Access Challenges and Implications for Airpower in the Western Pacific

Eric Stephen Gons

ResearchPublished Aug 15, 2011

This dissertation examines the risk of U.S.-China conflict based on a variety of theoretical works on conflict, applied to the U.S.-China relationship. Following this examination, and finding that the U.S.-China relationship does include elements of risk, the dissertation examines the implications of anti-access weapons on USAF sortie generation. The dissertation develops a simple sortie-generation model and air combat framework, using open-source data to estimate the forces that the USAF and the PLAAF can bring to bear, and predicts the results of air combat between two forces of dissimilar performance and quantity. Finally the dissertation examines options for increasing USAF performance in the face of antiaccess weapons, which includes a methodology to assess the effectiveness of strike employed to achieve air superiority.

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Gons, Eric Stephen, Access Challenges and Implications for Airpower in the Western Pacific. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2011. https://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertations/RGSD267.html.
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This document was submitted as a dissertation in May 2010 in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the doctoral degree in public policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. The faculty committee that supervised and approved the dissertation consisted of Bart Bennett (Chair), Roger Cliff, and John E. Peters.

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