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| A2/AD (Click Image to Enlarge) |
By: Mark Pomerleau
In the first of a two part series, Washington think tank Rand, with the Army serving as a sponsor, issued a report detailing the motivations, technology and economics behind adoption of anti-access area denial (A2/AD) capabilities.
A trendy buzz word frequently thrown around defense policy circles, A2/AD describes methods in which adversaries seek to deny and prevent outside entry of forces into certain territories.
Rand’s report, titled "Smarter Power, Stronger Partners, Volume I: Exploiting U.S. Advantages to Prevent Aggression," examines A2/AD's difficulties and high costs of countering, "and whether the erosion of U.S. force-projection capabilities is inexorable; and assesses how long the U.S. has to respond or adjust to these changes.”
The 279 -page report asserts that if certain trends such as Chinese, Russian and Iran aggression continue, “so will the danger that U.S. adversaries will use A2/AD as a shield behind which they can commit aggression.”
Of these three potential adversaries, Rand concluded that China has by far the greatest economic and technological capacity to raise the costs and risks of U.S. force projection. This, despite heightened tensions with Russia over their assertive posture in Syria, purported meddling into the American electoral process and assertion by top U.S. generals that Russia poses the greatest strategic challenge to the U.S.
Read the full story at C4ISRnet