Breaking Defense:

As the Biden administration weighs how to manage China, Indo-Pacific Command has crafted a $27.3 billion plan to buy new missile defense systems, place radar and missile defense systems on the ground, launch satellites and build state-of-the-art training ranges across the region.

The report, delivered today to Capitol Hill, sketches out the budget for the 2022 budget and in the years out to 2027, envisioning a long-range plan that Indo-PaCom head Adm. Phil Davidson first introduced last year. A copy of the Executive Summary was obtained by Breaking Defense.

The plan for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative includes $4.6 billion in 2022, which the document points out is “two-thirds the amount spent on the European Defense Initiative in FY20 ($5.9B).”

The document tells lawmakers that the US “requires highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the First Island Chain, featuring increased quantities of ground-based weapons. These networks must be operationally decentralized and geographically distributed along the western Pacific archipelagos using Service agnostic infrastructure.”

Davidson plans to formally roll out the report at an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, at a time when the Biden administration is putting together its 2022 budget. The final DoD topline is expected to come in around $740 billion, roughly the same as the 2021 and 2020 budgets, meaning hard choices will have to be made within the Pentagon about where to allocate resources…

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