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41. Turkey's Response to the Russia-Ukraine Crisis

Author:
Aaron Stein
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
On October 26, 2021, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense released video of a TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) striking a separatist D-30 howitzer in Russian-occupied Donbas. The strike was Ukraine’s first confirmed use of the now ubiquitous TB2, the Bayraktar-manufactured drone that the Turkish military has used to great tactical effect in Syria, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh. The Turkish-Ukrainian defense relationship is understudied, but it could become an important factor in how Russian elites view North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) support for non-member Ukraine, and be used to justify an invasion to assuage Moscow’s concerns about a US-allied military presence along its borders. The Turkish support for Ukraine is not the main driver of Russian discomfort about the future of Ukraine. The TB2 is also not a decisive game changer, and the use of UCAVs is almost certain to have little impact on how Russian leadership weighs risk during debates about the efficacy of armed conflict in a neighboring state. Nevertheless, Turkish-Ukrainian defense ties are worthy of deeper study, precisely because Ankara’s relationships with Kyiv and Moscow have a secondary impact on American interests in Eastern Europe. The Turkish-Russian relationship is marred by bureaucratic distrust, which is papered over by a very functional leader-to-leader dynamic that enables the two Black Sea neighbors to cooperate and manage numerous regional conflicts. The Turkish-Ukrainian dynamic, in turn, is part of a broader Turkish effort to establish itself as an independent actor, committed to pursuing a foreign policy that often clashes with much of the NATO alliance. This paper will explore Turkish-Russian and Turkish-Ukrainian relations; the reasons for Turkey’s efforts to “fence sit” and establish itself as a neutral political actor in the Black Sea; and what these efforts portend for US interests in the region.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, NATO, and Crisis Management
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Turkey, Ukraine, and Middle East

42. American Interests in the Ukraine War

Author:
Joshua Shifrinson
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Defense Priorities
Abstract:
Policymakers have poorly defined U.S. strategic interests in the Russia-Ukraine War. Those interests that have been defined—deterring future aggression and protecting the “liberal order”—do not stand up to scrutiny. Actual U.S. interests in Ukraine are essentially negative: preventing further escalation or spillover of the conflict and limiting a wholesale collapse in U.S.-Russian relations. The limited interests that the U.S. does have in Ukraine suggest that Washington should try to convince Ukraine and Russia to accept a negotiated settlement.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Liberal Order, Conflict, Strategic Interests, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and United States of America

43. Regaining the High Ground Against China: A Plan to Achieve US Naval Aviation Superiority This Decade

Author:
Bryan Clark and Timothy A. Walton
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps face growing challenges ranging from China and Russia to regional threats such as Iran and North Korea, all of whom seek to undermine their neighbors’ stability and revise geopolitical relationships in their favor. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn, each of these potential adversaries continued to improve its military capabilities, especially the number and reach of precision missiles able to strike U.S. allies and slow or prevent intervention by U.S. naval forces. Supported by commercial and military surveillance networks in every domain, weapons located on adversary territory are capable of threatening U.S. and allied ships, troop formations, and aircraft hundreds of miles away. U.S. naval aviation risks sliding into irrelevance unless Navy and Marine Corps leaders embrace organizational and investment changes that would enable more effective operational concepts against peer adversaries. To support the approaches, naval air forces will need greater reach, adaptability, and capacity, which this study proposes to address by changing the composition of carrier air wings and repurposing aircraft based ashore or on surface combatants and amphibious ships. Rebalancing naval aviation primarily involves force management, supported by additional procurement or modification of existing aircraft and payloads. This contrasts with prevailing Navy and Marine Corps plans, which sustain the existing force with minimal improvements while prioritizing development of next-generation capabilities. Not only does this approach fail to address the urgent nature of Russian and Chinese threats, but it also perpetuates the Navy’s expectation that revolutionary new capabilities will fix problems that demand tactical, organizational, or adaptive technical solutions. That strategy failed to deliver in the cases of the Littoral Combat Ship, Zumwalt-class destroyer, and Ford-class carrier. The F/A-XX program for a sixth-generation air superiority fighter-even if successful-is unlikely to transform naval aviation but could consume resources needed to address peer adversaries during the next decade. The shortfalls facing naval airpower against the People’s Republic of China are significant, but not insurmountable. Analysts have pronounced the death of the aircraft carrier several times since the end of World War II, but by exploiting its adaptability and mobility U.S. naval forces could remain relevant against peer opponents despite the emergence of long-range sensor and precision weapon networks. However, achieving the reach and capacity necessary to counter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific will depend on carriers focusing on the mission only they can do sustainably and at scalelong-range counter-air and strike warfare. Navy and Marine Corps leaders have an opportunity to substantially improve the ability of maritime airpower to influence events in the Indo-Pacific. However, rebalancing naval aviation will require overcoming cultural, organizational, and programmatic hurdles. As described in this report, the necessary changes are possible and affordable, but only if naval leaders embrace the urgency of their challenges and do not continue to hope they can continue to push their problems-and solutions-out into the future.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Armed Forces, Military Affairs, Navy, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

44. One-Size-Fits-None: Overhauling JADC2 to Prioritize the Warfighter and Exploit Adversaries’ Weaknesses

Author:
Bryan Clark and Dan Patt
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos famously attributes his company’s success to its customer obsession, which drove initiatives ranging from the creation of a cloud infrastructure and processing orders at unprecedented scale to establishing an entirely new logistics network that rapidly moves purchases to destinations. Amazon’s focus on shoppers is understandable, as it only makes about 1 percent of the merchandise it sells. Unlike a product-aligned business model like Apple’s, which seeks to anticipate or shape customer demand, Amazon’s bottom line depends on it being able to understand and respond to consumers better and faster than competitors. Given the urgent challenges China and Russia pose to US allies, the US Department of Defense (DoD) should adopt a fulfillment model like that of Amazon. Although analysts often treat the DoD as a single customer in a monopsonistic relationship with its thousands of suppliers across the defense industrial base, the DoD more closely resembles a market where military services, combat support agencies, and defense contractors collaborate to deliver capabilities to their ultimate customers—combatant commands such as US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), and US European Command (EUCOM). Viewing the DoD as a market rather than a customer suggests that services and agencies should focus their efforts on understanding and meeting combatant commanders’ needs. This would reverse the Pentagon’s longstanding practice, codified in the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS), in which services and agencies predict future operational requirements and task government labs or contractors with developing solutions that will fill anticipated capability gaps. JCIDS harkens back to the 20th century’s industrial model of product development exemplified by Henry Ford, who famously said that purchasers of his Model-T could have it in any color they wanted, as long as it was black. The DoD’s customers are similarly disenfranchised. The US Joint Staff, which administers JCIDS and acts as the combatant commanders’ representative in Pentagon decision fora, lacks acquisition authorities and funding and thus can impact defense programs only by defining requirements for future systems. Because requirements are predictive, they attempt to capture the full range of use cases for a new product, leading JCIDS to produce comprehensive, generalized solutions rather than customized capabilities designed to meet combatant commanders’ operational challenges. The argument for military services “pushing” new systems to customers instead of letting end-users “pull” what they need centers on the perception that combatant commanders are focused on near-term capacity rather than next-generation capability. This assessment may have been valid in 2003 when JCIDS was first implemented. Emerging systems like the F-35 strike-fighter and DDG-1000 each took nearly two decades to reach fruition, and combatant commanders lacked the analytic processes and far-term perspective to determine what would be useful or feasible 10 to 20 years in the future. Moreover, the US military in 2003 was by far the world’s most capable force, and threats requiring substantially different US capabilities would take a decade or more to materialize. However, the assumptions underlying the DoD’s industrial model of capability development are no longer valid. INDOPACOM assesses that China could mount a successful invasion of Taiwan during the 2020s, and Russia continues to threaten imminent action against Ukraine and NATO’s eastern members. Combatant commanders’ perspectives on capability requirements should therefore be a top priority for services, agencies, and the defense industry. At the same time, in the commercial sector, computing, manufacturing, and materials technologies are delivering new products within months or several years rather than decades. New defense industrial base entrants that leverage commercial advancements and software-centric innovation could quickly provide relevant capabilities by responding directly to combatant commander’s current and emerging operational challenges. Unfortunately, the DoD’s pursuit of efficiency and centralized decision-making hinder the direct connections between combatant commander customers and commercial or government suppliers that foster innovation. The results will therefore continue to be one-size-fits-all solutions that take longer and are more expensive than concepts and capabilities tailored to meet specific needs. In addition to furthering the Pentagon’s well-documented problems delivering new systems and concepts on cost and schedule, universal solutions will be less likely to target the specific threats posed by such peer adversaries as China or Russia. Without restoring combatant commander customers to the center of the DoD’s capability development efforts, US forces will not be able to keep up with the challenges posed by peer adversaries like China or Russia and may even find themselves behind regional powers with geographic advantages and little to lose. The US military cannot afford another failed and ponderous attempt to “boil the ocean” with universal solutions and should take a page from Amazon by focusing on customer needs first.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Armed Forces, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
Russia, China, and United States of America

45. Can the U.S. Regain Battlefield Superiority against China? Applying New Metrics to Build an Adaptable and Resilient Military

Author:
Bryan Clark, Dan Patt, and Timothy A. Walton
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Organizational behavior is driven by metrics and measurements, which can compel change more effectively than a flurry of management directives from the C-suite. With Pentagon leaders calling for new ways of building and fighting the force, the time has come to re-examine some of the US military’s fundamental metrics and assess how they could better incentivize the characteristics needed for future combat.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security, Armed Forces, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

46. Regaining Decision Advantage: Revising JADC2 to Buttress Deterrence in Our Window of Greatest Need

Author:
Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, Scott Swift, and Eric Wesley
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
We believe that Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) is a critical priority for the Department of Defense (DoD) as it represents the best path towards deterring potential People’s Republic of China (PRC) aggression and addressing the other military challenges of our time. To the DoD, JADC2 represents the capability to sense and make sense of information at all levels, in all phases of war, across all domains, and with all partners, thereby ensuring information advantage at the speed of relevance.1 JADC2 is therefore the US military’s essential technical enabler to leverage joint and coalition capabilities in complex military operations. Practically speaking, this means choosing important operational problems and wiring together the right sensors and decision aids to deliver the right effects to solve them. The result will create operational dilemmas for our adversaries, and new options for US commanders.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Armed Forces, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
China, North America, and United States of America

47. Building a Team for Next Generation Air Dominance

Author:
Bryan Clark and Dan Patt
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
US air and naval forces face contested environments over wider areas than ever before. Opponents fighting near their home territory can use long-range surface-to-surface missiles and air defense systems—enabled by a combination of commercial or military satellites and airborne sensors—to threaten US or allied airfields, ships, and aircraft thousands of miles away, as depicted in Figure 1.1 By showing they can slow or prevent US intervention in their regions, aggressors like the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, and Iran hope they can convince neighbors to accept their demands for access, influence, or territory. And if coercion proves unsuccessful, these revisionist powers could employ long-range precision weapons as part of a military offensive to achieve their objectives. Although formidable, long-range weapon and sensor complexes like that of the PRC would not be impenetrable. For example, countermeasures and stealth capabilities could degrade the ability of enemy sensors to target and communicate the location of US ships or aircraft, and self-defense systems could prevent small attacks from being successful. As Figure 1 suggests, against the larger strikes likely to be mounted during war, US ships, aircraft, and bases could also be positioned farther from enemy missile batteries to shrink weapon salvos to within US units’ defensive capacities.3 However, reducing their detectability and attacking from longer ranges would reduce the number and intensity of effects US ships or aircraft could generate. Consequently, adversary leaders may have greater confidence in their ability to win a war on acceptable terms.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Armed Forces, Military Affairs, and Air Force
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

48. Defending Guam

Author:
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, Bryan Clark, and Matthew Costlow
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Guam, “where America’s day begins,” constitutes an indispensable strategic hub for the United States. The largest of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, it allows the United States to successfully project power within the Indo-Pacific region and so makes credible US security commitments to key US allies located there. Guam is home to Andersen Air Force Base (AFB), from which F-22 Raptors and strategic bomber rotations project US power from the skies, and to the deep-water port Apra Harbor, which plays a critical role in US Navy missions aimed at keeping trade routes open. Thus, this US territory is essential to the security of the American citizenry. Guam’s great strategic value to the United States and its proximity to North Korea and the People's Republic of China (PRC) make it a prime target of missile attack by these US adversaries. Of particular concern, however, is the threat posed by possible Chinese long-range missile strikes, and so, to enable the successful projection of US power within the region and provide credible assurance to key allies, Guam’s defenses must be strengthened. Due to its significance to US security and its status as a US territory, military officials have increased their emphases on the need to speed up the construction of an adequate defense. Then-Commander of US Pacific Command Admiral Davidson regularly connected Guam to the US homeland, stating to Congress, “Hawaii, Guam, and our Pacific territories are part of our homeland and must be defended.”
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security, Geopolitics, and Strategic Planning
Political Geography:
Pacific Ocean and Guam

49. Learning to Win: Using Operational Innovation to Regain the Advantage at Sea against China

Author:
Bryan Clark, Timothy A. Walton, and Trent Hone
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The US Navy has spent the last decade attempting to pivot from efficiently maintaining the post–Cold War peace to effectively preventing and fighting a war against China or Russia. The circa-2000 Navy faced pervasive low-end threats from terrorists, insurgents, and regional opponents; today it is up against great power adversaries who used the past twenty years of relative stability to modernize and expand their fleets. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is now larger than its American counterpart and is narrowing the US Navy’s capability advantages.1 Russia’s Navy, while smaller than that of the United States or China, boasts some of the most capable submarines in the world and hypersonic missile-equipped frigates.2 Proliferation of computing, sensing, material, and countermeasure technologies has leveled the playing field for military capability development. Building faster, more precise, stealthier, or smarter ships, aircraft, and weapons than opponents⎯the US Navy’s playbook since the Cold War⎯will no longer yield substantial or persistent advantages. The Navy will need to continue pursuing improved capabilities, but regaining and maintaining an edge against Chinese and Russian forces will depend as much or more on the US fleet establishing new operational concepts and tactics that exploit its strengths and its enemies’ vulnerabilities.3
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Navy, Maritime, and Innovation
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

50. Prepare Ukraine for Victory in a Long War

Author:
Luke Coffey
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time in eight years. While many assumed that the war would be short, a stiff Ukrainian defense halted and then successfully counter-attacked against the Russian advances on Kyiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv. After capturing Kherson, Russia’s main advance from occupied Crimea in the south toward Mykolaiv also stalled. At the time of writing, Ukrainian forces are beginning a counterattack in that region and are located approximately 12 miles outside Kherson city center. Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov coastline, fell to the Russians on May 22 after Ukrainian forces made a heroic last stand in the Azovstal iron and steel works. This capture allowed Russia to create a land bridge from the Russian Federation to occupied Crimea. Mariupol’s capture also turned the Sea of Azov into a Russian lake.”1 In the Donbas, which is arguably Russia’s main effort at this stage of the war, Russian troops have made limited advances at a very high cost in equipment and manpower. In late June, Russian forces captured Sievierodonetsk after weeks of heavy fighting, leaving Russia in control of Ukraine’s Luhansk Oblast. Ukrainians are currently defending a front line that is approximately 1,250 miles long—this is equal to the straight- line distance from Washington, DC, to Houston, Texas. Russian public opinion still supports the war.”2 While Russia’s advancements in the Donbas have been slow and costly, there is no indication that Moscow will stop its offensive anytime soon. President Vladimir Putin knows that his legacy rides on Russia’s victory or defeat in Ukraine.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security, Conflict, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe