Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / Reissued 30 May 2017 to correct misspelled name of Dept. Chair on title page. / The Black Sea historically was the theater of rivalry between great powers, mainly the Ottoman Empire and Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, rivalry on the Black Sea became much less intense as Russia weakened and NATO was not paying much attention to it. After the 2008 invasion of Georgia and the 2014 annexation of Crimea, NATO gradually resumed activity on the Black Sea, sending warships of non-littoral NATO members and conducting joint maritime exercises. Russia built a robust anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bubble in Crimea and responded to NATO activation with provocative actions against NATO ships. At its most recent summit in Warsaw in 2016, NATO paid quite a lot attention to the Black Sea issue and committed to increase NATO presence in the area; nevertheless, the organization shared no signs of a clear strategy. This thesis discusses a potential alternative strategy for NATO, which is based on using its own strategy against Russia—with littoral NATO members and partners building a couple of A2/AD bubbles around the Russian one. The suggested strategy consists of the creation of a Black Sea defense coordination center, an integrated network of all source data exchanged, and the combined capabilities of robust land-based mobile anti-ship missiles, mobile air defense systems, and sea and air surveillance radars, as well as aviation and naval assets. / Civilian, Ministry of Defence of Georgia

新戰爭趨勢下的空海軍事作戰硏究: 以美中軍事競爭爲例 / By announcing ‘pivot to Asia’ policy in 2011, the 2nd Obama Administration is moving U.S. strategic center of gravity to East Asia-western Pacific area. Inter alia, U.S. is intensively deploying its conventional military forces on this area in order to check China emerging regional military power by its sustained economic growth, and ‘Air-Sea Battle’ concept is mentioned as a background of the military disposition. This battle concept is now interpreted as a thing to counter-act Chinese expansionists’ maritime strategy has been constructed since 1980’s for regional extension of influence in military. Received much attention from military academia, the Air-Sea Battle concept is recognized as a regular operation doctrine derived from superiority in military technology has dominated war fighting styles of the U.S. military forces for a long time as well as the military has put stress on it by itself and conservative military professionalism. However, war was just a repeated event tackling enemy’s weak points through unthinkable war patterns in terms of its mean and way, and especially the war patterns served a golden opportunity for the weak encountering the strong enemy. Meanwhile, the military cannot adapt to changes seasonably signed its own death warrant and recent asymmetric warfare between regular forces and irregular ones in Middle East shows that point suitably. In the respect, this thesis will identify critical but neglected threats on the Air-Sea Battle and will search for its limitations while expecting China’s spectrum of war at the comprehensive and multi-modal level.