Mutually-beneficial Alliances and partnerships are an enduring strength for the United States, and are critical to achieving our objectives, as the unified response to Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated. Answering this “call to action,” the Department will incorporate ally and partner perspectives, competencies, and advantages at every stage of defense planning.
The Department will advance our goals through three primary ways: integrated deterrence, campaigning, and actions that build enduring advantages.
- Integrated deterrence entails developing and combining our strengths to maximum effect, by working seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, other instruments of U.S. national power, and our unmatched network of Alliances and partnerships. Integrated deterrence is enabled by combat-credible forces, backstopped by a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent.
- Campaigning will strengthen deterrence and enable us to gain advantages against the full range of competitors’ coercive actions. The United States will operate forces, synchronize broader Department efforts, and align Department activities with other instruments of national power, to undermine acute forms of competitor coercion, complicate competitors’ military preparations, and develop our own warfighting capabilities together with Allies and partners.
- Building enduring advantages for the future Joint Force involves undertaking reforms to accelerate force development, getting the technology we need more quickly, and making investments in the extraordinary people of the Department, who remain our most valuable resource.
The Department will develop, design, and manage our forces—linking our operational concepts and capabilities to achieve strategic objectives. This requires a Joint Force that is lethal, resilient, sustainable, survivable, agile, and responsive.
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