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Special Report #122 on National Security and Defense
October 12, 2012
October 12, 2012 | Special Report on National Security and Defense
Much of what is written today about the capabilities required by the military services is offered within the context of fiscal restraint, national budget austerity, and cuts in the defense budget to ensure that the armed services pay their "fair" share of deficit reduction. This study argues for building an Air Force to support a joint force that can meet current and future threats to American security without regard for arbitrary fiscal guidelines and ceilings. It is time for the United States to adopt an asymmetric strategy linking objectives and resources, emphasizing the role of air power, and maximizing U.S. Air Force contributions to that strategy.
How Did the Air Force Arrive in This State? A number of factors have led the U.S. Air Force into its current state—described by some as "geriatric." The size of the Air Force has declined in tandem with the perceived threat and as a result of a decade-long concentration on land combat against irregular forces. Without new aircraft to replace the existing fleet, the Air Force was required to keep its aging aircraft flying, creating a "death spiral"—spending funds on maintenance, repair, and overhaul of obsolescent airframes instead of acquiring new aircraft. Moreover, the Air Force has engaged in nearly continuous combat operations since Saddam Hussein's forces crossed the Kuwaiti border in 1990. The "long hard slog" of counterinsurgency that occupied America's armed forces over the past decade emphasized a manpower-intensive doctrine that sought to find and fix an elusive, asymmetric adversary in unconventional armed conflict at the expense of the core Air Force missions of air superiority and long-range strike.
The Principal Security Challenges Facing the U.S. Military and the Air Force. The principal military challenges driving the need for improvements in the Air Force are: deterring hostile actions by an increasingly confrontational China and overcoming the anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) military capabilities being fielded by that country; preventing the aggression of regional rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran, whose militaries could be armed with nuclear weapons; and prevailing against the varied brands of violent Islamist radicalism that threaten terrorist acts against important U.S. interests and allies.
Building a Full-Spectrum Air Force. This study argues for building an Air Force to support a force capable of meeting current and future threats to American security without regard for arbitrary fiscal guidelines and ceilings.
Deterring China. To overcome China's increasing A2/AD capabilities, and to deter China from regional aggression, this report makes a number of specific recommendations:
Preventing Regional Aggression. To prevent regional aggression and to stem nuclear proliferation, this paper recommends that the Air Force:
Prevailing Against Radical Islamist Terrorism. As the U.S. de-emphasizes its large ground presence and seeks to substitute technology for manpower in counterterrorist operations, the Air Force needs to:
Abstract:A combination of procurement holidays, high operational tempo, and a de-emphasis of strategic conventional bombing have left behind an Air Force that is inadequately prepared to meet the range of challenges to America's security. In contrast to the latest versions of budget-driven defense policy, this study argues for building an Air Force to support a joint force that can meet current and future threats to American security without regard for arbitrary fiscal guidelines and ceilings. The United States cannot successfully underwrite its foreign and defense policy objectives without increased investment in Air Force capacities and capabilities.
Much of what is written today about the capabilities required by the military services is offered within the context of fiscal restraint, national budget austerity, and cuts in the defense budget to ensure that the armed services pay their "fair" share of deficit reduction. The 10-year, $487 billion reduction dictated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the current debate over further cuts from "sequestration" are only the latest versions of a budget-driven defense policy. Yet the United States Air Force is already operating the oldest fleet in its history in a security environment that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has characterized as unprecedented in the range of threats that challenge America's security. The facts are disturbing:
This study not only examines the current state of the U.S. Air Force, but recommends where to invest to allow a reinvigorated Air Force to meet the security challenges facing the United States. Chapter 1 describes the current state of the Air Force and explains several of the factors that led to its obsolescent state. Force planning for the air arm has never been a precise science, and the gradual move away from a strategic concept advocating a "two-war" threat-based capability coupled with a recent focus on combating irregular opponents has clouded the issue of "how much airpower is enough." Chapter 2 examines the current security environment and finds plenty for the Air Force to do. However, today's Air Force is not equipped to do it. New directions for U.S. military strategy, the "pivot" to the Western Pacific, and concern about the "anti-access/area denial" (A2/AD) and power projection intentions of would-be adversaries provide a new foundation for Air Force planning and a blueprint for investment. In light of that threat, Chapter 3 examines major plans, programs, and initiatives in Air Force planning and evaluates them in terms of their value added to deterrence and defense in the emerging security environment. It makes the case for those Air Force capabilities and capacities required to support the joint force, underwriting U.S. foreign and defense policy objectives across the spectrum of conflict in the near term and midterm.
This study argues for building an Air Force to support a force capable of meeting current and future threats to American security without regard for arbitrary fiscal guidelines and ceilings. Students of American foreign and defense policy during the Cold War will recall John Lewis Gaddis's Strategies of Containment in which he contrasted the strategies developed over those years to match objectives and budgets based on perceptions of resources available.[1] In the current climate of fiscal austerity, it may again be time to adopt an asymmetric strategy linking objectives to budgets by emphasizing the role of air power[2] and maximizing Air Force contributions to that strategy.
How much air power is enough? Air power force sizing constructs are not known for their analytical rigor. During the Cold War and for some time afterward, Air Force tactical fighter wings were sized to support Army divisions, with a rough metric of one to two wings—composed of air superiority, interdiction, and close air support fighter aircraft—for each land division. Yet even with this metric and a force planning focus on Central Europe during the Cold War, the growing technological sophistication and attendant costs of developing and producing advanced fighter aircraft threatened the ability to field a force in the numbers required. A 1974 Brookings study on U.S. tactical air concluded that "the tactical air forces are receiving fewer aircraft and modernizing more slowly than at any time since the emphasis on US conventional capabilities was renewed at the beginning of the 1960s."[3]
That turn to conventional deterrence was prompted by a national military strategy of "Flexible Response," which departed from the nuclear-intensive "New Look" of the Eisenhower Administration. However, the need for additional conventional firepower was realized late in fighter aircraft—the Air Force acquired the Navy's F-4 to obtain a conventional attack aircraft in Vietnam—and never was extended to the bomber force. Despite the extensive use of B-52s in conventional roles during the Vietnam War, the robust fleet of B-52s required by General Curtis LeMay's doctrine of "massive retaliation" remained dedicated to strategic nuclear deterrence. Without an emphasis on long-range conventional strike, the bomber force was allowed to atrophy as a marginal contributor to the nuclear triad composed increasingly by intercontinental ballistic missiles.[4] New bomber programs were also seen through the prism of nuclear strike and arms control negotiations. President Jimmy Carter cancelled the B-1 in a time of perceived detente with the Soviet Union, and Ronald Reagan restored it as part of a campaign pledge to boost the nation's nuclear arsenal. The proposed force of 100 B-1s and 132 B-2s was justified by calculations of damage expectancy and intended to replace the B-52 fleet. However, the B-2, despite its inherent conventional capabilities, was also a victim of conflating "strategic" with "nuclear." As the Cold War ended and budgets declined, the stealth bomber was seen as a throwback to the nuclear competition with the Soviet Union, rather than a means of conducting long-range precision-strike conventional operations within contested airspace. Ultimately, the U.S. acquired only 21 of the planned 132 B-2s.
The major post–Cold War force planning exercises, documents, and declaratory U.S. defense policies provided little assistance in sizing the Air Force for the future and in clarifying a long-range vision of needed capacities and capabilities. The "Base Force" developed by the George H. W. Bush Administration was essentially a straight-line reduction of military forces and budgets designed to hedge against a more dramatic and disjointed decrease spurred by calls for a "peace dividend." Despite air power's shining hour in Operation Desert Storm, during which the game-changing technologies of stealth and precision were first revealed on the battlefield, the subsequent "Bottom-Up Review" returned to methodologies of the past by sizing air power in relation to "boots on the ground" in force-on-force contingencies, and it cut fighter and bomber force structure significantly. Additional studies under the Clinton Administration—notably the "Report of the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces," the "Heavy Bomber Force Study," and the "Deep Attack Weapons Mix Study"—made little attempt to alter the force planning models of the past or to stress the importance of conventional long-range air power as a unique American advantage and a requirement for effective joint operations.
The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), mandated by Congress to follow up the Bottom-Up Review process and augment the annual Secretary of Defense reports, continued as a series of conservative documents drawing down U.S. Cold War force structure while adjusting to emerging threats. Across these reviews, the "two major theater wars" approach used to generate the number of divisions, aircraft carriers, and tactical fighter wings remained remarkably constant, despite some rephrasing to match political pledges.[5] Although the 2001 QDR hinted that the Department of Defense (DOD) would adopt a framework for transforming the U.S. military to meet a changed security environment and usher in a revolution in military affairs, such ambitions were set aside after 9/11 and the ensuing all-encompassing ground and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The February 2010 QDR continued the tradition of basing force planning on two, nearly simultaneous large-scale conventional contingencies, while insisting that the joint force also be available to support contingencies beyond those two canonical scenarios. Thus, the most recent QDR provides no strategic rationale or guidance for reducing combat aircraft inventories. Indeed one could surmise that requirements have increased. But the trend is in the other direction.
Two recent declarations of policy by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Joint Staff stress the need to increase the priority of air power.[6] "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense," released by the Department of Defense in January 2012, explicitly shifts the focus from the ground-intensive strategies of counterinsurgency that have dominated military doctrine and budgets for the past decade to a "rebalancing" toward the Asia–Pacific region. The ability of U.S. military forces to project power into contested environments despite anti-access/area denial challenges is central to this newly declared strategy. A "Joint Operational Access Concept," issued at the same time, further delineated that task. It identifies 30 operational capabilities that the future joint force will need to operate in highly contested environments against sophisticated adversaries. Many of those capabilities rely heavily on air power. Regrettably, the Air Force of today is not equipped to provide that air power, nor do these operational concepts offer concrete plans on how to build the necessary force.
A number of factors have led the U.S. Air Force to its current state—which some describe as "geriatric."[7] Over time, the size of the Air Force has declined in tandem with the perceived threat and a recent concentration on land combat against irregular forces. From its numerical peaks during the early days of the Cold War and then in Vietnam, its total number of aircraft declined precipitously with the drawdown in Southeast Asia and the collapse of the Soviet empire. As Air Force capacity shrank under strategic and fiscal guidance, the Air Force shifted to a quality-over-quantity emphasis—fewer aircraft capable of doing more things—starting with the F-4 series of fighter aircraft and continuing with current "fourth-generation" fighters, such as the F-15 and F-16.[8]
This approach worked for a while as the Air Force, in partnership with the defense industry, continued to modify these aircraft with increasingly sophisticated sensors and precision weapons. An F-16 rolling off the production line today (for a foreign customer)—termed by some as the "4.5 generation"—is far more capable than an F-16 built in the 1980s. Nevertheless, no matter how improved a single airplane might be, numbers matter when U.S. security objectives require deployments in distant theaters and frequent rotations. During the "procurement holiday" after the Cold War, aircraft production dropped dramatically. Without new aircraft to replace the existing fleet, the Air Force was required to keep its aging fleet flying, creating a "death spiral"—spending funds to repair and overhaul increasingly tired aircraft instead of acquiring new aircraft. Analysts and Air Force planners recognized this downward trend more than a decade ago. A RAND briefing in 2002 noted that while undercapitalization during the procurement holiday of the 1990s could be tolerated briefly, given that the drawdown of the force could simply be seen as early retirement for some force elements, the procurement curve needed to start up soon or major force posture shortfalls would arrive after 2010.[9]
If the U.S. had entered a "strategic pause" at the end of the Cold War, allowing it to "skip a generation" of aircraft acquisition, the Air Force might have found the time and budget to nurture its legacy aircraft while investing in the research and development of a new fleet of aircraft that could have gradually replaced their less-advanced ancestors. Instead, "the Air Force has been engaged in nearly continuous combat operations since Saddam Hussein's forces crossed the Kuwaiti border in 1990."[10] Shortly after the high-intensity campaigns of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the Air Force enforced the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, a decade-long air operation at a high operational tempo that only increased with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Meanwhile, U.S. air forces were tasked with taking down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and continuing air patrols over American cities after the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Aircraft were flying more than twice or three times as much as planned, aging the fleet prematurely.
The "global war on terrorism" also took its toll on Air Force planning, force structure, and modernization. Air Force long-range, precision-strike capabilities made notable contributions in the first days of the Iraq and Afghanistan air campaigns. However, the "long hard slog" of counterinsurgency over the past decade de-emphasized the core Air Force missions of air superiority and long-range strike at the expense of a manpower-intensive doctrine that sought to "find and fix" an elusive, asymmetric adversary in unconventional armed conflict. The Air Force adapted to these tactics, and its improvements in joint command and control (C2) and ISR capable of tracking individuals, using unmanned air vehicles with precise targeting, and rapid response to calls for close air support, were noteworthy in defeating irregular combatants in remote and urban areas. However, this strategic focus on irregular conflict in relatively uncontested airspace prevented the Air Force from making well-received arguments to modernize its force to face a more sophisticated future adversary. A case of "next-war-itis" could appear as not fully supporting the war on terrorism—the task at hand. Thus, for many airmen who have experienced the Air Force support of ground forces as the primary mission over the past decade, the missions of air superiority and long-range strike that created the service's birthright are notions found in history books and old newsreels.
In addition, the Air Force has not championed a strategic vision that could have illuminated Air Force roles, missions, and core competencies in a brighter light. Continuing the AirLand Battle focus of the Cold War years, Tactical Air Command—the Air Force's largest and most influential conventional air command—entered the 1990s with a vision of conventional war focused on supporting the Army with short-range air superiority and land-attack fighter aircraft.[11] This institutional momentum continued despite guidance from the top echelons of the Air Force and critiques from informed observers. In 1990, the Air Force released "Global Reach Global Power," a white paper anticipating that the Air Force's unique characteristics of speed, range, flexibility, and precision would serve as major contributors in meeting U.S. security objectives in a "new world order."[12] As the Air Force embarked upon a major long-range planning effort in the mid-1990s, analysts outside the organization advised it to consider what the Air Force of the future might be asked to do and to emphasize its core competencies of long-range precision strike, stealth, air superiority, and global reconnaissance and surveillance.[13]
Despite these observations, the Air Force as an institution remained largely resistant to change. Some have attributed this organizational bias to its leadership—general officers with predominantly fighter backgrounds from 1982 until 2008.[14] At the end of that period the Air Force fielded roughly 1,475 operational fighter aircraft and bombers, but only 6 percent were long-range bombers, and a majority of those were committed to nuclear operations. Similarly, only 6 percent of the combat air fleet was considered stealthy—designed with low-observability radar cross sections enabling them to penetrate sophisticated integrated enemy air defenses.[15] For all of its talk, the Air Force was not walking the walk of the military-technical revolution.
Other issues also led to a "crisis in institutional confidence,"[16] contributing to the loss of Air Force influence in the bureaucratic politics that shape the nation's force structure and budgets:
Thus, there is plenty of blame to go around for the state of the Air Force today. It is more important to note the one overriding result of these trends: Today's Air Force is ill-equipped to carry out the roles and missions assigned to it in the new national military strategy. However, the decline of the U.S. Air Force is a choice, not a fate. Understanding this reality requires outlining the major current and emerging threats to U.S. national security and specifying how the Air Force can be shaped to meet them.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin E. Dempsey stated recently that the world is more dangerous than at any other time in human history: "More people have the ability to harm us or deny the ability to act than in any time in my life." The chairman elaborated by pointing to the proliferation of precision weapons—destructive technologies that are now available to a "wider and more disparate pool of adversaries."[18] There is a fairly wide consensus regarding the scope and seriousness of these threats, but the implications for Air Force capacities and capabilities are not always transparent. This chapter outlines the most salient security challenges with the purpose of recommending an agenda for building the Air Force that America needs.
Leading the list, China's military buildup and advanced technological developments threaten America's ability to project military power into the Western Pacific region and, thereby, to protect its interests and allies in this vital region. There is great uncertainty that China will be as successful in the future as it has been the past 25 years—a period marked by military modernization and doctrinal reform. We cannot predict with confidence China's future because the Chinese themselves are unable to do so. However, China's capabilities, if not its course of action, are clear and inform U.S. strategy and force planning. China is fielding modern capabilities and devising new concepts to deny U.S. military operations in the Western Pacific. These anti-access/area denial capabilities are designed to prevent the U.S. from operating in the region as planned, specifically from forward land bases within relatively short range of the Taiwan Strait, the presumed nexus of conflict. To deny these bases to the U.S. and to threaten sea basing as well, the Chinese are investing in precision-guided surface-to-surface and anti-ship ballistic missiles, highly accurate land-attack and anti-ship cruise missiles, kinetic and directed-energy anti-satellite weapons, electronic and cyber-attack systems, ground and sea-based defenses of their critical infrastructure, and fourth-generation and possibly fifth-generation fighter aircraft.[19] The 2011 DOD report to Congress on the rising military might of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has a number of implications for the U.S. Air Force.[20]
In sum, despite considerable uncertainty, China could emerge over the next decade as a major threat to U.S. security. With increasing anti-access and power projection capability, China's military could provide the means through which the PLA could seek to replace the United States as the principal military power in the Western Pacific and move toward hegemonic political and economic status in the region. As diplomatic and economic competitions unfold, the mission of the U.S. Department of Defense must be to maintain a favorable military balance of power in the region to dissuade China from making any aggressive or coercive moves against U.S. and allied interests in the region.
Iran and North Korea also pose significant risks to American interests and international security because both countries have proceeded with ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs despite international sanctions. Even if sanctions successfully slow their nuclear programs, short-range conventional precision weapons—often referred to as guided rockets, artillery, mortars, and missiles (G-RAMM)—could enable their military forces to mount precision attacks against American air bases overseas, making doubly difficult the deployment of short-range air forces into the theater of operations. Finally, the U.S. government has identified both states as sponsors of terrorism, and they are prime candidates to export primitive nuclear devices and precision conventional weaponry to non-state entities and proxies, such as Hezbollah and al-Qaeda.
The proliferation of advanced military technologies may allow Iran to develop its own A2/AD capabilities—like China, but on a smaller scale with Iran's capabilities tailored to the unique geographic characteristics of the Persian Gulf. A recent study of Iran's growing A2/AD capability argued, "Iran's acquisition of weapons which it could use to deny access to the Gulf, control the flow of oil and gas from the region, and conduct acts of aggression or coercion are of grave concern to the United States and its security partners."[21] The study pointed to Iran's growing A2/AD capabilities in four broad categories: ballistic missiles, possibly armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs); G-RAMM holding at risk U.S. and allied forces deployed to bases and ports in the region; weapons and systems designed to close or control the Strait of Hormuz, including fast-attack aircraft, mine-laying platforms, and anti-ship cruise missiles; and air defenses.[22]
In A2/AD, Iran is no China in terms of military capability, but it has advantages that China lacks, particularly in geography.[23] While China has much to defend in a vast region of the Western Pacific, Iran can focus on the 600 mile-long Persian Gulf and specifically the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint. Therefore, Iran can concentrate its growing A2/AD capabilities on a far smaller area if its objective is to make it too costly for the United States to project military power into the region. For the moment, however, an important similarity between Chinese and Iranian ambitions is that both appear content to capitalize on the proliferating precision weapons regime to strengthen their political and economic status in the region, rather than leveraging that increasing strength to launch military attacks. However, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) does not appear to share that reticence.
A recent study by the Korea Economic Research Institute in Seoul concluded that North Korea's offensive military strategy was superior to the defensive posture of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and that North Korea was building up its forces to underwrite its doctrine of "military first politics" under Kim Jong-un, its new ruler.[24] Rather than constructing an A2/AD capability to deter U.S. power projection, North Korea, faced with the formidable South Korean military on its southern doorstep, has instead adopted an offensive posture that threatens a preemptive strike to unify the peninsula on its own terms. In such a scenario, the U.S. military would become quickly engaged by virtue of diplomatic commitments and the 28,500 U.S. troops that remain in South Korea. U.S. operational plans call for the rapid deployment of American ground, maritime, and air power to the region. As those operational plans are developed and exercised, they need to account for the capacity and capabilities of a rogue state that dedicates much of its national resources and nearly all of its international prestige to its military forces.[25]
The military threat from North Korea should not be exaggerated. Experts and findings from war games point to its aging and outdated equipment, which could fall prey to the more sophisticated air forces of the United States and the Republic of Korea. In addition, South Korea has been very deliberate in responding to the North's military provocations, such as referring to the sinking of the corvette Cheonan and the significant loss of life to the United Nations for investigation. South Korea has also developed an extensive defense reform program to improve its capacity to respond effectively to North Korean provocations. In addition, Seoul created a new Northwest Islands Command and deployed additional forces and sensors to the West Sea, the location of the Cheonan attack and artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.
Nevertheless, the provocations have continued, diplomacy has bogged down, North Korea's nuclear capability has continued to increase, and its new, young, and untried leader is clinging to the traditional "military first" policy. Thus, South Korea and the U.S. continue to seek and implement measures that will prevent North Korea's leaders from launching a more serious preemptive attack that could plunge the peninsula into war.
These force planning contingencies should not be taken lightly. While the military balance measured against Iran and North Korea may seem to favor the United States and its allies when compared with the increasing capability of China, regarding these rogue states simply as lesser-included cases would be a mistake. RAND's Project Air Force has conducted in-depth research on what they have defined as nuclear-armed regional adversaries: "countries that pursue policies that are at odds with the United States and its security partners, whose actions run counter to broadly accepted norms of state behavior, and whose size and military forces are not of the first magnitude."[26] That research led to an important conclusion that deterring the use of nuclear weapons by either North Korea or a newly armed Iran "could be highly problematic in any plausible conflict situations…for the simple reason that adversary leaders may not believe that they will be any worse off having used nuclear weapons than if they were to forego their use."[27]
The implications of the RAND findings for this paper and for building Air Force capabilities and capacities is that the United States military needs to offer high assurance that it can prevent these would-be adversaries from using nuclear weapons, rather than deter them, as is the case with China. This calls for a modern conventional military force that in contested airspace can hold at risk enemy command and control, WMD, and their delivery systems. It requires high-caliber reconnaissance-strike systems that can locate, pinpoint, and attack hardened fixed targets as well as identifying and attacking targets on the move. In perhaps the most important difference between planning a force to prevent, rather than deter, active defenses will be required to destroy delivery vehicles after their launch, but before they can strike regional bases and ports.
A final threat emanating from these nuclear-armed regional adversaries is that they may proliferate precision-guided weapons and, perhaps, primitive nuclear devices to non-state actors dedicated to carrying out terrorist attacks against American and allied interests.
The "hybrid warfare" model that North Korea practices with its combination of conventional and irregular forces is transferrable to non-state actors, insurgents, and terrorists pursuing an agenda of religious fanaticism and revolution in the Middle East and Africa. The U.S. focus on defeating this radical Islamist movement since 9/11 has resulted in major hybrid, counterinsurgency, and counterterrorist operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Recently, with the killing of Osama bin Laden and successful drone strikes against other major al-Qaeda operatives, there has been a sense of "mission accomplished" as U.S. forces have withdrawn from Iraq and are on a downward trend in Afghanistan. However, with a number of Middle Eastern nations trembling from the "Arab Spring" and its aftermath, neglecting the global network of reconnaissance and strike necessary to prevail against this organization, still capable of launching terrorist attacks against the United States, would be a mistake. As the U.S. shifts its strategic attention from the Middle East to the Pacific and begins to rebuild its conventional forces to deter China and prevent the aggression of regional adversaries, it also needs to maintain watch and, when required, use deadly force to counter terrorist organizations acting against U.S. and allied interests. Evidence of continuing jihadist terrorism is plentiful:
The United States faces "complex irregular warfare" in this long war against radical Islam.[29] In such a conflict environment, the U.S. military sets aside the traditional calculations and movements of "force-on-force" combat and attempts to dominate complex physical, human, and informational terrain. As the U.S. and its allies enter this nontraditional and disaggregated battlespace, there is no requirement to meet the enemy on its own terms. Indeed, the U.S. retrenchment in Afghanistan and Iraq and its recent re-emphasis on more conventional warfighting and adversaries reflect the difficulty that America faces in a counterinsurgency environment in which distinguishing between friend and foe is difficult and winning hearts and minds does not necessarily follow from victory in battle. Nevertheless, the U.S. military can bring its own asymmetric strengths to this conflict, as it has adapted over the past decade, and continue to leverage its advantages of instantaneous access to firepower, force protection, mobility, stealth, and precision in this ever-evolving challenge.
At the heart of deterring China's military lies the challenge of overcoming the anti-access/area denial capabilities that the PLA is fielding to deny U.S. force penetration into and operations in the Western Pacific region. The U.S. operational concept termed "AirSea Battle" best expresses the joint service response to this challenge.[30] Taking a page from the joint operational concept of AirLand Battle that focused on Central Europe during the Cold War, AirSea Battle seeks to unite separate Air Force and Navy plans and doctrine to address the A2/AD challenge and to deter a rising China from military power projection in the Western Pacific. Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz explained, "The ultimate goal [of AirSea Battle] is interoperable air and naval forces that can execute networked, integrated attacks-in-depth to disrupt, destroy, and defeat an adversary's A2/AD capabilities, in turn sustaining the deployment of U.S. Joint forces."[31]
To underwrite this operational concept, a number of candidate AirSea Battle initiatives have been identified to field the necessary forces and capabilities. Those most pertinent to building the Air Force that America needs are:
The following makes specific recommendations for building an Air Force capable of supporting those initiatives.
Build the Bomber. A new long-range bomber is the centerpiece for Air Force contributions to AirSea Battle and at the heart of an operational concept designed to overcome China's growing A2/AD capabilities. Current Air Force plans and budgets include a new long-range bomber, but reaching this point has been a long and difficult climb. Despite a series of studies in the 1990s advocating continuing B-2 production and, when that line closed, stressing the need for a next-generation long-range strike system, the best the Air Force could do in 1999 was to establish 2037 as the date for the new bomber's initial operating capability (IOC). The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review reversed that decision, moving the IOC to 2018, and the 2010 QDR advocated examining options for long-range strike within a "family of systems."[33] Most recently, the new defense strategy declared in January 2012 called for developing a new stealth bomber as an important component of projecting military power despite A2/AD challenges.[34]
Now that the program for a new bomber is underway—under considerable wraps owing to its classified nature—a number of issues revolve around it. Some of the most important go to whether the airplane will be manned or unmanned, nuclear or conventional, and part of the larger family of long-range systems or more autonomous. Given these considerations, the Air Force should:
Reopen the F-22 Line. The Air Force originally planned to purchase 700 F-22As to replace the fleet of 800 F-15A-Ds and the recently retired F-117 bomber, but the required number of F-22s was dramatically reduced over the past two decades to 442 in 1993, to 339 in 1997, and finally to 184 in President George W. Bush's fiscal year 2009 defense budget request. Although the Air Force has maintained a requirement for 381 F-22s in recent years, General Schwartz recently noted that the Air Force requires 243 F-22s. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced the Administration's intention to end F-22 production at 187 aircraft. On May 2, 2012, the last F-22 was delivered to the Air Force, but it is not too late to restart that production line. The U.S. should restart the F-22 production because:
Acquire an Advanced Version of the Navy's Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle. The Air Force has made great progress in building and deploying its unmanned aircraft fleet in the context of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but without an appreciation for the capabilities needed to conduct the same roles and missions in contested airspace.[39] As directed by the 2006 QDR and as a result of a number of studies and research efforts, the Navy is making considerable progress in fielding a longer-range, carrier-based UCAV.[40] The logic supporting its development is every bit as compelling as for the logic driving the U.S. Air Force to prepare for flight operations in a sophisticated A2/AD environment. Like short-range, land-based Air Force fighter aircraft, fighter and attack jets launched from a carrier are best suited for striking targets between 200 and 450 nautical miles from their carriers. At the same time, aircrew endurance limits the ability, even with aerial refueling, to fly combat missions of more than a few hours. A carrier-based UCAV with aerial refueling could stay airborne for 50 to 100 hours—limited only by the life of its operating systems—allowing it to establish persistent surveillance-strike combat air patrols at long ranges.
The Navy is moving deliberately on their UCAV plans, testing the X-47B demonstrator to inform its plans to field the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) System by 2018.[41] The Air Force should leverage the Navy's technical progress and capitalize on its doctrinal innovation to develop and field a UCAV designed to underwrite Air Force roles and missions in an A2/AD environment. Such a course makes good sense because:
Fortify Space and Cyberspace. The 2012 DOD Report on China's military states:
[T]he PRC [People's Republic of China] is developing a multidimensional program to limit or deny the use of space-based assets by adversaries during times of crisis or conflict. In addition to the direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon tested in 2007, these counter-space capabilities also include jamming, laser, microwave, and cyber weapons. Over the past two years, China has also conducted increasingly complex close proximity operations between satellites while offering little in the way of transparency or explanation.[43]
The new Joint Operational Access Concept notes that "a logical opening operation to any anti-access campaign is to neutralize U.S. space assets."[44] China's demonstrated capabilities as a space-faring nation differentiate it from other threats and challenges to U.S. national security—a challenge not encountered since the Cold War. Given these capabilities, the Air Force must regard space as another arena of A2/AD and adapt to a degraded environment. This means not only making U.S. space-based systems more numerous and resilient, but also developing and fielding substitutes or alternatives to space-based systems to provide essential C4ISR. Given America's dependence on space and cyberspace, a major step in mitigating aggression against the U.S. space-based infrastructure is the ability to defeat attacks against those assets and to demonstrate the ability to operate effectively even when enemy action has disabled some of those assets.
The issue areas of space and cyberspace always raise the issue of the "militarization" of space and its ultimate "weaponization." Quite clearly, space is militarized across a spectrum of roles and missions in space.[45] Space support refers to the launch of space-based assets and the management of on-orbit satellites that are essential to global military operations and communications. Force enhancement refers to the way in which space-based assets improve the effectiveness of operations in other domains: air, land, and sea. The dichotomy occurs between force enhancement, in operation every day, and force application from space, which the space-faring nations have thus far avoided.
How long the U.S. and other nations can eschew placing weapons in space is anyone's estimate. One thorough diagnostic of the military uses of space completed a decade ago doubted any such shift would occur before 2025.[46] Yet two issues are clear: First, the threats to space-based systems continue to escalate: electromagnetic pulse, direct-ascent anti-satellites, directed energy weapons, and cyber attacks. Second, the new American way of warfare—web-based and net-centric—depends on the global information grid for its joint warfighting capabilities. It is therefore incumbent on the Air Force to fortify its space-based and cyberspace capabilities, while hedging against the risk, probably within the next decade, that force application in and from space will become a reality. Prudent investments in this area include the following:[47]
As the United States faces an emerging peer competitor in the Western Pacific and seeks to overcome the robust A2/AD capabilities that the PLA is fielding, it also must confront would-be regional aggressors, such as North Korea and Iran, that may be armed with nuclear weapons. Although one might assume that these states' possession of rudimentary WMDs would not prompt aggression or be seen as a deterrent to external intervention in response to that aggression, such an assumption could prove risky and dangerous. Therefore, in these regional contingencies, the Air Force and its joint partners face the challenge of dissuading and preventing these states from regional power projection, while reducing U.S. vulnerabilities, exploiting their weaknesses, and offsetting their strengths.
As suggested above, these two states have adopted quite different strategies for regime survival, A2/AD, and power projection. Iran's preferences appear to mirror China's on a much smaller scale, but they have far less geography to defend. Iran is developing capabilities that could be used to attack U.S. forward-deployed forces, restrict the access of follow-on units to the region, and deny military and commercial shipping access to the area around the Strait of Hormuz in order to leverage their control over the flow of oil. In contrast, North Korea threatens a much more offensive course of action, warning of the bombardment of Seoul and South Korea followed by a land invasion with armored vehicles and special forces designed to grab Seoul—reminiscent of the Korean War of the 1950s, which left the peninsula divided under a tenuous truce.
North Korea's declared strategy is to use asymmetric warfare, cyber attacks, and its huge arsenal of artillery and ballistic missiles. Artillery would bombard forward-deployed South Korean and American land forces, possibly with chemical weapons. Long-range artillery would target Seoul, land forces in the rear, and bases and ports to the south, conceivably with WMD. Ballistic missiles, possibly with WMD warheads, would attack off-peninsula targets. North Korea has developed a wide range of asymmetric technologies: GPS jammers and camouflage, concealment, and deception techniques, including a tunnel and storage infrastructure that is hardened and deeply buried. North Korea may also have thousands of hackers to launch cyber attacks. Despite the famine and shortages that affect the country's civilian and military populations, North Korea's wartime strategic reserves of food, fuel, and ammunition are estimated to last in full-scale war from three months to more than one year.
Iran's growing A2/AD capabilities and North Korea's offensive might present serious military challenges, but they are not yet equivalent to those posed by China. Therefore, projecting such capabilities into the future and proposing an "Outside-In" operational concept to fight from long range in the event such capabilities continue to improve and mature are prudent steps.[52] However, Air Force planning for the near term should meet the objective of preventing aggression and proliferation by relying on its more traditional doctrine of moving tactical forces to bases around the periphery of these states to establish, with the help of its joint and combined partners, air dominance over the battlespace. Clearly, the long-range capabilities advocated to deter China would assist in a comprehensive, regional theater campaign and could swing to Northeast or Southwest Asia as needed. However, the resources the Air Force needs in these contingencies look much like the forces dedicated to the conventional campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade, albeit upgraded to operate in contested airspace. The objectives of such a campaign are to:
The following makes specific recommendations for building an Air Force capable of supporting those initiatives.
Continue the F-35 Program as Planned. Despite the delays, concurrency issues, and cost increases, the Air Force needs all 1,700 F-35 strike fighters to replace the aging F-16, A-10, and F-15E fleets as originally planned. As it comes on line, the F-35 will act as a force multiplier for upgraded F-15 and F-16 fleets facing increasingly hostile A2/AD environments. The current program schedule has the delivery of basic combat capability aircraft in late 2015, followed by full capability baseline software in late 2016, and completion of the development project in 2018 when delivery of the more advanced configuration is expected. Air Force peak production starts then, with 60 aircraft being produced annually. That rate will rise to 80 jets per year by 2021, producing 40 squadrons of combat-coded F-35As (the conventional takeoff and landing variant to be flown by the Air Force) by 2028. The design goals call for the F-35 to be the premier strike aircraft for the Air Force as well as of its joint and combined partners through 2040. The F-35 program should continue as planned for some additional reasons:
Modernize the Legacy Fighter Force. The delays in the F-35 program have resulted in plans to upgrade and extend the service-life of 300–350 Block 40/50 F-16s to about 2030. Unless these aircraft undergo extensive improvements, emerging land-based and air-based defenses will force them into standoff roles or their removal from the fight entirely. The F-15 fleet, which lost an aircraft in 2008 to structural fatigue and airframe failure, particularly needs modification and overhaul.[54] These fourth-generation fighters also need avionics upgrades in order to carry out missions against sophisticated defenses, and all F-15 and F-16 models need phased array (AESA) radars. Targeting pods and infrared search and track capabilities would also increase their contributions in Korean or Iranian scenarios. As it leverages its legacy fighter fleet to prevent aggression by these regional adversaries, the Air Force should also:
Strengthen the ISR Decision Chain. The "family of systems" approach being adopted in long-range conventional strike also has applications in strengthening ISR collection, processing, exploitation, and dissemination in conventional, but contested airborne environments. A recent review of Air Force ISR capabilities and an Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study drew attention to the role of nontraditional ISR in contested airspace and made the case for modernizing legacy ISR platforms as well as streamlining and strengthening the ISR decision chain. The Air Force should take a number of steps that would contribute to achieving military objectives against regional aggressors:
Develop and Field a Hypersonic Munition. The High Speed Strike Weapon is planned to be an air-breathing, hypersonic round intended to improve the effectiveness of fifth-generation fighter aircraft against growing A2/AD capabilities. It will be capable of striking time-critical targets from tactically relevant standoff distances in tactically relevant timelines. The research and development must incorporate seeker, guidance, navigation, and control technologies with the goal of mounting a hypersonic ground-attack system on an F-35.
The long war endures. Since 2001, in response to the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. homeland by radical Muslim terrorists under the leadership of al-Qaeda, the United States has led coalitions of armed forces to defeat terrorism and the states and non-state actors that sponsor and conduct terrorist attacks on American interests and allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. The strategy has shifted as the U.S. de-emphasizes its large ground presence and seeks to substitute technology for manpower in counterterrorist, rather than counterinsurgency, operations. But the objectives remain to prevail against those seeking to harm the United States through terrorist, asymmetric, and possibly catastrophic means.
Although the U.S. military presence in Iraq has ended, America will stay involved in Afghanistan and its environs for some time. A recent NATO summit ratified roughly $3.6 billion in economic support per year for 10 years. NATO will provide nearly 2,000 military trainers for Afghan security forces, and an additional 20,000 U.S. military personnel will remain in-country providing battlefield enablers such as aerial surveillance, close air support, and logistic mobility.[61] As the Afghan campaign winds down or, at least, transitions, other trouble spots will likely flare up. The U.S. will certainly think twice before attempting to insert a large ground army in the Middle East or Africa to defeat terrorism, quell proliferation, foment democratic revolution, or change a regime. Nevertheless, the U.S. will still need major efforts to prevail against the Taliban or any other actor that allows a sanctuary for al-Qaeda or its offspring. A number of Air Force capabilities and capacities will prove essential as this long war continues, and successful counterterrorism operations will require a number of enhancements that are referenced in the 2010 QDR:
The following makes specific recommendations for building an Air Force capable of supporting those initiatives.[63]
Focus Layered ISR on Counterterrorist Operations. As the American and allied presence on the ground declines and situational awareness of an elusive enemy is correspondingly degraded, integrated, multisource intelligence gained through layered airborne ISR systems becomes more important to counterterrorism operations. An Air Force emphasis on expanding ISR qualities and increasing ISR capacity will help to overcome that shortfall. Focusing ISR on complex irregular warfare calls for improving the types and qualities of sensor systems and increasing the number of orbits by airborne assets to cover large swaths of territory in distant regions and variable terrain.
Increase Targeting Capacity for Irregular Warfare. The Air Force oversaw the explosion of investment in ISR sensors and platforms over the past decade in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it did not pay enough attention to integrating and leveraging those assets. Better integration and exploitation of a wide range of intelligence products is required as well as developing tools and organizational concepts to exploit the layered intelligence picture.
Add Airborne Capacity and Capability to Enable Counterterrorism Operations. The Pentagon is about to launch another comprehensive mobility study to reduce Air Force strategic and tactical airlift fleets based on the new national defense strategy that calls for smaller ground forces and, presumably, lower air mobility requirements. However, far-flung counterterrorism operations and rapid deployment requirements may add to the million ton-miles per day calculations. The Air Force has recommended that any new study also consider factors such as intra-theater requirements, aerial refueling, time-sensitive delivery to maneuver forces, and prepositioned equipment. The Air Force's capability to support U.S. and allied ground forces on the move in irregular warfare scenarios needs a number of enhancements:
Recommit to the Total Force. The Air Force understandably wants to recapitalize the active force while reducing the personnel and operational tempo absorbed by its Guard and Reserve components during the irregular wars of the past decade. Yet Congress rejected as disproportionate the proposed cuts of 5,000 people and 200 aircraft from the Guard to rebalance that effort. Modernization of the Guard and Reserve is essential to enhance recruitment and retention and to keep ready the expertise generated during constant rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Guard and Reserve can continue to relieve pressure on the active component by focusing on homeland defense and humanitarian support missions, adjusting fighter force manpower, maintaining a lowered rotational requirement in support of counterterrorism operations, and divesting legacy aircraft in favor of more modern platforms, including unmanned systems. A number of initiatives appear promising:
This study has offered three perspectives:
A number of sources support the first thesis. The defense intellectual community—including the Pentagon, the Administration, Congress, and academe—generally agrees that maintaining the U.S. military's dominance is vital to protecting U.S. interests and those of its allies and friends at home and abroad. While the number and character of these threats can be expansive, if restricted to U.S. security concerns related to military threats from other actors in the international system, deterring China, preventing regional aggression by new nuclear actors, and prevailing in the war on terrorism dominate the conflict spectrum facing U.S. military force planners. One can hope that China will continue its peaceful rise, that the regimes in North Korea and Iran will succumb to domestic revolt and revolution before they assault their neighbors, and that Arab nationalism and moderate Islam will mitigate the radical sects in their countries and religion and lead them to peacefully resolve their internal and external disputes and differences. But hope is not a reliable strategy for force planners.
The second contention is perhaps more argumentative because it raises the perennial question in defense studies of "how much is enough?" Nevertheless, it is difficult to oppose the conclusion that the Air Force is ill prepared to deter, prevent, and prevail in the contingencies suggested above. The blame for this condition can be shared widely, but the facts remain the same. The Air Force is operating a fleet of aircraft with an average age of more than a quarter of a century. It has deferred major acquisition programs for three decades. It possesses only 20 "modern" bombers and a handful of fifth-generation fighters. Because of internal stumbles, procurement holidays, and a global war on terrorists and insurgents, it missed the promise of a military-technical revolution. Would-be adversaries have taken advantage of these lapses and have created zones of anti-access and area denial that would deny to the Air Force and its joint warfighting partners the tactics and techniques of forward deployment and employment that have provided the foundation for U.S. military dominance during the Cold War and since. The playing field of international armed conflict no longer tilts in America's favor, and it promises to slide further away if the U.S. does not alter some very unfavorable trends.
The third section of the study may strike many as thorough, but unrealistic. It is fashionable for current think-tank studies making the rounds within the Beltway to argue that maintaining or increasing current levels of defense spending would be a mistake in this time of austerity and deficits. Instead, they suggest a number of remedies: The Department of Defense can operate more efficiently and effectively, generating considerable savings. Weapons acquisition can be reformed. Jointness should be enhanced and redundancy attacked. Leap-ahead technologies need to be championed. Perhaps some of this will occur. This study has taken the approach of outlining the capabilities and capacities that the Air Force requires to underwrite the declared security and defense policies of the United States without crunching numbers, making tradeoffs, or computing cost-effectiveness. This paper briefly referenced John Gaddis's Cold War analysis of the strategies of containment. During that period, strategies were shifted to match perceived resources with objectives by adopting what Gaddis termed as "symmetric" or "asymmetric" means. One of those asymmetric strategies, when national solvency became paramount, was emphasizing the nation's air power. Such a strategy appears to have a contemporary application.[69]
The suggestions offered in the third chapter of the study might be considered as something akin to the joint "Planning Force" of old that was unconstrained by budget ceilings. It also might resemble the late and lamented "Unfunded Priorities List," which the Armed Services used to lobby for some of their favorite platforms and systems that did not make it into the President's budget. Others might say this would be a good starting point for congressional "earmarks," if they were still around. Finally, some will deride the chapter as the worst possible product of Pentagon planning: the laundry list. Yet all of these proposals are desirable and feasible.
In its own force planning and program development, the Air Force has undoubtedly considered all of the options presented in this paper, but could not include them under fiscal guidelines.
The planning contingencies are not new, and the capabilities and capacities recommended here are not, for the most part, revolutionary. The Air Force leadership has made tough choices in trading off readiness, modernization, and force structure. More tough decisions lie ahead.
Therefore, a few concluding recommendations in terms of priorities are warranted.
The decline of the U.S. Air Force is a choice, not a fate.
Robert Haffa Jr., Ph.D., is a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, DC. His 24-year Air Force career included operational flying assignments in reconnaissance and tactical fighter wings in Vietnam, the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Korea. Dr. Haffa followed his Air Force duties with a second career in the defense industry, and now is the Principal of Haffa Defense Consulting in Naples, Florida.
|Active electronically scanned array. An AESA radar (also called phased-array radar) utilizes numerous transmit/receive modules to increase radar power and cover a range of frequencies and targets while allowing stealthy operations.
|Air National Guard. The Air National Guard is the Air Force component of the National Guard and in that capacity performs both federal and state missions. For example, the ANG has total responsibility for the air defense of the United States. Under state law, the ANG reports to the governors of their respective state and provides protection of life and property through emergency relief support during and following natural disasters.
|Airborne Warning and Control System. The Airborne Warning and Control System (the E-3 Sentry) is a platform derived from the Boeing 707. It provides all-weather surveillance, command, control, and communications and is used to manage airborne assets during combat operations.
|AirSea Battle
|In September 2009, the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Chief of Naval Operations signed a classified memorandum to initiate an effort to develop a new operational concept termed "AirSea Battle." This effort focuses on the rising challenge to the ability of the U.S. military to project power into regions in which potential adversaries possess anti-access/area denial capabilities.
|Anti-access/area denial. Anti-access/area denial refers to the ability of a potential military adversary to prevent U.S. forces from penetrating an operational area (anti-access) or denying them the ability to operate effectively within that region (area denial). These capabilities include ballistic missiles to attack regional bases, integrated air defense systems, precision-guided munitions, and electronic warfare.
|Command and control. "The exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander over assigned and attached forces in the accomplishment of the mission. Command and control functions are performed through an arrangement of personnel, equipment, communications, facilities, and procedures employed by a commander in planning, directing, coordinating, and controlling forces and operations in the accomplishment of the mission."[70]
|Command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. C4ISR combines the concepts of command and control with the necessary communications, computers, and reconnaissance and surveillance assets that provide situational awareness and actionable intelligence of a battlespace.
|Directed energy. Directed energy, if it is weaponized, can be focused on a target to inflict damage. Instead of using a projectile, directed energy warfare uses electromagnetic radiation, particles, or sound.
|Electromagnetic pulse. "The electromagnetic radiation from a strong electronic pulse, most commonly caused by a nuclear explosion that may couple with electrical or electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges."[71]
|Fifth-generation aircraft
|Fourth-generation aircraft refer to the 'teen series (F-14, F-15, F-16, and F-18) of fighter aircraft, which excelled over their predecessors in maneuverability, digital computers and system integration techniques, and system upgrades.
|Fourth-generation aircraft
|Fourth-generation aircraft refer to the 'teen series (F-14, F-15, F-16, and F-18) of fighter aircraft, which excelled over their predecessors in maneuverability, digital computers and system integration techniques, and system upgrades.
|Guided rockets, artillery, mortars, and missiles. The proliferation of precision weapons technologies suggests that weapons previously limited to indirect attack on key facilities, such as airfields, may soon have the capability to strike individual targets with precision over both short and long ranges.
|Improvised explosive device. An IED, often referred to as a roadside bomb, is an explosive device constructed and deployed in ways other than conventional military action. Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan have used them extensively to target coalition forces, causing more than 60 percent of the forces' casualties.
|Long-Range Strike Bomber. The Department of Defense has announced that it will procure 80 to 100 new penetrating bombers with estimated initial operational capability in the mid-2020s. This aircraft is also referred to as the "next-generation bomber" (NGB).
|Operationally responsive space
|The ability to address emerging, persistent, and/or unanticipated needs through timely augmentation, reconstitution, and exploitation of space force enhancement, space control, and space support capabilities.
|Orbital diversity
|Orbital diversity is the use of multiple satellites and ground communications systems to gather information over a large area.
|People's Liberation Army. The PLA is the unified military organization of all land, sea, strategic missile, and air forces of the People's Republic of China. It is the world's largest military force.
|Quick reaction capability. Quick reaction capability is the ability to deliver a project in less time than would normally be expected in which cost is a secondary consideration to production and deployment of the item—often to meet an urgent operational need.
|Rivet Joint
|RC-135 V/W. The RC-135 V/W is the Air Force's standard airborne signals intelligence aircraft. It can detect, identify, and geo-locate various signals throughout the electromagnetic spectrum.
|Surface-to-air missile. SAMs are launched from the ground at a target in the air, either an aircraft or another missile.
|Space force application
|"Combat operations in, through, and from space to influence the course and outcome of conflict. The space force application mission area includes ballistic missile defense and force projection."[72]
|Space force enhancement
|"Combat operations in, through, and from space to influence the course and outcome of conflict. The space force application mission area includes ballistic missile defense and force projection."[73]
|Unmanned aerial vehicle. A UAV is an aircraft that flies without a human pilot and is controlled remotely, with varying degrees of autonomy.
|Unmanned combat air vehicle. A UCAV is a drone designed to deliver weapons and attack targets while under human control. For example, the Predator and Reaper have been employed for such attacks in uncontested airspace, and new designs are being developed for use in high-threat environments.
|Weapons of mass destruction. WMD can be biological, chemical, nuclear, or radiological devices designed to inflict massive casualties.
Show references in this report
[1]John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982). Gaddis differentiated between "symmetric" strategies buoyed by expanding resources and "asymmetric" strategies adopted in times of budgetary constraints.
[2]My colleague Ben Lambeth reminds me that air power—actually air and space power—is a complex amalgam of hardware and less tangible ingredients that bear on its effectiveness, such as employment doctrine, concepts of operations, training, tactics, proficiency, leadership, adaptability, and practical experience. Air power is functionally also inseparable from battlespace information. Air power, properly understood, is a joint service undertaking. The purpose of this paper is not to explore all of these components of air power, but to focus on building an Air Force to meet the three principal challenges to U.S. security. See Benjamin S. Lambeth, "The Role of Air Power Going into the 21st Century," in Emerging Threats, Force Structures, and the Role of Air Power in Korea (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2000), http://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_proceedings/CF152/CF152.chap6.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012).
[3]William D. White, U.S. Tactical Air Power: Missions, Forces and Costs (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1974), p. vii.
[4]Project Air Force at RAND advised otherwise. See Stephen T. Hosmer and Glenn A. Kent, "The Military and Political Potential of Conventionally Armed Heavy Bombers," RAND Corporation, August 1987, http://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/2009/R3508.pdf (accessed August 23, 2012).
[5]The Bottom-Up Review advocated a force structure, using a "building block" approach based on the Gulf War including four to five divisions and 10 Air Force fighter wings. This approach was continued through the 1997 QDR and the 2001 QDR. See Robert P. Haffa Jr., "Planning U.S. Forces to Fight Two Wars: Right Number, Wrong Forces," Strategic Review (Winter 1999), pp. 15–21.
[6]U.S. Department of Defense, "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense," January 2012, p. 5, http://www.defense.gov/news/Defense_Strategic_Guidance.pdf (accessed August 14, 2012), and U.S. Department of Defense, "Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC)," January 17, 2012, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/JOAC_Jan%202012_Signed.pdf (accessed August 14, 2012).
[7]Rowan Scarborough, "Fleets Fade Away with Pentagon Budget Cuts," The Washington Times, February 6, 2012, p. 1, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/5/fleets-fade-away-with-pentagon-budget-cuts/ (accessed August 14, 2012).
[8]See James C. Ruehrmund Jr. and Christopher J. Bowie, "Arsenal of Airpower," Air Force Magazine, February 2011, pp. 77–81, http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2011/February%202011/0211arsenal.aspx (accessed August 14, 2012).
[9]Kevin N. Lewis, "Force Modernization and Recapitalization: A Few Lessons Suggested by History," RAND, July 2002.
[10]Thomas P. Ehrhard, "An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul," Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, September 17, 2009, p. 17, http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2009/09/an-air-force-strategy-for-the-long-haul/ (accessed August 14, 2012).
[11]David A. Deptula, Firing for Effect: Change in the Nature of Warfare (Washington, DC: Aerospace Education Foundation, 1995), p. 13.
[12]U.S. Department of the Air Force, "The Air Force and National Security: Global Reach, Global Power," June 1990, http://www.afa.org/edop/2012/GRGP_Rice_1990.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012).
[13]See Andrew Krepinevich, The Air Force of 2016 (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 1996), and Robert P. Haffa Jr., "Wake-Up Call: What the Air Force Study on Long-Range Planning Should Conclude," Armed Forces Journal, September 1996, pp. 54–58.
[14]See Mike Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals: The Problem of Air Force Leadership (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1998), http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/AU_Press_Collection/Books/Worden/Worden.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012).
[15]Ehrhard, "An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul," p. 15.
[16]Ibid., p. 27.
[17]Ibid., pp. 28–29. Most recently the Senate Armed Services Committee's markup of the Pentagon's fiscal year 2013 budget request precludes the Air Force from divesting, retiring, or transferring aircraft assigned to the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve during next fiscal year. The committee went against the Air Force leadership's recommended changes because it "was unhappy with the lack of analysis and justification" that caused these planned reductions to "fall more heavily on the Air National Guard," and pushed for a commission to study the "appropriate makeup" of the total force.
[18]Karen Parrish, "Dempsey: Nation Faces Security Paradox," U.S. Department of Defense, http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=67921 (accessed August 15, 2012).
[19]The Joint Operational Access Concept uses "anti-access" to refer to long-range capabilities designed to prevent a military force from entering an operational area. "Area denial" refers to shorter-range forces fielded to limit the opposing forces' freedom of action within the area. For an earlier overview of the concept, see Andrew Krepinevich, Barry Watts, and Robert Work, Meeting the Anti-Access and Area Denial Challenge, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2003, http://www.csbaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2003.05.20-Anti-Access-Area-Denial-A2-AD.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012). For insight on anti-access and China's military improvements, see Roger Cliff et al., Entering the Dragon's Lair: Chinese Anti-Access Strategies and Their Implications for the United States (RAND Corporation, 2007), http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG524.html (accessed August 15, 2012).
[20]U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2011," http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/2011_cmpr_final.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012). See also U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2012," May 2012, http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/2012_CMPR_Final.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012), and John H. Cushman Jr., "Pentagon Study Says China Military Getting Stronger," The New York Times, May 18, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/world/asia/pentagon-study-says-china-military-getting-stronger.html/ (accessed August 15, 2012).
[21]Mark Gunzinger, "Outside-In: Operating from Range to Defeat Iran's Anti-Access and Area-Denial Threats," Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2011, p. ix, http://www.csbaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/CSBA_SWA_FNL-WEB.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012).
[22]Ibid., p. 33.
[23]See Andrew F. Krepinevich, "Why AirSea Battle?," Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, February 19, 2010, p. 27, http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2010/02/why-airsea-battle/ (accessed August 15, 2012).
[24]Jeremy Laurence, "North Korea Military Strategy Superior, Says Think-Tank," Reuters, January 4, 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/04/us-korea-north-military-idUSTRE8030C820120104 (accessed August 15, 2012).
[25]See Richard Norton-Taylor, "North Korea and South Korea: Military Capacity and Nuclear Capability," The Guardian, May 20, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/20/north-korea-south-korea-military-nuclear (accessed August 15, 2012); Koo Sub Kim, "Substance of North Korea's Military Threats and the Security Environment in Northeast Asia," The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 21, No. 3 (September 2009), pp. 239–250; and International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey 2011: The Annual Review of World Affairs (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2011), pp. 370–384. See also Leslie H. Gelb, "North Korea, U.S. Headed to Brink of War, Unnoticed," The Daily Beast, April 1, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/01/leslie-h-gelb-north-korea-u-s-headed-to-brink-of-war-unnoticed.html (accessed August 15, 2012), and Tony Capaccio and Roxana Tiron, "North Korea's Cyberwarfare Strength Grows, General Says," Bloomberg, March 27, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-28/north-korea-s-cyberwarfare-strength-grows-general-says.html (accessed August 15, 2012).
[26]David Ochmanek and Lowell H. Schwartz, Nuclear-Armed Regional Adversaries (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2008), http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG671/ (accessed August 15, 2012).
[28]See Seth G. Jones, "Al Qaeda Is Far from Defeated," The Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2012, p. A15, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577369780858510366.html (accessed August 15, 2012); "Al-Qaeda Is Down, but Far from Out," The Economist, April 21, 2012, p. 75, http://www.economist.com/node/21553013 (accessed August 15, 2012); Yaroslav Trofimov, "Attacks by Taliban Rise in Surge Areas," The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2012, p. A8, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303448404577408042123143860.html (accessed August 15, 2012); and Ali Almujahed and Sudarsan Raghavan, "Blast in Yemeni Capital Underlines al-Qaeda's Reach," The Washington Post, May 22, 2012, p. A1.
[29]See International Institute for Strategic Studies, "Complex Irregular Warfare: The Face of Contemporary Conflict," The Military Balance, Vol. 105, No. 1 (2005), pp. 411–420.
[30]See Krepinevich, "Why AirSea Battle?," and Jan Van Tol, AirSea Battle: A Point of Departure Operational Concept, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2010, http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2010/05/airsea-battle-concept/ (accessed August 15, 2012).
[31]General Norton A. Schwartz, "Air-Sea Battle Doctrine: A Discussion with the Chief of Staff of the Air Force and Chief of Naval Operations," video, The Brookings Institution, May 16, 2012, http://www.brookings.edu/events/2012/05/16-air-sea-doctrine#ref-id=20120516_schwartz (accessed August 23, 2012). See also General Norton A. Schwartz and Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, "Air-Sea Battle," The American Interest, February 20, 2012, http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1212 (accessed August 15, 2012), and Captain Philip DuPree and Colonel Jordan Thomas, "Air-Sea Battle: Clearing the Fog," Armed Forces Journal, June 2012, http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2012/05/10318204 (accessed August 15, 2012).
[32]Van Tol, AirSea Battle, p. xiv.
[33]See Robert Haffa and Michael Isherwood, "The 2018 Bomber," Northrop Grumman Analysis Center, August 2008, http://www.northropgrumman.com/analysis-center/paper/assets/The_2018_Bomber_the_case_for_a.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012), and Robert P. Haffa Jr. and Michael W. Isherwood, "Long-Range Conventional Strike: A Joint Family of Systems," Joint Force Quarterly, January 2011, pp. 102–107, http://www.ndu.edu/press/lib/images/jfq-60/JFQ60_102-107-Haffa-Isherwood.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012).
[34]U.S. Department of Defense, "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership," pp. 4–5.
[35]For the interview with retired Lieutenant General David Deptula, see David Axe, "Why the US Wants a New Bomber," The Diplomat, May 6, 2012, http://thediplomat.com/2012/05/06/why-the-u-s-wants-a-new-bomber/ (accessed August 15, 2012). See also Rebecca L. Grant, "The Case for a New Stealth Bomber," Washington Security Forum, 2012, http://www.irisresearch.com/case-for-a-new-stealth-bomber?a=1&c=1129 (accessed August 15, 2012).
[36]For example, Global Zero advocated an arsenal totaling 900 weapons. Global Zero, "Modernizing U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Force Structure and Posture," May 2012, http://timemilitary.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/051612_globalzero.pdf (accessed August 15, 2012). See also "The Growing Appeal of Zero," The Economist, June 18, 2011, p. 69, http://www.economist.com/node/18836134 (accessed August 15, 2012); Thom Shanker, "Former Commander of U.S. Nuclear Forces Calls for Large Cut in Warheads," The New York Times, May 16, 2012, p. 4, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/world/cartwright-key-retired-general-backs-large-us-nuclear-reduction.html (accessed August 15, 2012); and Thom Shanker, "Senator Urges Bigger Cuts to Nuclear Arsenal," The New York Times, June 14, 2012, p. A8, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/us/politics/senator-levin-urges-bigger-cuts-to-nuclear-arsenal.html (accessed August 15, 2012).
[37]Haffa and Isherwood, "Long-Range Conventional Strike," p. 107.
[38]See Mackenzie M. Eaglen and Eric Sayers, "Maintaining the Superiority of America's Defense Industrial Base," Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2276, May 22, 2009, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/05/maintaining-the-superiority-of-americas-defense-industrial-base; Richard B. Andres, "Up in the Air," The American Interest, September/October 2010, http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=861 (accessed August 15, 2012); Daniel Goure, "Bring Back the F-22," Lexington Institute, January 18, 2011, http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/bring-back-the-f-22?a=1&c=1171 (accessed August 15, 2012); Mackenzie Eaglen and Douglas Birkey, "Nearing Coffin Corner: U.S. Air Power on the Edge," American Enterprise Institute, March 21, 2012, http://www.aei.org/outlook/foreign-and-defense-policy/defense/nearing-coffin-corner-us-air-power-on-the-edge/ (accessed August 15, 2012); and Barry Watts, "The F-22 Program in Retrospect," Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, August 9, 2009, http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2009/08/the-f-22-program-in-retrospect/ (accessed August 15, 2012).
[39]See Robert P. Haffa Jr. and Anand Datla, "Six Ways to Improve UAVs," C4ISR Journal, March 2012.
[40]See Thomas P. Ehrhard and Robert O. Work, "Range, Persistence, Stealth, and Networking: The Case for a Carrier-Based Unmanned Combat Air System," Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, June 18, 2008, http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2008/06/carrier-based-unmanned-combat-air-system/ (accessed August 15, 2012).
[41]"Deck Work," Aviation Week and Space Technology, December 6, 2011, pp. 54–57.
[42]See Ehrhard and Work, "Range, Persistence, Stealth, and Networking," and Michael Franklin, "Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles: Opportunities for the Guided Weapons Industry?" Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies Occasional Paper, September 2008, http://www.rusi.org/publications/occasionalpapers/ref:O48BBB2FD81A4A/ (accessed August 16, 2012).
[43]U.S. Department of Defense, "Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2012."
[44]U.S. Department of Defense, "Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC)," p. 50.
[45]See Benjamin S. Lambeth, "Airpower, Spacepower, and Cyberpower," Joint Force Quarterly, January 2011, pp. 46–53, http://www.ndu.edu/press/airpower-spacepower-cyberpower.html (accessed August 16, 2012).
[46]Barry D. Watts, The Military Uses of Space: A Diagnostic Assessment, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2001, http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2001/02/the-military-use-of-space-a-diagnostic-assessment/ (accessed August 16, 2012).
[47]See Ehrhard, "An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul," and Ellen Pawlikowski, Doug Loverro, and Tom Cristler, "Space: Disruptive Challenges, New Opportunities, and New Strategies," Strategic Studies Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 27–54.
[48]Ellen Nakashima, "U.S. Builds a Cyber 'Plan X,'" The Washington Post, May 31, 2012, p. A1.
[49]Jan Kallberg, "Designer Satellite Collisions from Covert Cyber War," Strategic Studies Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring 2012), p. 131.
[50]U.S. Department of Defense, "About ORS," http://ors.csd.disa.mil/about-ors/index.html (accessed August 16, 2012).
[51]Elaine M. Grossman, "U.S. Air Force Approves Concept for Future ICBM, Eyes Navy Collaboration," Global Security Newswire, June 1, 2012.
[52]Gunzinger, "Outside-In."
[53]See Eaglen and Birkey, "Nearing Coffin Corner"; Ehrhard, "An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul"; Jeff Schogol, "Study: AF Lacks Stealth Aircraft to Fight China," Air Force Times, March 28, 2012, at http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2012/03/air-force-lacks-stealth-aircraft-to-fight-china-study-says-032812w/ (accessed August 16, 2012); Marcus Weisgerber, "Pentagon Confident in F-35 Buy Schedule," Defense News, March 31, 2012, p. 1; Loren B. Thompson, "Former Deputy Defense Secretary Says Slow Pace of F-35 Is 'Misguided,' Costing Taxpayers Billions," Lexington Institute, May 8, 2012, http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/former-deputy-defense-secretary-says-pentagon-slow-roll-of-f-35-is-misguided-costing-taxpayers-billions?a=1&c=1171 (accessed August 16, 2012); General John D. W. Corley and General William R. Looney III, "Real Consequences of Delaying F-35 Program," The Washington Times, May 14, 2012, p. B4, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/11/real-consequences-of-delaying-f-35-program/ (accessed August 16, 2012); John A. Tirpak, "Washington Watch," Air Force Magazine, July 2011, pp. 8–10, http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Documents/2011/July%202011/0711watch.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012); and Loren Thompson, "Pentagon's Best-Kept Secret: F-35 Fighter Program Is Progressing Nicely," Forbes, June 11, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/06/11/pentagons-best-kept-secret-f-35-fighter-is-progressing-nicely/ (accessed August 16, 2012).
[54]Robert Wall and Amy Butler, "Air Force Blues," Aviation Week and Space Technology, November 14, 2011, pp. 37–38.
[55]Robert Wall, "Gap Filler," Aviation Week and Space Technology, May 14, 2012, p. 29, and Amy Butler and Robert Wall, "Penetrating Questions," Aviation Week and Space Technology, May 14, 2012, pp. 46–47.
[56]See Lieutenant General Dave Deptula and Colonel Mike Francisco, "Air Force ISR Operations," Air & Space Power Journal, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter 2010), http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj10/win10/2010_4_04_deptula.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012); Guy Norris, "USAF ISR Review Points to Priority Change," Aviation Week and Space Technology, November 30, 2011; U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, "Non-Traditional ISR for Contested Environments," 2011, http://www.airforce-magazine.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Reports/2011/December%202011/Day02/AFSAB_NICE_TOR.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012); David Fulghum, "Embracing Change," Aviation Week and Space Technology, May 14, 2012, pp. 45–46; and Amy Butler, "Best Laid Plans," Aviation Week and Space Technology, February 27, 2012, pp. 31–32.
[57]Ehrhard, "An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul," p. 65.
[58]See David A. Shlapak and Alan Vick, "Check Six Begins on the Ground": Responding to the Evolving Ground Threat to U.S. Air Force Bases (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1995), http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2007/MR606.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012), and Christopher Bowie, "The Lessons of Salty Demo," Air Force Magazine, March 1999, http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2009/March%202009/0309salty.aspx (accessed August 16, 2012).
[59]Mark Gunzinger, "Changing the Game: The Promise of Directed-Energy Weapons," Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2012, p. x, http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2012/04/changing-the-game-the-promise-of-directed-energy-weapons/ (accessed August 16, 2012).
[60]Ibid., p. xii. See also Defense Science Board Task Force, "Directed Energy Weapons," U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, December 2007, http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA476320.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012).
[61]North Atlantic Treaty Organization, "Chicago Summit Declaration on Afghanistan," May 21, 2012, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_87595.htm (accessed August 16, 2012).
[62]U.S. Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, February 2010, pp. 21–25, http://www.defense.gov/qdr/images/QDR_as_of_12Feb10_1000.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012).
[63]See Michael Isherwood, "Layering ISR Forces," Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies Mitchell Paper 8, December 2011, http://www.afa.org/mitchell/reports/MP8_ISR_1211.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012).
[64]See Steven H. Walker, "Status and Health of the Department of Defense (DoD) Science and Technology (S&T) Laboratory Enterprise," statement to the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Committee on the Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives, April 17, 2012, http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2012/04%20April/Walker%2004-17-12.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012).
[65]See Robert P. Haffa Jr. and Jasper Welch, "Command and Control Arrangements for the Attack of Time-Sensitive Targets," Northrop Grumman Analysis Center, November 2005, http://www.northropgrumman.com/analysis-center/paper/assets/Time-Sensitive-Targets.pdf (accessed August 16, 2012).
[66]Eric Schmitt, "NATO Sees Flaws in Air Campaign Against Qaddafi," The New York Times, April 15, 2012, p. A1, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/world/africa/nato-sees-flaws-in-air-campaign-against-qaddafi.html (accessed August 16, 2012).
[67]See Julian E. Barnes and Adam Entous, "U.S. Seeks Faster Deployment," The Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2012, p. 7, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303630404577390333494738036.html (accessed August 16, 2012).
[68]See Ehrhard, "An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul," pp. 90–93, and Aaron M. U. Church, "The Associate Push," Air Force Magazine, June 2012, pp. 44–47, http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2012/June%202012/0612push.aspx (accessed August 16, 2012).
[69]Gaddis, Strategies of Containment.
[70]U.S. Department of Defense, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, November 8, 2010, amended through August 15, 2012, s.v. "command and control," http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp1_02.pdf (accessed September 13, 2012).
[71]Ibid., s.v. "electromagnetic pulse."
[72]Ibid., s.v. "space force application."
[73]Ibid., s.v. "space force enhancement."


text:
B-5, BB-252 [R2]. Ex. Cardinal. Beautiful deep blue and cobalt hues complement the strong strike.
Ron Guth: In 1803, engravers at the Philadelphia mint used two different punches for the 3 of the date on Silver Dollars of that year. One is known as the Small 3, the other as the Large 3. The difference is obvious, not so much because of an actual size difference, but because of the dramatic difference in the shapes of the 3's. On the Small 3, the left end of the top bar of the 3 has no upper serif, and the lower serif points down. On the Large 3, the left end of the top bar of the 3 ends with top and lower serifs aligned in a vertical arrangement, pointing up and down.
The two varieties appear to be fairly equal in terms of survivors, though the Small 3 is slightly more common and can be found in higher Mint State grades than the Large 3. Mint State examples of both varieties are very rare. According to the April 2012 PCGS Population Report, the finest 1803 Small 3 Dollars are a pair of MS64s.

subset: commoncrawl