Competition For U.S. Long-Range Strike Mission Heats Up

Long-range strike as a sector of U.S. military investment has not been so popular since perhaps Gen. Curtis LeMay’s Strategic Air Command reigned supreme over the Air Force in the 1950s. Whether in terms of missiles—hypersonic, supersonic or subsonic—or a new platform such as the stand-in Northrop Grumman B-21 or reengining of the standoff Boeing B-52H, the Air Force has multiple, overlapping development programs in progress.

For the first time, however, the popularity of the conventional long-range strike mission is no longer reserved for the Air Force. Since the signing of the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987, which led to the retirement of the Army’s Pershing II missile system, the Army has depended solely on Air Force surveillance and striking power to hit any target more than 185 mi. away.

• Joint Chiefs vice chairman champions multiservice investments
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That division of responsibilities was partly intended to establish clear lines of authority for weapons release on a dynamic battlefield to minimize the chances of a friendly fire incident. The other services also appeared content to focus their limited fiscal resources on other areas while the Air Force shouldered the financial burden for maintaining the long-range strike mission.

A year after the Trump administration withdrew from the INF Treaty, in 2019, the old division of responsibilities among the services for long-range strike is eroding. As the Defense Department prepares the fiscal 2022 budget request amid new resource constraints, some senior U.S. military officials are calling for dissolving those lines altogether. The goal would not be merely to free services besides the Air Force to invest in long-range strike capabilities but to impose new requirements that would make the Army, Navy and Marines as capable as the Air Force in the long-range strike mission.

The new approach is championed by senior leaders, including Gen. John Hyten, a veteran Air Force officer who is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The transition to a new warfighting doctrine—initially defined by the Army—called multi-domain operations (MDO) fundamentally changes how each of the services must approach the long-range strike mission, Hyten says.

“We have a joint doctrine now that says we establish the forward edge of the battle area, the fire support coordination line, the forward line of troops,” Hyten said during a videoconference hosted by the Hudson Institute on Aug. 12. “We say Army can operate here. The Air Force can operate here. . . . Naval forces can go here. Allies can go here.”

The MDO doctrine changes that paradigm. Automated systems now in development under the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept will assign targets to any “shooter” on the battlefield, not just the Air Force’s long-range strike platforms and weapons. In theory, a target detected by satellite hundreds of miles deep into enemy territory could be assigned to a new Army artillery system such as the 300-mi.-range Precision-Strike Missile (PrSM) or the Navy’s hypersonic Intermediate-Range Conventional Prompt Strike weapon.

“Everything [now] is about lines,” Hyten says. “But in the future, those lines are eliminated, which means an army capability can have on its own platform the ability to defend itself or strike deep into an adversary area of operations. A naval force can defend itself or strike deep. The Air Force can defend itself and strike deep. The Marines can defend themselves or strike deep.”

Such a vision implies significant new investments by the Army, Navy and Marines in long-range fires and perhaps by the Air Force in new ground-based defensive systems. At the same time, the Air Force is seeking to expand future B-21 production; the service’s leadership is now openly discussing a need for up to 240 aircraft instead of the original plan to buy 80-100 new bombers. The Air Force also is developing concepts for a new, nonstealthy “arsenal plane,” which could increase capacity for long-range strike with standoff munitions.

But budgets are growing tighter. For the first time since 2015, the Pentagon requested less overall funding in fiscal 2021 than the year before. Most expert forecasts predicted flat defense budgets beyond fiscal 2021 before the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which depressed the economy and triggered trillions of dollars in new spending for relief. If budgets remain flat or decline, some Air Force officials say they would call for less “duplicative” spending by other services on the long-range strike mission.

“I do think that we as a [Defense Department] and the Air Force have to look at duplicative activities,” said Lt. Gen. David Nahom, in public remarks in April. “We bring up the long-range fires . . . and I know [the Pentagon] and certainly the [Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office] are looking at this. If the Air Force can do something in long-range strike, maybe one of the other services doesn’t have to do it.

“All of us investing in a single area, just in a slightly different way, is just not going to be affordable, especially if those flat budgets actually become less than flat,” added Nahom, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for plans and programs.

The leadership of the Army, however, believes long-range strike has become a core mission set. Since the INF Treaty-imposed retirement of the Pershing II in the late 1980s, the Army’s weapon with the longest range has been the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System, with a range of up 185 mi. While the INF Treaty was still in effect, the Army publicly listed the objective range of PrSM at no more than 310 mi., or 0.6 mi. short of the threshold banned under the treaty. Since the treaty expired in August 2019, the Army reset the minimum range of PrSM to 311 mi., with future plans to extend the weapon system to about 500 mi.

But the Army’s interests in long-range fires go beyond the PrSM program. The Strategic Long-Range Command seeks to field a new capability by 2025 that can fire an artillery shell at targets more than 1,150 mi. away. Even sooner, the Army hopes to field the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, featuring a rocket-boosted glide body, by 2023. The Defense Department also is working on a new, intermediate-range ballistic missile but has not confirmed the fielding schedule.

In addition to developing long-range striking power, the Army is aiming to reduce dependence on the Air Force for reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition. The Multi-Domain Sensor System (MDSS) program seeks to deploy by 2028 a new, Army-funded fleet of manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft. In fact, the Army deployed the Airborne Reconnaissance and Targeting Multi-Mission Intelligence System (Artemis), a chartered Bombardier Challenger 650 equipped with a suite of intelligence sensors, in July to Okinawa. The Artemis deployment’s objective is to test concepts of operation for the most advanced element of the MDSS: a business-jet-class airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft that would perform a mission similar to the Air Force’s E-8C Joint STARS, which is scheduled for retirement by 2025.

Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, the Army’s cross-functional team leader for long-range fires, spoke last year about his service’s motivation to spend billions of dollars on a mission area that had once belonged to the Air Force, saying that aircraft such as bombers and fighters are too vulnerable against a peer adversary equipped with integrated air defense systems. The Army needs the ability to lob surface-to-surface missiles or artillery hundreds or thousands of miles downrange, he says. And his position has not changed.

“I’m convinced that across the joint force, we all recognize that enough targets are out there for all of us,” Rafferty said during a Heritage Foundation videoconference on Aug. 24. “And we’re going to have to figure out how to sort this out.”