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Stabilizing Force

July 30, 2021
Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin III visits Fort Wainwright, Alaska, July 24, 2021 (Photo Credit: DVIDS - DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)
“We believe that we’re a stabilizing force; no matter where we are, what part of the world, we add value to the stability of the region” – SECDEF Lloyd Austin at Fairbanks Alaska, July 24th, 2021 

Advancing strategic stability requires national power and political will. Strategic deterrence is a core component of global stability, and it requires both credible capabilities and a perceived willingness to use them. Possessing a capable stabilizing force designed to enact deterrence by denial rather than deterrence by cost imposition is essential. The global strategic landscape is shifting rapidly, and instability exists in numerous regions – especially between the Indo-Pacific’s first and second island chain, within the South China Sea, and across the Taiwan Straits. Measured against the capability and capacity of the aggregated Chinese, North Korean, and Russian missile threats, the U.S. is vulnerable, because our capability and capacity to defend critical nodes, such as Guam, is limited and inadequate. 

We are losing vital time while we delay in allocating and appropriating the requisite resources to defend Guam – in fact just such an opportunity presents itself today in the FY2022 Budget deliberations. But Congress is missing critical information to base its decisions on. As part of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) was directed to produce a report identifying an architecture and acquisition approach for an integrated air and missile defense system to protect Guam from cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missile threats. That report was required to be submitted 60 days after the enactment of the 2021 NDAA on December 31st, 2020. MDA and the Department of Defense have not yet issued the required report.  

Within the Indo-Pacific, the President of the United States must have credible options should China attempt to alter the status quo with Taiwan by force. Within an Indo-Pacific Campaign, our ability to defend Guam is both a strategic an operational imperative. By defending Guam, we protect and preserve our military access and, more importantly, the livelihoods of nearly 170,000 U.S. citizens – we protect America, forward. The best method to defend Guam is through a combination of active and passive defense and left of launch threat-disabling measures. Guam must be defended with an integrated open-architecture of joint and combined Missile Defense technologies. The defense architecture must also be tied-in with a broader regional Missile Defense architecture that includes our like-minded Allies and Partners.   

The message to our adversaries must be clear and unambiguous: America is defended and we are postured to guarantee global stability. Possessing an effective missile defense architecture in Guam that is capable of theater integrated Air and Missile Defense, ballistic missile defense, and hypersonic missile defense will serve to:

– Enhance the survivability of Guam and of other distributed Military sites across the Pacific
– Complicate China’s decision calculus for an attack on U.S. interests anywhere in the Pacific
– Erode the lethality of China’s missile arsenal across the theater- Expand our own decision calculus and battlespace response times
– Untether and free-up three AEGIS equipped BMD Destroyers to conduct other critical missions
– Demonstrate resolve and re-assure our Indo-Pacific Allies and Partners  

The functions of capabilities that the United States must develop to defend Pacific islands and establish stability are:
• Flexibility on system configuration emphasizing requirements of the War Fighter
• Be integrable and interoperable and serve as a node that is compatible with a common architecture
• Upgradable – not the end solution but a step to the end solution

Don’t blame Congress, Get the Report Out!

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MDAA’s mission is to make the world safer by advocating for the development and deployment of missile defense systems to defend the United States, its armed forces and its allies against missile threats.

MDAA is the only organization in existence whose primary mission is to educate the American public about missile defense issues and to recruit, organize, and mobilize proponents to advocate for the critical need of missile defense. We are a non-partisan membership-based and membership-funded organization that does not advocate on behalf of any specific system, technology, architecture or entity.

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