President-elect Trump made a strong statement to the world in American leadership with his nomination of General James Mattis (Link) for the Secretary of Defense, a nearly complete opposite personality, experience and leader from the current Secretary of Defense, Dr. Ash Carter as well as changing the oversight and influence given by the President for this position. This signals of an upcoming change in America’s strength and engagement on “red line” boundaries to those that threaten the national security interests of the United States.
As the transition between President Obama and President-elect Trump takes place over the next 47 days, military activity in the Pacific by our near peers and rouge actors may escalate, (Link to article on China flight testing 10 DF-21 missiles) seeking an advantage under the current policies of President Obama to influence, shape and posture the incoming President-elect and his Administration as they define their “red line” boundaries in the Pacific.
The United States Navy plays a tremendous and vital role in the security of the Pacific. Leadership from the new Administration towards having more capacity and capability with increasing U.S. Naval vessels to 350 from the current 272 vessels (Link) and a “distributed lethality” on close to 200 of these vessels is valid consideration for further securing stability and security in the Pacific.
MDAA had the opportunity to visit the Pacific region over the last two weeks in November in the air and missile defense domain. From this perspective and awareness of the President-elects impact on a potential supplementary 2017 appropriation and the 2018 Fiscal Year budget, we have put forward our white papers on each of the key Pacific locations, as well as the overall region, for recommended increases in capability and capacity to the already existing inventory and can be accomplished in the 2017 calendar year.
