Fiscal Year 2005 Research Agenda

Strategy and Doctrine Program

Managing Escalation in the Post-Cold War Security Environment

Escalation management has received little attention in U.S. strategic thought since the end of the Cold War. Yet there are important reasons to examine the dynamics of escalation in the current security environment. The USAF’s ability to rapidly project overwhelming force in conventional conflicts, coupled with the emergence of multiple state and non-state adversaries seeking asymmetric capabilities and with potential access to weapons of mass destruction, present risks that confrontations could escalate in ways that U.S. leaders, schooled in concepts developed in the Cold War, may be ill-equipped to anticipate or manage. This study will examine the changed nature of escalation in the new environment, evaluate multiple dimensions of possible escalation, assess the impacts on U.S. interests and operations, and identify implications for the USAF.

Sponsor: AF/XPX
Project Leader: Forrest Morgan

The USAF Role in Counter Insurgency

This project seeks to help the USAF prepare for counterinsurgency, stability, and other operations against irregular forces. It will address the problem at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. First, the study will explore the nature of irregular warfare in the 21st century, identifying continuities and well as dissimilarities with irregular warfare during the cold war and earlier periods. Second, it will examine the respective role of military, political and other instruments in such conflicts and assess air power’s potential contributions. Finally, it will identify concepts and technologies that could make air power more effective in defeating irregular adversaries.

Sponsor: AF/XOX
Project Leader: Alan Vick

The U.S.-China Security Relationship: Taiwan and Beyond

While tensions across the Taiwan Strait remain the focal point of the Sino-U.S. security competition, a host of other issues, including the fate of the Korean peninsula and China's growing need for energy and other resources to fuel its economic expansion, also connect the two countries. This project will address three broad questions: First, what are the likely trajectories for resolving the China-Taiwan dispute? Second, looking both geographically and temporally past Taiwan, what other factors drive, and will drive, the security contest between the United States and China over the next 10-20 years? Finally, given the wide range of possible Sino-U.S. relations over that period, what should be the core features of a robust U.S. security strategy and USAF posture in East Asia and the Western Pacific? This study will support USAF-wide exercise development, Capability Review and Risk Assessments (CRRA) and overall gap analysis.

Sponsors: AF/XOX; PACAF/CC
Project Leader: David Shlapak

The USAF’s Role in the Future Middle East

Events in Iraq and Iran will have a profound effect on the security environment in the Persian Gulf and throughout the Middle East, with implications for U.S. policy and Air Force strategy. Turbulence in Iraq could spread instability across the region, while a viable democratic transition could begin to reshape regional politics. Iran is caught in a transition of its own; divided internally between an ossified clerical hierarchy and more moderate factions, and saddled with a dysfunctional policymaking process. A better understanding of where these countries are headed is vital to a sustainable U.S. strategy and posture in the Greater Middle East. This project will have three main tasks. First, it will examine political, social, and economic developments in Iran, Tehran’s national security policies, strategies, and objectives, and the likely development of its military capabilities over five to 15 years. Second, it will assess alternative mid- to long-term trajectories for Iraq’s post-occupation evolution. Third, building on these analyses, it will explore the implications for U.S. security strategy and USAF posture in the Greater Middle East.

Sponsors: AF/XOX; ACC/9th AF
Project Leaders: Olga Oliker, Steve Simon

Anticipating and Managing Impediments to the Design and Execution of Effective Air Campaigns

One of the Air Force’s core responsibilities is to develop airmen to be well versed in how best to employ air and space assets in the pursuit of national objectives; that is, the art and science of devising air campaign strategy. This is an inherently complex and creative process. Every case is, in some ways, unique: we seldom have much accurate information on the enemy’s perceptions, and guidance about overall objectives and strategy can sometimes be ambiguous. Not surprisingly, unanticipated factors often arise during the course of a conflict that complicate and constrain military operations or that call for major adjustments in strategy. This project would examine past conflicts to identify such factors and to suggest ways to mitigate them. It would seek to develop a concise “primer” to be used by those charged with developing air campaign strategies.

Sponsor: AF/XOO
Project Leader: David Ochmanek

Defeating Terrorists in Failed States

Ungoverned areas in failed or failing states can and do become breeding grounds for terrorist and criminal organizations, and key sources of international insecurity. In the future, the USAF may be called upon to conduct operations (spanning the spectrum from raids to multi-year stability efforts) against terrorists in these ungoverned territories. Understanding more fully the threats to U.S. interests that emanate from these areas is critical to developing effective mitigating strategies. This examination will focus on the conditions that produce state failure and ungoverned areas and that allow these areas to become havens for terrorist and criminal networks, with the intention of yielding insights into precluding or countering these conditions, especially with respect to military operations and USAF posture requirements.

Sponsor: AF/XOX
Project Leader: Angel Rabasa

America's Dependence on Space

This project seeks to produce a balanced (pros and cons), easily understandable primer on issues central to the space defense debate. America’s space systems are critical enablers of military, economic, and scientific activities in the United States and around the globe. While most Americans are generally aware that space-based capabilities are important, few appreciate just how much these capabilities contribute to U.S. security and general well being. And fewer still understand that America’s dependence on space makes it vulnerable to attacks on orbital assets and their supporting infrastructure. To the extent that there has been a debate on these matters, it has focused as much on whether to defend assets in space as it has on how to defend these assets. What is missing in the space defense debate is an holistic, unclassified assessment of what assets the United States has in space, the many ways we and others depend on them, the potential impacts of their loss, and what options exist for protecting them. This study will undertake such an assessment

Sponsor: AFSPC/CC
Project Leader: Forrest Morgan

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