Timothy A. Walton and Dan Patt of Hudson Institute will publish a subsequent report, titled Flipping the Script: Redesigning the US Air Force for Decisive Advantage, that will detail the force design and provide more comprehensive modeling of its performance. Portions of this policy memo cite and are drawn from that draft report.
Summary
The Air Force cannot return to dominance by scaling up today’s force or chasing a single breakthrough. Adversaries now field sensors, precision weapons, and resilient command and control that are comparable to what the United States has. Meanwhile, each new crewed aircraft generation costs more to acquire and sustain, and personnel costs outpace inflation. Because the US military cannot restore dominance simply by growing or finding a new “tech surprise,” America needs to change how it finds advantage—instead of relying on platform supremacy, it should orchestrate combined‑arms warfare at force-wide scale. This approach requires a three-part force design that denies and deceives under the threat umbrella, disables adversaries’ key nodes, and dominates once defenses and magazines are degraded.
Introduction
The US Air Force (USAF) suffers from a combination of high operational tempo, low readiness, and too few aircraft that can fight the US military’s pacing scenarios. Many analysts blame the USAF’s situation on decades of inadequate investment and poor acquisition decisions by Pentagon and congressional leaders. For them, the solution is simply increasing funding to make today’s Air Force larger and better.
But the Air Force faces challenges because the threat landscape has fundamentally changed. Technology proliferation and the digitization of warfare have erased America’s traditional advantages. The USAF cannot grow in its current form because each new generation of aircraft costs more to buy and maintain than its predecessor, and personnel costs are rising much faster than inflation. While the US can still field superior capabilities in specialized domains, the marginal returns on these investments have collapsed. The Pentagon cannot procure its best platforms in sufficient numbers for a sustained Pacific fight, and the risk of employing those aircraft is too high. Meanwhile, adversaries have closed the gap in the sensors, precision weapons, and resilient command networks that once guaranteed American overmatch.
The Air Force’s inability to dramatically grow or achieve a game-changing technological advantage creates a fundamental dilemma for force planning. Adversaries like the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are improving their militaries, which might be able to overcome US forces in stressing scenarios like a short-notice invasion of Taiwan.
This situation is much different from what the Pentagon faced during the past three decades. After the Cold War, the US military enjoyed dominance over its likely adversaries. So the US Department of Defense (DoD) could field a one-size-fits-all power projection force of predominantly multimission ships, aircraft, or troop formations that it could apply to any scenario. Today that approach is no longer feasible due to rapidly improving adversaries and fiscal, personnel, or industrial base constraints.
Unable to substantially enlarge or improve the overall US military within realistic budgets, for the past few years the DoD focused its force structure on what a stressing Taiwan invasion scenario would require. The Navy reduced funding for buying and maintaining amphibious ships that were less relevant to defending Taiwan. The Air Force reduced funding for non-stealthy fighters and support aircraft in favor of highly survivable fighters and bombers that policymakers thought were necessary for countering a Taiwan invasion. And the Army and Marine Corps invested in new missile systems for expeditionary operations on Western Pacific islands while divesting of rotary wing aircraft and artillery viewed as less useful in countering the PRC.
Because the US military has optimized its force for one specific scenario, it risks being unable to respond to the 95 percent of situations it is most likely to face. Figure 1 represents this dilemma by using Army Air Forces and USAF deployment data from 1943 through 2010.1 As the figure shows, the US deployed its air forces to combat operations at peak intensity during only about 5 percent of that period, which corresponds with the most intense portions of World War II combat.
Figure 1. US Air Forces Combat Deployment Rates from 1943 to 2010
Source: Authors, using data on Air Force deployments from a DARPA study.
Hudson Institute built on this insight in a previous study that recommended the US military size and shape the mainline multipurpose force to address the majority of likely scenarios. That study argued the Pentagon should use specialized hedge forces to lower the risks associated with high-consequence, low-probability events such as the opening days of World War II or a short-notice invasion of Taiwan.
By introducing hedge forces, the recently renamed US Department of War (DoW) could protect the mainline military from becoming a “one-trick pony” optimized for one scenario but too small or exquisite for other situations. For example, rather than cutting its tactical air forces to emphasize survivable strike for a Taiwan crisis, the Air Force could stand up a dedicated hedge force designed specifically to thwart or slow Chinese assaults against Taiwan. Such forces might be predominantly uncrewed and cost-effective, allowing them to be postured in theater without impacting the USAF’s global capacity.
The Air Force could leverage hedge forces to lower the risks mainline tactical aircraft would face and reduce the number of targets they would need to engage in high-consequence, low-probability scenarios. The USAF should exploit this complementarity in its force design.
Adding hedge forces to the mainline Air Force would also allow the service to adapt in an environment of significant uncertainty. As technology proliferation helps potential adversaries become more capable, it also enables them to become more flexible. Because hedge force units are specialized, smaller, and forward-deployed, they could more easily adapt to this challenge compared to mainline Air Force units that have extensive logistics tails, a rotational base of duplicative units, and substantial training pipelines. The Air Force could then retain a core force of fighters, tankers, strategic airlift, and other capabilities configured for flexible, multi-theater demands.
The Air Force should therefore pursue a three-pronged design. The first element, the edge force, represents the Air Force’s version of a hedge force. It employs small, mobile teams operating close to or underneath an adversary’s defensive umbrella. These units rely on rapid movement, minimized signatures, and opportunistic engagements to disrupt enemy kill chains, provide localized but lethal offensive air denial, and destroy key ground and surface targets.
The second element, the pulse force, aggregates specialized, long-range platforms and weapons capable of striking critical nodes at precisely timed intervals while operating from locations resilient to missile strikes. Rather than maintaining static positions, this element “pulses” to generate powerful but unpredictable salvos against well-defended targets, disable key nodes, frustrate an adversary’s targeting cycles, and protect valuable US assets from preemptive destruction.
Only after the edge and pulse forces suitably shape the conditions in a theater does the more traditional core force enter in strength. With an adversary’s ability to disrupt large force packages materially reduced, this third force integrates sustained strike capabilities, high throughput operations, and more robust forward basing.
This is combined arms applied to force design: edge compels enemy adaptations that pulse punishes; pulse opens windows that core exploits. This design wins by imposing concurrent, incompatible demands on the adversary’s sensing, command, and magazines—not by out-massing or out-performing any single arm.
The sections below provide a brief overview of this proposed Air Force design. It starts with an assessment of the threats and challenges facing the USAF. It then details the force design’s new elements—the edge force and pulse force—and how they work together and with the core force to achieve operational objectives. The paper then assesses the new design’s effectiveness compared to a traditional Air Force design and operational approach. Hudson Institute will publish a subsequent paper that will detail the force design and provide more comprehensive modeling of its performance.
An Improving Threat
Over the last three decades, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has transformed its military, and now it boasts the world’s largest navy and rocket force, the largest air force in Asia, and sophisticated space capabilities. These developments expand Beijing’s capacity to project power and deter what it views as unwarranted foreign intervention, aligning directly with its overall strategy of national rejuvenation by 2049.
Progress in PLA Air Force (PLAAF) aircraft quality and quantity is a central feature of the PLA’s modernization. Once overshadowed by aging platforms, the PLAAF now manages a substantial inventory of modern, high-performance fighters, bombers, and support aircraft. The PLAAF complements its fourth-generation aircraft with fifth-generation stealth fighters, such as the J-20, J-36, and J-50, that incorporate indigenous stealth coatings, low-observable designs, and advanced radars. The PLA is also upgrading its long-serving H-6 bomber series and developing variants like the H-6K and H-6N that can deliver a high volume of standoff precision strikes across the first and second island chains. These strikes could include nuclear-capable air-launched ballistic missiles.
In parallel, the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) has transformed from mainly a silo-based nuclear deterrent into a multifaceted enterprise capable of mounting conventional and nuclear precision strikes. Its array of short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles provides layered coverage of potential conflict zones. Meanwhile, systems like the DF-26 and DF-27 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) can hold targets at risk well beyond the first island chain, which is formed by Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The PLARF has also tested hypersonic glide vehicles that can complicate US missile-defense architectures. This transformation aligns with Beijing’s concept that a credible nuclear deterrent, coupled with rapid conventional precision strikes, can buy time and political flexibility in the early stages of a confrontation.
To protect its offensive capacity, the PLA fields an extensive integrated air defense system (IADS) that blends domestic surface-to-air missiles like the HQ-9B, HQ-19, and HQ-22 with improved Russian S-400-based technology to achieve overlapping coverage of inland, coastal, and offshore areas. Expanding PLAAF fighter patrols far from the mainland as well as electromagnetic warfare (EW) against adversaries’ target acquisition, radar, and communications systems augment the PLA’s IADS.
The PLA organizes and orchestrates its military capabilities to implement the concept of Intelligentized Warfare. Under this operational approach, the PLA uses artificial intelligence–enabled software to quickly assess sensor information so that commanders can develop effective courses of action and fires plans, often with the assistance of AI-enabled computer tools. Intelligentized Warfare depends on the PRC’s rapidly expanding military and commercial space-based capabilities for remote sensing, meteorology, signals intelligence, and navigation.
The PRC is expanding its capabilities for space control to protect its satellite constellations and hold opposing systems at risk. In addition to direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles, the PRC’s counter-space capabilities include co-orbital satellites with directed energy weapons and servicing or attack mechanisms. Although many of these space programs claim purely civilian uses, the PRC’s overarching military-civil fusion strategy ensures the PLA can apply them in combat.
The PLA’s combination of air and missile modernization, integrated air defenses, and space-based enablers has undermined traditional US power-projection advantages in the Indo-Pacific. Although the PLA still confronts gaps—particularly in combat experience and global logistics—its investments point to enduring structural and technological improvements that will persist beyond the next decade. The Air Force will need to craft robust countermeasures, new operating constructs, and flexible basing strategies to maintain a credible deterrent and project power effectively in regions increasingly shaped by Chinese military influence.
Basing and Logistics Challenges
Recent assessments have found that the PLA’s precision fires and surveillance increasingly threaten US and allied air bases across the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, the PLA has systematically expanded its infrastructure to withstand or rapidly repair after missile or air strikes. These developments pose an especially acute challenge for the Air Force, which historically relied on secure forward airfields in regions like Europe or the Middle East.
In a high-intensity scenario against the PRC, the PLA will likely attack the main US operating bases in Okinawa, mainland Japan, or Guam. Ballistic missile attacks using runway-penetrating submunitions, complemented by cruise missile strikes on fuel and munitions depots, could close airfields and damage critical logistics and command functions. Meanwhile, qualitative improvements in China’s surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities increase the likelihood that repeated follow-up strikes would hamper any large-scale US buildup.
US bases in the Indo-Pacific region possess limited protective infrastructure and lack proven procedures for rapidly repairing and reconstituting damaged sites. Air Force engineers have refined reconstitution methods, such as rapid airfield damage repair. However, forces in theater are constrained by a shortage of prepositioned repair materials and the specialized personnel necessary for managing ordnance disposal at multiple sites under near-simultaneous attacks.
Bulk fuel storage and munition distribution systems also limit air forces’ ability to sustain forward operations. Hardened underground bunkers and dispersed fuel bladders would improve survivability, but current facilities often consist of unprotected tank farms that the PLA would likely attack early. The Air Force also aggregates unprotected munitions and critical spares in rear areas. Attacking these high-value stocks would undermine the Air Force’s capacity for sustained sorties and could negate the benefits of runway repairs or hardened fuel supplies. While distributed operations under the Agile Combat Employment framework can mitigate some threats, implementing them at scale is only credible if the logistics enterprise can move supplies and personnel among a network of smaller airfields while under attack.
Planners have also highlighted potential workarounds, such as partnering more deeply with allies to increase base access. The Air Force could disperse aircraft across additional runways, such as Japanese Self-Defense Forces fields or civilian airports, to create targeting dilemmas for an adversary. However, local resistance to military air operations and the need for specialized ground equipment and hardened on-base storage may make this an impractical solution, and for the PLARF, simply scaling its missile inventory remains relatively more cost-effective.
For longer-range operations, the aerial refueling fleet’s ability to enable long-range and distributed operations hinges on resilient logistics arrangements for both tankers and receiving aircraft. Forward-based tanker units cannot function without well-protected storage sites, robust overland or over-the-shore fuel delivery methods, and sufficient runway length and ramp space for surge operations. Where runway or infrastructure capacity is too limited, or political clearances too restrictive, tankers could be forced into far rearward basing that undermines their ability to offload large volumes of fuel. These tankers then compete for available ramp and runway space with bombers and other assets.
Without a more systematic approach to logistics survivability, the Air Force could struggle to maintain a credible forward presence and fulfill allied commitments during the opening phases of a high-intensity regional conflict. Rather than relying on a single fix, the Air Force will need to integrate multiple resilience measures to address its basing and logistics challenges. These measures include dispersed forward operations, long-range pulse operations, prepositioned materials for rapid airfield repairs, low-signature fueling methods, shelters for essential command-and-control (C2) nodes, and significantly more training for engineers and ordnance-disposal personnel. In this fight, airpower is hindered less by aircraft performance than by ground vulnerability—the geometry of fuel, munitions, and repair—rendering sortie generation a transient statistic rather than a campaign variable.
A Grim Assessment
The Air Force’s basing and logistics vulnerabilities could prove catastrophic if it relies almost exclusively on tactical aircraft (TACAIR) operating from first-island-chain installations to conduct counter-air or strike operations. Even the Department of the Air Force’s own long-range forecast concedes that by mid-century Chinese ballistic and cruise missile inventories will be large enough to saturate forward locations, leaving little prospect of a reliable sanctuary. Recent modeling echoes this assessment, noting that even well-defended bases can succumb to intense, repeated missile raids that crater runways and destroy large numbers of aircraft on the ground. Once its bases are neutralized—even temporarily—the Air Force would lose its ability to respond locally, giving the PLA critical windows in which to exploit momentum or consolidate gains and achieve a fait accompli.
US dependency on forward basing might also affect the willingness of leaders in Washington to intervene. One wargame, for example, found that under various assumptions, the PLA destroyed between 200 and 500 aircraft over roughly three weeks of fighting with the USAF’s current force design. Nearly 90 percent of US air losses occurred on the ground, primarily due to concentrated ballistic- and cruise-missile strikes by the PLARF. Faced with the prospect of these losses, a US president may decline to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.
A Force Design to Regain Advantage
Air Force leaders argue that the changing threat landscape requires a new force design that can remain relevant in highly contested areas, deliver effects from long range, and retain the capacity to support global commitments. They have characterized their needs for a new force design in terms of three mission areas (MA1, MA2, and MA3) with a specific set of attributes, similar to those listed in figure 2.
This paper builds on and refines the Air Force’s foundational ideas by mapping MA1 to the edge force, MA2 to the pulse force, and MA3 to the core force, as shown in figure 2. This alignment allows us to propose specific operational phasing, force employment models, and resource allocation strategies, all of which flow naturally from official statements and give the Air Force a practical roadmap for turning broad guidance into actionable capability.
Figure 2. Attributes of the Three Force Design Elements
Source: Authors.
Our proposed force design also builds upon prior analysis, with the edge-pulse-core force construct owing much to Hudson Institute’s original study of a Taiwan Bulwark Activation Force (TBAF)—a prototype joint edge force that integrated lightweight distributed fires for counter-maritime operations. When paired with long-range fires from submarines and bombers in the early phase of a conflict (acting like a pulse force), the TBAF helped reduce the vulnerability of US tactical aircraft and surface combatants by delaying their entry until they could survive long enough to contribute to the fight. Using the TBAF to blunt the initial amphibious assault, followed by bomber and submarine anti-ship attacks, increased the damage inflicted on the PLA and cut the US military’s projected mission-capable attrition from as high as 90 percent to only 18 percent. Preserving US forces during this early action set it up to flow into the theater additional forces that were ready to deal with a potential protracted conflict.
Target prioritization was essential to the success of this concept. Pulse attacks from bombers and submarines preferentially engaged highly survivable PLA surface combatants, while the TBAF concentrated its attacks against amphibious and air assault forces. The careful sequencing allowed US forces to degrade the PLA’s amphibious lodgment attempts without incurring unsustainable losses. Two recent war games led by the authors further reinforced these insights.2
Edge Force
Small road- or barge-mobile launchers for tactical one-way-attack uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) and surface-to-air missiles would largely comprise the Air Force’s edge force. By exploiting small footprints, frequent relocations, and simple camouflage, these units could survive inside an adversary’s lethal ring of precision weapons, forcing the opponent to devote inordinate resources to finding and neutralizing them. Edge force detachments would rely heavily on austere basing, including civilian ports, roads, and waterways.
Whether deployed on the Philippines’ Batanes Islands, Japan’s Sakishima Islands, or Taiwan, the edge force units’ core aim would be to disrupt enemy air forces and increase the risk to adversary objectives. As recent operations in Ukraine demonstrate, a ground force can contest airspace sufficiently to dissuade an opponent from flying crewed aircraft into an area, essentially denying it. The Air Force’s edge force units would complement those from other services focused on counter-maritime operations, such as the US Navy’s emerging Hellscape concept.
Although designed with Western Pacific contingencies in mind, edge force units could adapt to different theaters. By scaling or reshuffling the proportion of uncrewed vehicles, short-range offensive anti-air systems, or mobile launch trucks, the Air Force could reconfigure the edge force to address missile and drone threats in the Middle East, respond to potential flashpoints in Europe, or augment allied exercises aimed at dissuading aggression.
Edge force formations would employ multiple layers of organic sensors, short-range radars, and overhead uncrewed vehicles to cue their own strikes if cut off from higher-echelon intelligence. Yet they would also link into the broader Air Force enterprise, receiving, if available, real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) from satellites, a distributed sensing grid, and allied sensor networks.
To improve their resilience, small squadrons of edge force units would move from one location to another, operating from improvised forward sites that are difficult to find and identify, creating a “Scud-hunt” problem for the PLA. Launch trucks with containerized systems like those for ground-based SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles would carry both conventional munitions and newly developed drone–munition hybrids. Deception tactics, inorganic targeting, and basic concealment will help each detachment go dark as needed, reemerging only to fire on the highest-priority targets. The edge force therefore converts cheap mobility, concealment, and commercial components into a potent threat and a taxing search‑and‑intercept problem for the adversary.
The Air Force edge force’s primary function would be conducting offensive counter-air operations below the threshold at which F-35s, F-22s, or other high-value crewed assets would typically operate. As some who support expanding the role of air denial concepts have argued, halting or degrading adversary air activity can produce outsized strategic benefits even without outright air superiority. By prepositioning these small units forward and equipping them with enough magazine depth to persist through an initial exchange of volleys, the Air Force could buy time for traditional forces to mobilize while simultaneously reducing the risk that high-end jets or bombers would face on day one of a conflict. The edge force could support counter-surface strikes, mimicking the Air Force’s historic missions with ground-launched cruise missiles.
In sum, edge force units would attrite escorts, harass logistics, and raise the PLA’s weapon-per-kill requirement until pulse forces can land decisive blows. The economics are part of the concept: by leaning on commercial components and modular designs, these groups create affordable mass, are hard to pre-target, and can be iterated faster than the PLA can close every seam.
Edge force formations would build on the expeditionary and adaptive logistics pedigree of Air Force Special Operations Command. This command’s operators are already versed in clandestine deployments, refuel-on-the-fly methods, and rapidly shifting flight plans. Local partnerships with allied forces would ensure that roads, small ports, or remote airstrips remain open for essential spares, reloads, and command elements. If extended supply lines break down, the edge force’s organic sensor-to-shooter loops would preserve basic functionality in a denied environment.
The edge force’s combination of uncrewed platforms, small air defense detachments, and containerized missile launchers offers a cost-effective, versatile, and survivable layer of combat power for the Air Force. By mixing existing weapons with newly emerging drone–munition hybrids, and networking them into both local and higher-level C2 systems, the USAF can present a difficult targeting puzzle to adversaries, complicate hostile planning, and safeguard allied territory during the critical opening phases of a conflict. The result is a design that not only complements existing airpower but can also deploy forces wherever and whenever rapid denial is needed. For the edge force, the decisive metric is not US sortie count but an adversary’s allocation: it creates cheap, mobile nodes that steadily pull reconnaissance and precision munitions away from bombers, tankers, and forward bases.
Pulse Force
In contrast to the edge force’s dispersed, close-in operations, the pulse force conducts concentrated strikes from survivable bases outside the immediate conflict area. The central idea behind the pulse force is that, even under lethal or contested conditions, the Air Force can still generate timed, near-simultaneous attacks on well-defended, high-value targets to disrupt adversary operations and drive enemy forces to adjust their defensive postures.
Like artillery that sits beyond the enemy’s effective reach, the pulse force’s long-range platforms remain poised at secure airfields or even in the continental United States. While the edge force targets enemy fighters, pulse force units surge briefly to launch precision munitions and then return to defensible bases. Consisting mostly of B-21, B-2, B-52, and B-1 bombers as launch platforms, the pulse force may also include cargo aircraft rigged for palletized munitions delivery. The unifying theme is that each platform can strike at long ranges, using advanced standoff weapons and networked kill chains, thereby minimizing the exposure window to adversary defensive salvos. By design, this concept is neither tethered to a single airfield nor reliant on extensive forward build-up, though it does rely heavily on aerial refueling and robust command, control, and sensing to cue time-sensitive strikes. The pulse force spends finite, expensive standoff weapons only against truly high‑value targets (e.g., escorts, IADS, and C2 nodes), which improves the system‑level cost‑exchange ratio.
The pulse force’s hallmark, and primary challenge, is identifying priority targets over thousands of miles. Aircraft attacking moving targets in highly contested areas will require real-time data from satellites, forward sensors, and distributed intelligence grids during the brief window when they are within range and able to survive the engagement.
The most important element of the pulse force’s targeting apparatus will be space-based moving target indicator sensing, which can feed continuously updated positional data to strike aircraft or other long-range strike assets in the pulse force, dramatically shortening decision cycles. This means that, when a “pulse” is executed, aircrews will have highly accurate, time-sensitive location information on targets such as missile launchers, air defense batteries, or naval task groups—all of which are crucial to degrading enemy anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) networks. As the chief of space operations recently emphasized, the Space Force’s evolving capacity to deliver resilient missile warning, tracking, and domain awareness will be central to enabling future kill chains and ensuring that US forces can operate inside contested zones.
The pulse force will depend on a robust C2 architecture. Because the adversary can quickly relocate high-value assets, the C2 architecture will need the ability to integrate sensor data from a wide variety of intelligence sources. Instead of pursuing universal data formats, the Air Force’s emerging approach—exemplified by the Joint Long-Range Kill Chain Organization—brings together operators, technologists, and acquisition personnel from multiple services to rapidly integrate new sensors and mesh them into operational frameworks. This collaboration model directly addresses the system-of-systems nature of kill chains, aligning advanced space-based capabilities with stealth bombers and emerging long-range munitions to maximize responsiveness and strike precision. The result is a pulse force that can both hit hard and dynamically adapt to changing target sets in high-threat environments.
Just as the edge force offsets ballistic missile threats with dispersed and mobile ground-based fires, the pulse force pursues an advantageous cost exchange at scale by hitting truly high-value adversary assets. This approach is necessary because each mission pulse consumes finite stocks of sophisticated long-range munitions. More affordable palletized long-range networked munitions deployed from an airdrop offer a potential method of increasing volume, but they require a new generation of more affordable long-range weapons.
Operating from sanctuaries beyond the range of most adversary ballistic missiles, the pulse force is supposed to be more survivable, but it may still be vulnerable over time. A variety of indirect or long-range enemy countermeasures can still attack supporting tankers, C2 nodes, and even forward staging bases. Nonetheless, the unpredictability and episodic nature of pulse strikes may generate powerful coercive effects that add strategic depth—especially when integrated with the edge force’s local denial activities.
For example, if an adversary devotes substantial resources to tracking bomber or tanker flows, it will need to divert reconnaissance away from targeting the small, distributed edge force. The pulse force can then degrade critical infrastructure and air defenses to provide windows in which the edge force can engage enemy aircraft or ships. From the adversary’s perspective, pulsed attacks become a recurring menace, forcing them to maintain a high tempo of defensive readiness with all the attendant costs.
The pulse force cannot sustain continuous strikes. A finite bomber inventory, tanker dependencies, and weapon stockpiles constrain the number of sorties and the sheer volume of missiles that the force can launch, even with well-coordinated pulses. Pulses succeed when they compress the adversary’s decision cycle faster than it can reconstitute kill chains, trading continuous presence for time-dominance at the moment of contact. If an adversary can extend or protract conflict, it may expose the vulnerability that the pulse force’s standoff weapons are not infinitely replenishable. In this sense, the pulse force is part scalpel, part sledgehammer—a specialized but finite instrument for strategic effect. Yet if used in tandem with an edge force, it can impose critical losses on the adversary while minimizing US exposure to ballistic missile salvos. Over time, it sets the conditions for the core force to break open the environment for a more sustained presence.
Core Force
Almost all of today’s Air Force falls into the new design’s core force, which addresses every air mission, albeit at different scales or risk compared to the edge or pulse forces. During peacetime, forward-deployed core force units support air defense and deterrence. When a crisis emerges, core force units surge to deploy necessary Air Force and Joint Force units and augment forward-deployed core force units. In conflict, core force units operate with allies and partners from a mix of forward, intermediate, and distant airfields, and core force aerial refueling and airlift aircraft allow US forces to maneuver in the air and on the ground.3 Armed with conventional and tactical nuclear weapons, core force units support homeland defense, strategic deterrence, and power projection, and as noted above, their operations can contribute to edge force and pulse force missions.4 Core preserves the most extensive aircraft inventory for the conflicts or phases where shorter‑range weapons and high sortie rates are decisive.
Despite its broad relevance, the core force’s current and planned structure results in a force employment approach that is brittle, slow to deploy, susceptible to attack on the ground, predictable in the air, and incapable of prosecuting a high-end conflict by itself.5 It is also by far the costliest element of the force. As shown in figure 3, the Air Force will need to shrink the core force to resource growth in the edge and pulse forces, while also adjusting the core force’s composition to ensure it remains relevant to future operations against China and other threats.
Figure 3. Relative Resource Shifts to Implement the New Force Design
Source: Authors.
The core force’s primary missions revolve around expeditionary air operations, including light and medium strikes, offensive and defensive counter-air operations, and suppression or destruction of enemy air defenses. Fighters are central to these missions, and the Air Force is evolving its fighter fleet to achieve greater survivability and reach. The multirole F-35A is currently the USAF’s most numerous low-observable crewed fighter, and it is complemented by the F-16 for counter-air operations. Ongoing Block 4 upgrades will provide the F-35A with an internal carriage of six (rather than the current four) advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles and new radio frequency (RF) and electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors to improve its capacity for counter-air operations.6 Further improvements, such as fuel drop tanks and engine upgrades or replacement, could increase the F-35A’s range. However, the core force’s role in the new force design may not demand a substantially increased range. Investments in the edge force and pulse force will be more important than extending the F-35A’s reach.
The Air Force is developing the longer-range and lower-signature F-47 to eventually replace the F-22 Raptor. The F-47 will lead the emerging Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems, which includes collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) such as the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A; these two systems are candidate designs for the first CCA increment.7 The Air Force expects CCA Increment 1 vehicles to cost about one-third that of crewed fighters, or $25–30 million apiece. Due to their low cost and potentially large inventory, commanders could treat CCAs as attritable. However, unlike the one-way attack and counter-air UAS of the edge force, Increment 1 CCAs would require similar runways and infrastructure as fighters. As a result, they will need to operate from the same airfields supporting core force fighters and will likely support manned fighter missions as “weapon trucks” or by carrying additional sensors or electronic attack payloads.
The weapons employed by fighter aircraft will also likely evolve. Longer-range weapons such as the AIM-260 will enable distributed kill chains that allow shooters to engage targets beyond their line of sight. Conversely, high-capacity, short-range weapons such as the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System allow fighters to defeat swarms of low-cost drones. And lower-cost “affordable mass” weapons such as the Extended Range Attack Munition and Powered Joint Direct Attack Munition will complement the Air Force’s current portfolio of exquisite strike weapons.8
The core force also includes cargo and refueling aircraft, which provide one of the US military’s most important competitive advantages.9 By allowing US forces to rapidly deploy around the world and sustain operations for extended periods, the mobility fleet presents adversaries with a greater variety of potential threats across multiple regions compared to the militaries of less-expeditionary powers. Although normally considered in the context of crisis response, the mobility fleet is a key element of US deterrence.
The Air Force is recapitalizing its 1950s-era fleet of KC-135 tankers with new KC-46As. Although the KC-46A program has suffered numerous deficiencies and delays, it provides more fuel offload capacity and much-improved cargo, passenger, and aeromedical transport capacity, which helps offset demand on the airlift fleet. The USAF is also adding enhanced communication and C2 capabilities to aerial refueling and other mobility aircraft. This change will improve the aircraft’s ability to dynamically plan missions and be aware of threats.10
The core force incorporates the Air Force’s ISR and EW assets, which are integral to expeditionary air operations. Fighters depend on airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) capabilities, such as those of the current E-3G, to manage air operations and provide targeting data for engagements. The Air Force is wisely planning to replace the aging E-3G with a system-of-systems approach combining space-based sensing, long-endurance UAS such as the MQ-9B Reaper, and existing crewed AEW&C aircraft. The core force’s shrinking size and role in future operations suggest this construct is more appropriate than investing a billion dollars apiece in new E-7 AEW&C aircraft. The Air Force should similarly shift its other ISR and EW platforms, such as the U-2 Dragon Lady reconnaissance aircraft and RC-135 Rivet Joint and EC-130H Compass Call EW platforms, toward uncrewed systems of systems.
Enablers
Edge, pulse, and core forces will depend on enablers that allow them to fight smarter and survive longer. The most important of these is a portfolio of capabilities for counter–command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (C5ISRT) operations that degrade PLA sensing and sensemaking. This would prevent enemy commanders from forming a reliable target picture or sequencing efficient fires. Implementing this effort would require routine discipline in RF emissions, deliberate use of decoys and jamming, and cross-domain non-kinetic effects that ride RF apertures into otherwise isolated networks to corrupt data and slow fusion at the point of use. The Air Force will need to complement counter-C5ISRT operations with efforts like Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control and the Joint Fires Network that enable more recomposable kill chains. If employed creatively, the Air Force can translate this recomposability into ambiguity for PLA commanders and initiative for the US military.
The second and complementary enabling line of effort is resilient airfields, with an emphasis on passive defense. The USAF should disperse operating sites, use camouflage and deception, prepare for rapid damage repair, build protected or underground bulk fuel storage, foster redundancy in power and water supplies, preposition mats and fill, and generate stocks sized for weeks, not days. Building out active air defenses imposes costs on the US, but a basic level of forward base resilience can complicate adversary targeting. When combined, counter-C5ISRT and recomposable kill chains complicate PLA targeting before shots are exchanged, and resilient airfields preserve forward combat power after a conflict begins.
A Changed Operational Concept
The core force will need to change how it fights to remain relevant against increasingly capable adversaries. In general, expeditionary air forces like fighters and mobility aircraft will need to remain in less-contested areas to address growing threats to airfields. The new force design accommodates this dynamic by using each force for its best purpose. Core force fighters are inefficient platforms for delivering long-range standoff munitions that are better carried by pulse force bombers. But the core force is perfectly suited for gaining and maintaining air superiority from forward bases in the later phases of a conflict. Fighter aircraft operating from nearby bases also remain one of the most effective ways to generate and maintain high sortie rates that deliver constant effect in intense or sustained campaigns.
The core force will sometimes need to fly from more contested areas to create a decision-making advantage against a peer adversary like the PRC. For example, without a forward-operating core force, the PLA could exhaust the edge force’s limited counter-air capacity, shoot down pulse force strike munitions, and attack US or allied targets in the region with overwhelming numbers of stand-in or direct attack munitions. Without the threat of core force counter-air fighters, PLA bombers could bypass ground-based forward defenses to attack intermediate and distant pulse force airfields on a greater scale. And forward-deployed core force operations impose dilemmas on the PLA, such as whether to use a higher fraction of fighter sorties for defensive combat air patrols or attacks on forward airfields. The presence of the forward core force also swells the enemy’s target set from a small number of airfields suitable for tankers and bombers to the numerous locations from which core forces can operate.11
This suggests that commanders should treat core force units as a tool in the decision-making competition during the early phases of a peer conflict. They should keep enough theater-assigned core force aircraft forward, including decoys and other counter-C5ISRT capabilities, to create challenges and dilemmas for the opponent. Core forces would retrograde as the risks of remaining forward begin to outweigh the benefits of their presence, possibly leaving decoys and EW systems on forward airfields to simulate continued air operations. The Air Force should also build out sufficient hardened shelters and passive defenses to keep these core forces in theater viable when under attack.
The core force would conduct more persistent operations forward as the enemy expends its long-range missiles and the US degrades its air defenses. This would allow the Air Force to sustain strikes and counter-air attacks with less-sophisticated munitions after the pulse force expends its stock of long-range standoff missiles and edge force units are neutralized or run out of ground-based weapons.
This new operational approach will require fewer aircraft than traditional plans that expect core force strike-fighters to conduct the bulk of attacks. However, US forces will still encounter a broad array of scenarios in which core force units remain relevant. In a constrained budgetary environment, the Air Force will need to keep some core force capacity for these missions. But the new force design will require reductions in the core force to enable the USAF to address the full range of situations it could face, from regional instability to major power war.
Our proposed construct represents combined arms warfare at the force-design level: edge shapes the problem; pulse breaks key systems; core exploits the opening; and enablers make all three feasible at acceptable risk. By thoughtfully combining and sequencing these three distinct elements, the proposed force design offers a balanced approach to competing in a high-threat environment dominated by precision fires and ISR, most notably from the PLA. Each phase operates with the explicit goal of setting conditions for the next, ensuring that large-scale deployments occur only after the US military has sufficiently reduced the adversary’s ability to detect, target, and engage. The net effect is a resilient and adaptive posture that meets the demands of both deterring and, if necessary, prevailing in the most challenging conflict scenarios, while remaining versatile enough to address the wide array of global security obligations that policymakers expect the Air Force to fulfill.
Assessing the Design
To explore how different force employment concepts might perform under the sustained pressure of a high-intensity conflict, we developed a simulation tool that captures the dynamics of force employment, rocket force attacks, amphibious invasion, and airfield protection and resilience. This is a comparative analytic model, not a high‑fidelity campaign simulation; it tests concept deltas (sequencing, posture) rather than predicting absolute loss numbers. This modeling effort illuminates critical relationships between force posture, operational phasing, and campaign outcomes. The results strongly support our proposed three-part force design concept.
We examined two contrasting operational approaches to understand how the timing and composition of forces shape campaign outcomes.12 These scenarios, while simplified, capture the essential tension between early force presence and force preservation in a missile-rich environment.13 Results hold across wide ranges of base‑attack intensity, weapon assumptions, and initial inventories; details move, but the phasing advantage persists.
Strategy A: Classic Force Employment with Heavy Reliance on TACAIR
In our first scenario, US commanders employ a classic operational concept: they use forward-deployed tactical aircraft to immediately contest the airspace over and around Taiwan and attack amphibious shipping. Commanders also begin flowing tactical aircraft from other regions toward the fight. This approach reflects decades of successful US air operations where forward basing and immediate air superiority have proven decisive.
The results reveal the fundamental vulnerability of this approach against a peer adversary armed with substantial precision strike capabilities. While modern base defenses and dispersal tactics under the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept dampen some of the catastrophic on-ground aircraft losses, the traditional approach still fails in its strategic objective. In model runs, approximately 60 percent of the invasion fleet survives to threaten or execute landings by the campaign's end. The tool does not include exhaustive modeling of naval contributions, which would almost certainly improve this result. However, the simulation serves as a useful comparison.
This outcome occurs not because the PLA destroys US aircraft wholesale on their parking ramps—improved bunkers and dispersal do present a floor for such losses—but because the broader operational system breaks down. Aircraft that survive the initial missile salvos must still operate in an environment shaped by intact adversary naval air defenses. The combination of degraded runways, persistent missile threats, and powerful shipborne air defense systems creates a compounding effect that prevents effective maritime strikes during the window when ships are vulnerable.
Strategy B: A Phased, Multi-Part Approach Delivers Decisive Results
The second scenario implements the distributed and phased employment concept at the heart of our proposed force design. Rather than rushing tactical aviation forward into the teeth of the missile threat, this approach sequences three distinct elements to shape conditions for decisive action.
During the conflict’s first hours, distributed ground-based missile launchers from Air Force and Navy edge forces begin engaging the invasion fleet and PLAAF assault and fighter aircraft. Simultaneously, pulse force strike aircraft operating from distant sanctuaries systematically target the amphibious fleet’s naval air defense escorts with long-range standoff munitions. This one-two punch proves devastating. Within days, US forces eliminate the PLA escort force that would have shielded the amphibious ships from air attack.
Early in the conflict, theater-assigned elements of the core force only conduct limited operations from the theater, augmented by decoys, to complicate enemy targeting and consume PLA strike weapons. The core force then deploys forward at scale after the edge force and pulse force have degraded naval air defenses and PLAAF fighter sweeps. In addition to attacking remaining amphibious ships, core force units begin establishing air superiority as needed across the Western Pacific.
The results of this three-phase approach are striking. While air forces sustain losses, they complete the mission. Modeling suggests that the invasion fleet is essentially annihilated, with only a single damaged vessel surviving from a force of nearly 300 ships.
Additionally, the new force design and operational approach reduce aircraft losses. Strategy A requires a much larger number of tactical aircraft at air bases in the Indo-Pacific region, of which almost half the PLA can engage with cruise or ballistic missile attacks. Mostly because of missile strikes, the number of US strike fighters on the ground drops to nearly zero by the end of the first week of the conflict. PLA air defenses eliminated the bulk of the remaining aircraft, and a small percentage of US fighters were still in the air at the simulation’s end.
In contrast, Strategy B relies on edge forces in the campaign’s opening phases to blunt the amphibious assault and contest the airspace over the first island chain. The edge force buys time for the pulse force to begin maritime strike operations against the amphibious assault, prioritizing air defense escorts and then attacking transports. Tactical aircraft in the core force remain largely outside the theater until the pulse force has degraded naval air defenses and the PLA completes its initial attacks on air bases. The core force enters the fight several days into the conflict after airfield repairs restore operations at regional air bases. In the less contested air environment, the core force more effectively counters PLA air operations and holds amphibious forces at risk around Taiwan. And more than half of the US tactical aircraft deployed to the region are still able to land and park at the simulation’s end.
Key Insights for Force Design
These results, while derived from a simplified analytical framework, reinforce several critical insights that should guide force design decisions:
The primacy of mission accomplishment over territorial control. The traditional approach failed catastrophically in preventing the amphibious assault—the campaign’s main objective. Moreover, it imposed such losses on the core force that the Air Force would be unable to wage a protracted conflict or intervene in other theaters. Replacing lost aircraft would take a decade or more. Although Strategy B ceded some battlespace to the enemy early, it accomplished the operational goal and preserved tactical aircraft needed to regain air superiority in the Western Pacific.
The power of integrated, phased operations. Success stemmed not from any single capability but from the synergistic employment of multiple force elements. The edge force’s distributed launchers created continuous pressure; long-range strikes eliminated key defensive nodes; and tactical aviation delivered the decisive blow—but only after conditions were properly set.
The importance of imposing dilemmas rather than accepting them. By refusing to present concentrated targets during the conflict's opening phase, the phased approach forced the adversary to expend precious missiles against dispersed or absent targets. This dynamic engagement strategy turned the adversary's A2/AD investment into a wasting asset.
The value of patience in warfare. Counterintuitively, withholding the most capable combat aircraft until conditions were favorable proved far more effective than committing them early. This finding challenges deeply ingrained cultural notions that the Air Force’s most important contributions are fighters, but it aligns with timeless principles of economy of force and decisive concentration.
These modeling insights, while preliminary, strongly validate the three-part force structure proposed in this report. Each force played an essential and complementary role. Their sequenced employment, rather than simultaneous commitment, creates the operational dynamics necessary for success against a peer adversary’s A2/AD complex. Sequencing is the key: by withholding large fighter packages until the edge, pulse, and enabling counter-C5ISR efforts simplify the problem, finite airframes, tankers, and magazines offer a durable advantage instead of suffering from attrition early.
Future analysis will expand this framework to include joint force contributions, examine sensitivity to key parameters, and explore adversary adaptation strategies. However, the fundamental insight remains clear: in an era of precise, long-range fires and sophisticated defenses, how forces are employed matters at least as much as what forces are available. The three-part force design concept provides the flexibility and resilience necessary to transform this insight into operational advantage.
Conclusion
Traditionalists will argue that the Air Force should not be in the business of ground-based missiles and runway-independent UAS. They will also question the wisdom of shrinking the fighter fleet and other elements of expeditionary airpower to build an edge force and expand the pulse force. After all, the existing Air Force design has proved effective in every conflict since the Cold War.
The difference today is that the threat environment precludes sustained air operations in contested areas with high ground threat density. As the war in Ukraine shows, airfields within reach of enemy drones are easily attacked at scale, and fighter aircraft can be denied using a variety of short- and medium-range air defenses. Aircraft will need to operate from ever-increasing standoff ranges, making fighters extremely inefficient. In some cases, they will be infeasible for strike operations in the opening hours of a conflict against peer adversaries and a growing number of lesser opponents. In sum, the TACAIR that made the Air Force successful in the last half-century will not be decisive in the next.
Furthermore, financial and industrial challenges are driving the need for dramatic change. If the Air Force simply procures more of current and future fighters to win a fight over Taiwan, operating costs will become crippling, and it will have insufficient capacity for routine global engagements. Specialized hedge forces, like the edge forces described above, offer a more cost-effective and sustainable solution that leverages existing commercially derived and autonomous systems to fill key operational gaps without undermining the rest of the USAF’s missions. By discreetly introducing novel drones, missiles, and sensor phenomenologies at meaningful scale—while keeping public disclosure to a prudent minimum—the Air Force can force the PLA to continuously adapt, thereby imposing costs and complicating the adversary’s planning cycles.
Shaping the Air Force around a single, worst-case China invasion scenario is neither affordable nor prudent. While the PLA remains its principal military challenger, the US military still requires globally viable airpower. Uncertainty shapes strategy, and politics often create crises that break neat assumptions. Force designs should be flexible enough to handle deep uncertainty while also being laser-focused where the stakes are highest.
A redesigned Air Force should, therefore, treat major contingencies like a Taiwan invasion not as the only priority but as a core stressor that highlights the need for new operational constructs. By adopting a combined-arms approach that includes specialized hedge forces alongside a robust core force, the United States can prepare for contested fights in the Western Pacific without compromising air operations elsewhere. This more sophisticated method, inspired by both historical lessons and emerging technological possibilities, allows the Air Force to move away from having only one option to sustain the broad, adaptable airpower that global realities demand.