Pacific Air Forces ready to fight if deterrence fails, says Strategy 2030

The Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) operates 334 aircraft with more than 46,000 air and civilian personnel and is headquartered at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.

The 2030 strategy, unveiled on 11 September, covers nine US Air Force major commands and the air component of US Indo-Pacific Command to use air and space power in promoting US interests, deter aggression from strategic competitors and reinforce partners in the Indo-Pacific.

“PACAF is evolving airpower and setting the pace to preserve peace and if necessary, fight and win,” according to Pacific Air Forces Commander General Ken Wilsbach, who spoke at the Space & Cyber Conference on 11 September.

“We understand the challenges inherent to generating airpower in contested environments, recognising it is fundamentally different than projecting power from safe-haven bases.

“Therefore, we embrace the acceleration of change, leveraging innovation to benefit the United States and our many allies and partners.

“If deterrence fails, PACAF will be ready to fight. These operational priorities reflect the urgency to accelerate change to meet the challenges of this decisive decade.

“Informed by our finite resources, PACAF will focus on four priorities: enhance warfighting advantage; advance theater posture; strengthen alliances and partnerships; and shape the information environment.”

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The document puts forward strategic priorities to protect Americans at home and aboard as a first responder to natural disasters and man-made crises, push the asymmetric advantage of an American-led global network of allies and partners to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific, as well as deterring aggression by acting as a rapid response combat-credible force.

The PACAF strategy encourages the empowering of decision making at the lowest level to develop multi-capable air personnel to maximise survivability and sortie generation within range of an adversary’s long-range precision fires.

It also recommends to depend on the US’s ability to rapidly penetrate contested airspace and deliver precise, lethal, and integrated fire in the maritime domain, as well as rely on using advanced communication, edge computing, and artificial intelligence to enhance sensor fusion.

“As the United States continues to navigate this decisive decade of uncertainty, PACAF must anticipate and rapidly adapt to new social, economic, and security conditions that impact the role of airpower within the Indo-Pacific,” Gen Wilsbach said.

“With the combined strength and experience of our allies and partners, PACAF’s steadfast resiliency will continue to propel us forward to meet the challenges of the future.”

According to the PACAF Strategy 2030, regional stability and security are currently at risk from environmental or biological threats, social unrest, transboundary conflict, natural disasters, global health crises, water scarcity, food insecurity, and population displacement. These periods of vulnerability could also be exploited by malign actors for political or ideological motives.

“The Indo-Pacific is entering a pivotal era where the actions of the United States, our allies and partners, and our strategic competitors will influence the social, economic, and security conditions for the foreseeable future,” the strategy said.

“America’s strategic competitors, the Chinese Communist Party, the Russian Federation, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea undermine the rules-based international order through coercive actions, enabled by their growing conventional and nuclear capabilities.

“Additional security concerns stem from violent extremist organisations seeking to advance ideological agendas through fear, and environmental disasters threatening the economic and governance systems vital to regional peace and welfare.”

The strategy states that the CCP’s publicly stated peaceful ambitions and behaviours are often at odds with its actual coercive actions within the region and it uses a combination of manufactured historical narratives and domestic decrees to subvert common international law. Future disputes are anticipated to emerge in the polar regions and other domains historically viewed by international law as global commons.

The PACAF also intends to form a resilient, self-healing Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control network with the ability to hold air, maritime, and land targets at risk, at a time and place of its choosing.

To achieve this real-time situational awareness, the strategy will reportedly use space-based communication and navigation systems, enhanced cyber capabilities, all-domain sensors, and artificial intelligence.

In addition, the PACAF is expanding access, basing, and overflight to include distributed operations in new strategic locations to improve advance theatre posture.

The PACAF will leverage the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, B-21 Raider, and the E-7 Wedgetail with paired Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, other programmed maritime strike, hypersonic and stand-off weapons to deliver air dominance.

The 2030 strategy also outlined plans to integrate unmanned combat aircraft to increase combat reach and flexibility while simultaneously reducing risk in highly contested environments, as well as using advancements in aerial refuelling to generate combat airpower from austere locations.