The Pacific deterrence problem is not just whether the joint force can see. It is whether it can stay coherent long enough to deny a rapid success.
Danger Zone is really a warning about timing
Hal Brands and Michael Beckley’s Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China is, at its core, a warning about time. Their argument is that China is not simply a rising power. It is a peaking power, one that may become more dangerous precisely because it sees a narrowing window to secure key objectives before adverse demographic, economic, and geopolitical trends worsen its position. In the Air University review of the book, the core claim is summarized clearly: peaking powers are often more aggressive and unpredictable because they fear their best moment may be slipping away. In that context, China may be tempted to pursue quick geopolitical gains before the correlation of forces moves further against it.
That is what makes scarcity so important to command and control and air battle management (C2ABM) in the Pacific.
Scarcity is not just an acquisition problem
The most common way to discuss air battle management is to focus on platform quality, sensor performance, or the elegance of future architectures. Those things matter. But in a theater defined by distance, fragmentation, and communications stress, the bigger problem may be quantity and endurance. Deterrence weakens when Beijing can plausibly believe that a handful of successful blows against aircraft, against island nodes, or against communications pathways could fracture the allied ability to build the picture, prioritize threats, direct aircraft, and keep combat power coherent. In the Pacific, scarcity is not just an acquisition problem. It is a deterrence problem.
That point is no longer theoretical. Since 2022, the United States has already begun recapitalizing key Pacific islands through projects such as runway restoration and divert-airfield work on Tinian, major airfield upgrades on Yap, and broader infrastructure and radar development in places like Palau. In other words, the strategic-island logic has already started to move from argument to policy. The remaining question is whether air battle management capacity, airborne and ground-based, will be built with the same seriousness.
The E-7 buy must be sized for the theater
That is why the E-7 buy matters so much. The issue is not merely replacing the E-3 with something newer. The issue is whether the Air Force will procure enough airborne air battle management capacity to support real combatant command requirements in the largest and most operationally demanding theater on earth. If a peaking China is tempted by the prospect of a short war or a rapid fait accompli, then the United States should not give it additional confidence by fielding too few theater-wide airborne air battle management nodes. The most dangerous message a thin E-7 buy could send is not budgetary prudence. It is that the joint force may be easier to disorganize than advertised. That danger flows directly from the logic Brands and Beckley describe in Danger Zone: the risk is greatest when Beijing believes decisive action may work now better than later.
Strategic islands matter because they anchor air battle management
The same logic applies on the ground. Strategic islands in the Pacific are not simply places to disperse aircraft or stage fuel and munitions. They are becoming operational anchors from which the joint force must preserve air battle management capacity under pressure. That is why recent U.S. investment in places like Tinian, Yap, and Palau matters beyond mere dispersal. It shows that the strategic-island logic is already moving from theory to policy.
That logic was already visible in Winning in the Indo-Pacific Despite the Tyranny of Distance, which argued in 2022 that the United States needed to recapitalize strategic islands along the Second Island Chain because the First Island Chain was becoming increasingly vulnerable to Chinese bombers, cruise missiles, and theater ballistic missiles. It specifically pointed to Midway, the Marianas, Palau, and the Marshall Islands as locations that could add capacity, survivability, and strategic depth if equipped with multiple runways, protected infrastructure, and adequate air defenses. The remaining question is whether air battle management capacity will be built onto that foundation with the same seriousness. Strategic islands should not be viewed only as places from which aircraft launch or refuel. They should also be viewed as places from which the joint force preserves the picture, sustains regional awareness, and maintains coherent air battle management after the opening blow. That is also the implication of The Arsenal of Democracy Needs an Air Battle Management Plan: the Pacific does not just need more places to operate from. It needs more places from which the force can continue to exercise delegated C2 authorities when airborne nodes are stretched, displaced, or lost.
Space and datalinks matter, but they cannot carry the architecture
That point becomes even sharper when paired with No Matter the Kit: Focus on the Development of the Air Battle Manager Weapon System. That piece argues that the coming fight may span vast distances, that those distances will strain the limitations of radar and radio on tactical C2 platforms, and that critical connectivity must be maintained even when air battle managers operate from an austere island in the Pacific. It also calls for a layered line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight communications architecture and argues that operators must be able to employ all available networks to execute the commander’s intent within acceptable risk. The implication is hard to miss: space-based sensing and datalinks are crucial, but they should be treated as contested and potentially fleeting once shooting starts. That is precisely why a layered architecture is necessary. If any single path can be disrupted, then no serious deterrent architecture can depend on a single pristine network or a tiny number of high-demand airborne nodes.
Scarcity becomes dangerous when the force assumes the network will hold
A great deal of current debate assumes that if data can be moved from enough non-organic sensors through enough mesh networks, the force can accept thinner inventories of organic air battle management platforms. That is a dangerous assumption in the Pacific. Non-organic sensing is crucial. So are datalinks. So are space-enabled pathways. But a war with China is exactly the sort of fight in which those paths should be expected to degrade, fragment, or disappear in sectors and at times that matter most. That does not make them unimportant. It makes redundancy and depth more important. It means the Air Force should not think of E-7 capacity as a boutique fleet and strategic-island radar coverage as a secondary enhancement. Both contribute to the joint force’s ability to remain coherent after first contact.
In C2ABM terms, Brands and Beckley’s warning points to a simple reality: deterrence weakens when an adversary believes it can fracture the force’s coherence faster than the joint force can restore it.
In the Pacific, thin inventories can be decisive
That is why the Pacific scarcity problem is different from a normal modernization shortfall. In a smaller theater, thin inventories are dangerous. In the Pacific, they can be decisive. The theater’s distances increase transit time, stretch support, complicate mutual support, and magnify any break in the C2 web. A force that loses even a small number of key airborne or ground-based air battle management nodes may not simply become less efficient. It may lose the ability to maintain a coherent operational picture across the battlespace quickly enough to deny a rapid move. That is the sort of opening a peaking power might gamble on. Brands and Beckley’s argument in Danger Zone should therefore be read not only as a warning about Chinese intent, but as a warning about American assumptions. A force built on too little air battle management capacity may invite exactly the sort of risk the book warns about.
Buying too little now just costs more later
This is also why the E-7 buy must be sized correctly the first time. Buying a small number now and planning to revisit later is not thrift. It is a bet that time is available, that attrition will be limited, and that future dollars will be kinder than present ones. It is the same kind of logic that has repeatedly forced later rethinks in other tactical aircraft portfolios. In the Pacific, that habit is especially dangerous because the point of the fleet is not merely to exist on paper. The point is to support combatant command requirements across a theater so large that scarcity is immediately visible to friend and foe alike. If Beijing is searching for signs that the United States might struggle to sustain theater-wide air battle management under attack, a thin E-7 buy is exactly the wrong signal to send.
Ground-based air battle management nodes make island recapitalization operationally meaningful
That is why ground-based sensors alone are not enough. The Pacific requires ground-based air battle management nodes, not just radars. Sensors help build the picture, but nodes are what help preserve the function. They are what keep information tied to prioritization, timing, direction, and force employment. Without that broader architecture, island recapitalization risks becoming a basing story rather than a war-fighting story.
That is precisely where Winning in the Indo-Pacific Despite the Tyranny of Distance still matters. Its argument for multiple runways, maritime access, and defended infrastructure on strategic islands was really an argument for operational depth. The same logic applies to air battle management. A resilient Pacific posture requires not just places to launch from, but places from which the joint force can sustain theater awareness and continue to orchestrate combat power after disruption.
This is where No Matter the Kit: Focus on the Development of the Air Battle Manager Weapon System is especially useful. It argues that the coming fight may span vast distances, that those distances will strain the limits of radar and radio on tactical C2 platforms, and that critical connectivity must be maintained even when air battle managers operate from an austere Pacific island. That is a reminder that the real requirement is not merely equipment on the ground. It is a layered architecture of ground-based sensors, mobile air battle management nodes, LOS and BLOS communications, and trained crews who can hold the picture together when the network begins to fragment.
That is what makes strategic islands operationally meaningful. A distributed set of defended, ground-based air battle management nodes across key islands complicates Chinese targeting in the same way that multiple runways and dispersed aviation do. It forces Beijing to solve a broader, more resilient problem before it can expect to create operational confusion. The more the joint force can preserve theater awareness and air battle management from multiple positions, the harder it becomes for China to believe that a single sharp opening blow will create confusion faster than allied forces can recover.
The larger lesson
That is the larger lesson. The Pacific scarcity problem is not just about the number of aircraft, radars, or kits in isolation. It is about whether the United States is building enough layered air battle management capacity for China not to reasonably expect to unravel it early. Brands and Beckley warn in Danger Zone that the danger zone is the period in which a peaking China may be tempted to strike because delay looks worse than risk. In that environment, deterrence depends less on elegant future concepts than on whether the force can stay coherent under fire, across distance, and after disruption. Airborne E-7s sized to real theater demand, ground-based sensors on strategic islands, mobile air battle management nodes, and layered LOS and BLOS communications are not peripheral details. They are part of the practical foundation of deterrence by denial in the Pacific, as argued in The Arsenal of Democracy Needs an Air Battle Management Plan and No Matter the Kit.
The real danger is not simply that the United States could have too few assets. It is that it could field just enough to look modern in peacetime, but too few to demonstrate resilience in war. In the Pacific, that gap between appearance and endurance is exactly where deterrence begins to erode.
Col Grant “SWAT” Georgulis, USAF, is a Master Air Battle Manager and currently assigned as the Deputy Chief of C2 Inspections as part of the Headquarters NORAD and NORTHCOM Inspector General team. He most recently finished a year-long Air Force National Defense Fellowship at The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies for the academic year 2024-2025. He entered the Air Force in 2007 through the ROTC program at Texas State University–San Marcos. SWAT has served on a combatant command component staff, was an Air Force Weapons School instructor, and graduated from the Naval War College’s College of Naval Command and Staff and Air University’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. He previously commanded an E-3G Squadron, the 965 Airborne Air Control Squadron, at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or U.S. government.
Photo by Feyza Dastan on Pexels
Leave a Reply