Pentagon officials are devising new plans to defend air bases worldwide—plans that prioritize collaboration across all the military services, rather than relying solely on the Army for protection.
The growing threat of long-range missiles from China, along with the proliferation of drone swarms, has complicated the Army’s long-held mission to defend air bases. At the same time, the Air Force is building more small bases in the Indo-Pacific to reduce reliance on a handful of large installations, but traditional Army air defense systems like Patriot and THAAD are too expensive to field at a constellation of tiny bases.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has suggested that the Air Force could take over the air base defense mission from the Army, if given the resources. But other Pentagon leaders have advocated for a “joint” approach to air base defense.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin met with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George at the end of last year to plot a course ahead—one that will include the entire joint force.
“The conclusion we both came to is this is something we need to look at beyond just Air Force versus Army roles and missions. There is a spectrum. There’s a continuum of base defense that goes from group one UAVs that we’re seeing here in the continental United States, all the way up to ballistic missiles, so we need to come to the recognition across the joint force that this is a new entrance into the changing character of war,” Allvin told Defense One during a December interview.
The two chiefs didn’t reach a conclusion on Army versus Air Force roles and missions, Allvin said, but agreed they need to work together, and not “swing lunch boxes at the bus stop at each other, saying, it’s your job, it’s my job.”
“This is a new environment that we’re in where there are probably joint requirements that need to be sort of investigated on who does what and where and when,” Allvin said.
A new report from the Hudson Institute, released Tuesday, underscored the need for new air base defense plans—arguing that China has made major investments to defend, expand, and fortify their airfields, while the U.S. has done very little in the region.
The report made three primary recommendations to mitigate the Pentagon’s shortcomings: build resilient infrastructure that has both active and passive defenses, field systems that can operate at long distances and spend more time in the air, and force China to invest in defensive measures and field new classes of cheaper standoff and stand-in weapons.
Specifically, the report stressed the need to harden infrastructure like aircraft shelters and fuel and ammunition storage, arguing that even if the military uses the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept, China still has a slew of targeting capabilities to expend. And forcing the Chinese to use larger, more expensive weapons against each hardened aircraft shelter would reduce the number of weapons the PLA could use for other targets. Additionally, the argument that the military should only operate from afar instead of hardening infrastructure is ill-advised, the report says, because it will be years before the Air Force will field those types of forces in large numbers, “and the DOD will still require passive and active defenses at airfields regardless of these changes in force design. It cannot hope future military forces will address its current airfield weaknesses.”
However, implementing these recommendations will require considerably more money, Tim Walton, a senior fellow at Hudson and co-author of the report, told Defense One. Absent a major top line budget increase, DOD would need to fund investments by decreasing spending in other areas, he said.
Specifically, the report recommends moving resources from Army ground maneuver forces to Army air defense artillery, or ADA.
“I think there’s an opportunity in this new administration for there to be a significant rebalancing and reshaping of the force,” Walton said.
The Air Force could take ownership of the air base defense mission, as Kendall suggested, which Walton said is not an unusual arrangement. A majority of countries with ground-based air defenses have medium- and long-range assets within their air forces, he said. But that plan carries some risk, he added, if Air Force leaders can’t properly resource the mission.
This issue is “one of the most important force design decisions” the incoming defense secretary will need to make, Walton said.
“Previous secretaries of defense have deferred action on this, and they’ve concluded that all services have a role. Although that’s true, the Army has the leading role in ground-based air defense and so we need a secretary of defense, with congressional support, who’s going to prioritize the Army properly resourcing air defense artillery, which is arguably the Army’s most important contribution in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.
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