Terminology: Maritime Control and Denial

In my writings, you’ll frequently see me invoke Julian Corbett’s definitions of sea control and denial. Corbett asserted that navies can never control or deny the entirety of a given sea at all times; there simply aren’t enough naval forces in any nation’s (or conceivable coalition’s) possession to make such a degree of dominance possible. Instead, he argued, a naval force only needed to gain and then exercise control of the specific, localized sea area(s) from which it would perform its assigned operational tasks (e.g., projection of national power ashore, protection of sea lines of communication, enforcement of an offshore blockade, etc.) at a given moment in time. Once control of a given area was no longer necessary for task accomplishment, it could be relinquished without necessarily ceding anything valuable to the enemy. It follows that control can be secured in the form of a ‘moving bubble’ of highly localized superiority as a naval force maneuvers within a contested sea and executes an operation; control need not be geographically fixed or temporally protracted unless the operation’s particulars require as much.

Similar logic applies to denial. Per Corbett, a belligerent seeking to contest its adversary’s sea control should accordingly focus its denial efforts in time and space. For instance, denial efforts could be concentrated against localized areas the adversary’s forces would have to pass through or operate from in order to perform their anticipated (or ongoing) operational tasks. A weaker belligerent might not be able to do much in terms of preventing its adversary from gaining or exercising localized sea control, but it could effectively use denial operations to bog down its adversary’s campaign progress and drive up the adversary’s costs of war continuation.

Sea control and denial have obvious value to operations on, over, and below the sea. However, the use of land-based forces, sensors, communications systems, and the like to help naval forces obtain and exercise sea control—or to otherwise assert sea denial—can lead to some confusion over the boundaries of Corbett’s concepts. As an example, if a ground force’s or land-based air force’s operations on or over some territory are intended to support expansion of a naval force’s freedom of maneuver within an adjacent sea area (or deny the same to an adversary), do these non-naval operations fall under the definitions of sea control and denial? Or are they something conceptually separate?

I believe that the term ‘maritime’ is not limited to purely naval topics or oceanic operations. Indeed, per the DOD’s own Dictionary of Military Terms (Joint Publication 1-02), the ‘maritime domain’ includes “the oceans, seas, bays, estuaries, islands, coastal areas, and the airspace above these, including the littorals” (emphasis is mine). In other words, the maritime domain inherently incorporates the land and air domains when operations in those domains affect or are affected by operations at sea. I also believe Corbett’s logic of control extends to airspace and “landspace;” a force’s assets must be physically present in an air or ground area to assert any kind of control, or else an adversary gains some margin for using that area for his purposes. Corbett’s terms can accordingly be extended to apply within holistic maritime warfare. As I observed in the endnotes of my Maritime Deception and Concealment article:

Given that a maritime area combines the sea with the airspace and “landspace” that can affect or be affected by an actor’s use of the sea, “maritime control” means that a force (whether single-service, joint, or combined) has obtained and is exercising control of a localized maritime area for a certain duration and purpose; “maritime denial” means that a force is challenging an opposing force’s efforts to obtain and exercise control of a localized maritime area. (Pg 107-108)

The implication is that a force can use the land, air, or sea domains to support its efforts to obtain and exercise localized control in any of the other domains. Likewise, it can use any of these domains to prevent or contest an adversary’s localized control in any of the other domains. Control or denial within some combination of these domains is consequently essential to attaining operational objectives within a maritime theater; the particular combinations hinge on the specifics of a conflict and the associated geography. These domains are so entwined that it is difficult to see how operations within one domain could be planned and executed in isolation from those in the other domains without endangering campaign objectives.

This is what I mean in my work when I use the terms ‘maritime control’ and ‘maritime denial.’