The U.S. Navy is the world leader in missile defense. For me, the story of the U.S. Navy’s journey to achieve effective fleet air defense is a personal one – and one that drove my professional career choices. But this is not a mere walk down “memory lane” or a bit of mid-life nostalgia, but an important point that helps, I believe, to illustrate the challenges facing surface-to-air missile development and Fleet operational deployment.

Read more about this journey and about U.S. Navy air and missile defense on the Defense Media Network website here

Americans have every right to ask: What is the United States’ role in today’s world? While there are many opinions among Americans – many of them at the far poles of internationalism and retrenchment – the thoughtful analysis in the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 is worth considering.

Much has been made in the last decade regarding “America’s decline.”  And given the current Washington gridlock, to say nothing of the shrill predictions of some pundits, one would think the United States is about to become a third-world power. It has become a debate that, while poorly-informed, makes up for it in passion.

Read more about America’s role in the world on the Defense Media Network website here.

Much ink has been spilled discussing the United States “Rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region” or as it is known more colloquially – especially in naval circles, the “U.S. Pivot to the Pacific.” President Obama put it this way almost three years ago:

“Our new focus on this region reflects a fundamental truth – the United States has been, and always will be, a Pacific nation … Here, we see the future. With most of the world’s nuclear power and some half of humanity, Asia will largely define whether the century ahead will be marked by conflict or cooperation, needless suffering or human progress.”

President Barack Obama
Remarks to the Australian Parliament November 17, 2011.

In this prize-winning article in the Australian Navy League’s premier publication, The Navy, we examine whether this “pivot” is real or just rhetoric.

In outward appearance and the scope of their operations, they seemingly have nothing in common. While the A-1 Triad was constructed of wood and fabric with a top speed that would put it in the slow lane on a modern interstate highway, the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System represents cutting edge technology. Yet, these aircraft, for what they represent to the development of naval aviation, are quite similar. Seminal moments in their service occurred in May during which the Navy this year celebrates the 103rd birthday of naval aviation.

Read more here

From the Information Dissemination website come two interesting and differing views of U.S. national security. Two well-known experts, Robert Kaplan and Usha Sahay, square off:

Kaplan stakes his claim here:

“But what about all those new global and regional institutions and organizations, to say nothing about the growth and opportunity that has come from financial markets? Aren’t they the other, more positive half of reality? They are. But then the question arises: Why have they been able to come into being in the first place? What ultimately undergirds them? The answer is one that many members of the global political and financial aristocracy do not want to hear: raw American power.”

“It is the various U.S. Navy fleets and numbered air forces that are the ultimate guarantor of stability in the key theaters of the globe…The U.S. Navy calls itself a global force for good. That claim would pass the most stringent editorial fact-checking process. Without that very naked American ambition, which allows the Navy and the Air Force to patrol the global commons, the world is reduced to the sum of its parts: a Japan and China, and a China and India, dangerously at odds and on the brink of war; a Middle East in far wider war and chaos; a Europe neutralized and emasculated by Russian Revanchism; and an Africa in even greater disarray.”

Sahay takes a different position here:

“It’s certainly true that America is changing its role on the world stage. But that’s not the same as retreating from that stage altogether. In fact, the opposite is true: by many measures, the Obama administration has increased American engagement with the world. What has changed is not the amount of engagement, but its nature. Obama has sought to re-orient our foreign policy away from a military-first approach, and toward a more comprehensive approach that leans more on diplomatic and economic tools.”

“Critics who believe that Obama has pulled back from the world stage are confusing quantitative changes in the nature of U.S. engagement with a qualitative decline in that engagement.”

Read both articles.  For Kaplan, it is hard power that ultimately backs up diplomatic engagement.  For Sahay-who not once, but twice, refers to pre-Obama foreign policy is terms of “militarism”, engagement is self-perpetuating.

Kaplan

Sahay

New platforms may not always be the answer to rising military technology needs, according to strategic guidance just issued by the Pentagon’s research and engineering office. “In the near past, technology surprise” came from systems like revolutionary airplanes or ships, states the document. In the near future, “operational advantage may well come from new technologies and capabilities, or from new ways to use existing technologies that enhance and enable” existing platforms.

The research and engineering enterprise will be putting its limited funds to work on many enablers, such as ways to lower lifecycle costs, smart design, prototyping, and risk reduction. The next generation of technology surprises the United States may spring on its adversaries will also likely flow from quantum technologies, nano-engineered materials and devices, new sensors, autonomous systems like unmanned vehicles, and timekeeping/navigation devices that will far outstrip the abilities of GPS, states the document, dated May 1. The latter will likely be attacked and possibly “denied” by adept enemies.

Read more here

Today, the U.S. Navy leads the pack in the national imperative of providing missile defense. It has been a long journey. While the U.S. Navy has enjoyed unprecedented success in developing surface-to-air missiles for fleet air defense the path to success was not a linear one, but one that proceeded by trial and error, and in the early days, impelled by war, always pushing the outer limits of technological development. And while this is a story about more than just technology, as Max Boot points out in his best-selling War Made New, “My view is that technology sets the parameters of the possible; it creates the potential for a military revolution.” And indeed, the Navy’s journey to field effective fleet air defense has represented both an evolutionary and revolutionary approach.

Read more here on Defense Media Network

As the name implies, the United States publishes its major strategic document, Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) once every four years. Mandated by the U.S. Congress, this report focuses both United States defense strategy and military spending. Not coincidentally, the 2014 QDR was released on the same day as the Obama Administrations Fiscal Year 2015 budget (for reference the United States Fiscal Year runs from October 1 through September 30).

Tying the 2014 QDR so closely to the President’s budget was done purposefully and sends a clear message the U.S. Department of Defense is operating in a tight fiscal environment. And it is also clear that the department is making strategic choices that are informed by a number of factors ranging from the substantial United States debt, to constant budget deficits, to the desire for a bit of a peace dividend as the United States extracts itself from two decade-long land wars in the Middle East and South Asia.

Read the about the QDR, the U.S. Budget and the impact on the Asia-Pacific region here

In a recent post we talked about Game Changers rocking our world. While megatrends and tectonic shifts represent those trends that will likely occur under any future scenario, game changers are those potential shifts that could be even more disruptive to how we currently see the future.

But beyond these game-changers are potential events we call Black Swans. Briefly, at its very basic elements, the black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that is a surprise to the observer, has a major effect, and after the fact is often inappropriately rationalized with the benefit of hindsight.

The phrase “black swan” derives from a Latin expression. Its oldest known occurrence is the poet Juvenal’s characterization of something being “a rare bird in the lands, very much like a black swan.” When Juvenal coined the phrase, the black swan was presumed not to exist. Therefore, black swan gets to the heart of the fragility of any system of thought.

A set of conclusions is potentially undone once any of its fundamental postulates is disproved. In this case, the observation of a single black swan would be the undoing of the phrase’s underlying logic, as well as any reasoning that followed from that underlying logic. For those who have read Andrew Krepinevich’s book, 7 Deadly Scenarios these black swan events are equally terrifying – or hopeful – and no-less believable.

Read more here on the Defense Media Network Website

As we’ve noted in other posts on this subject, while not tilting against John Maynard Keynes rejoinder that, “The idea of the future being different from the present is so repugnant to our conventional modes of thought and behavior that we, most of us, offer a great resistance to acting on it in practice,” at the end of the day, megatrends and tectonic shifts represent those trends that will likely occur under any future scenario. In other words, they are things we can “take to the bank” without a lot of argument.

Although these megatrends and tectonic shifts are expected to shape the world out to 2030, Global Trends 2030 acknowledges these critical game-changers have the potential to largely determine “what kind of transformed world will be inhabited in 2030.” These game-changers are questions regarding:

• The health of the international economy;
• Global governance;
• Conflict;
• Regional instability;
• Technological breakthroughs, and;
• The role of the United States.

Read more about the impact these game-changers will have on our world today – and especially tomorrow – here on this Defense Media Network post.