As the Air Force envisions a future in which a network of small bases in austere locations allows airmen to swiftly plug in and out of operations, service officials are calling on the Army to bulk up its portion of air base defense.
“I would feel more confident if we had a more robust, active base defense, quite frankly,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin told reporters at the Pentagon recently. “That’s one of those where we’ve been working with the Army, and that’s something that the [Defense] Department has taken on as a joint requirement that we need to improve our base defenses.”
The Air Force concept, dubbed Agile Combat Employment, would provide for greater camouflage and agility in the Indo-Pacific environment but puts some assets in a position increasingly vulnerable to threats from Chinese ballistic and cruise missiles and drone swarms, he said.
Base defense against these kinds of attacks has historically been an Army mission, but under the current financial outlook, Army officials are hesitant to take on the expensive and complex role in its entirety. ACE would multiply the number of capabilities needed to thwart sustained threats in the expansive region.
The under secretaries and vice chiefs from both services are leading the joint effort, Allvin noted, adding that together they need to define the timing, requirements and other resourcing to get the capabilities fielded to meet the Air Force’s needs. Much of those factors are still in flux.
For now, the Air Force is considering a myriad of ideas to protect these small bases, including mobile advanced missile defense systems.
“If we can’t have them at every space, we want to have them be able to decide where to place them, which means they need to be mobile enough to be able to not just be fixed,” Allvin said. “That’s some of the cleverness that has to happen with this, as well as the ability to rapidly move.”
Pacific Air Forces Commander Gen. Kevin Schneider agreed, saying last week that at the heart of ACE is the ability to “disaggregate our force for survivability, reaggregate it for lethality.”
“I will never admit to being as defended enough as I would like,” he told reporters during the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space, Cyber conference. “For the highly contested environment in which we operate, I'm always looking for ways that we can put more base defense, whether it's localized area or localized base defense or the higher capability into play.”
Schneider and his U.S. Army Pacific counterpart recently had a “conference,” he said, in which the pair discussed ways to align schemes of maneuver, ACE and multidomain operations to identify where there are resources or capabilities inherent to either service that are complementary to the other -- especially in the western part of the Indo-Pacific region.
“We're probably going for similar or same real estate. So, let's find ways that we can do more together, to bring our collective capabilities to bear . . . and certainly expanding those conversations to include the Navy and the Marine Corps as well,” Schneider said. “Some of these are big service decisions because these are big bills to pay, I would say, at the operational level and the things that we do in our headquarters.”
Current conversations suggest that solutions may be active -- in the form of kinetic effects and directed energy -- or passive. The “old school things of camouflage, concealment and deception are still alive and well, we just need to upgrade them to a 21st century context,” Allvin said.
He deferred specific questions about proposed capabilities for the joint effort to the Army.
Schneider said the Army’s 94th Air and Missile Defense Commander Brig. Gen. Pat Costello in particular “is an innovative thinker,” adding that their teams often work alongside one another to come up with “creative solutions based on the threats that we’re facing.”
The Army’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability and Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor are part of those talks, he added, but nothing is yet set in stone.
“There’s been dialogue and an understanding between the Army and the Air Force and [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] that we will work together,” Allvin said. “I haven't signed a [memorandum of understanding], but there still is an understanding, and so the Army is sorting out how to do it for air bases. They also have their own for their maneuver elements as well. But they are pursuing some areas specifically with us to support Agile Combat Employment.”
ACE an issue of resources for Army
The Army’s role in the implementation of the Agile Combat Employment concept ultimately comes down to resources, which Secretary Christine Wormuth has been emphasizing of late.
Wormuth said during a Sept. 12 event hosted by the Stimson Center that she has been concerned about China building out its anti-access/area-denial capabilities going back to her time serving in the Obama administration.
“You know, they have thousands of missiles of all sorts of different ranges, and the kind of operational situation that that sets up means that we’re not going to be able to mass many, many, many fighter jets in one particular place, because it’s too rich of a target,” she said.
The Air Force has concluded it must disperse its aircraft to many different locations and move them around quickly to ensure they do not become easy targets, Wormuth noted. The Army’s role is to provide air defense protection and sustainment, but challenges exist when it comes to capacity.
The Army’s Patriot air defense system is the “most stressed force element” for the service, in part because Ukraine has needed them during its conflict with Russia, Wormuth noted. The U.S. Army also uses Patriot to protect forces in the Middle East.
The Army has a “finite number” of Patriot batteries, Wormuth said. However, the Army is growing that piece of force structure to add an additional composite battalion, and another Patriot battalion in the next few years, she noted.
The Army is also working on the Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) system, which is a “mobile, ground-based weapon system” designed to defeat cruise missiles, drones, rockets, artillery and mortars.
The first increment 2 battalion of IFPC is scheduled to be fielded by fiscal year 2026, according to a Congressional Research Service report issued this summer.
The Army will eventually have multiple IFPC battalions, as well as counter UAS batteries, which are capabilities that could be employed as part of ACE, Wormuth noted.
The problem of scarce resources comes during a time when the Army must deal with the problem of flat budgets year after year.
“The issue is tension between supply and demand. And I think that’s the biggest issue that we have to manage with the Air Force, is how are we going to try to meet the needs that they may have in the Indo-Pacific, while also continuing to protect forces in the Middle East or other places,” she said.
In response to a question about what Army funding in FY-26 might look like for ACE, service spokesman Jason Waggoner wrote to Inside Defense Sept. 17 that “at this time, ACE is an Air Force concept and not an Army funded program.”
Waggoner emphasized that the Army would continue to work with the Air Force on the ACE “concept and methodology” and wrote that the Army is “constantly looking for new and unique ways to combine our next-generation multidomain operations with other exquisite concepts and capabilities.”
“The combination of ACE methodology, the Army's integrated air and missile defense network, multidomain operations and the USAF’s air base defense capabilities will provide senior military commanders with improved capabilities and options that will ultimately increase deterrence around the world,” he wrote.
Besides money, another challenge the Army faces in its role is manning the pieces of force structure that would be used as part of ACE, according to Wormuth. She noted that there have been difficulties in retention and recruiting into the air defense branch of the service because of the high operations tempo – a measure of unit activity level.
“It’s hard to recruit into that particular branch and set of military occupational specialties because folks know that when you sign up to go into that particular area, you’re going to be busy. You are deploying, and you’re away from your family more often than almost anyone else in the United States Army,” she said.