All Warfighting Domains Are Challenged in the Asia-Pacific Region
Previous Asia military operations dealt with one or two warfighting domains; but that was a luxury that no longer is available.
U.S. military forces will be challenged in all warfighting domains should conflict break out, according to a Pacific Air Forces general. One of those domains may already be the site of an ongoing fight.
Maj. Gen. John Shasteen, USAF, mobilization assistant to the commander, U.S. Pacific Air Forces, told the luncheon audience at TechNet Asia-Pacific 2012 in Honolulu, Hawaii, that nation-states and rogue organizations threaten U.S. military operations in all the warfighting domains. He contrasted this threat with the environment that U.S. forces faced in Southwest Asia, where the air domain was dominated by the allies and the only challenge was on land.
Now, in the Asia-Pacific region, all domains are contested. Serious threats include antisurface cruise and ballistic missiles; land-attack cruise and ballistic missiles; and increasingly sophisticated antisubmarine warfare.
But the top threat domain may be cyberspace, the general offered, which is the site of ongoing conflict. “In cyber, you’re fighting in every day of peacetime,” Gen. Shasteen said. “Some [adversaries] are state actors, some are individuals, and some are criminals.”
To prevail throughout the region, U.S. forces will need “temporal superiority,” he declared.
