Build a High-Low Mix to Enhance America’s Warfighting Edge and Deter China
The military balance in the Indo-Pacific is shifting. China’s military modernization has greatly expanded its inventory of ships, planes, missiles, and drones—and with it, Beijing’s ability to alter the status quo. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has significantly increased the scope and scale of its coercive military tactics in the region, asserting its territorial claims in the South and East China Seas and conducting increasingly threatening maneuvers around Taiwan. The PLA’s belligerent actions reflect a change in China’s risk calculus driven by the relative decline of American military power.1 The U.S. military does not have a force equipped with the appropriate mix of capabilities and a concept for how to employ them to defeat the PLA. If the United States does not act quickly to rectify these deficits, China may decide that it can win an outright war of aggression and thus be more likely to start one.