The Next Offset: Winning the Fight Before It Starts

This commentary is part of a report from the CSIS Defense and Security Department entitled War and the Modern Battlefield: Insights from Ukraine and the Middle East.

As the chapters in this volume highlight, the United States and its allies face one of the most dangerous international security environments in recent history, with war raging in Europe and the Middle East and tensions high in the Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, East China Sea, and Korean Peninsula. In this environment, some aspects of warfare are largely unchanged. As the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz argues, war is still at its core “an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will.”¹

Yet the character of warfare is evolving. There is an expansion of unmanned and autonomous systems—air, undersea, surface, and ground—that can be used for “precise mass,” in which large numbers of inexpensive, accurate, and technologically advanced systems can be deployed together to target an opponent.² There will likely continue to be an explosion of open-source intelligence, and AI, quantum, and other technologies may be increasingly important on the battlefield. Thanks to commercial technology, there is a growing democratization of space that is shifting traditional notions of who can wield space capabilities in war, creating new motivations for adversaries to deny the advantages that space provides, and increasing counterspace capabilities.

Despite these developments, the United States is not adequately prepared for the future of warfare. It is not prepared to fight and win two or more major theater wars at the same time, its defense industrial base is not ready for a protracted conflict, and its defense budget is significantly lower than at any point during the Cold War as a percentage of gross domestic product.

One of the most urgent priorities—and the focus of this chapter—is the need to develop an offset to defeat and deter China, which has some advantages over the United States in mass and scale. An offset refers to an effort to affordably counter—or offset—an adversary’s advantages through a combination of operational concepts and technology.³ The focus on emerging technology, such as autonomous systems, cheap precision-guided missiles, and AI, has crowded out the development of a sound operational concept. Technology is important, but it has never been sufficient to win wars. Successful warfighting has required the establishment of an effective operational concept, which is then supported by relevant technologies. As Andrew Marshall, the long-time head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment argued, “technology makes possible the revolution, but the revolution itself takes place only when new concepts of operation develop.”⁴

A joint U.S. operational concept against a rapidly modernizing China should focus on preventing the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from conducting a successful invasion of Taiwan by swiftly striking at the center of gravity of the PLA’s invasion force. Specific examples include PLA amphibious assault ships, landing craft, air assault helicopters, and airborne delivery planes carrying PLA soldiers, weapons systems, and equipment as part of an invasion. Based on this concept, the United States needs several types of capabilities: a mix of large nuclear-powered attack submarines and cheap underwater drones, since the PLA is relatively weak in the undersea domain; sufficient quantities of long-range missiles and cheap unmanned and autonomous systems to sink PLA ships and destroy other targets; and a combination of bombers and stealthy fifth- and sixth-generation aircraft to conduct penetrating attacks. But there is a lot the United States will not need in the quantities it has required in the past, such as large, expensive surface vessels and heavy land systems.

The rest of this chapter is divided into seven sections. The first examines Eisenhower’s New Look and the first offset in the 1950s. The second section shifts to Air-Land Battle and the second offset, which began in the 1970s. The third provides a brief overview of the third offset in the mid-2010s. The fourth section explores the China challenge, including PLA modernization and an industrial base that is on a wartime footing. The fifth outlines a new offset and an operational concept designed to defeat a PLA amphibious invasion. The sixth section discusses the key capabilities needed for a new offset. And the seventh section provides a brief conclusion.

New Look

The first offset took place during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s, when the United States faced a major Soviet threat in Europe. The Soviet Union had nearly three times the number of ground forces in Europe as the United States and its allies, and it was building a formidable industrial base. As the Eisenhower administration’s top-secret policy paper NSC 162/2 concluded, “The USSR has sufficient bombs and aircraft, using one-way missions, to inflict serious damage on the United States, especially by surprise attack. The USSR soon may have the capability of dealing a crippling blow to our industrial base and our continued ability to prosecute a war.”⁵

President Eisenhower concluded that deploying and sustaining a large U.S. force in Europe would likely weaken the U.S. economy, which at the time was recovering from the Korean War. Instead, his administration developed an offset strategy called New Look, which was designed to counter Soviet advantages in conventional forces. New Look involved building an overwhelming nuclear advantage and, in a war, using tactical nuclear weapons against Red Army troops—including inside West Germany. As described in NSC 162/2, the United States would develop the capability to inflict “massive retaliatory damage by offensive striking power,” including with tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.⁶ For officials like Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, this doctrine of “massive retaliation” meant that the United States would respond disproportionately to a conventional attack.⁷ The U.S. Army fielded infantry and airborne divisions, including the Pentomic Division, that were designed to fight and win a nuclear war. The goal was to strengthen deterrence and persuade the Soviet Union not to start a war, but to nevertheless be prepared in case of a conflict.

Consequently, New Look led to a major investment in two areas: nuclear weapons and long-range bombers. The first involved a rapid increase in the development and production of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles, especially intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The U.S. Air Force ramped up development of the liquid-fueled Atlas ICBM and multistage Titan I, as well as two types of guided missiles: the subsonic, ground-launched Snark cruise missile and the supersonic Navaho cruise missile. Testifying before Congress in 1956, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Nathan Twining explained that the Pentagon gave “the very highest priority” to Atlas production to offset Soviet military capabilities.⁸ The United States also developed several other missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads: the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile, the Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile, and the Jupiter medium-range ballistic missile.⁹

The second priority was long-range bombers that could carry nuclear weapons. The backbone was the B-52, a long-range bomber capable of flying at subsonic speeds that could carry nuclear and conventional ordnance. The B-52 could also perform a range of missions, including strategic attack, close air support, air interdiction, and offensive counter-air operations. In 1956, President Eisenhower and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson asked Congress for an additional $248.5 million to increase B-52 production from 17 aircraft per month to 20 per month. They also requested another $128 million to expand air base infrastructure necessary for the B-52 force.¹⁰

The result was impressive. The Soviet Union was deterred in Central Europe, and the United States held a commanding lead over the Soviet Union in missiles by the 1960s—including nuclear missiles.

Air-Land Battle

By the 1970s, however, the United States was in danger of losing deterrence in Central Europe, thanks to U.S. defense cuts and Soviet advancements. The Soviet Union had reached nuclear parity with the United States and also had a three-to-one advantage in conventional capabilities in Central Europe.

U.S. Department of Defense officials sparked a fundamental shift in U.S. defense policy during the Carter administration—a second offset—led by such individuals as Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering William Perry. The U.S. Army was also pivotal, including such individuals as General Donn Starry. At the core of Air-Land Battle was the concept of integrating land and air forces to conduct attacks against the Soviet military in three areas: close (at the front line of troops), rear (immediately behind the front line of troops), and deep.¹¹ As Air-Land Battle doctrine stated, “Successful attack will require isolation of the battle area in great depth as well as the defeat of enemy forces in deeply echeloned defensive areas. Successful defense will require early detection of attacking forces, prompt massing of fires, interdiction of follow-on forces, and the containment of large formations by fire and maneuver.”¹²

One of the most significant complementary concepts was Assault Breaker, which was developed under the oversight of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).¹³ Assault Breaker focused on offsetting Soviet capabilities by destroying waves of Soviet forces that broke through U.S. and other NATO defenses. Implementing Assault Breaker involved the research, development, production, and deployment of sensors, computer programs, stealth capabilities, high-speed digital communications, and precision weapons to strike hardened mobile targets, such as tanks.¹⁴ As Perry noted in a memo to Brown in August 1978, “In order to stop the second and third echelons [of a Soviet and broader Warsaw Pact attack against Western Europe] with conventional weapons, we need to ‘see deep’ and ‘shoot deep’; that is, detect and place precision weapons on targets 30 to 50 KM behind the FEBA [forward edge of the battle area].”¹⁵

The efforts of Brown, Perry, and other Pentagon officials led to the production of an array of smart weapons, such as stealth platforms like the F-117 attack aircraft; artillery shells, such as the Copperhead 155 mm caliber cannon-launched guided projectile; precision-guided bombs and missiles, such as Paveway and Maverick; and long-range cruise missiles, such as the air-launched cruise missile and Tomahawk Land Attack Missile.¹⁶ The United States also developed a series of satellite-based systems, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS), and smart sensors, such as the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System. President Reagan continued the efforts to support Assault Breaker and other concepts—including Air-Land Battle. The U.S. defense budget rose by almost $100 billion between 1981 and January 1985, defense sales increased by 60 percent in real terms in the early 1980s, and the aerospace workforce grew by 15 percent from 1983 to 1986.¹⁷

Moscow viewed Assault Breaker and the U.S. development of sensors, stealth, and precision weapons with alarm. General Nikolai Ogarkov and other Soviet leaders conducted a massive exercise in 1981, called Zapad-81, to respond to Assault Breaker and became increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union was falling behind. Minister of Defense Dmitri Ustinov told a meeting of the Warsaw Pact Committee of Defense Ministers that the military balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was “at the moment not in our favor” because of Assault Breaker and other U.S. defense efforts.¹⁸ Yet again, U.S. defense leaders combined concepts of operation with advanced technologies to defeat (and ultimately deter) Soviet forces in Europe.

Third Offset

By the mid-2010s, Pentagon officials led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work developed the “third offset.” One of Work’s most significant concerns was that China and Russia had made progress in achieving parity with the United States in such areas as theater-level battle networks, precision-guided munitions, and long-range, ground-based fires. Work was particularly concerned about China, which he assessed was trying to achieve military technical parity with the United States. China had developed the DF-21D, an antiship ballistic missile with a range of nearly 1,000 miles, dubbed the “carrier killer,” which posed a serious threat to U.S. surface ships—including aircraft carriers—in the Pacific. China and Russia were also investing in cyber, space and counterspace, and electronic warfare capabilities.

The solution for Work and others, including Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, was to identify and develop operational concepts and technology to ensure that the United States could win a war. One critical component was the development of new warfighting operational concepts, such as the U.S. Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations, U.S. Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations, U.S. Army’s Multi-Domain Operations, and U.S. Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment. In addition, the United States began to invest in new space capabilities, advanced sensors, missile defense, cyber capabilities, and a range of promising technologies: unmanned underwater systems, advanced sea mines, high-speed strike weapons, AI, advanced aeronautics, electromagnetic rail guns, and high-energy lasers. The third offset, as Work described it, was a “combination of technology, operational concepts, and organizational constructs—different ways of organizing our forces—to maintain our ability to project combat power into any area at the time and place of our own choosing.”¹⁹

Despite these efforts, however, there was no actual offset. Neither China nor Russia possessed a significant military advantage over the United States—at least not yet. The United States enjoyed a preponderance of military power. It spent $647.8 billion on defense in 2014, compared to $182.1 billion for China and a measly $84.7 billion for Russia.²⁰ This reality made the situation fundamentally different from the first and second offsets, when the Soviet Union had considerable advantages that the United States needed to offset or risk losing deterrence. In many ways, Work’s third offset was a decade ahead of its time.

The China Challenge

But the situation is different today. China has become a formidable military challenger of the United States. Its defense industrial base is on a wartime footing and is producing a growing number of highly capable surface and subsurface vessels, aircraft, missiles (including those capable of carrying nuclear warheads), space-based and offensive cyber capabilities, and land systems. China’s long-range missile capabilities have significantly expanded over the past two decades, creating a major challenge for the United States in parts of the Indo-Pacific. Commensurate with its burgeoning land attack capacity, China has grown its inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles that can engage surface ships. As a result, U.S. forward-based forces on land and at sea are now vulnerable to being damaged or destroyed before they even get to the fight. The PLA’s ballistic and cruise missiles can be launched from a broad spectrum of air, land, and maritime platforms. The concepts that emerged from the third offset envisioned China as a potential future challenge, but now China presents a near-term challenge with some advantages in mass and scale.

China has also invested in advanced surface-to-air missile systems with powerful tracking and guidance radars equipped with electronic countermeasures and missiles able to engage fighter aircraft at long ranges. The radars and missile launchers can be mounted on vehicles, making them challenging to locate, target, and destroy. Suppressing China’s integrated air defense systems would be difficult and time consuming for U.S. pilots, especially if deployed in dense arrays and aided by survivable C2 facilities. China complements its surface-based air defenses with substantial numbers of fourth- and fifth-generation fighter aircraft, such as the J-20 and J-35 fighters, along with H-6J, H-6K, and H-6N bombers. China has also fielded the KJ-500, the country’s most advance airborne early warning and control aircraft, which enables the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) to detect, track, and target U.S. and partner capabilities at greater ranges.

The PLA Navy (PLAN) has made major strides in modernizing its surface and subsurface fleets. As a result of these investments, China’s surface fleet features growing numbers of destroyers and frigates with modern combat management systems and sensors, as well as long-range SAMs and surface-to-surface missiles. Similarly, the PLAN is modernizing its submarine fleet with growing numbers of nuclear-powered vessels and more capable antiship cruise missiles. Furthermore, the PLAN has embarked on a long-term effort to develop and deploy several aircraft carriers, including the Type 003 carrier Fujian. The result is that the United States is losing deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, particularly around such areas as the Taiwan Strait, where the PLA can gain advantages in mass and scale.

Like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, however, China has vulnerabilities that can be exploited which need to be integrated into an offset strategy. One major weakness is antisubmarine warfare, where the PLAN still struggles to detect, identify, and track U.S. submarines. While China has made significant improvements in antisubmarine warfare, the United States remains dominant in the undersea domain. In addition, the PLAN and PLAAF would likely face challenges extending operations outside the first island chain due to logistical constraints, corruption, and inexperience in blue-water operations. More broadly, the PLA suffers from “peace disease” (和平病), a lack of combat experience since the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War.²¹ With no serious combat experience for over 50 years, PLA soldiers, equipment, and doctrine are not battle-tested.

These weaknesses suggest opportunities for the United States.

A New Offset

A U.S. offset needs to be based on solving a specific operational problem.²² A PLA amphibious invasion of Taiwan offers a useful test case since reuniting the island nation is a major priority for Xi Jinping and a war so close to the Chinese mainland would be a major challenge for the U.S. military. The primary goal of a U.S. operational concept should be stopping such an invasion.

An operational concept to defeat the PLA in the Taiwan Strait would also be relevant to conflicts in other areas, including in the South China Sea, East China Sea, and Yellow Sea. An offset that focuses on China does not exclude preparing for contingencies elsewhere, such as against Russia in Eastern Europe, Iran in the Middle East, or North Korea on the Korean Peninsula. But it does mean that the United States needs to prioritize defeating and deterring China, much like the United States focused primarily on the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

A successful PLA invasion would require quickly moving massive amounts of troops, weapons, and materiel onto Taiwan or another territory through an amphibious landing, air assault, or airborne landings, or most likely a combination of these means, in the shortest time possible. The PLA would likely need hundreds of thousands of soldiers—from the PLA Army (PLAA), PLAN Marine Corps, and PLAAF Airborne Corps—and vast amounts of materiel.²³ It would then need to bring those forces to Taiwan using amphibious assault ships, landing craft, civilian roll-on/roll-off (Ro-Ro) ferries, air assault helicopters, and transport aircraft.²⁴ These platforms would transport first echelon troops to seize and hold a lodgment, allowing follow-on PLA forces to flow into Taiwan. The PLAA would likely take the lead in attempting to break through Taiwan’s coastal defenses, establishing one or more beachheads, overrunning entrenched defenders, and establishing conditions for second-echelon PLA forces.²⁵ In addition, the PLA would likely need thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, rockets, drones, and strike aircraft capable of hitting enemy forces and infrastructure, supported by cyber, space, and air defense capabilities. The initial phases of a PLA campaign would also likely involve a blockade and cyber and space operations.²⁶ Throughout the process, the PLA’s joint logistics and national defense mobilization systems would play key roles.²⁷

Consequently, a U.S. operational concept needs to include several components.

The first is to preposition equipment to move with urgency and speed, which is beginning to occur. The United States would need to act within hours or days to prevent a territorial fait accompli. There may not be sufficient time for a slow and steady build-up of forces, much like the United States did before Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Consequently, the United States needs to posture its forces, munitions, and equipment today for a rapid engagement. Examples include deploying sufficient bombers to Australia and Alaska, hardening shelters for aircraft, establishing active defenses for missiles, and stockpiling sufficient quantities of fuel, spare parts, munitions, and other materiel that can be used for a fight now.²⁸

Second, U.S. forces would need to rapidly strike at the center of gravity of the PLA’s invasion force and cripple its offensive. This would require identifying high-value targets, including amphibious assault ships, landing craft, air assault helicopters, and airborne delivery planes carrying PLA soldiers, weapons systems, and equipment. It would also involve precisely hitting and destroying PLA air defenses, air and missile bases, artillery, and operational C2 centers supporting the invasion force.²⁹ While many of these strikes might occur in transit from the mainland to Taiwan, the United States would also need to weigh striking targets in ports, airfields, and bases on the Chinese mainland, raising important questions about escalation.

To quickly target the heart of the PLA’s invasion force, the United States would need to generate combat power that can operate both inside and outside the reach of China’s strike systems. As Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of Indo-Pacific Command, remarked, “I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”³⁰

In the short run, the United States would need to ensure that U.S. and allied forces could withstand initial PLA attacks; blind PLA battle networks and command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems (C5ISR); execute a suppression campaign against PLA long-range missiles; and target PLA air defense systems. As Admiral Paparo acknowledged, the U.S. military badly needs “counter-C5ISR capabilities in cyber, space, counterspace, to ensure that the United States can see, understand, decide, act, assess, learn faster than the PRC can, to enhance our ability to blind, to deceive, and to destroy the adversary’s ability to see and sense.”³¹

In the long run, the United States would need to be prepared for a protracted campaign, maintain operational logistics, and increase defense industrial production for critical munitions and weapons systems, including air defense and long-range strike. Allies such as Japan, Australia, South Korea, and the Philippines would be helpful, though not necessarily assured.

A Mix of Capabilities

Several types of capabilities are important to defeat PLA forces as part of this operational concept—and should drive research, development, and production of the U.S. defense industrial base.

The first includes capabilities that allow the United States to maintain its undersea advantage. Of particular value are attack submarines, such as Virgina-class nuclear-powered submarines, and relatively cheap underwater drones. PLA capabilities are still relatively weak in antisubmarine warfare, and the PLA has serious difficulties finding U.S. submarines. In multiple iterations of CSIS wargames, U.S. submarines wreak havoc against Chinese ships, including large amphibious vessels, escorts, and logistics vessels. Submarines are also needed to screen against Chinese submarines exiting the first island chain.³²

The United States should also prioritize autonomous underwater drones. There will be substantial U.S. submarine attrition in a fight against China, such as in the relatively shallow waters of the Taiwan Strait.³³ Each loss would be tough, since a Virginia-class submarine has a crew of roughly 132 sailors and costs approximately $4.5 billion each.³⁴ While underwater drones are not yet as capable as attack submarines, they can be programmed to fulfill some critical missions, such as minelaying and strike against PLA submarines and surface vessels.

Second is a major increase in the U.S. inventory of precision-guided, long-range missiles—including antiship missiles—that can strike PLA vessels and aircraft. Munition usage is likely to be high in a protracted conflict with the PLA. Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASMs) are effective against PLA targets. But they are expensive at over $3 million per missile, and the United States does not have enough of them.³⁵ The Joint Air-to-Surface Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) is also effective and comes with a price of roughly $1.5 million per missile.³⁶ The United States needs to ramp up the research, development, and production of long-range missiles—especially antiship missiles to strike PLA surface vessels—and do so at a lower cost.

Large numbers of relatively cheap unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, are also critical for defeating the PLA, particularly drones that do not need runways to launch. They can perform valuable missions in a war—such as intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, battle damage assessment, electronic warfare, and strike—within range of PLA missiles and drones. They are also expendable since they are cheaper than fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft and do not endanger a pilot or crew.

Third, manned aircraft are still important in this operational concept, especially bombers and stealthy fifth- and sixth-generation fighters. The range and high ordnance throughput of stealth bombers like the B-21 Raider presents China with a particularly daunting challenge. They can be based beyond the range of Chinese ballistic missiles, and they can carry substantial bombs to attrit Chinese forces. Some fifth- and sixth-generation stealth aircraft are also helpful because their speed, sensor packages, and strike capabilities will likely allow them to operate inside the PLA’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) areas for air-to-air engagements, some air-to-ground missions, and overall battle management.

Other capabilities are also important, such as all-domain C2 capabilities and software that leverages next-generation AI, which allows the U.S. military to operate a battle network. So are space, cyber, electronic warfare, and some land capabilities, such as air defense systems and long-range fires. But other capabilities are not likely to be as critical for this prioritized operational concept. For example, surface ships are less likely to be useful in a war because of their vulnerability. Destroyers are highly exposed in a war, as are aircraft carriers. Many U.S. land systems, such as heavy tanks, are not helpful for this fight.

Conclusion

There is a growing chorus of voices who argue that the future of warfare hinges on the production and use of emerging technology, such as autonomous systems, cheap precision-guided missiles, and AI. As one article concludes, “Future wars will no longer be about who can mass the most people or field the best jets, ships, and tanks. Instead, they will be dominated by increasingly autonomous weapons systems and powerful algorithms.”³⁷ Some contend that the era of large, expensive platforms is dead. As Elon Musk pronounced, the F-35 aircraft is “obsolete” and “manned fighter jets are outdated in the age of drones and only put pilots’ lives at risk.”³⁸ Another skeptic referred to these large platforms, such as bombers and fighter aircraft, as “old legacy zombie programs.”³⁹

Despite some claims that the future of warfare is largely about unmanned systems, AI, and other technologies, U.S. military capabilities need to be grounded in a viable joint operational concept. Inventing technologies or being the first country to use a technology in warfare does not guarantee a significant advantage on the battlefield—militaries still have to integrate the technology into combat.⁴⁰ British engineers at William Foster & Company developed and produced the tank, including one dubbed the “Little Willie,” with the support of senior British officers such as Sir John French and Douglas Haig.⁴¹ But it was German military officers such as Heinz Guderian that effectively used the tank to devastating effect during blitzkrieg operations in World War II.

Bold pronouncements about obsolete and antiquated platforms and systems—such as fifth-generation aircraft and bombers—are largely meaningless unless they are connected to a joint operational concept against a specific adversary. Technology needs to support the joint concept, not the other way around. And this is exactly why it is important to develop an offset to deter and—if deterrence fails—defeat a rising China.

Please consult the PDF for references.

Seth G. Jones is president of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.