A bill to require the Secretary of Defense to develop and implement a strategy to strengthen multilateral deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region.

This bill mandates the Secretary of Defense to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy aimed at strengthening multilateral deterrence against regional aggression across the Indo-Pacific region. The strategy specifically targets expanding coordination with critical United States allies and partners, including Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, through enhanced multilateral access, basing agreements, command and control structures, intelligence-sharing, and joint exercises and operations. Key elements of this strategy include leveraging reciprocal access agreements to expand regional access for allied military forces, improving command and control structures, and expanding intelligence-sharing and maritime domain awareness. It also requires increasing the scope and scale of multilateral military exercises and operations, particularly among the specified allies, including more frequent combined maritime operations through strategic waterways like the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea. The strategy must also consider strategic and operational contingencies for securing military and economic avenues of approach and trade routes throughout the Indo-Pacific. The Secretary of Defense must submit this strategy to congressional defense committees within 180 days, detailing necessary funding or policy changes and additional resources required for its implementation, with an interim progress report due by March 15, 2027.