Area Denial Research Articles

Simulating autonomous drone behaviors in an anti-access area denial (A2AD) environment

Army senior military leaders are invested in acquiring modernized aerial platforms and equipment to augment the US Army’s ability to overcome Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD) threats imposed by modern Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS). A prominent element of this modernization effort is the employment of autonomous drones to defeat IADS threats while minimizing risk to Army Soldiers. This research utilizes a framework for classifying the levels of autonomous capability along three dimensions: the ability to act alone, the ability to cooperate, and the ability to adapt. A virtual combat model, created using the Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration, and Modeling (AFSIM), simulates the engagement between an enemy IADS and a friendly formation comprised of autonomous drones, attack helicopters, and a Long Range Precision Fires (LRPF) capability. A designed experiment evaluates drone performance with varying levels of autonomy. The experimental results reveal that low levels of autonomy yield a 20.74% increase in survivability and a 5.52% increase in lethality.

Strengthening Multi-Domain Deterrence and Defense in the Asia–Pacific Region

Novel strategic technologies are posing major challenges to Asian security. These disruptive systems include high-precision and hypersonic delivery vehicles, advanced cyber capabilities, and space weaponry. The proliferation of these new capabilities among states could complicate military planning, reduce strategic predictability, and decrease crisis stability by amplifying preemption incentives. Developments regarding these technologies have already contributed to the collapse of longstanding arms control agreements and have raised dangers of miscalculations or misperceptions that could lead to inadvertent escalation. Yet, revisionist powers in Asia―such as China, Russia, and North Korea―perceive these strategic technologies as helping them realize their theory of victory. In particular, they hope to employ them to negate superior U.S. conventional forces to secure important gains in a limited conflict through multi-domain coercion, while managing escalation dynamics to prevent an all-out war. Chinese, Russian, and DPRK strategists see having strong offensive capabilities as their best means of crippling U.S. military alliances in Asia. Indeed, these strike systems enhance the anti-access/ area-denial barriers these Asian land powers have erected to keep U.S. forces from reinforcing U.S. allies and partners. Fortunately, emerging strategic technologies can enhance U.S. alliances in Asia in critical ways, while some of their potentially destabilizing impacts can be mitigated by managing competition and reducing the risks of miscalculations in these domains.

Model to Predict Probability of Significant Skin Burn Injury From a Directed-Energy Source.

Millimeter wave directed energy in the frequency regime of 94-95 GHz has potential for use in numerous military applications including crowd control and area denial. Although proven to be very safe, millimeter wave energy has the potential, because of accidental over exposure, to produce significant injuries. Currently, the Dynamic Thermal Model (DTM), developed by Beason and colleagues, is used to calculate the temperature profile in skin undergoing (millimeter wave) heating, using an all-or-nothing threshold of injury. Risk of significant injury (RSI) is determined by product of the probability of an injury outcome on a region of the body times the probability of that the injury will occur. Thus, a threshold injury determination may over predict burn probability and fail safety requirements. This work augments the DTM, replacing the current threshold value of injury with a probabilistic risk of injury to better quantify the risk of significant injury. In this study, continuous probabilistic dose-response models using logistic regression analysis have been developed to account for mild second-degree, deep second-degree, and third-degree burn injuries based on a historic experimental burn dataset. Statistical analysis methods such as Hosmer-Lemeshow statistics, McFadden's pseudo R2 and receiver operator characteristic were used to validate the models against an independent experimental burn dataset. Comparison of logistic models fit using damage coefficients from the literature showed that Mehta and Wong provided the best fits historic burn data, which was corroborated by the McFadden pseudo R2 statistic for mild second-degree, deep second-degree, and third-degree severity. The dose-response models developed in this study are shown to be an excellent predictor of burn injury for each severity. The DTM was repackaged with the probabilistic burn models to more accurately determine the risk of significant burn injury.

Multi-Domain Operations and Lessons from NSC 68 in the Competitive Space

Russia has pursued policies that blur the lines between peace and war. Weapons and enablers used in the five domains (maritime, air, land, space and cyber) have been transformed, leading to improved anti-access and area denial capabilities, as well as faster kinetic and non-kinetic operations. Such changes have occurred before Western democracies have been able to respond. NATO should close this gap by developing a framework for deterrence and containment within this competitive space. The Cold War United States Objectives and Programs for National Security (NSC 68) established goals for policy and promoted guidelines that both limited and authorised necessary acts that shaped an environment advantageous to Western democracies. Tyler Wesley argues that a new framework, inspired by examples drawn from NSC 68, is necessary.◼

The geopolitical Roots of China’s naval modernisation

ABSTRACTChina’s naval modernisation program has been seen as China’s path toward a blue water naval capacity designed to challenge American global hegemony. While China does reap the benefits of maritime trade, especially along its eastern seaboard, it is also through that eastern seaboard that China is vulnerable to invasion and encirclement. To prevent this encirclement China has built up its navy, including its anti-access and area denial capabilities, as well as adding two aircraft carriers to its surface fleet. The PLAN’s modernisation effort, therefore, is defensive in nature, and not an attempt by China to build a blue water naval capacity to challenge directly the United States, or its allies.

Aircraft protection for complex threat platforms through integrated EWOS application

The advancement of threats is focusing commanders to consider how to combat these complex threats throughout the kill chain including prior to launch and Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD). To match this technology race, modern platforms have been designed with integrated command and control systems and automated Defensive Aids Suites built on modular open system architectures incorporating less diverse but more complex software driven systems. The successful operation of these combat systems is reliant upon the availability of accurate, configured, harmonised and “time sensitive” mission data without which the systems may be ineffective. This paper explores the use of threat analysis diagramming techniques, and open architectures tightly integrated with a EWOS life-cycle; to develop countermeasures with a measured response beyond the traditional self-protection kill chain stages of self-protection. It introduces how threat analysis prepares understanding for simulation and how a countermeasure description language can be used to store and exchange countermeasures in a structured form. This level of intelligence data support and analysis coordinated and synchronised across multiple platforms thereby facilitating the complexities of force protection higher up the kill chain into an onion of protection mapped to a Venn diagram of countermeasure types (design intentions) with differing data needs.

Bytes, With, and Through: Establishment of Cyber Engagement Teams to Enable Collective Security

Multiple documents from the White House, Congress, and from within the Department of Defense describe the imperative to work with allies and partners toward long-term advancement of the U.S. and partners’ interests. These same documents also often stress the importance of the cyberspace as a warfighting domain and a U.S. and international interest. However, there is no clear strategy or methodology today that explicitly links the building of partner capacity within the cyber domain. This paper serves as a primer for discussion on how to bridge cyber operations and partner capacity by proposing a concept of Cyber Engagement Teams (CETs). CETs would seeks to expand on current Foreign Internal Defense (FID), Security Force Assistance (SFA) or other cooperation and engagement apparatuses. Taking advantage of similar successes and lessons learned over the many decades by those units engaging in FID, SFA, and other security cooperation mechanisms, the U.S. has an opportunity establish a cadre of functional cyber experts to complement the traditional and existing engagement models. These forward deployed CETs would work with and train U.S. allies in areas of network operations, cyber security, and even offensive cyber operations while at the same time providing a viable mechanism to hold the adversary’s target networks and systems at risk. By working with indigenous forces, CETs would situate U.S. and friendly forces and capabilities in a better position to counter Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD) threats, to hold adversary command and control (C2) networks at risk by working “by, with, and through” friendly nations, and would develop lasting relationships. CETs are a logical tool to contend with cyber adversaries through friendly engagement, collective security, and partnering.

Researching Baltic security challenges after the annexation of Crimea

Abstract The article aims to provide an insight into academic and military studies that investigate security challenges in the Baltic region after the annexation of Crimea. To do this in a systematic way, numerous academic and military studies and analyses in this field are divided into six broad categories: literature on conventional threat scenarios in the Baltic region; studies on nuclear escalation scenarios; publications that describe Russian viewpoints in the current confrontation with the West; studies that discuss security policy and security perceptions of the Baltic countries and the national security models of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; studies on anti-access and area denial; and articles that analyse the dilemmas and challenges in association with understanding the essence of deterrence in the context of modern hybrid warfare and the build-up of a viable deterrence model in the Baltic region. In total, about 40 publications from the period between 2014 and 2019 are represented in this article. While some studies are already well known, others have undeservedly remained somewhat overlooked. This article attempts to correct this by highlighting and comparing the results of the most interesting and intriguing studies in this field. Through this, the author strived to maintain a balance between studies conducted both by military experts and by academics.

A2AD Concept in the Modern Security Environment

Abstract In the 21st century, the international scene witnesses major changes in the security environment. There are many actions aimed at redefining spheres of influence and reaffirming states as great powers. The international scene is dominated by two entities that were antagonistic during the Cold War: Russia and NATO. In recent years, Russia is trying to impose itself again as a global actor and is therefore trying to consolidate its power in Europe and the world, both by reforming its armed forces and by participating in various conflicts in the hot zones of the world. Russia perceives NATO as its main adversary, which is trying to get closer to its vital space, reduce its spheres of influence and isolate it. As a reaction, Russia initiated a series of complex actions aimed at both maintaining buffer zones and banning access and limiting NATO's freedom of movement in the immediate vicinity of its borders. To this end, Russia has developed a series of capabilities to prevent the opponent from entering a certain area and to reduce or even forbid him any freedom of action once he has entered the area, this approach of Russia being part of the A2AD (Anti-access, Area Denial) policy

Preparing NATO for the Future – Operating in an Increasingly Contested Environment

The global proliferation of precision-strike systems may be challenging the foundations of Western military-technological supremacy. Relatedly, the development of so-called Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities across the globe threatens to complicate Western freedom of military movement and access, and could give way to a more contested military-strategic environment. The twin challenges of precision-strike proliferation and A2/AD strongly impact NATO’s agenda, which revolves around strengthening deterrence and defence in Eastern Europe, and addressing the different threats emanating from the so-called Southern European neighbourhood. In order to address or mitigate such challenges, the Alliance needs to produce operational concepts and capabilities able to deliver deterrence and expeditionary warfare in a maturing precision-strike environment, one characterised by the emergence of A2/AD capabilities.

Denial strategy in Australian strategic thought

ABSTRACTAlthough denial has been at the centre of Australian strategic thought for decades, it has frequently been used as a broad catch-all term. This article shows, however, that there are two distinct denial traditions in Australian strategic thought: anti-access denial and area denial. Despite the different denial strategies having significantly different implications for defence budgets, procurement and force structure, official strategic guidance and defence scholars themselves have rarely specified which variant they are referring to. This article first maps the conceptual genealogy of anti-access denial and area denial within Australian strategic thought, before showing why acknowledging the specific type of denial is critical for policy and operational considerations. In addition to the two traditional approaches to denial, this article introduces a third approach—‘dissuasion by denial’—which, notwithstanding its growing influence in deterrence research and high relevance to twenty-first-century Asia-Pacific security dynamics, has yet to be introduced into Australian denial debates. The article finally addresses the conditions under which each denial strategy would be the most appropriate for Australia.

U.S.-Japan-Australia Strategic Cooperation in the Trump Era: Moving from Aspiration to Action

The U.S.–Japan–Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) was the first formal trilateral security mechanism in the Asia-Pacific, and one of the earliest and most important nodes of what former U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter calls the “principled security network” that the United States and its partners have been constructing in the region. Since it was established in 2002 the TSD has become institutionalized at the ministerial level and has met twice at the leaders’ level, becoming the most developed and substantial trilateral involving the United States in the Asia-Pacific. Augmented in 2007 by a Security and Defense Cooperation Forum involving defence as well as foreign ministry officials, the TSD has developed into a useful mechanism for coordinating policy positions on regional issues such as North Korea and the South China Sea, and for driving deeper strategic cooperation between the three countries in areas including defence, security, intelligence, development assistance, capacity building, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). It has also helped to foster stronger defence and security ties between Japan and Australia — the weakest leg of the strategic triangle. The strategic logic of trilateral U.S.–Japan–Australia defence and security cooperation remains compelling. Threats to the United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific are intensifying — whether from North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, China's assertiveness in the Western Pacific (increasingly backed by sophisticated area denial weapons), or the resurgence of Islamist terrorist networks in Southeast Asia. These threats will increasingly stretch the constrained resources of the United States and its allies. The only cost-effective way to remedy the ensuing capability gaps in key areas such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), undersea warfare, missile defence, and amphibious lift is to develop greater interoperability and, ultimately, integration among U.S. and allied military forces. Japan and Australia are two of the United States’ most capable and dependable allies in the region, as well as longstanding economic and diplomatic partners, who over the past decade have been steadily building their own substantial bilateral strategic relationship. Moreover, their respective strategic geographies complement each other and the United States’ maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific region. Current trilateral defence cooperation focuses heavily on combined exercises, with the three countries steadily increasing the frequency, scale, and sophistication of their three-way exercise programme.

Future Warfare in the Western Pacific: Chinese Antiaccess/Area Denial, U.S. AirSea Battle, and Command of the Commons in East Asia

Abstract Many analysts worry that improvements in Chinese missile, sensor, guidance, and other technologies will enable China to deny the U.S. military access to parts of the Western Pacific that the United States has long controlled. Although these “antiaccess, area denial” (A2/AD) capabilities are real, they are a geographically limited long-term threat. As both the United States and China deploy A2/AD capabilities, a new era will emerge in which the U.S. military no longer enjoys today's command of the global commons, but is still able to deny China military hegemony in the Western Pacific. In this new era, the United States will possess a sphere of influence around allied landmasses; China will maintain a sphere of influence over its own mainland; and a contested battlespace will cover much of the South and East China Seas wherein neither power enjoys wartime freedom of surface or air movement. This in turn suggests that the Chinese A2/AD threat to U.S. allies is real but more limited than often supposed. With astute U.S. choices, most U.S. allies in this new system will be imperfectly, but substantially, secure.

The ‘Third’ US Offset Strategy and Europe’s ‘Anti-access’ Challenge

ABSTRACTOver the last two decades, a number of countries (most notably China, Russia and Iran) have been developing so-called anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) capabilities, such as ballistic and cruise missiles, offensive cyber-weapons, electronic warfare, etc. The development of A2/AD capabilities by non-Western countries undermines the foundations of US power projection and global military-technological supremacy. In order to overcome, or at least mitigate, the impending A2/AD challenge, the US Department of Defense (DoD) began to roll out its so-called ‘third’ offset strategy in late 2014. The strategy aims to bring about innovative operational concepts and technologies and spur new doctrinal and organisational debates. This article assesses which of the operational concepts and capabilities informing current US discussions on offset may be relevant in the context of the A2/AD challenges Europeans face on their eastern ‘flank‘ and in their ‘extended southern neighbourhood‘, and which may not. Europeans must grapple with the same conceptual puzzle as the US: how to strike the right balance between defeating A2/AD capabilities and hedging against them, i.e. through alternative strategies that are less dependent on unhindered access and resort to asymmetric forms of warfare. However, they must take into account the geographical features of their eastern flank and extended southern neighbourhood, the level of technological maturity of their challengers, and their own military-technological prowess and political limitations. This suggests a somewhat different approach to offsetting A2/AD than that adopted by the US.

Radiological Risk Assessment by Convergence Methodology Model in RDD Scenarios.

A radiological dispersal device (RDD) is a simple weapon capable of causing human harm, environmental contamination, disruption, area denial, and economic cost. It can affect small, large, or long areas depending on atmospheric stability. The risk of developing a radio-induced cancer depends on exposure, and an effective response depends upon available timely guidance. This article proposes and demonstrates a convergence of three different capabilities to assess risk and support rapid safe resource efficient response. The three capabilities that are integrated are Hotspot for dispersion, RERF for epidemiological risk, and RESRAD-RDD for response guidance. The combined methodology supports decisions on risk reduction and resource allocation through work schedules, the designation and composition of response teams, and siting for operations. In the illustrative RDD scenario, the contamination area for sheltering, evacuation, and long-term public concern was greatest for calm atmospheric conditions, whilst close-quarter responders faced highest dose rates for neutral atmospheric conditions. Generally, the risks to women responders were found to be significantly greater than for men, and the risks to 20-year-old responders were three times that of their 60-year-old counterparts for similar exposure.

Rebalancing US Forces: Basing and Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific

Rebalancing US Forces: Basing and Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific. Edited by Carnes Lord and Andrew S. Erickson. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2014. Hardcover: 226pp. Can the United States rely on its land bases, major naval surface combatants, and above all, its fleet of formidable nuclear-powered aircraft carriers sustain a military presence in the Asia-Pacific in the coming decades? This is the key question for Carnes Lord and Andrew Erickson, the editors of Rebalancing US Forces: Basing and Forward Presence in the Asia-Pacific. For nearly seven decades, US strategy in the Pacific has remained relatively constant: maintain a robust and active presence coupled with bilateral alliances ensure peace, stability and prosperity. Since the end of the Cold War, however, East Asia's regional strategic template has become progressively more complex and multifaceted with the confluence of unresolved historical legacies in traditional flashpoints such as the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan Straits, territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas as well as a range of non-traditional security challenges such as energy and cyber security. Above all, however, it is China's increasing power projection capabilities embedded in the People Liberation Army's (PLA) growing technological developments, including long-range precision-strike assets, that is gradually redefining the regional military balance and subsequently US strategy. In particular, China's asymmetric counter-intervention concepts and weapons technologies, designed deny the American military and its allies the freedom of action in China's near seas by restricting deployments of US forces into theatre (anti-access) and denying them freedom of movement there (area denial), amplify the magnitude of strategic and operational challenges for US commanders in the region. In this context, Lord and Erickson argue that the current constellation of US in East Asia--main operating bases with a permanent US military presence, forward operating sites maintained by a relatively small US support presence for temporary deployments and cooperative security locations designed for contingency use with little or no permanent US presence--will become increasingly vital, yet paradoxically vulnerable (p. 9). The question of the long-term strategic effectiveness of America's presence in the is analyzed in detail through select case studies of Guam, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, the Indian Ocean and Central Asia. Chapter One, by Andrew Erickson and Justin Mikolay, focuses on the increasing geostrategic importance of Guam as a sovereign anchor of American force posture in East Asia with a potential to play a key supporting role in military operation across the region (p. 17). Here, the authors map the diverse factors, situational advantages as well as challenges that both enable and constrain the deployment and basing of more US ships and submarines. On one hand, for example, Guam allows for a rapid response regional contingencies by reducing transit times for submarines and other pre-positioned naval and air power assets. On the other hand, however, Guam's Naval Base requires significant infrastructure and equipment upgrades (p. 20) support US forces in the region, and perhaps more importantly, mitigate the increasing risks and vulnerabilities China's precision-strike missiles. Guam therefore represents a key benchmark for basing resource allocation and development necessary for the United States retain its Asia-Pacific leadership in the future. In Chapter Two Toshi Yoshihara explores the strategic ramifications of China's increasingly sophisticated arsenal of conventional ballistic missiles for the US presence in Japan and US-Japan defence cooperation. This chapter is noteworthy as it analyses not only Chinese strategic assessments of the importance of US naval in Japan, but also how these fit into the PLA's evolving missile strategy and doctrine. …

Japan's Choices in a Changed Security Environment

China's rise and clear ambition to change Asia poses both tactical and strategic questions, long neglected in Japan. Tactically, territorial challenges can be countered effectively by use of Anti-Access Area Denial [A2/AD] tactics, as Japan is now doing. The strategic issues: how to deal with a hostile nuclear super-power neighbor, counter nuclear blackmail, and so forth, are far more difficult. This author believes that US “extended deterrence” no longer exists. Washington in fact would never use nuclear weapons to defend Japan, whatever promises have been made. The only answer, and one that decreases rather than increases the possibility of conflict, is for Japan to acquire within a decade a minimal nuclear deterrent, too small for war-making but adequate to prevent attack, such as those maintained by Britain and France, who know America best. Without such a deterrent Japan will be defenseless against inevitable Chinese nuclear threats and blackmail.

A modernização militar da China e a distribuição de poder no Leste Asiático

Em razão do fim da União Soviética, China e Estados Unidos perderam um rival importante no Leste Asiático, o que alterou substancialmente a balança de poder da região, levando-a da multipolaridade à bipolaridade, ou seja, desde 1991 China e Estados Unidos são os únicos polos de poder na região. Para melhorar sua posição relativa nesta balança, o governo chinês vem investindo pesadamente na modernização de suas Forças Armadas. O tema deste estudo é o impacto da modernização militar chinesa sobre a distribuição de poder na região, considerando os inventários militares e seus meios de emprego (táticas assimétricas de antiacesso e negação de área), especial-mente na esfera aeronaval. Isso nos leva ao problema geral da presente pesquisa: qual o impacto da modernização militar da China sobre a balança de poder do Leste Asiático? O método utilizado será o de estudo de caso - comparação focada e estruturada. Tal comparação terá um caráter sincrônico, ou seja, considerará os valores das variáveis em um dado momento, apenas. Conclui-se que a modernização militar do Exército de Libertação do Povo (ELP) mudou sensivelmente a distribuição de poder no Leste Asiático em favor da China.

Air-Sea Battle and China's Anti-Access and Area Denial Challenge

The challenge presented by China's military modernization has seemingly altered the conventional balance in the Western Pacific, with significant implications for U.S. national security policy, and, thus, deserves the focus of planners and decision-makers.

Chinese Perspectives on the U.S. Role in Southeast Asia

The United States is a long-term stakeholder in the Asia-Pacific. China recognizes that the United States is an irreplaceable “security anchor” in the entire region. Basically the U.S. role of “balancer” against any uncertainties in Southeast Asia — indispensible and tenacious — is an integral part of stability, peace, and prosperity at the regional level. Simultaneously Beijing understands the significance of close bonds between the United States and the ASEAN region — Southeast Asia needs the United States to counter-balance a rising China. Yet, in China’s perception the Obama administration’s “rebalancing” moves portend a worrying trajectory for the Sino-American strategic relationship. Diplomatically, in China’s perception, the Obama administration has continually sought to keep China cornered and subdued with regard to the South China Sea issue by aligning with Vietnam, opening new military facilities in the Philippines, and excluding China from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). From a military perspective, the United States has sought to increase its preparedness through the Air-Sea Battle concept, a response to China’s anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) strategy, and moves like selling advanced F-16 C/D jetfighters to Indonesia and establishing a new military base in Darwin, Australia. The ramifications of Beijing-Washington relations extend far beyond their immediate bilateral terrain, and will clearly decide the landscape of the AsiaPacific region in a much broader sense. Any balance of power system will not automatically promote the highly valuable regional economic vigour which has now spread throughout the Asia-Pacific. Enduring economic growth at the very least reduces security concerns even if it does not produce security. China, contributing substantially to regional economic prosperity, will not be alone