistic or cruise missiles. Several initiatives are underway to create a "family of systems" capable of robust defense-in-depth, but most are years away from becoming operational. The Air Force now faces the problem of how to rapidly deploy to an austere environment, with the threat of asymmetric attacks. The solution requires both a technological approach to field defensive systems that are more expeditionary, and organizational solutions to ensure defenses are ready for rapid deployment, logistically light, and interoperable.