Challenging the focus on great powers in the international debate, this book explores how rising middle power states are engaging with emerging major military innovations and analyses how this will affect the stability and security of the Indo Pacific. Presenting a data-based analysis of how middle power actors in the Indo-Pacific are responding to the emergence of military Artificial Intelligence and Killer Robots, the book asserts that continuing to exclude non-great power actors from our thinking in this field enables the dangerous diffusion of Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) to smaller states and terrorist groups, and demonstrates the disruptive effects of these military innovations on the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. Offering a detailed analysis of the resource capacities of China, United States, Singapore and Indonesia, it shows how major military innovation acts as a circuit breaker between competitor states disrupting the conventional superiority of the dominant hegemonic state and giving a successful adopter a distinct advantage over their opponent. This book will appeal to researchers, end-users in the military and law enforcement communities, and policymakers. It will also be a valuable resource for researchers interested in strategic stability for the broader Asia-Pacific and the role of middle power states in hegemonic power transition and conflict.

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform asked RAND for an independent analysis of PPBE-like functions in selected countries and other U.S. federal agencies comparable to the U.S. Department of Defense. This executive summary distills key insights from seven case studies of budgeting processes, as detailed in two companion volumes, and compiles findings from all 16 case studies in the seven-volume series.

The Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform asked the RAND Corporation for an independent analysis of PPBE-like functions in selected countries and non-Department of Defense federal agencies. This executive summary distills key insights from nine case studies of budgeting processes across comparative organizations, as detailed in three companion volumes.

The capacity to generate and project power is central to state relations in what is an inherently anarchic environment. The emergence of a major military innovation acts as a sort of circuit breaker between competitor states. By shifting the paradigm of conflict, a major military innovation can disrupt the conventional superiority of the dominant hegemonic state, giving a rising challenger who becomes a successful adopter a distinct advantage over their opponent. This is already apparent with LAWS, with China openly pursuing increasingly autonomous systems as part of a plan to leap-frog the United States, which in turn adopted the Third Offset Strategy and is investing heavily in related technologies. The political, ethical and legal challenges raised by development toward LAWS has prompted a growing body of research. While valuable, there has been a clear focus major states, particularly the United States and China, leaving a gap in understanding of the role of middle powers. Therefore, this thesis focuses on exploring how the diffusion of increasingly autonomous platforms will impact the nature of power projection in the context of Southeast Asian rising middle powers. The key goal of this thesis is to make a substantive contribution to the emerging understanding of how middle states can interact with early generation autonomous weapon systems and the impact of their initial proliferation. This thesis utilises a composite theoretical framework, which builds on Adoption Capacity Theory as the basis for its evaluation of the adoption capacity of Singapore and Indonesia. This thesis will demonstrate how the levelling effect of increasingly autonomous weapon systems will impact relations of power. This thesis concludes by demonstrating how the adoption of autonomous unmanned platforms could assist Singapore and Indonesia to maintain their careful balancing in the event of worsening hegemonic competition between China and the United States.

"Recent RAND analysis of planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) reform in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) comes at a time when the critical significance of allied and partner relationships in deterring and responding to global security threats has become increasingly apparent. There is also a renewed emphasis on deepening U.S. technology cooperation with like-minded nations. Foremost among these efforts--and the most ambitious--is the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) trilateral security partnership. AUKUS aims not only to deliver new shared technologies that will enhance the military capabilities of the three partner nations but also to integrate their underlying defense sectors. Such technology cooperation and international defense-industrial integration could contribute to integrated deterrence through enhanced collaboration, innovation, interoperability, collective military capability, and industrial capacity. Pursuing a strategy of integrated deterrence that relies on stronger, more-interoperable capabilities, greater technology cooperation, and deeper industrial ties has enormous implications for the PPBE-like processes within these countries. Australia, the UK, and the United States will need to align their national resource allocation processes with their international strategy and shared vision to achieve the goals exemplified by AUKUS. This paper addresses the implications of stronger allied cooperation for the reform of both DoD's PPBE processes and the comparative processes of U.S. allies and partners, particularly the members of the AUKUS security partnership."--Publisher's description.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process is a key enabler for DoD to fulfill its mission. But in light of a dynamic threat environment, increasingly capable adversaries, and rapid technological changes, there has been increasing concern that DoD's resource planning processes are too slow and inflexible to meet warfighter needs. As a result, Congress mandated the formation of a legislative commission to (1) examine the effectiveness of the PPBE process and adjacent DoD practices, particularly with respect to defense modernization; (2) consider potential alternatives to these processes and practices to maximize DoD's ability to respond in a timely manner to current and future threats; and (3) make legislative and policy recommendations to improve such processes and practices for the purposes of fielding the operational capabilities necessary to outpace near-peer competitors, providing data and analytical insight, and supporting an integrated budget that is aligned with strategic defense objectives. The Commission on PPBE Reform asked RAND to provide an independent analysis of PPBE-like functions in selected other countries and other federal agencies. In this report--Volume 5 in a seven-volume set of case studies--RAND researchers analyze the defense budgeting processes of five additional allied and partner nations: France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and Sweden. Relative to the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada (considered in Volume 2), the cases in this volume are more varied and have some notable differences from the United States.

In this second volume of four reports examining nine case studies of defense budgeting processes across comparative organizations, RAND researchers conducted case studies of the budgeting processes of Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.