The A2/AD Challenge: Interview with Rep. J. Randy Forbes

(Editor’s Note: The below is an RCD interview with Congressman J. Randy Forbes of Virginia.)

Rep. Forbes: I certainly hope the concept does not fall into obscurity. My chief worry with regards to ASB and the JAM-GC that has replaced it has been that the concept would lose its focus on overcoming A2/AD challenges, even those challenges aren’t going away.  The ASB Office and the J7 have been very clear, both in their op-ed and in a discussion they had down in Suffolk with my staff, that the concept’s focus will remain on overcoming A2/AD challenges.  I think that’s very important and reassuring because those challenges are intensifying, and our efforts to counter and mitigate them are going to need to ramp up as well.    

Another thing that concerns me is the risk that the JAM-GC will be written in what I like to call “Pentagonese.”  It’s not the acronyms that bother me—it’s the tendency of military writers to use these abstract terms and adjectives that sound important but don’t say much at all.  It’s a problem that afflicts the entire DoD and I don’t want to sound too critical of the ASB Office or J7, but I must say I get a little worried when I hear them talking about “leveraging cross-domain expertise within component and lower-echelon operations centers to create cross-domain effects in support of the commanders’ intent and schemes of maneuver.”  As I said in my own piece in The National Interest, words matter, and it’s important that the JAM-GC be written in concrete terms that can communicate to policymakers and allies what we need to do and we need to do it.  Fortunately, it sounds like the new concept will discuss the characteristics our forces will need to deal with A2/AD and will include an implementation plan that explains what we need to do.  

Kazianis: You have been a big supporter of crafting a long-term strategy when it comes to the Asia-Pacific region. In a few words, if you were crafting such a strategy on your own, what would be the key components?

Forbes: The United States has significant national interests at stake in the Asia-Pacific, from ensuring the free flow of global commerce to upholding the peaceful regional order that has prevailed since World War II. Upholding those interests requires a combination of robust military capability and a commitment to the alliance and partnership structure that has endured for seven decades.

The military aspect of any long-term U.S. strategy in Asia requires both a level of defense spending commensurate with our challenges and a focus on investments particularly relevant to the region. The military balance in Asia has discernibly shifted in the past decade, as China focuses on A2/AD systems designed to either neutralize traditional U.S. advantages or aggravate perceived American weaknesses.

While the future is never fully knowable, there are several key areas of military investment that will almost surely be crucial over the coming decades. Preserving the traditional U.S. competitive advantage in undersea warfare, including platforms like the Virginia-class attack submarine and the growth in Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), will be key. Long-range strike and power projection, including the Air Force's next generation bomber and the promise of unmanned carrier aviation, are essential to preserving U.S. and allied access to the region's common areas. We must also tend to the less "exciting" aspects of our presence in Asia, from a ready stockpile of precision munitions at strategic locations to a well-resourced combat logistics capability.  Finally, American commitment to open access in both space and cyberspace, both of which are crucial to a long-term forward presence in the Asia-Pacific, will require a sustained investment in the years ahead.

Perhaps most importantly, any long-term U.S. presence in Asia requires a reinvigoration of our alliances and partnerships. When I visit with Asian leaders, their most commonly expressed concern is that U.S. presence in the region is shaky and American strategy is unclear and ill defined. We must leave no doubt, through our words and deeds, that the United States sees the Asia-Pacific region as an area of absolute national interest. Our traditional allies, and emerging partners like Vietnam, will respond positively to American leadership when our rhetoric and our actions are aligned and our leaders leave no doubt that the United States sees itself as a Pacific power in the 21st century.

Kazianis: Over the last several weeks there seems to have been some movement on one of America's greatest strategic problems: being what yourself have termed as being "out-sticked" by various types of anti-ship weapons. Do you feel the Pentagon and the administration is moving fast enough to develop, test, and eventually deploy anti-ship weapons with enough range and technological capabilities to compete with efforts by China, Russia, Iran, and various others?

Forbes: I have been pleased with what I’ve been seeing recently with regards to weapons development.  We may have had our head stuck in the sand for a little too long, but now that we’ve belatedly recognized and acknowledged the problem we seem to be moving out pretty quickly.  I am encouraged to see that we’re simultaneously pursuing game-changers in the long-term like directed energy and railguns, while also looking at near-term enhancements like off-the-shelf anti-ship missiles and new tricks for the old Tomahawk missile.  Both are badly needed.  

But it’s not just about capabilities, it’s also about capacity, and I think we need to take a hard look at our munitions stocks and see what kind of numbers we have and what kind of numbers we would need if we were engaged in what some have called a “salvo competition” with another highly capable adversary.   

Kazianis: Moving away from the Asia-Pacific region I would like to get your reaction to the Obama Administration's new National Security Strategy (NSS). Do you feel it addresses the challenges America faces overseas? Do you think it will have an impact on America strategic thinking longterm considering the relatively short amount of time left for the Obama Administration to craft policy?

Forbes: Strategy is about linking ends, ways, and means, and while the Obama administration’s document contains a lot of warm and fuzzy talk about the lofty aims and ideals of our nation, it says relatively little about the ways in which we will attain and achieve them and even less about the resources required to do so.  So I don’t think it’s a document that can or will be taken very seriously. It certainly does not speak candidly about many of the challenges we face.

This speaks to a problem I have had with the Administration for many years: the failure to speak candidly about our national security challenges. Instead of Islamist terrorism, we are facing “man-caused disasters” and the generic threat of “violent extremism”. It is difficult to rally the world to your cause when you speak mostly in euphemism and refuse to call your adversary what it truly is. Not only does it confuse our allies and partners but it gives our enemies a sense of comfort that they most certainly do not need.

Kazianis: Finally, in a recent article for Politico, former Mitt Romney foreign policy adviser Robert C. O'Brien makes the case that America's Navy is too small to address the challenges that lie ahead—and it seems like it will get even smaller. What can be done to address this important issue?

Forbes: The Navy is shrinking, and has done so for most of the past generation. Both parties failed to sustain the gains of the Reagan Administration, when our Fleet numbered a little under 600 ships. Today, we are at 284 ships, one of the Navy's smallest sizes since World War I, and likely to shrink still further.  The number of grey hulls in the water isn’t the only metric for the strength or weakness of our Navy, but given the demand for ships in multiple theaters and the fact that each ship can only be in one place at one time, it remains an important one.  

Looking ahead, the Navy faces a roughly $4 billion shortfall between the money budgeted for shipbuilding and the resources that are actually going to be needed to make the 30 Year Shipbuilding Plan a reality.  $4 billion sounds like a lot of money to most Americans—and it is—but as the Congressional Research Service has pointed out, it would take less than 1% of the DoD budget to fill that gap and fully resource the Navy’s shipbuilding plan.  Given the importance of seapower to our nation and our foreign policy, I think it’s a strategic imperative that we do so.  It’s an issue of supply and demand, and right now the demand is going up while the supply is just barely holding steady. The shipbuilding budget will be even further strained by the Ohio Replacement submarine program, a national strategic asset that should be funded outside the Navy’s shipbuilding accounts. If we don’t bend those trend lines the Navy is not going to be able to keep protecting our interests and preserving peace and stability the way it has been for the past 100 years.

Meanwhile, we need to make sure that we’re keeping our limited number of platforms as capable and ready as we can.  We need to make sure we’re fully funding ship maintenance, upgrades, and overhauls and getting those hulls out of the drydocks and back on station as quickly as we can.  We also need to harness new technologies like unmanned aircraft, directed energy weapons, and lasers to maximize the capability and capacity of individual platforms and multiply the force they can deliver.   

Harry Kazianis is Editor of RealClearDefense and a Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at The Center for the National Interest (non-resident). Follow him on Twitter: @grecianformula.