U.S. Major Combat Operations in the Indo-Pacific

Résumé du livre

The study described in this report assessed the potential for the United States to receive support in air component capabilities from partners and allies in the event of a major combat contingency in the Indo-Pacific. A companion report focuses on technical and operational considerations associated with partner and allied support: whether they have the capability and capacity to support U.S. air operations in a major conflict. This report focuses on the geopolitical side of the equation: whether partners and allies have the willingness to support U.S. operations. Capabilities alone do not equal warfighting outcomes; the partners and allies must be willing to join the United States in the conflict. The authors identified 12 countries for the focus of the analysis, representing a mix of U.S. treaty allies, significant regional players, and countries with specific air component assets potentially important to a contingency. These countries are Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. The authors then defined four potential scenarios for high-end conflict against which they assessed as these countries' possible contribution: a conflict over Taiwan, a second Korean war, a maritime conflict in the South China Sea, and a major stability operation on the Korean Peninsula following a collapse of North Korea.