HONOLULU — U.S. Army leaders assembled in Hawaii this week emphasized the importance of a multi-pronged effort, from the foxhole to the factory, necessary to deter near-peer adversaries across the vast Indo-Pacific.
Speaking at the 2026 Land Forces Pacific Symposium and Exposition, U.S. Army Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of United Nations Command, ROK/U.S. Combined Forces Command and U.S. Forces Korea, called the joint military-industrial approach “the ultimate guardian of peace.”
Delivering the symposium’s opening keynote, Brunson cited military strength, industrial sustainability and allied collaboration as primary components needed to create “a true fortress for all our nations and interests here in the Indo-Pacific.”
“Sustainment is not the tail,” Brunson said, referencing industrial networks capable of supporting far-reaching, forward combat operations across the region.
“It’s the teeth of our deterrence,” he said. “Strategic concepts only survive as long as they are backed by industrial endurance.”
Brunson’s “fortress” reference is a nod to a “fortress chain” of defense burden sharing among regional allies, such as South Korea, who have been ramping up industrial capabilities — weapons replenishment and equipment repair principally among them — to be positioned closer to the fight.
“Korean dry docks have already overhauled [the] USNS Wally Schirra and Cesar Chavez, with two more in the queue,” he said, citing maintenance the ROK has completed on U.S. ships. “That is the operational blueprint. … We cannot shuttle broken equipment across an ocean for repair while an adversary evolves on our doorstep.”
That type of burden sharing, Brunson said, “complicates every adversary calculation.”
For its part, the Trump administration has increasingly pushed for allies to take on more responsibility for regional defense spending.
Across Europe, defense spending in 2025 surged 14% to $864 billion, according to a report published last month by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Military expenditures across Asia also soared in 2025, with Japan’s defense spending climbing 9.7% and Taiwan’s 14%, among others.
“U.S. allies in Asia and Oceania, such as Australia, Japan and the Philippines, are spending more on their militaries, not only due to long-standing regional tensions but also due to growing uncertainty over U.S. support,” Diego Lopes da Silva, senior researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme, wrote in the assessment. “As in Europe, U.S. allies in Asia and Oceania are also under pressure from the Trump administration to spend more on their militaries.”
That emphasis has yielded results in South Korea, which Brunson credited with being a “producer of security” rather than a “consumer” while promising to up its defense spending to 3.5% of its GDP.
Shared deterrence responsibilities across the Indo-Pacific were also on display just days before the launch of LANPAC 2026, as the U.S. military wrapped up the 41st iteration of Exercise Balikatan, the largest annual bilateral exercise between the U.S. and the Philippines.
This year’s 19-day exercise was also joined by Australia, Japan, New Zealand, France and Canada, the latter four of which put troops on the ground for the first time as part of the exercise.
“Balikatan 2026 marked a strategic evolution from a bilateral exercise to a full-scale, multinational mission rehearsal for the defense of the Philippines,” U.S. Navy Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said of the event. “That growth reflects the security environment. It reflects the sovereign choices of free nations.”
J.D. Simkins is Editor-in-Chief of Military Times and Defense News, and a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War.
