Vol. 40, May 2023
Key Points
Kill chains are a process to find, fix, track, target,
and engage targets, then determine strike results.
Completing precision strike kill chains at scale is the
foundation to prevailing in armed conflict. Kill chains
are systems of systems that consist of sensors,
strike platforms, the weapons they deliver, and the
networks they use to share information.
The development of increasingly effective kill
chains and countermeasures to defeat them
can be described as a long-term competition.
China’s PLA has developed kinetic and non-kinetic
countermeasures to degrade or defeat every step in
the U.S. military’s kill chains at scale.
The U.S. Air Force must continuously evolve its kill
chains to optimize their scale, scope, speed, and
survivability to win the kill chain competition against
the PLA in a major Pacific conflict.
To maintain its kill chain superiority in the near-to-
mid-term, the Air Force must increase its capacity
of F-35 and B-21 aircraft that are capable of
independently closing kill chains in communications
degraded or denied environments.
The Air Force should incorporate kill chains that
consist of disaggregated families of systems that
are more resilient and difficult to defeat into its
force design in the long-term. To outpace PLA
countermeasures, Air Force air battle managers
must have the tools and authority to define and
construct kill chains using these disaggregated
systems in real-time.
“Kill chain” describes the process militaries use to attack targets in the
battlespace. e kill chain can be broken down into specic steps—nd, x,
track, target, engage, and assess—that enable planners to build and task forces
for combat operations. e U.S. military has long relied upon its superior
ability to rapidly close kill chains against adversaries. is advantage is now
at risk. China has developed countermeasures to obstruct or collapse U.S. kill
chains, which could lead to combat failures that have devastating, long-term
consequences for the security of the United States and its allies and partners.
To overcome these challenges, the Air Force must increase the scale,
scope, speed, and survivability of its kill chains. In practice, the service must
determine specic kill chain capability objectives for each of these attributes:
• Scale: e number of simultaneous kill chains a military can close.
• Scope: e distance, area, and duration over which a military can
prosecute targets.
• Speed: e ability of a military to outpace adversary countermeasures
to deny, disrupt, or break its kill chains.
• Survivability: How well a military maintains the integrity and
eectiveness of its kill chains, even under attack.
In the near-to-mid-term, 5 and 6 generation combat aircraft will be
crucial to assure kill chain dominance because they are consolidated “sensor-
shooter” nodes that can independently close kill chains and facilitate the
completion of other missions in localized areas of contested battlespaces. ese
aircraft will continue to provide air battle managers the necessary tools to rapidly
compose resilient kill chains well into the future as the U.S. Air Force migrates
toward a family-of-systems approach. Over the long term, the Air Force’s
advanced battle management system (ABMS) system of systems must support
kill chains that are highly resilient, interoperable, and have large numbers of
distributed nodes that are more dicult for a peer aggressor to defeat.
Abstract
Scale, Scope, Speed & Survivability:
Winning the Kill Chain Competition
by Heather R. Penney
Senior Resident Fellow, Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies
MITCHELL INSTITUTE
Policy Paper
