2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.PDF

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October 27, 2022

President Biden has stated that we are living in a “decisive decade,” one stamped by dramatic changes in geopolitics, technology, economics, and our environment. The defense strategy that the United States pursues will set the Department’s course for decades to come. The Department of Defense owes it to our All-Volunteer Force and the American people to provide a clear picture of the challenges we expect to face in the crucial years ahead—and we owe them a clear and rigorous strategy for advancing our defense and security goals.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) details the Department’s path forward into that decisive decade—from helping to protect the American people, to promoting global security, to seizing new strategic opportunities, and to realizing and defending our democratic values.

For the first time, the Department conducted its strategic reviews—the NDS, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Missile Defense Review (MDR)—in an integrated way, ensuring tight linkages between our strategy and our resources. The NDS directs the Department to act urgently to sustain and strengthen U.S. deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the pacing challenge for the Department. The NDS further explains how we will collaborate with our NATO Allies and partners to reinforce robust deterrence in the face of Russian aggression while mitigating and protecting against threats from North Korea, Iran, violent extremist organizations, and transboundary challenges such as climate change.

The PRC remains our most consequential strategic competitor for the coming decades. I have reached this conclusion based on the PRC’s increasingly coercive actions to reshape the Indo- Pacific region and the international system to fit its authoritarian preferences, alongside a keen awareness of the PRC’s clearly stated intentions and the rapid modernization and expansion of its military. As President Biden’s National Security Strategy notes, the PRC is “the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order, and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s unprovoked, unjust, and reckless invasion of Ukraine underscores its irresponsible behavior. Efforts to respond to Russia’s assault on Ukraine also dramatically highlight the importance of a strategy that leverages the power of our values and our military might with that of our Allies and partners. Together, we have marshalled a strong, unified response to Russia’s attack and proven the strength of NATO unity.

In these times, business as usual at the Department is not acceptable. The 2022 NDS lays out our vision for focusing the Defense Department around our pacing challenge, even as we manage the other threats of our swiftly changing world. It builds on my 2021 Message to the Force, which stressed as core values defending the nation, taking care of our people, and succeeding through teamwork.

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Our central charge is to develop, combine, and coordinate our strengths to maximum effect. This is the core of integrated deterrence, a centerpiece of the 2022 NDS. Integrated deterrence means using every tool at the Department’s disposal, in close collaboration with our counterparts across the U.S. Government and with Allies and partners, to ensure that potential foes understand the folly of aggression. The Department will align policies, investments, and activities to sustain and strengthen deterrence—tailored to specific competitors and challenges and coordinated and synchronized inside and outside the Department.

The Department will also campaign day-to-day to gain and sustain military advantages, counter acute forms of our competitors’ coercion, and complicate our competitors’ military preparations.

Campaigning is not business as usual—it is the deliberate effort to synchronize the Department’s activities and investments to aggregate focus and resources to shift conditions in our favor.

Through campaigning, the Department will focus on the most consequential competitor activities that, if left unaddressed, would endanger our military advantages now and in the future.

Even as we take these steps, we will act with urgency to build enduring advantages for the future Joint Force, undertaking reforms to accelerate force development, getting the technology we need more quickly, and making investments in the extraordinary people of the Department, who remain our most valuable resource.

America has never been afraid of competition, and we do not shy away from tough challenges, especially when it comes to securing our national interests and defending our national values.

To meet this moment, we will tap into our core strengths: our dynamic, diverse, and innovative society; our unmatched network of Allies and partners; and the tremendous men and women of our armed forces.

We live in turbulent times. Yet, I am confident that the Department, along with our counterparts throughout the U.S. Government and our Allies and partners around the world, is well positioned to meet the challenges of this decisive decade.

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I. INTRODUCTION

II. SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

III. DEFENSE PRIORITIES

IV. INTEGRATED DETERRENCE

V. CAMPAIGNING

VI. ANCHORING OUR STRATEGY IN ALLIES AND PARTNERS

AND ADVANCING REGIONAL GOALS

VII. FORCE PLANNING

VIII. BUILDING ENDURING ADVANTAGES

IX. RISK MANAGEMENT

X. CONCLUSION

2022 NUCLEAR POSTURE REVIEW

2022 MISSILE DEFENSE REVIEW

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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I. INTRODUCTION

For more than seven decades, the vision and leadership of the United States have undergirded international peace and prosperity. A strong, principled, and adaptive U.S. military is a central pillar for U.S. leadership, particularly in the face of challenges arising from dramatic geopolitical, technological, economic, and environmental change. The Department of Defense stands ready to meet these challenges and seize opportunities with the confidence, creativity, and commitment that have long characterized our military and the democracy that it serves.

The Department will focus on safeguarding and advancing vital U.S. national interests. We will work alongside other agencies and departments to:

► Protect the security of the American people;

► Expand economic prosperity and opportunity; and

► Realize and defend the values at the heart of American way of life.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) sets forth how the U.S. military will meet growing threats to vital U.S. national security interests and to a stable and open international system. It directs the Department to act urgently to sustain and strengthen U.S. deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the Department’s pacing challenge.

The strategy identifies four top-level defense priorities that the Department must pursue to strengthen deterrence. First, we will defend the homeland. Second, we will deter strategic attacks against the United States, our Allies, and our partners. Third, we will deter aggression and be prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary. Fourth, to ensure our future military advantage, we will build a resilient Joint Force and defense ecosystem.

The Department will advance our priorities through integrated deterrence, campaigning, and actions that build enduring advantages. Integrated deterrence entails working seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, all instruments of U.S. national power, and our network of Alliances and partnerships. Tailored to specific circumstances, it applies a coordinated, multifaceted approach to reducing competitors’ perceptions of the net benefits of aggression relative to restraint. Integrated deterrence is enabled by combat-credible forces prepared to fight and win, as needed, and backstopped by a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent.

Day after day, the Department will strengthen deterrence and gain advantage against competitors’ most consequential coercive measures by campaigning – the conduct and sequencing of logically-linked military initiatives aimed at advancing well-defined, strategy-aligned priorities over time.

The United States will operate forces, synchronize broader Departmental efforts, and align Departmental activities with other instruments of national power to counter forms of competitor coercion, complicate competitors’ military preparations, and develop our own warfighting capabilities together with those of our Allies and partners.

To shore up the foundations for integrated deterrence and campaigning, we will act urgently to build enduring advantages across the defense ecosystem – the Department of Defense, the defense industrial base, and the array of private sector and academic enterprises that create and sharpen the Joint Force’s technological edge. We will modernize the systems that design and build the Joint Force, with a focus on innovation and rapid adjustment to new strategic demands. We will make our supporting systems more resilient and agile in the face of threats that range from competitors to the effects of climate change. And we will cultivate our talents, recruiting and training a workforce with the skills, abilities, and diversity we need to creatively solve national security challenges in a complex global environment.

The 2022 NDS advances a strategy focused on the PRC and on collaboration with our growing network of Allies and partners on common objectives. It seeks to prevent the PRC’s dominance of key regions while protecting the U.S. homeland and reinforcing a stable and open international system. Consistent with the 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS), a key objective of the NDS is to dissuade the PRC from considering aggression as a viable means of advancing goals that threaten vital U.S. national interests. Conflict with the PRC is neither inevitable nor desirable. The Department’s priorities support broader whole-of-government efforts to develop terms of interaction with the PRC that are favorable to our interests and values, while managing strategic competition and enabling the pursuit of cooperation on common challenges.

Even as we focus on the PRC as our pacing challenge, the NDS also accounts for the acute threat posed by Russia, demonstrated most recently by Russia’s unprovoked further invasion of Ukraine.

The Department will support robust deterrence of Russian aggression against vital U.S. national interests, including our treaty Allies. We will work closely with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and our partners to provide U.S. leadership, develop key enabling capabilities, and deepen interoperability. In service of our strategic priorities, we will accept measured risk but remain vigilant in the face of other persistent threats, including those posed by North Korea, Iran, and violent extremist organizations (VEOs). We will also build resilience in the face of destabilizing and potentially catastrophic transboundary challenges such as climate change and pandemics, which increasingly strain the Joint Force.

We cannot meet these complex and interconnected challenges alone. Mutually-beneficial Alliances and partnerships are our greatest global strategic advantage – and they are a center of gravity for this strategy. We will strengthen major regional security architectures with our Allies and partners based on complementary contributions; combined, collaborative operations and force planning; increased intelligence and information sharing; new operational concepts; and our ability to draw on the Joint Force worldwide.

We cannot delay. The NSS describes the United States’ agenda for renewal in the coming “decisive decade,” a ten-year window for leadership to tackle our era’s defining challenges. In full accord with the urgency conveyed by the NSS and in support of its broader goals, the Department will move immediately to implement the changes detailed in this NDS, the Secretary of Defense’s preeminent guidance document.

The challenges we face are formidable, but the United States possesses strengths that our competitors cannot match. Our democratic values, our open society, our diversity, our base of innovation, our culture of ingenuity, our combat experience, our globe-spanning network of Alliances and partnerships, and above all our extraordinary All Volunteer Force – these together provide firm foundations for a defense strategy that will keep America secure, prosperous, and free.

II. SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

Now and over the next two decades, we face strategic challenges stemming from complex interactions between a rapidly changing global balance of military capabilities; emerging technologies; competitor doctrines that pose new threats to the U.S. homeland and to strategic stability; an escalation of competitors’ coercive and malign activities in the “gray zone”; and transboundary challenges that impose new demands on the Joint Force and the defense enterprise.

These developments and the threats they present are interconnected – in part because our competitors deliberately link them to erode deterrence, exert economic coercion, and endanger the political autonomy of states. Competitor strategies seek to exploit perceived vulnerabilities in the American way of war, including by creating anti-access/area-denial environments; developing conventional capabilities to undertake rapid interventions; posing all-domain threats to the U.S.

homeland in an effort to jeopardize the U.S. military’s ability to project power and counter regional aggression; and using the cyber and space domains to gain operational, logistical, and information advantages. At the same time, our competitors are building larger and more diverse nuclear arsenals and working to distract and divide the United States and our Allies and partners.

Strategic Competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security is the PRC’s coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences. The PRC seeks to undermine U.S. alliances and security partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region, and leverage its growing capabilities, including its economic influence and the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) growing strength and military footprint, to coerce its neighbors and threaten their interests. The PRC’s increasingly provocative rhetoric and coercive activity towards Taiwan are destabilizing, risk miscalculation, and threaten the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait. This is part of a broader pattern of destabilizing and coercive PRC behavior that stretches across the East China Sea, the South China Sea, and along the Line of Actual Control. The PRC has expanded and modernized nearly every aspect of the PLA, with a focus on offsetting U.S. military advantages. The PRC is therefore the pacing challenge for the Department.

In addition to expanding its conventional forces, the PLA is rapidly advancing and integrating its space, counterspace, cyber, electronic, and informational warfare capabilities to support its holistic approach to joint warfare. The PLA seeks to target the ability of the Joint Force to project power to defend vital U.S. interests and aid our Allies in a crisis or conflict. The PRC is also expanding the PLA’s global footprint and working to establish a more robust overseas and basing infrastructure to allow it to project military power at greater distances. In parallel, the PRC is accelerating the modernization and expansion of its nuclear capabilities. The United States and its Allies and partners will increasingly face the challenge of deterring two major powers with modern and diverse nuclear capabilities – the PRC and Russia – creating new stresses on strategic stability.

Russia as an Acute Threat. Even as the PRC poses the Department’s pacing challenge, recent events underscore the acute threat posed by Russia. Contemptuous of its neighbors’ independence, Russia’s government seeks to use force to impose border changes and to reimpose an imperial sphere of influence. Its extensive track record of territorial aggression includes the escalation of its brutal, unprovoked war against Ukraine. Although its leaders’ political and military actions intended to fracture NATO have backfired dramatically, the goal remains. Russia presents serious, continuing risks in key areas. These include nuclear threats to the homeland and U.S. Allies and partners; long-range cruise missile threats; cyber and information operations; counterspace threats;

chemical and biological weapons (CBW); undersea warfare; and extensive gray zone campaigns targeted against democracies in particular. Russia has incorporated these capabilities and methods into an overall strategy that, like the PRC’s, seeks to exploit advantages in geography and time backed by a mix of threats to the U.S. homeland and to our Allies and partners.

Although diverging interests and historical mistrust may limit the depth of their political and military cooperation, the PRC and Russia relationship continues to increase in breadth. Either state could seek to create dilemmas globally for the Joint Force in the event of U.S. engagement in a crisis or a conflict with the other.

Threats to the U.S. Homeland. The scope and scale of threats to the homeland have fundamentally changed. The PRC and Russia now pose more dangerous challenges to safety and security at home, even as terrorist threats persist. Both states are already using non-kinetic means against our defense industrial base and mobilization systems, as well as deploying counterspace capabilities that can target our Global Positioning System and other space-based capabilities that support military power and daily civilian life. The PRC or Russia could use a wide array of tools in an attempt to hinder U.S. military preparation and response in a conflict, including actions aimed at undermining the will of the U.S. public, and to target our critical infrastructure and other systems. These threats, along with the toll taken by climate change, pandemics, and other transborder challenges will increase demands on Department resources, federal civil authorities, and the public and private sectors.

Other Persistent Threats – North Korea, Iran, and VEOs. North Korea continues to expand its nuclear and missile capability to threaten the U.S. homeland, deployed U.S. forces, and the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan, while seeking to drive wedges between the United States- ROK and United States-Japan Alliances. Iran is taking actions that would improve its ability to produce a nuclear weapon should it make the decision to do so, even as it builds and exports extensive missile forces, uncrewed aircraft systems, and advanced maritime capabilities that threaten chokepoints for the free flow of energy resources and international commerce. Iran further undermines Middle East stability by supporting terrorist groups and military proxies, employing its own paramilitary forces, engaging in military provocations, and conducting malicious cyber and information operations. Global terrorist groups – including al-Qa’ida, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and their affiliates – have had their capabilities degraded, but some may be able to reconstitute them in short order, which will require monitoring indications and warning against the VEO threat.

Complex Escalation Dynamics: Rapidly Evolving Domains and Technologies. A wide range of new or fast-evolving technologies and applications are complicating escalation dynamics and creating new challenges for strategic stability. These include counterspace weapons, hypersonic weapons, advanced CBW, and new and emerging payload and delivery systems for both conventional and non-strategic nuclear weapons. In the cyber and space domains, the risk of inadvertent escalation is particularly high due to unclear norms of behavior and escalation thresholds, complex domain interactions, and new capabilities. New applications of artificial intelligence, quantum science, autonomy, biotechnology, and space technologies have the potential not just to change kinetic conflict, but also to disrupt day-to-day U.S. supply chain and logistics operations.

Competitors’ Gray Zone Activities. Competitors now commonly seek adverse changes in the status quo using gray zone methods – coercive approaches that may fall below perceived thresholds for U.S. military action and across areas of responsibility of different parts of the U.S.

Government. The PRC employs state-controlled forces, cyber and space operations, and economic coercion against the United States and its Allies and partners. Russia employs disinformation, cyber, and space operations against the United States and our Allies and partners, and irregular proxy forces in multiple countries. Other state actors, particularly North Korea and Iran, use similar if currently more limited means. The proliferation of advanced missiles, uncrewed aircraft systems, and cyber tools to military proxies allows competitors to threaten U.S. forces, Allies, and partners, in indirect and deniable ways.

Climate Change and other Transboundary Challenges. Beyond state and non-state actors, changes in global climate and other dangerous transboundary threats are already transforming the context in which the Department operates. Increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, rising sea levels, and more frequent extreme weather conditions will affect basing and access while degrading readiness, installations, and capabilities. Climate change is creating new corridors of strategic interaction, particularly in the Arctic region. It will increase demands, including on the Joint Force, for disaster response and defense support of civil authorities, and affect security relationships with some Allies and partners. Insecurity and instability related to climate change may tax governance capacity in some countries while heightening tensions between others, risking new armed conflicts and increasing demands for stabilization activities.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact societies, global supply chains, and the U.S. defense industrial base. It has required substantial commitment of Department resources for support of civil authorities and support to international partners. COVID-19 also spotlights the costs and risks of future biological threats, whether natural or human-made, for the Department and the Joint Force.

III. DEFENSE PRIORITIES

Together, these rapidly evolving features of the security environment threaten to erode the United States’ ability to deter aggression and to help maintain favorable balances of power in critical regions. The PRC presents the most consequential and systemic challenge, while Russia poses acute threats – both to vital U.S. national interests abroad and to the homeland. Other features of the security environment, including climate change and other transboundary threats, will increasingly place pressure on the Joint Force and the systems that support it.

In this context, and in support of a stable and open international system and our defense commitments, the Department’s priorities are:

► Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the PRC;

► Deterring strategic attacks against the United States, Allies, and partners;

► Deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary – prioritizing the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific region, then the Russia challenge in Europe; and, ► Building a resilient Joint Force and defense ecosystem.

IV. INTEGRATED DETERRENCE

Our competitors, particularly the PRC, are pursuing holistic strategies that employ varied forms of coercion, malign behavior, and aggression to achieve their objectives and weaken the foundations of a stable and open international system.

Meeting the challenge requires a holistic response: integrated deterrence. In the past, the Department’s approach to deterrence has too often been hindered by competing priorities; lack of clarity regarding the specific competitor actions we seek to deter; an emphasis on deterring behaviors in instances where Department authorities and tools are ill-suited; and stovepiping.

Integrated deterrence is how we will align the Department’s policies, investments, and activities to sustain and strengthen deterrence – tailored to specific competitors and coordinated to maximum effect inside and outside the Department.

How We Will Deter. Deterrence is strengthened by actions that reduce a competitor’s perception of the benefits of aggression relative to restraint. Effective deterrence requires the Department to consider how competitors perceive U.S., Ally, and partner stakes, commitment, and combat credibility; their perception of their own ability to control escalation risks; and their view of how the status quo will evolve – in part as a result of U.S., Ally, and partner actions – if they do not use force. Actions aimed at strengthening deterrence work by different logics: denial, resilience, and cost imposition. Optimal combinations need to be tailored to specific settings and deterrence objectives in an integrated deterrence approach.

Deterrence by Denial. To deter aggression, especially where potential adversaries could act to rapidly seize territory, the Department will develop asymmetric approaches and optimize our posture for denial. In the near-term, we will continue to develop innovative operational concepts and supplement current capabilities and posture through investments in mature, high-value assets.

Over the mid- to long-term, we will develop new capabilities, including in long-range strike, undersea, hypersonic, and autonomous systems, and improve information sharing and the integration of non-kinetic tools.

Deterrence by Resilience. Denying the benefits of aggression also requires resilience – the ability to withstand, fight through, and recover quickly from disruption. The Department will improve its ability to operate in the face of multi-domain attacks on a growing surface of vital networks and critical infrastructure, both in the homeland and in collaboration with Allies and partners at risk.

Because the cyber and space domains empower the entire Joint Force, we will prioritize building resilience in these areas. Cyber resilience will be enhanced by, for example, modern encryption and a zero-trust architecture. In the space domain, the Department will reduce adversary incentives for early attack by fielding diverse, resilient, and redundant satellite constellations. We will bolster our ability to fight through disruption by improving defensive capabilities and increasing options for reconstitution. We will assist Allies and partners in doing the same.

Deterrence by Direct and Collective Cost Imposition. Denial and resilience strategies are necessary but not always sufficient. Effective deterrence may also hinge on our ability to impose costs in excess to the perceived benefits of aggression. The Department will continue to modernize our nuclear forces, the ultimate backstop to deter attacks on the homeland and our Allies and partners who rely on U.S. extended deterrence. Direct cost imposition approaches also include a broad range of other means, including conventional long-range fires, offensive cyber, irregular warfare, support for foreign internal defense, and interagency instruments, such as economic sanctions, export controls, and diplomatic measures.

Collective cost imposition approaches increase the expectation that aggression will be met with a collective response. Through close collaboration with U.S. Government departments and agencies and with our Allies and partners, we will diversify our posture and broaden the scope of cooperation, adding complexity to competitors’ military planning and execution. U.S. leadership in shaping norms for appropriate conduct in the cyber, space, and other emerging technology domains will reinforce deterrence by increasing international consensus on what constitutes malign and aggressive behavior, thereby increasing the prospect of collective attribution and response when these norms are violated.

Role of Information in Deterrence. Deterrence depends in part on competitors’ understanding of U.S. intent and capabilities. The Department must seek to avoid unknowingly driving competition to aggression. To strengthen deterrence while managing escalation risks, the Department will enhance its ability to operate in the information domain – for example, by working to ensure that messages are conveyed effectively. We will work in collaboration with other U.S. Federal departments and agencies along with Allies and partners.

Tailored Deterrence Approaches. Coordinating and applying deterrence logics to maximum effect requires tailoring for specific problems, competitors, and settings.

Deterring Attacks against the Homeland. The Department will take steps to raise potential attackers’ direct and indirect costs while reducing their expected benefits for aggressive action against the homeland, particularly by increasing resilience. We will ensure that hostile operations

– including those conducted early in a crisis or conflict – will not advance adversary objectives or severely limit U.S. response options. Our work will prioritize closer coordination with U.S.

interagency, state, local, tribal, and territorial partners, as well as with the private sector, starting with the defense industrial base.

Deterring Strategic Attacks. Any adversary use of nuclear weapons, regardless of location or yield, would fundamentally alter the nature of a conflict, create the potential for uncontrolled escalation, and have strategic effects. To maintain credible and effective deterrence of both large-scale and limited nuclear attacks from a range of adversaries, the Department will modernize nuclear forces, nuclear command, control, and communications, and the nuclear weapon production enterprise, and strengthen extended deterrence. We will bolster regional nuclear deterrence by enhanced consultations with Allies and partners and by better synchronizing conventional and nuclear

1 0 aspects of planning – including by improving conventional forces’ ability to operate in the face of limited nuclear, chemical, and biological attacks so as to deny adversaries benefit from possessing and employing such weapons. The Department will employ an integrated deterrence approach that draws on tailored combinations of conventional, cyber, space, and information capabilities, together with the unique deterrent effects of nuclear weapons.

Deterring PRC Attacks. The Department will bolster deterrence by leveraging existing and emergent force capabilities, posture, and activities to enhance denial, and by enhancing the resilience of U.S. systems the PRC may seek to target. We will develop new operational concepts and enhanced future warfighting capabilities against potential PRC aggression. Collaboration with Allies and partners will cement joint capability with the aid of multilateral exercises, co-development of technologies, greater intelligence and information sharing, and combined planning for shared deterrence challenges. We will also build enduring advantages, undertaking foundational improvements and enhancements to ensure our technological edge and Joint Force combat credibility.

Deterring Russian Attacks. The Department will focus on deterring Russian attacks on the United States, NATO members, and other Allies, reinforcing our iron-clad treaty commitments, to include conventional aggression that has the potential to escalate to nuclear employment of any scale. We will work together with our Allies and partners to modernize denial capabilities, increase interoperability, improve resilience against attack and coercion, share intelligence, and strengthen extended nuclear deterrence. Over time, the Department will focus on enhancing denial capabilities and key enablers in NATO’s force planning, while NATO Allies seek to bolster their conventional warfighting capabilities. For Ally and partner countries that border Russia, the Department will support efforts to build out response options that enable cost imposition.

Deterring North Korean Attacks. The Department will continue to deter attacks through forward posture; integrated air and missile defense; close coordination and interoperability with our ROK Ally; nuclear deterrence; resilience initiatives; and the potential for direct cost imposition approaches that come from globally deployable Joint Forces.

Deterring Iranian Attacks. To deter large-scale Iranian attacks on vital national security interests and partners in the region, the Department will work to increase partner capability and resilience, particularly in air and missile defense, while collaborating with partners to expose Iranian gray zone operations. The Department will continue to support U.S. interagency and international efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Escalation Management. Changes in the security environment – particularly in the space and cyber domains – are likely to increase opacity during a crisis or conflict, threatening strategic stability. The Department will develop tailored approaches to assess and manage escalation risk in both crises and conflicts, including conducting analysis of escalation pathways and thresholds, and planning for situations with decreased domain awareness and impaired communications. We will strengthen strategic stability through dialogue with competitors, unilateral measures that make command, control, and communications more robust, and by developing defenses and architectural

1 1 resilience to maintain operational capabilities in cyberspace and space during conflict. Establishing and practicing crisis communications with Allies and partners, as well as with competitors, is an essential tool to reduce mutual misperceptions and to help manage escalation.

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V. CAMPAIGNING

The Department strengthens deterrence and gains military advantages not only by building Joint Force capabilities, but also by campaigning – the conduct and sequencing of logically-linked military activities to achieve strategy-aligned objectives over time. Campaigning initiatives change the environment to the benefit of the United States and our Allies and partners, while limiting, frustrating, and disrupting competitor activities that seriously impinge on our interests, especially those carried out in the gray zone.

Campaigning requires discipline. It targets the most consequential competitor activities – those that, if left unaddressed, would endanger our military advantages and vital national interests now and in the future. Successful campaigning begins with focused planning that specifies how an initiative supports our defense priorities, establishes clear connections with the Department’s ways and means, and incorporates feedback loops. In service of strategic prioritization, we will focus day-to-day force employment on a more narrow set of tasks than we do currently.

Campaigning to Gain Military Advantage, Enhance Deterrence, and Address Gray Zone Challenges. The Department will actively campaign across domains and the spectrum of conflict. Campaigning initiatives will improve our baseline understanding of the operating environment and seek to shape perceptions, including by sowing doubt in our competitors that they can achieve their objectives or conduct unattributed coercive actions. They will disrupt competitor warfighting advantages while reinforcing our own, and enhance interoperability and access. Working with Allies and partners, we will build and exercise force elements needed in crisis or conflict, such as infrastructure, logistics, command and control, dispersal and relocation, and mobilization.

Competitors increasingly engage in gray zone operations at odds with international norms and below the threshold of a credible military response. Emerging technologies and applications are making these activities more effective at building competitors’ military and non-military advantages which, if left unaddressed, could endanger U.S. military effectiveness now and in the future.

The Department will be judicious in its use of defense resources and efforts to counter competitors’ coercive behaviors in gray zone operations, as traditional military tools may not always be the most appropriate response. In many cases, intelligence sharing, economic measures, diplomatic actions, and activities in the information domain conducted by other U.S. departments and agencies may prove more effective. Nevertheless, there can be an important role for campaigning to disrupt competitors’ attempts to advance their objectives through gray zone tactics, especially when integrated for maximum impact with the actions of Allies, partners, and other U.S.

departments and agencies. Campaigning initiatives will provide a range of options to oppose select, acute forms of coercion carried out by competitors. We will conduct cyberspace operations to degrade competitors’ malicious cyber activity and to prepare cyber capabilities to be used in crisis

1 3 or conflict. Tailored information operations can be used to support and in some instances lead the Department’s response. In campaigning, the Department will carefully evaluate and manage escalation risks.

Campaigning and Our Global Posture. Our force posture will focus on the access and warfighting requirements that enable our efforts to deter potential PRC and Russian aggression against vital U.S. national interests, and to prevail in conflict if deterrence fails. The Department will conduct campaigning activities from this posture against a clear set of objectives, to include deterring adversary attacks, supporting rapid crisis response with survivable forces, and conducting operations to reinforce internationally-agreed-upon norms. In the Indo-Pacific, we will continue key infrastructure investments and coordinate with the Department of State to expand access in the region. In Europe, our posture will focus on command and control, fires, and key enablers that complement our NATO Allies’ capabilities and strengthen deterrence by increasing combat credibility. For other major threats, we will leverage security cooperation and capacity building with partners, backed by a monitor-and-respond approach that takes advantage of the deterrent value of the Department’s ability to deploy forces globally at the time and place of our choosing. Robust intelligence collection, in concert with the work of other departments and agencies, will seek to provide early indication and warning to help manage risk.

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VI. ANCHORING OUR STRATEGY IN ALLIES AND

PARTNERS AND ADVANCING REGIONAL GOALS

Countries around the world have a vital interest in a free and open international system. Close collaboration with Allies and partners is foundational for U.S. national security interests and for our collective ability to address the challenges that the PRC and Russia present, while responsibly managing the array of other threats we face.

We strive to be a trusted defense partner. We respect the sovereignty of all states, and we know that the decisions that our Allies and partners face are rarely binary. We recognize that when it comes to our security relationships, the Department cannot rely on rhetoric. Early and continuous consideration, engagement, and, where possible, collaboration with Allies and partners in planning is essential for advancing our shared interests. The 2022 National Defense Strategy is a call to action for the defense enterprise to incorporate Allies and partners at every stage of defense planning.

To strengthen and sustain deterrence, the Department will prioritize interoperability and enable coalitions with enhanced capabilities, new operating concepts, and combined, collaborative force planning. We will consult and coordinate with Allies and partners as we modernize our nuclear forces, reinforcing our extended deterrence commitments. The Department will seek to improve denial capability, including resilience, particularly for those most exposed to military coercion.

And we will support regional partners’ ability to respond to regional contingencies, provide strategic indicators and warning, and reduce competitors’ ability to hold key geographic and logistical chokepoints at risk. By joining with Allies and partners in efforts to enhance resilience to climate change, we will both strengthen defense relationships and reduce the need for the force to respond to instability and humanitarian emergencies. Overall, the Department will work across the interagency system and in concert with Allies and partners to advance regional security goals that implement the higher-level aims of integrated deterrence, while accounting for the cross-regional and global dimensions of potential conflict.

To succeed in these objectives, the Department will reduce institutional barriers, including those that inhibit collective research and development, planning, interoperability, intelligence and information sharing, and export of key capabilities. We will work across the U.S. Government to upgrade technology and information release processes, expand release authorizations, and redefine dissemination controls to facilitate information exchange for mutual benefit.

The Indo-Pacific Region. The Department will reinforce and build out a resilient security architecture in the Indo-Pacific region in order to sustain a free and open regional order, and deter attempts to resolve disputes by force. We will modernize our Alliance with Japan and strengthen combined capabilities by aligning strategic planning and priorities in a more integrated manner;

deepen our Alliance with Australia through investments in posture, interoperability, and expansion of multilateral cooperation; and foster advantage through advanced technology cooperation with

1 5 partnerships like AUKUS and the Indo-Pacific Quad. The Department will advance our Major Defense Partnership with India to enhance its ability to deter PRC aggression and ensure free and open access to the Indian Ocean region. The Department will support Taiwan’s asymmetric self-defense commensurate with the evolving PRC threat and consistent with our one China policy.

We will work with the ROK to continue to improve its defense capability to lead the Alliance combined defense, with U.S. forces augmenting those of the ROK. We will invigorate multilateral approaches to security challenges in the region, to include by promoting the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in addressing regional security issues. The Department will work with Allies and partners to ensure power projection in a contested environment. The Department will also support Ally and partner efforts, in accordance with U.S. policy and international law, to address acute forms of gray zone coercion from the PRC’s campaigns to establish control over the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, and disputed land borders such as with India. At the same time, the Department will continue to prioritize maintaining open lines of communication with the PLA and managing competition responsibly.

Europe. The Department will maintain its bedrock commitment to NATO collective security, working alongside Allies and partners to deter, defend, and build resilience against further Russian military aggression and acute forms of gray zone coercion. As we continue contributing to NATO capabilities and readiness – including through improvements to our posture in Europe and our extended nuclear deterrence commitments – the Department will work with Allies bilaterally and through NATO’s established processes to better focus NATO capability development and military modernization to address Russia’s military threat. The approach will emphasize ready, interoperable combat power in contested environments across NATO forces, particularly air forces and other joint precision strike capabilities, and critical enablers such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and electronic warfare platforms. The Department will collaborate with Allies and partners to build capacity along Europe’s eastern flank, strengthening defensive anti-area/access-denial capabilities and indications and warning; expanding readiness, training, and exercises; and promoting resilience, including against hybrid and cyber actions.

The Middle East. As the Department continues to right-size its forward military presence in the Middle East following the mission transition in Afghanistan and continuing our “by, with, and through” approach in Iraq and Syria, we will address major security challenges in the region in effective and sustainable ways. The Joint Force will retain the ability to deny Iran a nuclear weapon; to identify and support action against Iranian and Iranian-backed threats; and to disrupt top-tier VEO threats that endanger the homeland and vital U.S. national interests. The Department will prioritize cooperation with our regional and global partners that results in their increased ability to deter and defend against potential aggression from Iran, for example by working to advance integrated air and missile defense, maritime security, and irregular warfare capabilities.

Working in concert with global and interagency partners, the Department will redouble efforts to support regional security coalitions within the Gulf Cooperation Council and among states in the region to ensure maritime security and improve collective intelligence and warning.

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Western Hemisphere. The United States derives immense benefit from a stable, peaceful, and democratic Western Hemisphere that reduces security threats to the homeland. To prevent distant threats from becoming a challenge at home, the Department will continue to partner with countries in the region to build capability and promote security and stability. We will maintain the ability to respond to crises and seek to strengthen regional roles and capabilities for humanitarian assistance, climate resilience, and disaster response efforts. As in all regions, the Department will work collaboratively, seeking to understand our partners’ security needs and areas of mutual concern.

Africa. In Africa, the Department will prioritize disrupting VEO threats against the U.S.

homeland and vital U.S. national interests, working “by, with, and through” our African partners to build states’ capability to degrade terrorist organizations and contribute broadly to regional security and stability. We will orient our approach on the continent towards security cooperation;

increase coordination with Allies, multilateral organizations, and regional bodies that share these objectives; and support U.S. interagency initiatives in the region, including efforts to disrupt malign PRC and Russian activities on the continent.

The Arctic. The United States seeks a stable Arctic region characterized by adherence to internationally-agreed upon rules and norms. The Department will deter threats to the U.S.

homeland from and through the Arctic region by improving early warning and ISR capabilities, partnering with Canada to enhance North American Aerospace Defense Command capabilities, and working with Allies and partners to increase shared maritime domain awareness. U.S.

activities and posture in the Arctic should be calibrated, as the Department preserves its focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

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VII. FORCE PLANNING

Sustaining and strengthening deterrence requires that the Department design, develop, and manage a combat-credible U.S. military fit for advancing our highest defense priorities.

Building on the 2018 NDS, the 2022 NDS Force Planning Construct sizes and shapes the Joint Force to simultaneously defend the homeland; maintain strategic deterrence; and deter and, if necessary, prevail in conflict. To deter opportunistic aggression elsewhere, while the United States is involved in an all-domain conflict, the Department will employ a range of risk mitigation efforts rooted in integrated deterrence. These include coordination with and contributions of Allies and partners, deterrent effects of U.S. nuclear posture, and leveraging posture and capabilities not solely engaged in the primary warfight – for example, cyber and space. Additionally, the Joint Force will be shaped to ensure the ability to respond to small-scale, short-duration crises without substantially impairing high-end warfighting readiness, and to conduct campaigning activities that improve our position and reinforce deterrence while limiting or disrupting competitor activities that seriously affect U.S. interests.

Our approach to force planning aims to build strength and capability in key operational areas. To maintain information advantage, the Department will improve our ability to integrate, defend, and reconstitute our surveillance and decision systems to achieve warfighting objectives, particularly in the space domain, and despite adversaries’ means of interference or deception. To preserve command, control, and communications in a fast-paced battlefield, we will make our network architectures more resilient against system-level exploitation and disruption so as to ensure effective coordination of distributed forces. To enhance our ability to deny aggression, we will improve the speed and accuracy of detection and targeting. To mitigate adversary anti-access/area-denial capability, the Department will develop concepts and capabilities that improve our ability to reliably hold at risk those military forces and assets that are essential to adversary operational success, while managing escalation.