The Defense Department and Congress should give preference to fielding long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike aircraft to bolster the U.S. military posture in the Asia-Pacific and enable it to project power rapidly, according to a report from an influential Washington think tank.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) argues in a new report, Toward a Balanced Combat Air Force, the rise of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities like anti-satellite weapons and integrated air defense systems, in addition to the “tyranny of distances” the Asia-Pacific region provides, requires a new, balanced combat air force, which it says is dominated by aging systems. These aircraft are increasingly incapable of operating over long distances and in contested conditions, CSBA said. 
The need for an improved air combat fleet is not limited to just the Air Force, CSBA said. The Navy’s fixed-wing combat aircraft force might not be as old as the Air Force’s, CSBA said, but its F/A-18 aircraft fleet is non-stealthy and the wisdom of deploying aircraft carriers within range of anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles so their short-range fighters can reach their objective areas is doubtful, at best. CSBA said the Air Force’s combat force primarily consists of aging A-10s, F-15s, F-16s, B-1s, B-52s, B-2s and a handful of new F-22s, making the Air Force’s combat air forces the smallest and oldest it has ever fielded.
Upgrading older aircraft isn’t enough, CSBA said. To sustain its asymmetric aerospace advantage, the United States will need new combat aircraft that can perform missions in modern threat environments, can operate over long ranges and can adapt their capabilities to counter new threats as they emerge in the future. With the exception of a small number of stealthy F-22s and B-2s, CSBA said DoD’s fighters and bombers have lost their ability to operate in high-threat areas without the risk of significant losses or the need for very large supporting force packages to suppress enemy air defenses.
David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and one of the authors of the report, said Monday defense stakeholders need to get away from judging capabilities solely on cost per unit, common approach in today’s development of modern weapon systems.
“I know it’s easy, on one hand, to speak to cost per individual unit, and it’s difficult to talk about what’s more relevant: cost per capability,” Deptula said at an Air Force Association (AFA) event in Arlington, Va. Deptula is also dean of the AFA’s Mitchell Institute for airpower studies. “If (we) can get to a point where we use cost per desired effect as a measure of merit, that’s where we, as a nation (and) as a Department of Defense, will be able to achieve real economy. Not just in terms of dollars but in terms of force structure and personnel, as well.”
It is imperative for DoD to establish proper key performance parameters (KPP) for new combat air force capabilities before it creates programs of record to develop and procure them, CSBA said. In today’s age of austerity, CSBA said DoD won’t have the luxury of buying its way out of mistakes it makes at the front end of its requirements definition process. A service develops multiple KPPs for a new weapon system, including attributes for affordability, range/persistence, payload and weapons capacity, interoperability, sustainability and even training and force protection needs. CSBA said it focused on proper KPPs for new long-range ISR and strike aircraft: requirements for their basic shape, size, weight and capacity to generate electric power and internal cooling. These are considered most important, CSBA said, because they establish a baseline for the new aircraft to survive and perform missions effectively in future threat environments.
CSBA also promotes an alternative strategy it calls a “combat cloud,” which is similar to cloud computing in that a “combat cloud” is a highly-interconnected, ISR-strike, maneuver and sustainment complex that leverages information age technologies to conduct distributed operations. Instead of combining the computing power of multiple servers as in cloud computing, a “combat cloud” would capitalize on C4ISR networks to rapidly exchange data across an all-domain architecture of “sensors and shooters.”
A “combat cloud” could also improve capability by employing fewer modern weapons systems to achieve higher levels of effectiveness across larger areas of influence, CSBA said, compared to legacy operational concepts and systems. A “combat cloud” could integrate complementary capabilities into a single, combined “weapons system” to conduct disaggregated, distributed operations. A distributed, all-domain combat cloud that is difficult to attack effectively would also complicate an enemy’s planning and compel it to dedicate more resources toward its defense, CSBA said.
Along with Deptula, CSBA Senior Fellow Mark Gunzinger also co-authored the report.