Closing the Air and Missile Defense Gap in the Indo-Pacific

The United States and its Indo-Pacific allies face a critical shortfall in missile defense capabilities against China, whose massive arsenal of low-cost missiles could overwhelm defenders in the first hours of a conflict. To counter this threat, experts propose networking the air and missile defense systems of the U.S., Japan, Australia, South Korea, and Taiwan into a coordinated coalition. A recent tabletop exercise revealed that while fully unifying command is politically difficult, more limited integration is both feasible and operationally advantageous. The study developed promising concepts like "latent link," which networks sensors and shooters across the coalition to improve battlefield awareness and share tracking data without requiring a single, unified command structure.