Offset-X
Closing the Deterrence Gap and Building the Future Joint Force
Hello, I’m Ylli Bajraktari, CEO of the Special Competitive Studies Project. In this edition of 2-2-2, SCSP’s Defense Panel discusses their recently released report on Offset-X: Closing the Deterrence Gap and Building the Future Joint Force.
SCSP Releases Offset-X
The Defense Panel released its second Interim Panel Report (IPR) on Offset-X: Closing the Deterrence Gap and Building the Future Joint Force in conjunction with The Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security.
We encourage you to watch the Exchange, which convened pioneers and champions of innovation in national security from the government, private sector, and the scientific community to discuss themes from our report and honor the legacy of Secretary Ash Carter.
Offset-X: Closing the Deterrence Gap and Building the Future Joint Force
For the first time in decades, the U.S. military is faced with the prospect of a conventional military defeat at the hands of an advanced peer rival - China. The convergence of emerging technologies on the battlefield – including autonomy, artificial intelligence, robotics, cyber, and space – along with new concepts for how to employ them are fundamentally changing the character of warfare. The People’s Republic of China seeks to take advantage of those changes, and is continuing to amass a wide array of advanced capabilities deliberately designed to counter the American way of war.
In response, the United States needs to rapidly transform the Joint Force and field the next generation of capabilities needed to deter and, if necessary, defeat China in a conflict. Should we fail to act, we could see a shift in the balance of power globally towards a world increasingly dominated by the Chinese Communist Party - and an end to the last 80 years of peace and stability, underpinned by American military power, in the Indo-Pacific.
To meet this generational challenge, in October 2022, we proposed a technology-centered, competitive defense strategy – Offset-X – that draws on lessons learned from the last three offset strategies and the foundations of America’s economic, societal, and technological strengths. It lays out the groundwork of an institutional strategy for U.S. techno-military superiority in a new era of strategic competition.
We are now taking the next logical step in the development of the Offset-X strategy: proposing recommendations that translate the ten elements of the institutional strategy into operational capabilities and force design requirements. Cumulatively, these capabilities and requirements can close the deterrence gap in the Indo-Pacific in the 2025-2030 timeframe and build a Future Joint Force for an enduring great power competition with China.
The Changing Character of War
A modern great power war is more likely now than it has been in decades and would be unlike anything the world has ever experienced. It would be fought at unprecedented scale and intensity, and over a geographic area far larger than the areas of responsibility in which the U.S. military has operated over the past 20 years.
We are already in a persistent conflict below the level of armed clashes with China and Russia, whose governments are blurring the lines between war and peace through a range of cyberattacks, disinformation operations, intellectual property theft, and sabotage operations. These threats are further magnified by the trend towards the individualization of war, which is diversifying targeting from militaries, infrastructure, and populations to microtargeting individuals at scale through denigration campaigns, psychological operations, potential biological warfare, and killings by global strike platforms.
The war in Ukraine has given us a glimpse of this future. The growing number of sensors, AI-enabled analytical tools, and smart and loitering munitions are rendering the battlefield transparent, and making it easier to detect and strike large formations. Drones, as both expendable munitions and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets, are being employed to correct long-range artillery fires and degrade advanced air defense systems. Large datasets and new technologies are compressing decision-making and accelerating the tempo of war, requiring militaries to dynamically evolve their processes and systems to reach new speeds and scales to survive on the battlefield.
China, too, is observing the war in Ukraine just as it has studied the American way of war - or “informatized warfare” - for the last 30 years. During this period, it correctly identified command, control, communications, and precision targeting networks as the U.S. military’s operational centers of gravity and developed a theory of victory based on “system destruction warfare” to disrupt information flow, time sequencing, and key components of U.S. military operating systems.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China doesn’t seek, however, to merely match the U.S. military. In addition to organizing and investing to win informatized wars, China is adapting capabilities using AI, big data, advanced computing and networks, and supporting technologies to become the first mover in an era of “intelligentized warfare” and replace the United States as the world’s dominant military power. The PLA theory of victory ultimately shifts its concept of operation from informatized warfare to a hybrid of mechanized, informatized, and intelligentized warfare.
The PLA has now moved beyond theory and is organizing and equipping itself to challenge the U.S. military’s power projection and freedom of movement and action in the Indo-Pacific. China’s anti-access/area-denial capabilities and concepts, and ability to generate enormous combat power in the Taiwan Strait will deny the U.S. military the buildup time and benign environment in a Taiwan contingency.
Rather, U.S. forces will have to re-posture instantaneously, engage the PLA’s operational centers of gravity prior to even establishing air superiority, and bring decisive combat power to bear within days to blunt or deny invading forces. The urgency with which the Joint Force must adapt its concepts, capabilities, and characteristics to deter, and if necessary, defeat the PLA, has never been greater.
The Foundations of a Competitive Strategy
Despite these unprecedented challenges, the United States possesses persistent asymmetries - stemming from democratic institutions, long-standing organizational biases, and hard-won operational experiences - that can inform the development, deployment, and use of capabilities difficult for the PLA to replicate, even if it reproduces the underlying technology.
We identified these asymmetries in the report as (1) battle-tested joint, combined arms, and expeditionary operations experience, (2) empowerment of warfighters at the lowest tactical levels, (3) a preeminent military-civilian logistics system, (4) a deep and extensive network of alliances, (5) a lack of authoritarian pathologies, and (6) a tradition of innovation.
Constructed on the pillars of these persistent asymmetries, Offset-X lays out the foundations and guiding principles for a new set of capabilities and force design requirements to close near-term deterrence gaps and prevail in an enduring competition against China. We proposed the foundations of Offset-X last year in our first Interim Panel Report (IPR) on the Future of Conflict and the New Requirements of Defense neither as a war plan nor a comprehensive or definitive list of actions, but rather as a competitive strategy to achieve U.S. military-technological superiority over all potential adversaries.
Operationalizing Offset-X: from institutional strategy to capabilities
A new force design will take time to implement and achieve full effect, and the Department of Defense in the near-term will largely operate with the forces it has already designed. The military services and combatant commands, however, can begin to move from an institutional strategy to capabilities that operationalize Offset-X by 2027 for an Indo-Pacific conflict.
We organized these capabilities by warfighting function – command and control (C2), intelligence, movement & maneuvers, fires, sustainment, information, and protection – intuitive to the military community, with the addition of adaptation, to directly translate them into a vision of warfighting that can guide our force’s generation and execution of a new way of war.
The capabilities we outlined are based on technologies already fielded or in development and deliver on the mission requirements that we described for each warfighting function. We also provided illustrative examples of these technology solutions, which, individually or in combination, can address parts of the challenge and help to bring these capabilities to bear today.
The Characteristics of a Future Joint Force
Looking beyond 2027 to the long-term security challenges that China will pose, the U.S. military must design a Joint Force prepared to deter or outcompete China in an enduring competition. New technologies are driving fundamental changes to the character of warfare, and an emboldened China is undertaking a whole-of-nation approach to investment and reorganization of its military and society to capitalize on this transformation and win in the next way of war. Deterring - and winning - a conflict with China requires a new force design that widely adopts, integrates, and employs new technologies and attendant operating concepts to their full effect.
To guide the execution of this new force design, we identified the characteristics of a Future Joint Force that can employ the capabilities of Offset-X and meet the challenges raised by China in the changing character of conflict. As we noted earlier, a new force design will take time to implement, and we will need to adapt the force that we have now. To manage this transformation, we described for each characteristic, actions with near-term impact to develop the Joint Force and those with medium-term impact needed to equip the Future Joint Force with an enduring advantage against all potential adversaries.
Rising to the Challenge
Most Americans alive today have only known a world in which the U.S. military is dominant. For generations, it has both protected our homeland against invasion and secured an international order that has fostered peace and prosperity on a scale that humanity had never before experienced. Today, there is a growing realization that China is the challenge of our lifetimes. Yet, the magnitude and pace of our actions are still not reflective of what is needed. In our recent past, we rose to meet the threat of the Soviet Union, investing in and adapting technologies, concepts, and training for a new offset strategy that successfully deterred a war in Europe and contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. We must rise to the challenge again.
This latest report is an effort to map a path towards a Joint Force that can deter war – and, if necessary, win it. Our first Interim Panel Report on Offset-X was about the why and the what. This report provides the how.
#SCSPgeneration & Offset-X
Since the start, SCSP has been tech-first and national security focused. We recently launched the #SCSPgeneration campaign with help from generative AI to distill the breadth and depth of the amazing work our team has produced. Check out the fast-paced, high-level overview of Offset-X and follow along for more.