Operational Unpredictability and Deterrence

The 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy instructed the U.S. military to become more operationally unpredictable and suggested that doing so would help the United States deter attacks on U.S. partners. The authors of this report propose a definition of U.S. operational unpredictability—adversary uncertainty about how the United States would fight; develop four potential approaches for increasing U.S. operational unpredictability and deterring attacks on U.S. allies and partners; and assess how the four approaches could affect U.S. relations with Russia and China. They also examine two Cold War–era cases in which the United States sought to be more operationally unpredictable.

The authors find that increasing adversaries' perceptions of U.S. operational unpredictability may be possible if the United States has detailed information about their operational analysis and decisionmaking processes. The most promising way to increase U.S. operational unpredictability is to publicize new U.S. capabilities and demonstrate that they give the United States multiple options for achieving its key objectives. However, increasing U.S. operational unpredictability may be costly and, in some cases, involve negative side effects (e.g., reducing U.S. military effectiveness and increasing China's and Russia's threat perceptions). The authors recommend weighing the potential costs and effectiveness of these approaches against more traditional approaches to deterring U.S. adversaries.