U.S. Major Combat Operations in the Indo-Pacific

The study described in this report assessed the potential for the United States to receive support in air component capabilities from partners and allies in the event of a major combat contingency in the Indo-Pacific. A companion report focuses on technical and operational considerations associated with partner and allied support: whether they have the capability and capacity to support U.S. air operations in a major conflict. This report focuses on the geopolitical side of the equation: whether partners and allies have the willingness to support U.S. operations. Capabilities alone do not equal warfighting outcomes; the partners and allies must be willing to join the United States in the conflict. The authors identified 12 countries for the focus of the analysis, representing a mix of U.S. treaty allies, significant regional players, and countries with specific air component assets potentially important to a contingency. These countries are Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. The authors then defined four potential scenarios for high-end conflict against which they assessed as these countries' possible contribution: a conflict over Taiwan, a second Korean war, a maritime conflict in the South China Sea, and a major stability operation on the Korean Peninsula following a collapse of North Korea.