CNAS: This report begins with a discussion of how the United States lost sight of great-power deterrence and why its legacy presence-reliant approach to deterrence is unsuited to the current challenge. Instead, the department should embrace deterrence by denial to improve simultaneous deterrence of China and Russia in the near term without consuming resources earmarked for modernization. The report redefines campaigning to demonstrate how it could support a denial strategy through the rigorous linkage of campaigning to warfighting. It develops a framework for how the U.S. Department of Defense could implement this revised approach to campaigning. The framework is applied to the Indo-Pacific and Europe to demonstrate how the United States can reimagine its forces and capabilities, posture, and activities to simultaneously deter China from aggressing against Taiwan and Russia from aggressing against the Baltics. These plans are analyzed to determine the implications of two-theater deterrence for U.S. defense strategy, peacetime activities, and resource management. Finally, the report concludes with recommendations for the DoD and Congress on how to manage the simultaneous threat of two major adversaries in the near term.

Breaking Defense – Earlier this year, a group of experts from RAND and the Special Competitive Studies Project launched a new wargame effort around China’s invasion of Taiwan — but unlike most DC-based wargames, this effort heavily involved members of the commercial technology sector, in order to understand what near-term capabilities might be brought to bear on a Taiwan scenario. In the exclusive analysis below, Jim Mitre of RAND and Ylber Bajraktari of SCSP lay out their key findings.

War on the Rocks – Frustrated by reports of the U.S. Navy’s underperformance in cyber operations, Congress has made an unusual request. The Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act instructs the secretary of defense to report to Congress by 2024 on whether the Navy should continue contributing forces to U.S. Cyber Command. This request raises the unprecedented possibility that an armed service would not contribute forces to a joint combatant command. 

Defense News – As she assumes the mantle of acting chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchettifaces a growing stack of challenges in her inbox, from readiness and recruiting to force structure and innovation. Fortunately, she is uniquely positioned to pursue solutions.

1945 – As so often, Admiral Jim Stavridis called it right. Of this week’s decommissioning of USS Sioux City, a Freedom-class littoral combat ship (LCS), after less than five years’ service, the retired NATO supreme allied commander and Fletcher School dean declared: “Hard to figure this one out . . . . Hate to see anything decommissioned when we are so far behind China in overall ship count.” 

Defense News – Can the U.S. Navy’s fleet fight two conflicts at once, while managing distributed forces with limited resources?

USNI News – Two years after the initial Large Scale Exercise 2021, the Navy and Marines are again testing their new theories of war at sea with a blend of real-live and virtual training designed to push the commands of three four-star fleet admirals to their limits.