When then-Captain Charles Yeager shot down one of Germany’s vaunted Me-262 jet fighters in late 1944, it was not the result of a swirling aerial dogfight. Instead, Yeager caught the aircraft as it was landing: low, slow, and vulnerable.[1] This inglorious fate was all too common for the most advanced fighter aircraft made during the war. Out of the approximately 1,400 Me-262s produced, only some 300 saw operational service. Most were destroyed in factories, on the ground, or grounded due to lack of parts, pilots, or fuel.[2]
Me-262 (Revell)
The Allied Air Forces had established almost total air superiority over Europe by the time the German jets entered operational service in July of 1944. From modest beginnings, the 8th Air Force had transformed to a level that allowed it to inflict crushing and irreplaceable losses on the Luftwaffe.[3] Concerned about the potential impact of the new German jets on the hard-won Allied air superiority, Allied planners quickly stepped up attacks on German jet production and jet bases.[4] Simultaneously, fighter pilots realized that the best way to shoot down the jets was during their vulnerable takeoff and landing sequences.[5] Ultimately, Germany devoted additional piston engine fighter squadrons and flak batteries—much needed to fight Allied bombers—to protect the jets on takeoff and landing. Overall, the jet’s impact on the war was minimal.
Embedded in the story of the Me-262 is a critical lesson for today’s militaries. An adversary unable to defeat you in the air will attempt to defeat you on the ground, in the factory, or where you are otherwise most vulnerable. More broadly, if an adversary doubts its ability to win a fight, it will seek ways to defeat you without fighting.[6]
The American military would do well to remember these lessons of the Second World War. Today, deterrence against China partially depends on the ability to project power into the Western Pacific without interruption. If America could not continually project power into the Pacific, China would merely need to absorb the first blow of forward-based American forces before continuing with any military course of action. If, however, America can continuously project power into the region, China could face a protracted, difficult, and costly struggle with American forces. To remove this potential impediment to any military action, China is investing in counter-intervention concepts to offset the ability of American forces to project power. This offset is manifesting itself in capabilities to target American naval vessels, aircraft, and their associated bases and supporting infrastructure.[7]
An adversary unable to defeat you in the air will attempt to defeat you on the ground, in the factory, or where you are otherwise most vulnerable.
The current American response is mostly trying to do the same things better, faster, or more networked.[8] While these efforts increase lethality, they also play into existing Chinese offset efforts. It does not matter if American aircraft are increasingly lethal if they are destroyed on the ground or if they do not have ammunition to sustain the fight.
Similar logic applies to every aspect of American military operations. An astute adversary will attempt to achieve efficient destruction of American forces. This means targeting the force enablers, the bases, and the infrastructure, not trying to fight America’s aircraft or submarines directly. As H.R. McMaster said, “There are two ways to fight the United States military: asymmetrically, or stupid.”[9] The American military must prepare not for the war it wants, but for the war it is likely to get.
Then Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster (U.S. Army)
Thinking Disruptively
Many of America’s current innovation efforts—the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE), the Navy’s Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air, etc.—focus on winning battles or surviving during limited time frames. Artificial intelligence, hypersonics, and other investments are similarly all about enabling current capabilities and operational concepts.[10] To effectively respond to and offset adversary efforts, the United States must think beyond merely executing the same operational concepts with increased lethality.
Experience in previous conflicts underscores the necessity of thinking beyond the battlefield. In a compelling revisionist history of the Second World War, How the War Was Won, Phillip’s O’Brien argues, “There were no decisive battles in World War II.”[11] In his broad analysis, O’Brien develops what he terms a “superbattlefield.”[12] The superbattlefield is, according to O’Brien, the distinguishing characteristic of modern warfare. Instead of an isolated battlefield, the superbattlefield extends over thousands of miles and includes all aspects of building, training, and deploying military capability. Using this construct, O’Brien argues that the individual battles of World War II had little consequence on the overall outcome of the war.
For O’Brien, the battlefield consists not only of the actual battle, but also the pre-production, production, and deployment of forces. Instead of simply defeating their enemies in battle, Allied forces crippled the German and Japanese militaries long before they ever reached the battlefield. To halt the pre-production phase, or the transport of materials to be used in production, American submarines attacked Japanese shipping in the Pacific and Allied bombers attacked rail and other infrastructure in Europe. Allied forces simultaneously disrupted the production phase, or the actual building of equipment, by attacking factories, forcing them to disperse, or disrupting them through deprival of raw materials. Lastly, the Allies inflicted grievous losses on German and Japanese forces during the deployment phase as they tried to move built and trained forces forward.[13]
This superbattlefield allowed for the efficient destruction of an opponent’s forces. To use the earlier example, it was far easier to destroy Me-262s by preventing their construction, destroying them in factories, or bombing them on the ground than it was to shoot them down in air combat. O’Brien argues the failure of Germany and Japan to either protect their own phases of production and deployment or attack the Allied equivalents practically guaranteed their eventual defeat. Or, put another way, the inability of Germany to stop Allied forces in the Battle of the Atlantic or the Japanese to protect their own sea lines of communication from American interdiction sealed their respective fates.[14] It was not the individual battles that won or lost the war, O’Brien argues, but rather the destruction of the systems to make battle.[15]
The question for American planners today is twofold. Is O’Brien’s theory of victory in warfare still applicable? And, if it is, what does it mean for how America thinks about fighting wars?
The Superbattlefield Today
The superbattlefield is just as relevant today as it was during World War II. The 2018 National Defense Strategy has specifically tasked the armed forces with “evolving innovative operational concepts” to “sharpen our competitive advantages and enhance our lethality.” The goal: deter aggression or, if necessary, use contact, blunt, and, ultimately, surge forces to defeat an adversary while protecting the homeland.[16] What the National Defense Strategy misses is the need to win on the superbattlefield to enable these actions. For example, while the National Defense Strategy’s unclassified summary mentions lethality twenty times, it mentions industry (essentially production in O’Brien’s framing) just once and deployment only three times. This overemphasis of the battlefield leaves American forces underprepared in the event of a sustained conflict.
…while the National Defense Strategy’s unclassified summary mentions lethality twenty times, it mentions industry (essentially production in O’Brien’s framing) just once and deployment only three times.
It would be risky to assume a war will be short enough to preclude the need to resupply forward forces or produce and deploy new ones. As a conflict grows in duration, each phase—pre-production, production, and deployment—will increase in importance relative to individual battles. For example, in a hypothetical conflict with China, the American military would need to deploy and sustain forces thousands of miles away from the continental United States (deployment). Simultaneously, the United States would need to produce significant numbers of weapons and platforms to sustain operations, replace inevitable losses, and build up forces to achieve overmatch (production). To do this, America would require secure supply chains for system components and materials (pre-production). Experience in the campaign to counter the Islamic State showed how much of a burden even a relatively small campaign can have on weapons stockpiles and the U.S. industrial base.[17] A conflict with a peer or near-peer competitor would only further challenge America’s ability to wage war.
Chinese efforts, moreover, appear in line with preparing for war on a superbattlefield. As Jeffrey Engstrom writes:
“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army now characterizes and understands modern warfare as a confrontation between opposing operational systems [作战体系] rather than merely opposing armies. Under this theory, warfare is no longer centered on the annihilation of enemy forces on the battlefield. Rather, it is won by the belligerent that can disrupt, paralyze, or destroy the operational capability of the enemy’s operational system.”[18]
While Chinese documents often emphasize the information component of the confrontation between opposing systems, China is also building a robust set of kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities to target the deployment phase of American intervention.[19] Counter-intervention concepts and base strike capabilities all aim at the efficient destruction of American and Allied forces before they reach the battlefield: destroy the harbors and runways necessary to support military action, eliminate ships in port and planes on the ground, and otherwise target America’s ability to sustain military action.[20]
China also would likely target the production and pre-production phases. So far, Chinese capabilities seem to indicate a lack of desire to kinetically strike the continental United States. However, as some analysts have written, Chinese strikes on the continental United States could have significant detrimental effects on American war-making capability.[21] Or, China could non-kinetically attack the American homeland. If this were the case, then the production phase of the superbattlefield would be a probable target. Even disrupting a production line, without inflicting kinetic damage, could cause the loss of numerous smart weapons or aircraft relative to production targets.[22] Finally, China likely would pressure U.S. defense supply chains to target the pre-production phase of the superbattlefield.[23] In summary, a conflict between America and China could take on much of the nature, if not the character, of the superbattlefield of the Second World War.
America’s current response appears inadequate. Today, American planners spend significant energy on increasing the lethality of the existing force and worrying about fait accompli scenarios. Ultimately, lethality is necessary but not sufficient to win a protracted conflict against China. Instead, the United States military must develop a theory of victory on the superbattlefield of today and the future.
F-35 Lightning II (Darin Russell/Lockheed Martin)
Implications for American Defense Strategy
The superbattlefield concept requires America to invest in the less glamorous parts of its arsenal. America must experiment with and invest in ways to enhance and protect its pre-production, production, and deployment of forces. Simultaneously, planners must consider the requirements and implications of attacking an adversary’s equivalents.
In a sustained contemporary conflict, production and pre-production will remain critical. America must ensure it can produce sufficient mass to replace expected losses and, if necessary, grow forces to compete with and defeat an adversary.
There are four practical actions America can take. First, America should ensure its war plans align with the ability of American industry to support them. If American industry cannot produce or repair ships over conflict timespans, then war plans should reflect the need to husband them carefully. Second, America should keep critical production lines open until it is capable of both developing replacements and, more importantly, producing them in quantity. For example, one of the underappreciated benefits of the F-35 program is it allows America to produce 180 5th-generation aircraft annually.[24] Even if the F-35 is imperfect, mass has value. Third, the U.S. government should invest in and subsidize manufacturing expertise at home to prevent its continued drain to other nations.[25] Finally, it should communicate with and compensate industry to develop contingency plans for increased production of key systems and subsystems. These peacetime actions will help produce adequate numbers of weapons systems in any potential conflict.
The deployment of forces poses the greatest risks and challenges to U.S. operational plans. In any Pacific war, logistical matters will reign supreme. To efficiently destroy America’s ability to generate combat power, China would likely target the limited number of bases and supporting infrastructure necessary to deploy forces forward. Simultaneously, America’s reliance on allied geography for certain concepts creates an exploitable vulnerability if those allies could be convinced to not cooperate.[26]
There are an additional four actions America can take to enhance its ability to deploy forces. The first is to harden critical facilities such as Guam, currently an unfunded request.[27] Second, America should invest in the logistical capability needed to support large combat operations. For example, this entails buying more submarine tenders (more than the two the Navy currently has), dry docks, pre-placed stores, survivable aerial refueling tankers, and other force elements that enable sustained power projection. Third, the Navy-Air Force team must train for and be prepared to escort transport vessels to resupply forward bases, including those of our allies, in the face of sustained adversary interdiction efforts. Finally, America must procure forces with battlefield deployment and sustainment in mind. Weapon systems that place a disproportionate burden on the logistical system or require allied cooperation to be useful, such as short-range fighters, are potential liabilities in a Pacific conflict. Instead, America must ensure it has adequate numbers of long-range strike systems, such as strategic bombers, to fulfill military objectives.[28] The steps the U.S. needs to take to effectively deploy forces are not necessarily lethal, high-performance, or network-centric. They are often unglamorous and unsophisticated, but they are necessary to win a war.
Once the U.S. ensures it can produce and deploy forces, it must then determine how it can use its forces to attack an adversary’s ability to do the same. American strategists must step beyond myopic visions of battlefield lethality as decisive; relying on battlefield victories alone is an unlikely path to victory. While outside the scope of this paper, the U.S. should devote significant effort to understanding how it can efficiently destroy adversary forces on the superbattlefield of today or the future.
Conclusion
Clausewitz famously said, “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.”[29] O’Brien’s framework offers a simple way to think about the steps necessary to achieve victory in a protracted conflict: ensure the ability to produce and deploy more military power than the enemy, protect this capability, and use the resulting military power to attack an adversary’s ability to do the same. Simple, but difficult. Technophiles will spill immeasurable amounts of ink writing of the need for American investment in artificial intelligence, hypersonics, and other new technology. The brutal truth is none of this technological overmatch matters if America can’t build enough of it, sustain it, or get it to the fight in the first place.
David Alman is an officer in the Air National Guard; in his civilian career, he has worked as an aerospace engineer and management consultant. The opinions here are the author’s own and do not represent those of the Air National Guard, the National Guard Bureau, U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
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Header Image: Stacks of shells in the shell filling factory at Chilwell during World War I. (Wikimedia)
Notes:
[1] Charles Yeager, “Encounter Report,” 6 November 1944. ChuckYeager.com, accessed online April 12, 2020, http://www.chuckyeager.org/me-262-shootdown/
[2] Greg Bradsher, “The German Jet Me-262 in 1944: A Failed Opportunity – Part II,” The Text Message (US National Archives), December 18, 2014. Accessed online April 12, 2020, https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2014/12/18/the-german-jet-me-262-in-1944-a-failed-opportunity-part-ii/
[3] Williamson Murray, Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933 - 1945 (Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press, 1983), 237 - 245.
[4] Richard Davis, Bombing The European Axis Powers (Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press, 2006), 418.
[5] James Fenelon, Four Hours of Fury (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2019), 143.
[6] Lyle Morris, et al. Gaining Competitive Advantage in the Gray Zone (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2019), xi-xii, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2942.html
[7] Eric Heginbotham et al. Chinese Attacks on Air Bases in Asia (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2015), 1-3, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9858z2.html
[8] Department of Defense, “DOD Releases Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Proposal,” February 10, 2020. Accessed online April 12, 2020, https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2079489/dod-releases-fiscal-year-2021-budget-proposal/ and Chris Doughtery, “Why America Needs a New Way of War,” Center for a New American Security, June 12, 2019. Accessed online April 12, 2020, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/anawow
[9] Allison Schrager, “The four fallacies of warfare, according to Donald Trump’s new national security advisor.” Quartz, February 21, 2017. Accessed online June 22, 2020, https://qz.com/915438/the-four-fallacies-of-warfare-according-to-national-security-advisor-hr-mcmaster/
[10] Chris Doughtery, “Why America Needs a New Way of War,” Center for a New American Security, June 12, 2019. Accessed online April 12, 2020, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/anawow
[11] Phillips O’Brien, How the War Was Won (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 1.
[12] Phillips O’Brien, How the War Was Won (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 5-6.
[13] United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (Pacific War), (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1946), 13-15. And United States Strategic Bombing Survey Summary Report (European War), (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1945), i. Accessed online April 15, 2020, http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/
[14] Phillips O’Brien, How the War Was Won (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 480-481.
[15] Phillips O’Brien, How the War Was Won (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 479-480.
[16] Department of Defense, “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy,” 1. Accessed online April 12, 2020, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf and U.S. Congress, Senate, Hearing on Implementation of the National Defense Strategy by Elbridge Colby before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington, D.C. January 29, 2019, 3-4. Accessed online April 12, 2020, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Colby_01-29-19.pdf
[17] Aaron Mehta, “The U.S. is running out of bombs - and it may soon struggle to make more,” Defense News, 22 May 2018. Accessed online 8 June 2020, https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/05/22/the-us-is-running-out-of-bombs-and-it-may-soon-struggle-to-make-more/
[18] Jeffrey Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare: How the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Seeks to Wage Modern Warfare. (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2018), iii, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1708.html
[19] Joe Pappalardo, “China’s “Guam Killer” Is Forcing B-2s to Practice Strikes From Pearl Harbor,” Popular Mechanics, 9 October 2018. Accessed online 7 June 2020, https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a23692731/b-2-pearl-harbor-guam-killer/
[20] Thomas Shugart, “First Strike: China’s Missile Threat to U.S. Bases in Asia,” Center for a New American Security, June 2017, 1, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/first-strike-chinas-missile-threat-to-u-s-bases-to-asia
[21] Bruce Sugden, “China’s Conventional Strikes Against the U.S. Homeland,” Center for International Maritime Security, 25 June 2014. Accessed online 9 June 2020, http://cimsec.org/china-conventional-strike-us/11829
[22] Doug Olenick, “Spirit AeroSystems confirms ASCO Industries cyberattack,” SC Media, 13 June 2019. Accessed online 9 June 2020, https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/ransomware/asco-industries-silent-on-ransomware-attack/
[23] Keith Johnson and Lara Seligman, “How China Could Shut Down America’s Defenses,” Foreign Policy, 11 June 2019. Accessed online 9 June 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/11/how-china-could-shut-down-americas-defenses-rare-earth/
[24] Garrett Reim, “Lockheed Martin sees F-35 production rising to 180 units per year, despite high flying costs,” FlightGlobal, 30 January 2020. Accessed online 8 June 2020, https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-wing/lockheed-martin-sees-f-35-production-rising-to-180-units-per-year-despite-high-flying-costs/136455.article
[25] Nanette Byrnes, “Competing with the Chinese Factory of 2017,” MIT Technology Review, 16 June 2017. Accessed online 8 June 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/03/16/68782/competing-with-the-chinese-factory-of-2017/
[26] For example, see the Marine Corps’ reliance on geography in the First Island Chain to execute components of its Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept.
[27] Aaron Mehta, “Inside US Indo-Pacific Command’s $20 billion wish list to deter China - and why Congress may approve it,” Defense News, 2 April 2020. Accessed online 9 June 2020, https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/04/02/inside-us-indo-pacific-commands-20-billion-wish-list-to-deter-china-and-why-congress-may-approve-it/
[28] David Deptula and Douglas Birkey, “The Force We Need: Key Factors for Shaping the Air Force for the Future,” Mitchell Institute Policy Papers. Vol. 19, March 2019, 7. Accessed online 12 June 2020, https://www.mitchellaerospacepower.org/single-post/2019/03/06/The-Force-We-Need-Key-Factors-for-Shaping-the-Air-Force-for-the-Future
[29] Carl von Clausewitz, On War. Translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. Princeton University Press, 1984. Book 1, Chapter 7, 119.