CSBA "Third Offset" paper

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https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/01/16/congress-wrestles-with-deterring-chinabeyond-nukes/
“The No. 1 military objective for the United States today should be to re-establish credible deterrence,” said Flournoy, who now leads WestExec Advisors. “Militarily, the resurgence of great power competition requires the United States to reimagine how we deter and, if necessary, fight and prevail in a future conflict with China. America’s military advantage is rapidly eroding in light of China’s modernization efforts.”

The remarks came a day after the U.S. Navy’s top officer told the annual Surface Navy Association symposium that his service needs a larger share of the military budget if it’s going to keep pace with China’s fast-growing Navy. But at the hearing, HASC Chairman Adam Smith indicated he wants solutions that would not fuel an arms race or unduly drain America’s coffers.

“I think it is a mistake to look at a problem and say: ‘We can’t constrain resources, we have to address the problem in any way we can,’ ” said Smith, D-Wash.
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bobbymike said:
A new American way of war?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/CNAS+Report+-+ANAWOW+-+FINAL2.pdf
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Today, the global order is weakening. Many in the
United States and allied and partner nations only see the
costs and burdens of this order in the form of military
obligations, regulations, and multilateral organizations.
The benefits are often diffuse and the original catastrophes
that spurred its creation are increasingly lost in the
mists of history. Meanwhile, China seeks to create an
alternative Sino-centric order in Asia, and Russia seeks
to undermine the U.S.-led order at every turn. Should
these efforts prove successful, it could mark a return to
the harsh zero-sum competitions between political-economic
blocs that led to global cataclysms in the past. To
paraphrase Mark Twain, the history of the early 20th
century may not be repeating itself today, but it certainly
appears to be rhyming.
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This paper is intended to lay the intellectual foundation
for developing a new American way of war. Its
primary purpose is to identify the problems this new way
of war is attempting to solve. Secretary of Defense James
Mattis was fond of quoting Albert Einstein’s remark that
if you have an hour to save the world, you should spend
59 minutes defining the problem and one minute to solve
it. This paper represents the “problem definition” for
a new American “way of war.” Accordingly, it will first
define the concept of a “way of war” and explain why it is
important. Then it will situate the discussion within the
strategic context of the NDS, which provides the vision
for U.S. defense strategy in an era of great-power competition.
The body of the paper will examine the current
American way of war, the key assumptions that underpin
it, and why these are no longer valid, and the assumptions
that ought to guide a new American way of war.
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bobbymike said:
https://mwi.usma.edu/accelerating-next-fight-imperative-offense-future-battlefield/
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To exploit opportunities created by the effective actions of properly sized, postured, and prepared forward forces in the “contact” and “blunt” layers and deny the adversary’s recovery, the wider joint force, the National Defense Strategy’s “surge” force, should be retooled and repostured. Adaptations should allow those forces to accelerate out of their global, defensive posture on to the offense in hours, days, and weeks, not weeks and months, despite systemic attacks and little control over timing and location. Otherwise, the fait accompli becomes reality, with reversal coming at high cost. In the face of progressive improvements by our adversaries, contemporary capability, capacity in key areas, and posture are increasingly not up to this task. Preventing faits accomplis requires the “contact,” “blunt,” and “surge” forces be reviewed with the aim of enabling the acceleration into the offense.
This action would require a revolution in recruiting, retention, as well as aquistion and congressional budgetary affairs.


To deny the adversary any advantage from its “standoff” investments, the Army must be able to deploy and operate successfully without reliance on the time-consuming establishment of supremacy in other military domains, optimizing for rapid deployment and conducting distributed, semi-independent operations despite anti-access and area-denial threats. It is great to postulate the Army shouldnt be dependant on the other services, but the Army is not transforming into Specops anytime soon. Operationally full spectrum threat survivable, and Logistical autonomous are good paths toward semi-independance. though.

Divisions and above echelons are good for history/heraldry/tradition/espir de corp but little else. So would have to disagree on that. Logistics and medical as embedded in the forward fighting unit as they mention even contradicts the above mentioned premise of theirs.

They contradict themselves also by claiming eschleons can be delinated in the middle of their discussion of the distributed battle. Seems muddy and disjointed thinking or writing or both.

These systems should amplify the skill, cunning, and guile of soldiers and leaders, reduce their physical and cognitive burdens, and be upgradable with an agility and scale commensurate with the speed and breadth of technological change. IMHO this stetement alludes to an argument others have made a concerning the "everybody fights" maxim that commanders and staffs should simultaneously fight and lead. Advances in ISR and AI means there is no need for HQ units or placements. Command and staff should be part of the fight rendering c2 warfare against US forces a pointless exercise. It would simply to be too difficult to find the C2 to destroy. Units should be too resilent even if you did destroy the C2 element to suffer from c2 warfare attacks. Everyone becoming a staff member who is safe in a c2 suite commanding a drone is a bad direction. Everyone in the fight while performing there AI assist command, planning, logistics, personel mgmt etc. simultaneously is the way to go. Commanders need not lead ssults but plt ldrs can. The Israelis t least used to do that. Modern tech can ssure the first "through the door or up the hill is a robot" anyway. This falling into the German High Command tradition trap of boated staffs in the rear needs a stark termination.
 
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From Inside Defense pay site


DOD eyes $2.7 billion proposal to wrap half the planet in multidomain test range
The Defense Department is exploring a vast new test and training complex that would wrap around half the planet, reaching across the near entirety of the Pacific Ocean to support large-scale experimentation of advanced warfighting concepts, a move recommended by a classified study on the future of U.S. military superiority
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Like to read the classified study ;)
 
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