Forging a new national security alliance

In a not-so-distant future, the United States may face a combination of National Defense Strategy competitors in a shooting war while still holding terrorist groups at bay and responding to yet more crises across the globe. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which things go badly, quickly.

The opening days of combat see U.S. and partner ground forces engaged in close combat, recognizable to World War I and II veterans yet infused with waves of uncrewed land, air, and maritime surface and sub-surface systems. U.S. stocks of hypersonic weapons, small drones, loitering munitions, and autonomous systems are gone within 72 hours. Some weapons and systems simply fail to work, sabotaged at some point via vulnerable supply chains for semiconductors and electronics. Despite U.S. arms makers’ efforts to increase production capacity, they cannot match the pace of combat expenditure. And the contested transit time between the point of final manufacturing and the point of need, combined with ongoing enemy sabotage, reduces resupply efforts to irrelevance.

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