$6 Billion Investment to Include Pre-Positioning
US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J Austin, explained on 3 May that the DoD plans to boost US deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific. “So, this [proposed] budget invests some six billion dollars in the ‘Pacific Deterrence Initiative’, and in keeping with our new National Defense Strategy, we are going to enhance our force posture, our infrastructure, our presence and our readiness in the Indo-Pacific, including the missile defence of Guam,” he stated in testimony to Congress. He also said the Pentagon is seeking to increase its “prepositioned stocks” of military supplies in the region.
Austin, who testified alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, has repeatedly referred to China as the Pentagon’s “pacing challenge,” due to what he describes as Beijing’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive efforts to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and preferences.”
For instance, in earlier testimony, he stated China has expanded and modernised nearly every aspect of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), including its conventional forces and nuclear capabilities, “with a focus on offsetting US military advantages [and that it seeks to] fragment US alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and the PRC’s leaders hope to leverage their economic influence and the PLA’s growing military strength to coerce China’s neighbours and threaten their vital national interests.”
To counter this, the Biden administration’s defence budget request for FY23 makes investments that “robustly support the requirements of US Indo-Pacific Command,” as well as the development of capabilities and operational concepts aligned to those requirements, said Austin.
This includes leveraging existing and emergent capabilities, posture, and exercises to influence China’s perception of asymmetric, temporal, and geographic advantages. Austin stated that the proposed budget covers a number of areas, including investments in site surveys and planning and design for potential future military construction projects, in achieving initial operating capacity for new missile warning and tracking architecture, in defence efforts of Guam, in a framework for multinational information-sharing and multi-domain training and experimentation, and in other security co-operation efforts to improve allied and partner capability and capacity in the region.
He also noted that, while China and Russia pose the greatest challenges to US security, Washington must also remain vigilant. “We face persistent threats from North Korea, with its nuclear arsenal and developing missile capability, and Iran, with its nuclear ambitions and support for proxy groups that threaten the security of our forces and our allies, partners, and interests in the Middle East,” he warned.
