The over-the-horizon security environment is increasingly complex and, driven by rapid technology developments and proliferation, will translate into a highly disruptive operations environment for the Air Force. The Air Force, like its sister services, will need to adapt to new realities and, in particular, find ways to operate where freedom of manoeuvre is challenged in new and unprecedented ways.
Anti-access/area denial (A2AD) strategies are designed to create fundamental risks for the Air Force and other force components to operate with sufficient freedom of manoeuvre. Freedom of manoeuvre denotes the mobility possible at a chosen point of strategic, operational, or tactical importance and without this the Air Force preserves only a limited ability to apply force and operate in the competition continuum.
A2AD threats are becoming more complex for the Air Force as adversaries learn to employ advanced surface-to-air missiles, fighters and remotely piloted vehicles (RPAs) within more integrated command and control (C2) enterprises of their own. As A2AD threats intensify, the Air Force must confront an increasingly restrictive and degraded operations space to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and to prosecute targets. The challenge is compounded because alongside an increasingly effective use of A2AD, adversaries have understood that systemically targeting until now still largely static C2 and logistics centers at the operational- and theatre-levels of warfare with kinetic and non-kinetic means, especially cyberwarfare, can raise the cost of military intervention to an effective level of deterrence.
These accelerating developments have spotlighted the strategic imperative to counter future A2AD challenges more coherently and as this effort accelerates the focus is being placed on new technologies, new concept of operations and a doctrinal revolution of sorts. The twin concepts of Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) have emerged in the American military as answers to securing highly resilient C2 and battlespace awareness in the future.
