Creating a New Paradigm for U.S. Force Overmatch.

• Author: Nawabi, Wahid
• Position: Industry Perspective

Since the end of World War II, the United States has achieved force overmatch by deploying a range of very large, highly complex and extremely expensive assets that ranged from fighter jets and aircraft carriers to satellites and submarines.

And while this overmatch did not always translate into victory on the battlefield, it was undeniably effective in containing the Soviet threat and bringing the Cold War to an end.

Today, this overmatch is no longer absolute, thanks to the rise of peer and near-peer adversaries. If the United States is to continue to dominate the battle space, the military must think creatively about new ways of achieving overmatch, reducing its reliance on large, expensive and vulnerable military assets, and prioritizing resiliency, flexibility and interoperability.

In the conflicts of the 21st century, victory is as likely to come from smaller and more distributed fighting units unleashing swarms of lethal drones with extremely high levels of precision as it is from a stealth bomber or aircraft carrier a thousand miles away.

For the last 30 years, the United States has been the world's only superpower. However, its ability to sustain this status is an open question.

China and Russia have emerged as much more capable rivals, developing their own major weapon systems, finding ways to exploit weaknesses in U.S. platforms, and projecting their power aggressively in areas such as the Taiwan Strait and Ukraine. China has modernized its navy and developed highly capable fighter aircraft while Russia has streamlined and reorganized its armed forces.

And while the conventional military capabilities of second-tier powers like Iran and North Korea have stagnated, each of these countries has cultivated niche capabilities to offset U.S. overmatch.

While the United States remains the strongest military power in the world, its ability to maintain supremacy--especially against these formidable competitors--has eroded. The challenge it faces today is to find new, more effective and affordable ways to achieve force overmatch.

The way forward depends on the ability to understand the drawbacks of the extensive reliance on large, centralized platforms and adjust accordingly. The vulnerabilities of our current strategy have been well-documented in such publications as the National Defense Strategy and the Congressional Future of Defense Task Force report.

As these reports have stated, large assets have always been inviting targets, but more...