- The report argues that China’s growing military capabilities require the United States to address the prospect of conventional military defeat and a near-term deterrence credibility gap.
- SCSP describes the PLA’s theory of victory as centered on system destruction warfare and a planned shift toward a hybrid of mechanized, informatized, and intelligentized warfare by 2027.
- Offset-X seeks to reduce the military, economic, and political costs of war for the United States and allies while increasing those costs for China.
- The report contends that closing the deterrence gap requires both new capabilities and a new Joint Force design, including a broad review of force presentation and force employment.
- Near- to medium-term capability needs are organized by warfighting functions: command and control, intelligence, movement and maneuver, fires, sustainment, information, protection, and adaptation principles for conflict adaptation and software agility both now and in future warfare environments as digital tools accelerate changes in tactics and technology over operational timelines every day here.
Offset-X Strategy is SCSP’s second Defense Interim Panel Report and builds on its earlier Offset-X work by translating a technology-centered competitive strategy into capabilities and force design requirements for the Joint Force. The report argues that China’s military modernization and the PLA’s concepts of system destruction, informatized, and intelligentized warfare create a near-term deterrence credibility gap, especially around Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific. Drawing on Defense Panel work and expert consultations, it organizes its analysis around the changing character of warfare, objectives for the Joint Force, persistent U.S. asymmetries, warfighting functions, and future force characteristics. The report identifies desired capabilities across command and control, intelligence, movement and maneuver, fires, sustainment, information, protection, and adaptation, with examples of technology-enabled solutions in an annex. It also describes a future Joint Force that is distributed and network-based, organized for human-machine teaming, software advantage, data-informed decision-making, payload prioritization, information advantage, electromagnetic spectrum maneuver, and technology-literate leadership. Policy relevance centers on near-term actions for DoD, the military services, combatant commands, Congress, allies, and partners to close a 2025–2030 vulnerability window while positioning the United States for enduring strategic competition with China.
If we lose the war on the electromagnetic spectrum, we're going to lose the war and lose it quickly.
Gen. Mark Kelly
- Stand up joint tactical units that are organically equipped to conduct distributed, multi-domain operations. A distributed, network-based force would be capable of employing small, multi-domain units inside and outside the adversary’s envisioned battlespace.
- Develop novel warfighting concepts. Each military service should develop novel warfighting and employment concepts for HMC and HMT that allow them to capture both human and machine…
- Empower tactical-unit software development. The services and CCMDs should empower tactical units to experiment with, develop, and deploy robust, reliable, and resilient software.
- Develop and field a low-cost version of a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) at scale. The CCA should follow the above principles to quickly develop and procure a low-cost version of a CCA in large numbers.
Published by the Special Competitive Studies Project. Co-publishers and external authors, where they exist, are credited in the byline above.