Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 84

of warfare, A2/AD specializes in avoiding U.S.
strengths while targeting American vulnerabilities
and dependencies.
Fighting against A2/AD, new challenges emerge
and familiar challenges take on new forms. For
example, in the hands of an agile, adaptive, and
aware A2/AD adversary, time becomes a weapon
when its short, sharp, rapid onset denies America
time to mobilize its resolve, economy, Reserves, and
National Guard completely by blunting the projection of military forces. Moreover, America’s ability
to operate from convenient regional sanctuaries to
safely mass forces and effects, build combat power,
stage logistics, and reinforce a campaign are the
key U.S. activities an A2/AD adversary will seek
to continuously preclude.
Before an A2/AD crisis becomes a full-blown
conflict elsewhere, America’s government, military,
and private sector coul d suffer large-scale, widearea, or focused cyberspace attacks whose purposes
are to cripple America’s ability to mobilize, generate, deploy, and fight. Harkening to total war, our
adversaries may utilize cyber attacks to undermine
U.S. and ally public support for military operations.
Elsewhere, at relevant American forward bases, the
A2/AD adversary’s missile forces may compel a
U.S. defensive posture before America can deploy
adequate missile defense capacity.
To sketch some broad campaign strokes of what
A2/AD looks and sounds like, here is a notional
basket of hostile activities any A2/AD adversary
or competitor could undertake today. In those portions of the operations area where the adversary’s
navy has sufficient freedom of action, it could mine
littoral waters and cripple U.S. expeditionary naval
forces and the maritime portion of the joint force
logistics enterprise just as America is attempting to
ramp up presence and build combat power. Missile
raids against area U.S. Navy surface warfare groups
may cause them to retire to mitigate risk of further
attack. In space, using skills and access credentials
stolen beforehand, the adversary could disrupt control of U.S. space assets and degrade orbital platform
services with a three-way combination of offensive
counterspace, offensive electromagnetic, and offensive counternetwork effects. To preclude a force
buildup or to attack a massed force, key regional
bases could suffer withering missile raids that
damage facilities, delay reinforcement, and obstruct
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Potential Land Force Targets
RECONNAISSANCE:
• Key terrain, A2/AD systems
• Potential routes, corridors, zones
for follow-on joint force operations
RAIDS:
• Shore, coastal anti-ship missile
batteries
• Integrated air defense sites, facilities
• Adversary C4ISR nodes
• Adversary telecom sites
• Key adversary logistics facilities
SEIZURES
• Missile trans-shipment, storage sites
• Missile staging, assembly, firing
areas
• Maritime mine storage, staging sites
• Electromagnetic effects generation
sites
Figure 3: Potential Land Force Targets

the buildup of combat power. Overall, adversary
attacks in every domain using kinetic and nonkinetic
force may rapidly cripple the U.S. logistics enterprise
all the way back to the continental U.S. zip codes.
Finally, because in war all sides have a story to tell,
a war of counterinformation within the larger conflict
will shift into hyperdrive as the adversary bombards
media arenas with psychological shaping whose
purpose is less to inform and more to undermine
U.S. credibility and presence. That is certainly not
an all-inclusive list of what A2/AD can do, but these
points establish a foundation from which to tether
the goals of A2/AD.5
As shown in figure 4, nations employing A2/
AD have four goals; however, it is inaccurate to
November-December 2013

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