Offsetting Tomorrow's Adversary in a Contested Environment: Defending Expeditionary Advance Bases (EAB) in 2025 and Beyond - Anti-Access / Aerial Denial Threat by Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China

This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. Potential adversaries have studied the operational advantages of the U.S. joint force and as a result are developing A2/AD systems and capabilities intended to challenge the U.S. military's asymmetric advantage by denying freedom of access and maneuver in the global commons and across all warfighting domains. The advancement and proliferation of A2/AD capabilities enable adversaries to negate U.S. high value/capable assets by holding critical forward infrastructure at risk and imposes a cost imposition that could prove prohibitive. Sustained and integrated efforts across the joint force are required to ensure the continued U.S. and allied access to, and maneuver in the global commons. Well defended and mutually supportive Expeditionary Advanced Bases (EABs) will ensure operational freedom of action by keeping a foot in the door in contested environments. The integration of game-changing technology in force development paired with an innovative offset strategy will enhance the joint forces' ability to preserve vital national security interest in contested regions through the employment of well defended EABS supported by a joint force with resilience, capacity, and operational agility.

The rise of potential competitors and proliferating technology present an operational problem to the U.S. Joint Force, which has historically possessed an asymmetric advantage in freedom of access and maneuver through the global commons and has based its operational approaches on this advantage. The National Military Strategy states that the key state actors of Russia, Iran, North Korea and China pose serious concerns to national security interests. Each of these countries has studied the American way of warfighting, understands its requirement for access to global commons and forward basing, and has developed anti-access and area denial capabilities that hold the joint force at risk. Operating in and maintaining access to contested environments will require the joint force to utilize maneuver from Expeditionary Advance Bases (EABs). Employing multi-domain, task organized and rapidly deployable forces from the EABs will facilitate the conduct of operations in sufficient scale and duration to achieve desired objectives. The defense of EABs calls for the joint force to develop an innovative offset strategy that incorporates emerging technology into operational concepts that ensure freedom of access and maneuver in contested environments. The U.S. military's asymmetric advantage is built on a technology dependent force that possesses significant capability and efficiency at the risk of reduced quantity and resiliency. Future force development must balance capacity with capability and be informed by an offset strategy that embraces emerging technology to properly counter adversarial anti-access / area denial capabilities in defense of EABs to provide sufficient capacity and resiliency to attain temporal supremacy in a given domain.