What is Air-Sea Battle?

Vice Admiral Allen G. Myers was a late scratch from the program, but as they say - the show must go on. Today's guest speaker is Admiral Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations. Below are his opening remarks at the Brookings Institution Air-Sea Battle Doctrine on May 16, 2012.  The entire Brookings Institution event can be viewed at this link.

What is Air-Sea Battle?

Thank you very much, General Schwartz. Ladies and gentlemen, you saw this morning an anecdote of the importance of Air-Sea Battle. General Schwartz was attempting to communicate with all of you and you saw something came up to try to eliminate that. We worked together; I gave a little head nod, we went in there, a little cyber control of the EM spectrum, and things worked out.

So I don’t know how much better we can explain how this works. General Schwartz gave us a nice description of the history and really the mandate of the compelling need for Air-Sea Battle.

I’d like to talk just a little bit about why we think it’s important, what it can do for us, how we think it can be a good enabler and an enhancer for threats to access, and what our efforts will be to implement this concept. Also, what’s been going on so far and what are we going to do here in the future?

We think there’s a good strategic operational, tactical, and institutional value for Air-Sea Battle. The anti-access area denial is not the only challenge to naval and air forces, but it’s probably the defining challenge today and as we view it in the near future.

Strategically, Air-Sea Battle can help us deter adversaries, reassure our partners and allies by demonstrating the ability to honor our security commitments and to be able to act worldwide for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. It’s a spectrum of values.

It’s not about a particular country, as General Schwartz indicated. Anti-access area denial is proliferating. The Arctic is opening is an example. Climate changes take place around the world and we have to get where we need to get in order to act, to provide the effects that we’re asked to do.

Operationally, Air-Sea Battle provides us the ways and means to assure access. Some argue that look, we’re not going to fight those kinds of wars anymore in the future, but it’s not always a big war scenario. It might merely be a contingency. And it’s not always about conflict.

There are some natural or nature born or originated anti-access area denial that are a growing concern; earthquakes, the far north, fires on the West Coast, if you remember that. We had to get in there and it wasn’t easy to find those sources. And a nuclear disaster that about a year plus ago we had to figure out how to get to the source of this problem. And we were being denied that.

US Navy Photo

Institutionally, the integration between the Air Force and the Navy staffs is a great opportunity. We need to gain efficiencies, build appropriate redundancy where it makes sense, and the means by which it will preclude an advisory from finding the one way to develop a solution to preclude or to enable them to provide that anti-access and area denial.

Now the how. The Air-Sea Battle leverages the enduring U.S. advantages that we know well, especially in our two services; the initiatives and skill of our sailors and our airmen, the value that we have under the sea, the ability under the sea, the stealth, the global reach, the cyber capability, and the advantage we have in our networks and networking capabilities.

The central idea here, ladies and gentlemen, is a tightly coordinated operation across warfare domains. Air supporting land in the Cold War, General Schwartz mentioned it and Pete mentioned it in the opening, that was there and some of that is in our current plans. It’s maritime supporting the land, which took place in World War II, it took place in the Korea conflict, in the West Coast operations, and in amphibious operations.

Electronic warfare supporting air in suppressing air defenses took place in Libya, jamming. These examples, though, either were put together in the past sort of ad hoc or they were included as part of a particular operational plan; not really part of the concept of operations. And it’s really taken what we have and adjusting is what we did in the past.

What we’d like to do is make this cross-domain operation more an assumption for the future. We’ll build the concept of operations so that as we organize, as we train, as we equip and do operations in the future we’ll think about electronic warfare defeating radars to protect surface and air operations.

We’ll talk about submarines defeating air defenses, maybe kinetically and maybe non-kinetically, cyber attack against command and control needs to enable air and surface operations or stealth global strike on an anti-air warfare destroyer to enable air ops. There’s a whole panoply of it. The idea is to broaden the aperture in these and make that the standard approach as we think about the concepts of the future.

To do this we’re going to need real time coordination across these domains. We do this now, as threats improve, tighter coordination will be needed in the future. One example is we’ve got to be faster thinking about anything from an anti ship cruise missile, the faster coordination of electronic warfare kill, a non-kinetic kill.

Today our maritime component commander and our air component commander, sometimes they come together at the headquarters, at the task force headquarters. We need to think about that and see if there isn’t a faster way to do that.

I’m taken back to my own personal experience in 2005. I’m working with General Deptula who’s the Air Combatant Commander on the maritime combatant commander. We’re doing an operation and I’ve got a submarine out there who’s saying ‘hey, I’m detecting a radar out here through my periscope and my ESM mask that it’s over the horizon. I vaguely have this acoustic contact and I know that it’s a threat out there. So how do I get this to the JFACC and then get this back to the air task in order to get it out there?’ It takes too long.

So we worked through -- we need to get people on the same net, and General Schwartz mentioned that earlier in that exercise; to getting that faster turnaround, get inside that loop. That’s the future. That’s what we need to think about. Cross domain coordination requires a new approach. Our links need to be similar or minimally compatible.

Our F-22, F-35, our F-18 Hornets, our RA 2-Ds, navy integrated fire control counter air, NIFC-CA, and our ships; right now some of these links are different. We need to look at coordinating that. Communications between submarines and unmanned underwater vehicles or unmanned aerial vehicles and aircraft need to improve. Unmanned aerial vehicle based comms and links can be the gateways to bridge the domains and we need to get there. We need to have a visibility of the operations that are taking place in the EM spectrum.

Now on operational planning on our cross-domain actions are going to have to be more centralized. Command and control today, as I mentioned, you’ve got the JFMCC, the Joint Force Maritime Component Commander, the JFACC, the Air Component Commander, the Land Component Commander, and they’re in a structure of domains to deal with the problem.

US Navy Photo

In the future we need to look at should we be looking at missions, should we be looking at strike, at cyber, as something that crosses these domains in a command and control operation. And I say yes we do and our folks are. Air-sea battle provides that means to do that.

It’s providing -- it’s building cross-domain capability to improve our effects change and gives us more options. We can use an Air Force AWACS or an E-2 with cooperative engagement and share the tracks, what a concept, with our Aegis, with our Hornet, with the F22, with the Raptor, and other TAC air to engage. And it adds the redundancy, in some cases, to be more efficient and we can eliminate eventually some of that duplication as we work through this.

Air-sea battle uses integrated forces for what we like to think as three main lines of effort. It’s integrated operations across domains to complete, as I said, our kill chain, but it’s also Air-Sea Battle lines of effort to break the adversary’s kill or effects chain. We want to disrupt the C4ISR piece of it; decision superiority.

It may be good enough alone if they can’t communicate or if something is causing an effect, if some signal is causing a nuclear disaster -- our reactor to operate, how do we go in there and shut that down if the place is empty. How do we get into that information superiority area? Defeat of weapons launch, get to the archer, or defeat the weapon kinetically to defeat the arrow. And so looking at those three lines of effort, kind of summarizes how we approach that.

Now what we’re doing to implement Air-Sea Battle. We’ve got more than 200 initiatives that our respective teams getting together with the Marine Corps and with the Army put out there. A third of them are non-material, from policy to the concept of operations in componency that I mentioned earlier, data link, protocols, information sharing, and the majority of these are in progress.

We’ve stood up the Air-Sea Battle office last November with Army representation and Marine Corps representation, and of course, our respective services. We’ve championed initiatives out there. We’re pursuing more exercises that -- you’ve seen an example that General Schwartz -- how do we get more of that? What training opportunities are we not investing in that we really should?

We’ve weighed in on the investments. Where can we -- why should I be buying this if the Air Force is buying it? Well, maybe we should buy it together. Maybe we should let them operate, or the Army, or the Marine Corps. Where does this make sense?

We’re pursuing the relevant scenarios that may be -- that we may be using sooner than we think. Homeland defense, humanitarian assistance, disaster response, support of civil affairs in the homeland, natural disasters, just some I mentioned earlier. And we’re investing in Pres Bud 11, we’ve invested, Pres Bud 12 we’ve invested, particularly anti- submarine warfare, electronic warfare, air and missile defense, and information sharing.

Our Pres Bud 13, the one on the Hill today, sustains these investments and really provides more resilient C4ISR investments. We have accepted less capacity in some cases, in order to enhance capability to get better capability out there.

Going forward, we will jointly evaluate naval and air investments together through the office, looking at the long range bomber, the data links, like I said, looking for the common or the compatible data links; looking at SSN capability and capacity, looking at tankers, anti surface weapons, surface to surface delivered or air to surface delivered. What’s the best way? Cyber, electronic warfare, including electronic attack.

So Air-Sea Battle is a framework for us to organized, to train, and equip our efforts. We will continue to refine it and we’ll continue to apply it. And at this national security inflection point, that the defense strategic guidance has laid out for us, it’s essential that we have an effective and an efficient way ahead. We think this is one means to get that. Thank you for your time and I look forward to your questions.

Wait, He's a Congressman?

Did Representative Randy Forbes really write this? This is not the stuff one typically finds from a Congressman, because it's too smart. Forbes is no longer simply a Congressman on Navy issues - he's now the Congressman on Navy issues.

Throughout the last six decades, America’s military strength has helped preserve a relatively stable geo-strategic environment in the Asia-Pacific. However, in the past decade China has rapidly modernized its military, including another double digit military increase next year, with aspirations of supplanting the U.S. position. If present trends continue, the regional balance of power could tilt in Beijing’s favor as it is increasingly able to deter U.S. forces from entering the region, coerce neighboring states, or - should conflict ensue - win a rapid victory. In response, the United States must work to simultaneously sustain a level of credible deterrence in the region while reassuring allies, including Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and strategic partners like Singapore. Air-Sea Battle is now at the center of this effort.

In short, the Air-Sea Battle Office aims to define initiatives to develop the capabilities and integration necessary to help Combatant Commanders conduct integrated, cross-domain operations in A2/AD environments. According to Schwartz and Greenert, Air-Sea Battle seeks to use “Networked, Integrated Attack-in-Depth” to “disrupt, destroy, and defeat” (NIA-D3) adversary capabilities. More specifically, the joint force (integrated air, ground, and naval forces) armed with resilient communications (networked) aims to strike at multiple nodes of an enemy’s system (attack-in-depth) along three lines of effort. If we can consider these lines in terms of an enemy archer, one could choose to blind the archer (disrupt), kill the archer (destroy), or stop his arrow (defeat). Balanced capabilities geared towards executing all three will be required.

If Ray Mabus would have written this article, he'd be the most popular Secretary of the Navy since Lehman! Instead you folks get breathalyzers without any measurable or cited statistics related to alcohol on why... /facepalm!

Read it all.

One more thought on Randy Forbes. Yesterday I posted the YouTube link of his public, white glove, mild pat on the cheek of the SECNAV in a recent Congressional hearing. The thing about Randy Forbes argument that struck me at the time is that the questions he raised in that hearing about SECNAV priorities are the same questions I have heard in quiet, completely off record discussions with folks in the Navy.

That tells me two things. First, Randy Forbes has his finger on the pulse of the Navy like no Congressman in a long, long time. That leads to the second point. There is a snowballs chance in hell Randy Forbes is talking to the same people I do, and it has me thinking Randy Forbes questions about the SECNAVs priorities was a reflection of the uniformed Admiralty's concerns for the SECNAVs priorities. Maybe not the CNO, or maybe the CNO - who knows, but if Randy Forbes wrote that article it's a safe bet he had more than a few conversations on the topic from some pretty damn smart (and likely high ranking) folks inside the Navy bubble.

I'm not saying the SECNAV is facing a mutiny in the Navy (although what does exactly make a SECNAV jump THAT HIGH following a blunder THAT political), but I am saying there appears to be a Congressman who has more respect than the SECNAV from the uniformed Navy leadership at this point in time.

Pentagon Stands Up AirSea Battle Office

On Wednesday AirSea Battle officially went prime time. Well, sort of. More accurately AirSea Battle became official enough for the Pentagon to barely discuss publicly, but I'm not sure we really learned much except that the hype will likely get as much attention as the truth. I'll start by noting what folks are reporting in the media.

Phil Ewing at DoDBuzz:

At any rate, Wednesday’s defense officials said they wanted their office to become “a focusing lens” to help the services deal with tomorrow’s problems of anti-access and area denial — wherever they occur. The three officials did rhetorical backflips to avoid saying the word “China,” insisting they wanted their work to be applicable in any operational theatre.

Their profusion of buzzwords and jargon; their reluctance to define exactly what “Air-Sea Battle” is; and their refusal to talk in concrete terms left several reporters scratching their heads as to what exactly the briefers were talking about.

“Air-Sea Battle is not a war plan, not a [conops] plan, not an operational plan, it’s a framework of design which articulates and describes what the problem is,” one official said.

To that end, the new office will “Facilitate inter-service and inter-agency coordination during the development of the concept, supervise the implementation of ASB-related training, manning and equipping; and manage the executing the ASB concept,” the official said.

In other words: Air-Sea Battle is Air-Sea Battle, and the Air-Sea Battle Office will be charged with promulgating Air-Sea Battle. Simple, see?

Based on Phil Ewing's reporting, all we really learn here is that straight answers to reporters questions were hard to come by in the briefing. Bill Gertz must of been in the same briefing, because the article he wrote on the topic basically skipped everything the services said. Instead, Bill Gertz went out and found someone else to give us an (unofficial) explanation.

A senior Obama administration official was more blunt, saying the new concept is a significant milestone signaling a new Cold War-style approach to China.

“Air Sea Battle is to China what the maritime strategy was to the Soviet Union,” the official said.

During the Cold War, U.S. naval forces around the world used a strategy of global presence and shows of force to deter Moscow’s advances.

“It is a very forward-deployed, assertive strategy that says we will not sit back and be punished,” the senior official said. “We will initiate.”

The concept, according to defense officials, grew out of concerns that China’s new precision-strike weapons threaten freedom of navigation in strategic waterways and other global commons.

That is probably one way to look at AirSea Battle, but I'm hoping that there is more to it than a simple cold war style maritime strategy directed at China. Indeed, I honestly believe there is a lot more to it, but the perception drives the narrative in politics. Luckily, Chris Cavas has an article in DefenseNews that helps add clarity to the confusion.

"It's about access and freedom of action and making sure you have enough of what you need to get after your goals and protect and preserve your vital assets," one defense official said Wednesday at a press background briefing.

The Pentagon stressed that the office is "not about a specific actor, not about a specific regime." Officials resisted efforts by reporters to link the effort to China's rising capabilities.

"We're talking about taking our current state to a higher level," said one defense official.

"Air-Sea Battle represents change," the official said. "Three dimensions of change - institutional, conceptional and material."

Broadly, a Pentagon official agreed, the concept is a highly classified clearinghouse, set up to consider a wide range of current and potential threats. ASBO is charged with gaining familiarity with a vast number of capabilities and potential responses already available in the military, and matching them with threats.

"This is not about telling the combatant commanders to do their job," a defense official stressed. "It's about maintaining a military advantage to operate in the global commons."

A key priority for the office, a defense official said, is "to develop air and naval forces that are integrated."

US Army - MIA in ASBO

The official DoD announcement regarding the establishment of the Air-Sea Battle Office (ASBO) was posted on their website Wednesday. The first thing that folks immediately pointed out was that the US Army was missing from the arrangement. As I have watched the reaction of some, the question I have is whether leaving the US Army out of the ASBO loop was a sin of omission or commission?

I'm not sure anyone but Chief of Staff. Gen. Raymond Odierno can answer that question honestly, and I'm not sure he would. I have long believed that we will know that strategic thinking is active in the Pentagon when we see actions that under normal 'accepted' rules of Pentagon group-think; ideas and actions are untenable. The obvious absence of the US Army from the ASBO loop would qualify as one of the normally politically untenable actions - unless one was thinking and planning based on strategy first, and making a conscious decision to deal with political consequences later.

It is unclear to me if the US Army intellectual apparatus is taking seriously the strategic calculations the United States is making in regards to the balance of power in Asia in the context of defense and foreign policy politics today. Allow me to suggest that if the US Army is being resistant to strategic calculations the Pentagon is making in the political context of today, a sin of commission is absolutely appropriate. If the US Army is willingly engaged with the strategic shifts taking place in Asia, then a sin of omission would be inappropriate.

Now I don't know what you have heard, but about 99.9% of what I have heard suggests the US Army has been resistant at every possible level to the development of AirSea Battle - and that resistance is almost entirely driven in motivation by preservation of budget. If that is true, and I believe it is, it doesn't bother me at all that the US Army has been left out of AirSea Battle. They need to get refocused, because in the context of a smaller future US Navy, the nation is very likely to need their capabilities in any realistic application of AirSea Battle.

Here is what I have not seen yet - a single US Army officer or advocate write down a single idea that suggests a force structure adjustment within the US Army to prepare for any military confrontation by which AirSea Battle doctrine would be necessary. We are talking about the US Army intellectual community that has penned a gazillion words in regards to the strategic, tactical, operational, or doctrinal challenges of Iraq and Afghanistan and makes up about 70% of the defense think tank community in the United States. Army supporters need to wake up, because this is a rich intellectual space waiting for ideas.

For example, lets presume for a moment that AirSea Battle - as driven by the US Navy and USAF - does apply too much emphasis and focus on a possible military confrontation with China starting in the 2015 and beyond time frame. What happens if, for example, US policy somehow gets us engaged in a limited military capacity with Iran instead? A lot of folks may not realize this, but the last counter-insurgency style campaign the US fought before Iraq and Afghanistan was not Vietnam, but was Iran in Operation Preying Mantis. Much like the asymmetrical disruption of the logistics lines-of-communication US military forces faced in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iranians leveraged asymmetrical capabilities like small boats and mines to disrupt lines-of-communications in the Persian Gulf during the tanker war. Iran didn't have much depth to their capabilities in 1987-1988, but they do today.

I also note that during Operation Preying Mantis, the US Army was one of the main contributors to the "AIR" portion of military operations, as it was the US Army's 160 SOAR Little Birds that flew up and down the Gulf patrolling for irregular warfare threats. While that role might fall to SOCOM today, new roles for the US Army in AirSea Battle might include Cyber Warfare, air and ballistic missile defense in the region, and distribution of force for training and defense from asymmetrical attacks like sabotage.

It is hard to imagine a future war under AirSea doctrine where the 101st and 82nd Airborne are sitting on the sidelines instead of being deployed to heavily reinforce vulnerable infrastructure, but unless I've missed something, I haven't seen a single US Army officer put pen to paper on the subject.

So in my opinion - Yes, the absence of the US Army is noteworthy, but I see as much evidence the US Army is responsible for that as I see that the other services are responsible for that. If the other services never saw a role for the US Army in AirSea Battle, it's hard to fault anyone but the US Army for not getting engaged and highlighting their capabilities IMO. When it came to Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Navy did exactly that - and the six thousand IAs in the region to this day are legitimate proof of that.

Is ASB Legit?

I am not encouraged by the reporting of Phil Ewing on DoDBuzz regarding AirSea Battle. The Maritime Strategy as proposed by John Lehman was specific and operational, and it sent clear signals to the USSR. AirSea Battle is generic and conceptual, which sends mixed signals to China. I do not see value in sending obvious mixed messages in public to China, just as I do not see value when China sends obvious mixed messages in public to the US.

Vice Adm. Scott Swift hit this point yesterday from Hong Kong when he said "We need to be as transparent as we possibly can" when it comes to China. When the folks conducting the AirSea Battle briefing with reporters go out of their way to avoid China in the discussion, they basically undermine exactly what Vice Adm. Scott Swift is saying. It we are truly trying to avoid 'small incidents with unpredictable consequences' with China, then we can't avoid discussing China in a military context.

For example, in his speech in Hong Kong Vice Adm. Scott Swift also discussed the need for more diplomatic and military dialogue in the region, which has become the key talking point among military leaders on China. Noteworthy, not once has any significant military leader (OK I'll give you one, but his influence is still unknown) reciprocated by calling for greater diplomatic and military dialogue between China and the US. When our public message to China is 'we want more transparency and dialogue, from you' while at the same time we can't even mention China publicly in our maritime strategy or AirSea Battle doctrine, we become the ones serving bullshit popsicle's.

So is AirSea Battle Doctrine development legitimate? Maybe, but it is very hard to tell. AirSea Battle looks on the surface to be more about technology for operations, tactics, and budget at the military level rather than a strategic level review of defense capabilities and resources on par with the maritime strategy developed against the USSR. That may also be why AirSea Battle finds itself in a political bind - AirSea Battle is about planning for war, not an integrated foreign policy and defense strategy for managing political confrontations short of war.

The development of an integrated foreign policy and defense strategy to deal with rising powers like China is actually a fairly easy topic to discuss, but planning for war against rising powers like China is not. In some ways, I also think that is the great flaw of AirSea Battle though. If I was on the AirSea Battle development team, one of the first things I would call for is the development of an associated "integrated foreign policy and defense strategy" specific to major competitors like China, North Korea, and Iran. Why? Because defining the political red lines helps contingency planning, and anytime one adds political dynamics to military planning it allows the planners to potentially prepare on-ramps and off-ramps towards escalation control should hostilities break out.

Somehow I don't think the topic of AirSea Battle is going away anytime soon - even if the military has nothing useful (or something unbelievably stupid) to say publicly on the subject. I strongly believe that if there was a separate development activity that was focused on an "integrated foreign policy and defense strategy" that shaped the public policy discussion and conditions which AirSea Battle doctrine would be implemented, at least the focus on AirSea Battle would not be so acute. Such an activity would also give the US a process by which to be more transparent to China with intentions, and raise the bar of expectations for China to reciprocate in kind.

Red Lines

In my latest at WPR I take a middle road between McGrath and Galrahn on ASB:

And of course, both sides have to prepare for war, both to improve their negotiating positions and in case negotiations fail. China’s military might is now sufficient that the United States cannot leave room for the kind of error that inter-service conflict normally produces; its military machine has to run as efficiently as possible in order to plausibly threaten the People’s Liberation Army with defeat. While AirSea Battle doesn’t officially designate China as the expected opponent, no other foe would be plausible. For its part, China will continue to develop a system of anti-access capabilities designed mainly to force a U.S. president to hesitate before deploying aircraft carriers to respond to a crisis in East Asia.

And herein lies the problem: Any plan for war against China indicates that the United States is thinking seriously about war with China, thus potentially inspiring a Chinese reaction. What’s more, doctrinal and procurement decisions made now without full consideration of how the strategic situation might change could leave the United States -- or China -- with capabilities that don’t support their future diplomatic commitments. But a lack of preparation for war would indicate to the PRC that the United States has few if any “red lines” in East Asia, thus encouraging Chinese assertiveness. Given the likelihood that the United States is indeed willing to fight over some values -- perhaps Taiwan, perhaps South Korea -- such a message could prove disastrous, leading to misperception, miscalculation and the chance that the partners might become locked into a path to war.

AirSea Battle: A Politically Charged Doctrine?

Inside the Ring this week by Bill Gertz updates on some of the events surrounding AirSea Battle doctrine development. Most of it sounds political while the rest sounds unfamiliar.

The Pentagon is engaged in a behind-the-scenes political fight over efforts to soften, or entirely block, a new military-approved program to bolster U.S. forces in Asia.

The program is called the Air Sea Battle concept and was developed in response to more than 100 war games since the 1990s that showed U.S. forces, mainly air and naval power, are not aligned to win a future war with China.

A senior defense official said Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is reviewing the new strategy.

“We want to do this right,” the official said. “The concept is on track and is being refined to ensure that we are able to implement it wherever we need to - including in the Asia-Pacific region, where American force projection is essential to our alliances and interests.”

The official noted that the program is “the product of unprecedented collaboration by the services.”

Pro-defense members of Congress aware of the political fight are ready to investigate. One aide said Congress knows very little about the concept and is awaiting details.

Officially, the Pentagon has said the new strategy is not directed at China.

But unofficially China is the focus, and everyone including China knows that. Here is where AirSea Battle is heading.

Officials in the Obama administration who fear upsetting China also are thought to have intervened, and their opposition led Mr. Panetta to hold up final approval.

The final directive in its current form would order the Air Force and the Navy to develop and implement specific programs as part of the concept. It also would include proposals for defense contractors to support the concept.

The "unprecedented collaboration by the services" doesn't include the nations largest service - the US Army. Oops, somehow we decided to develop Battle Doctrine for a Pacific region where most disputes involve territories, including islands, and skipped the part where meaningful contribution from the land service is needed. I've soured a great deal on AirSea Battle for several reasons, but primarily because the Navy and Air Force have made it as parochial as humanly possible by somehow ignoring the range of capabilities the Army brings to the table in warfighting. I hope I am very wrong on this, but from what I am hearing from the US Army folks, I don't think so.

For example, the Navy is going to operate fewer ships in the future, something I believe we all accept as a political and budget reality. We can also assume that no matter where in the world the next war breaks out, it won't be in the Middle of the Atlantic Ocean or over some abyss in the Pacific Ocean - it will be somewhere in littoral waters where objectives are consistently on or near land. I'm not sure what history officers of the US Navy is reading, but in my read of human history of naval warfare on planet Earth, the oldest tactic in naval warfare is to utilize ground forces on land - be it soldiers or Marines - to cover the flanks for naval forces - and mutually support those land capabilities with seapower. That is basically one of the most utilized tactical applications of military forces in history - to cover the flanks of land and sea forced dating back to times of Athens up until as recent as Libya (unless we are going to chalk up Malta as a footnote in the littoral battleplan executed by NATO off the Libyan coast). Please tell me AirSea Battle didn't skip that portion of battleplan development.

Until I hear how the Army and Marines are included as roles within AirSea Battle doctrinal development, I will remain a skeptic of AirSea Battle. Forward radar coverage, logistics, air defense, anti-ship strike, forward air station establishment/defense/support, and any number of other roles will require ground troops. If someone is suggesting the Marines will fill all of these roles, plus the amphibious role, plus all the other littoral roles all while being reduced in size in the future... well I'm throwing the penalty flag. Whether it is the Pacific or Persian Gulf, offshore infrastructure matters and will require Marines. In the future, the Army will be required to take up the slack and ultimately - hold territory until relieved, and yes that may include holding territory against an adversary like China.

Without land combat power, AirSea Battle sounds like Shock & Awe with a new car smell, or some perfect conditions framework for deploying over the horizon combat power to win wars without causalities as some have suggested has happened in Libya (I'm still skeptical we have done 'net good' in Libya, the war isn't over just because Gaddafi is no longer in Tripoli).

Bottom line, I look forward to AirSea Battle seeing the light of day in Congress, because it is either going to be welcomed as brilliant battle doctrine or it will flop as a parochial rock drill that appears specific to arguing a budget share.

I don't want to give the impression that AirSea Battle is somehow 'all bad' - I'm sure there is a lot of great in there, but I am very concerned that AirSea Battle isn't 'all there' yet.

AirSea Battle - A Strategy of Tactics?

AirSea Battle is gaining public notoriety, even as an official description is yet to exist. AirSea Battle is now part of general answers and specific questions in Congressional hearings suggesting there is some anticipation on Capitol Hill what exactly this widely touted but never officially discussed series of ideas might be.

The focus of AirSea Battle appears to be to counter the growing challenges to US military power projection in the western Pacific and Persian Gulf, although in public use AirSea Battle is now used almost exclusively in the context of China.

CSBA described AirSea Battle as A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept. The use of the term "operational" implied AirSea Battle is intended to be developed as a battle doctrine for air and sea forces. Milan Vego recently took this one step further in Proceedings and recommended AirSea Battle be developed as one of several operational concepts for littoral warfare, although I think there is room to develop AirSea Battle doctrine for joint operations in several different geographic conditions.

All we really know about AirSea Battle is that we don't know a lot more about it than we do know, so every time someone writes about AirSea Battle from a position of some authority as to what AirSea Battle actually is - it's worth noting. In the latest example, we learn a lot.

A new Armed Forces Journal article by J. Noel Williams titled Air-Sea Battle is perhaps the most important contribution to the AirSea Battle discussion to date, because it starts a valid public discussion with criticisms of AirSea Battle - criticisms that cannot be ignored or dismissed. The article should be read in total - it's worth it. Because the article is very long difficult to cover in a single blogpost, I'm going to focus on only a few specific aspects of the article that stick out to me; a few of the criticisms and the implied competing doctrines.

Criticisms of AirSea Battle

This paragraph contains a lot of room for more discussion. The author's argument is that AirSea Battle doctrine appears to be a symmetrical approach to Chinese military capabilities. It should be noted that AirSea Battle doctrine is specifically being developed as an asymmetrical approach to Chinese area and access denial capabilities.

AirLand Battle posited an asymmetric approach in relation to the Soviet Union. AirLand would attack all echelons of the Soviet force with aviation and long-range fires because NATO was badly outnumbered on the ground. In contrast, ASB is symmetrical, pitting U.S. precision strike against Chinese precision strike. Since ASB is by definition an away game, how can we build sufficient expeditionary naval and air forces to counter Chinese forces that possess a home-court advantage? Is it prudent to expect the weapon magazines of an entire industrial nation to be smaller than those of our Navy and Air Force deployed more than 3,000 miles from home? What happens when the vertical launch systems of our ships and the bomb bays of our aircraft are empty?

Logistics is going to be a challenge in any military campaign where an enemy has the capacity to strike at our lines-of-communication, so in that sense the logistics points are not really a compelling argument for me against AirSea Battle. Logistics is a challenge in any military endeavor that can be applied to any doctrine. It is fair to note logistics is a huge challenge for the US today in Afghanistan, and hardly a major challenge specific to any single theater of war. I do like the last question though, because it is a question Congress needs to be asking all the time as budget pressures force difficult choices on Navy force structure.

The bigger question here is whether AirSea Battle doctrine represents a symmetrical apprach of "pitting U.S. precision strike against Chinese precision strike." I think the authors statement represents a fair question, but I am hesitant to agree with the author that this conclusion is accurate. Any battle doctrine between the US Air Force and US Navy should build towards a precision fires regime, so I am unclear as to why that is implied a problem with AirSea Battle. Furthermore, because AirSea Battle is supposed to be a battle doctrine - a joint US Navy and USAF operational concept - the authors strategic level argument fails because it compares tactical methods as symmetrical comparisons. Just because Taliban forces and US Army forces in Afghanistan might both employ accurate, precision fires, that doesn't mean both sides are engaged in symmetrical warfare on the battlefield. How forces are used on a battlefield is often much more important to measuring the symmetrical or asymmetrical nature of combat than the weapons forces utilize on a battlefield, and I have yet to see much discussed on that aspect of AirSea Battle doctrine development.

A military confrontation with China would be the biggest national security challenge since World War II, yet ASB advocates suggest it can be handled by just two of the four services. To the outside observer, this is astonishing; to the insider skeptic, it is absurd. Many ASB advocates I have talked with or have heard speak on the subject follow the logic that we will never conduct a land war in China, therefore long-range precision strike is the only practical alternative. What is missed in this line of thinking is that there are other, more fundamental choices that also don’t require a land war in China. It would appear there is an unstated assumption by many that conflict with China must include a race across the Pacific to defend Taiwan; many war games over the past decades have solidified this point of view. Unfortunately, this assumption is outdated. Chinese capabilities now, but especially 10 years from now, simply preclude a rush to Taiwan and would require a very deliberate campaign similar to that described in the aforementioned CSBA report to gain access. Without ground forces and with limited magazine capacities, what happens once we get there? What now, lieutenant?

I have heard everything mentioned in that paragraph discussed myself in person by those who are developing AirSea Battle doctrine, and I myself found what was said by AirSea advocates both "astonishing" and "absurd." The parochial, shortsighted nature of AirSea Battle that fails to include ground forces as a capability in major war is so thoroughly shortsighted that even as a hard Navy partisan I have a hard time believing AirSea Battle doctrine development has as much support as it does. The parochial nature of the AirSea Battle discussion informs me, an observer, that AirSea Battle is nothing more than an idea to advance a political agenda for the Navy and Air Force, and by political I am speaking specifically about justification of budgetary investments.

Competing Doctrines

Army Col. Gian Gentile, writing in Infinity Journal, expresses similar concerns about the impact of optimizing the Defense Department for counterinsurgency operations — in other words, optimizing for the opposite end of the spectrum recommended by ASB. The logic of the criticism is the same, nonetheless, since optimizing forces for an uncertain future is a prescription for getting it badly wrong. Gentile argues that counterinsurgency has become a “strategy of tactics.” He explains that when nations “allow the actual doing of war — its tactics — to bury strategy or blinker strategic thinking,” it leads to disaster, such as in Nazi Germany, where the German Army’s tactical excellence in Blitzkrieg could not rescue the regime from its fundamentally flawed strategy.

It is possible that, like Blitzkrieg, the U.S. could prevail in the tactics and operational art of ASB and still suffer strategic defeat.

So what’s the rub specifically? ASB initially was conceived as a way to increase interoperability between the Air Force and Navy through increased training and improved technical interoperability. Given the overlaps in their strike capabilities, especially in aircraft, it makes perfect sense for the two most technical services to work closely to ensure interoperability. But like its progenitor, AirLand Battle, ASB has progressed to an operational concept to address a specific military problem. While AirLand Battle was conceived to counter the Soviet Union, Air-Sea Battle is billed as the answer to growing anti-access/area-denial capabilities generically, but as everyone knows, specifically China.

CSBA described AirSea Battle as "A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept," so I am unclear how ASB progressed into an operational concept when ASB was actually introduced as an operational concept. Operational concepts are what drive doctrinal development, so if a service was going to develop battle doctrine the logical starting place would be to develop an operational concept. Am I missing something here?

I agree with Col. Gian Gentile that counterinsurgency has become a "strategy of tactics," kind of. It is more accurate to say that the US military developed a population centric operational concept intended to address a specific battlefield problem in Iraq, and the operational concept drove development of counterinsurgency doctrine. That operational concept and subsequent doctrine became tactics employed by troops on the battlefield that through trial and error, led to a wealth of lessons learned on the battlefield and ultimately, a political victory by means of military power that our national leaders could live with.

What followed the successful execution of a population centric operational concept, often generically described as "COIN" although it is much more than just counterinsurgency, was an intellectual Enterprise consisting of a politically diverse group military and policy intellectuals, and it was that intellectual Enterprise (or industry) - through open source intellectual rigor and debate - that began a process of broadly articulating strategic and policy ideas and recommendations based on the experiences and lessons learned from the successfully employed battlefield tactics.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the author frames AirSea Battle as akin to being a competing doctrine to COIN, pitting a high end warfare AirSea Battle doctrine represented by the US Air Force/US Navy against a small wars COIN doctrine represented by the US Army/US Marine Corps. This competition is political, which is another way of saying it is almost entirely intended to influence budget decisions. I tend to think that would explain why US Army leaders see a future where intervention is required in small states that are more likely to be unstable as a result of the rise of regional powers; and why US Navy leaders see a future where rising regional powers leads to instability throughout the world suggesting the focus should be on deterring hostilities and maintaining escalation control between major powers.

There is not a national security policy that settles this debate, or said another way, the National Security Strategy of the United States (PDF) is so broad, generic, and ultimately useless that almost any version of the future use of military forces is accurate, and the the DoD can do just about everything and anything and meet the strategic guidance.

Which leads me back to reminding folks that since we enacted Goldwater-Nichols, the military services don't actually do strategy. The military services are responsible for the development of tactics and doctrines for forces that get pushed up to the strategic level - which is the COCOMs, who develop and execute strategies from the political policies of US civilian leaders. Because the military services are not effectively engaged in strategic development as a result of Goldwater-Nichols, and all they really develop themselves anymore is doctrine and tactics, the services attempt to leverage the doctrines they develop to influence politically up to strategy and policy. The services manage budget and tactics/doctrine, so for them it is only logical to match budget to doctrine/tactics, not budget to strategy/policy.

COIN and now AirSea Battle are representative of how doctrine becomes advocated in political form for purposes of justifying the budgets of the services. Goldwater-Nichols has built a wall that separates strategy (COCOMs) and budget (Services), and the results are that 25 years later the nation has yet to develop a coherent national security policy or strategy that meets the challenges of the 21st century.

Budgets controlled by the services get aligned with doctrine/tactics resulting in the US military being remarkably brilliant tactically but unquestionably adrift strategically. My concern is, and I think the article by J. Noel Williams suggests, that while AirSea Battle may be a smart development for the US Air Force and US Navy towards a joint battle doctrine; AirSea Battle will also be the next military operational concept forwarded as a political idea that acts as a substitute for the absence of a coherent 21st century national security policy.

You know that strategic process Secretary Panetta discusses that will guide budget decisions? We are going to look globally incompetent if that "strategy" reads like it was informed by a doctrine rather than a policy.

The Navy is Losing the Narratives Battle

If you have been following ADM Roughead’s speeches lately, whether at the Current Strategy Forum (PDF) or last Thursday's event sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (PDF), you may have noticed that AirSea Battle is no longer discussed. The question has come up a few times... is AirSea Battle dead?

The answer is yes and no. AirSea Battle doctrine is rarely discussed anymore in public by the Navy because the Navy is backing off AirSea Battle, and some would call it backpedaling with speed. AirSea Battle is a warfighting doctrine developed towards dividing roles and responsibilities of military forces in combat from the sea, and is intended to provide guidance towards cutting redundancy and insuring all mission requirements are clearly understood by the services. The development includes a great deal more detail, but that's the general overview. That guidance would inform the services where overlap exists, and in theory inform services where cuts need to be made and where renewed focus on capabilities needs to be emphasized.

As it turns out, many have been looking at AirSea Battle as a way to promote and emphasize the prominent role of big deck aircraft carriers in the 21st century. In the past it had been suggested that Vice Admiral Bruce Clingan was appointed N3/N5 specifically for the purpose of insuring aircraft carriers were prominently featured in AirSea Battle doctrine being developed. I have previously dismissed this criticism of VADM Clingan, but I am no longer so sure, and there may be a hint of truth there.

As of late AirSea Battle has not unfolded in the way many in the Navy believed it should. Studies and wargames associated with AirSea Battle doctrine development began consistently suggesting that aircraft carriers do not play the prominent role in future military operations from the sea as originally envisioned by the Navy, indeed the findings that divide roles and missions have pushed the Navy away from using big deck aircraft carriers as the sustained strike platform, and instead push the Navy towards more of a long range precision munitions regime primarily conducted by submarines and surface combatants. These findings suggests that the Air Force becomes the primary lead in conventional strike airpower while the Navy leverages their unique capabilities for infiltration and rolling back enemy defense networks. Essentially the Navy's role becomes kicking the doors down in support of the Air Force and preventing enemy to leverage the sea against allied infrastructure, but sustained combat air operations are conducted primarily by the Air Force in the AirSea Battle doctrine that is currently being developed.

None of this is decided, indeed nothing is decided at all, but what has happened during the development of AirSea Battle doctrine is that the Navy has realized they had lost control of the AirSea Battle narrative. The Navy narrative placed the aircraft carrier at the center of AirSea Battle doctrine, and the Air Force's role was supposed to be in support of seapower and filling in gaps not covered by the Navy. As the new narrative emerged with AirSea Battle doctrine development, the Navy saw it as a threat to the institutionalized prominence of big deck aircraft carriers.

It was at that point folks like VADM Clingan and ADM Willard withdrew support for AirSea Battle doctrine as it was being developed, and OPNAV supported their withdraw seeing further development of AirSea Battle doctrine at this time as a budget threat to aircraft carriers.

So AirSea Battle doctrine development is dead, right? Not really.

Timeout

AirSea Battle doctrine development has helped clarify threats and challenges facing naval forces, and it has revealed how the Navy must evolve existing forces in order to manage the 21st century threat environment. US Navy leadership believes the American way of war at sea is over and under the ocean, and Navy leaders firmly believe that at no time has any weapon system or capability made obsolete the big deck aircraft carrier and submarine as the superior capabilities required in naval warfare. To those in the Navy opposed to the vision of AirSea Battle that has been winning the arguments, the challenges revealed in AirSea Battle doctrine development are a guide towards developing new capabilities that extend the relevance of aircraft carriers and submarines in the face of emerging threats, even in the face of difficult budgets that threaten both aircraft carriers and submarines due to their very high costs.

AirSea Battle doctrine development has informed the Navy that new unmanned technologies like unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned combat air systems are desperately needed. These new technologies are seen as highly cost effective and capable ways the Navy can leverage their existing global network, plug into their highly sophisticated existing AEGIS network, and by adding new defensive capabilities to AEGIS for protection against ballistic missile threats - the Navy can add ranged, highly mobile, sustained, long range strike capacity supported by robust ISR back into the fleet with numerous less expensive unmanned combat air systems flying off big deck aircraft carriers.

If you go back and look at plans discussed in the media 5-6 years ago, you will find the Navy was starting to move that direction in the middle of last decade, but those plans got sidetracked.

Two problems occurred. First, unmanned aircraft development for the Navy in particular got sidetracked when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began wearing down F-18s faster than the Navy expected, and due to political pressure from Congress, not to mention practical problems with rapidly aging airframes, the Navy ended up having to spend a great deal of the aviation budget on replacing F-18 Hornets instead of innovating new unmanned aircraft. Second, the Littoral Combat Ship mission modules that focused on unmanned vehicles ran into serious development problems that have led to a complete restructuring of the mission module programs. Many of those technologies could not meet requirements, and as a result Navy leadership spends a great deal of time in public speeches emphasizing the necessity for mission power capacity to support new technologies like unmanned underwater vehicles.

Navy leaders always discuss in public speeches what the focus is, and by not discussing AirSea Battle the Navy is basically signaling they are not ready yet. Secretary Gates has long been considered the point man on AirSea Battle, but his days are numbered. Leon Panetta is unlikely to come out quickly for AirSea Battle, indeed he may not know much about it at all coming from CIA. That means the Navy has time to allow AirSea Battle to sit on the shelf for awhile as the Navy develops new capabilities to support the aircraft carrier and submarine forces.

In other words, AirSea Battle isn't alive because the Navy is sitting on it, but it isn't dead either because the Navy is actively engaged in addressing the shortcomings revealed by the doctrine development. Basically, AirSea Battle is in stasis until such a time the Navy is better positioned with actual technologies instead of PowerPoint possibilities to argue more effectively their vision for what a Navy strike regime looks like in the 21st century - a strike regime the Navy believes is far more effective and survivable against a peer competitor than the Air Force alternative currently winning the argument in the AirSea Battle doctrine development discussions.

What's the next move? It is still unclear, because no one is quite sure how ADM Greenert intends to leave his mark as CNO. The common assumption is that ADM Greenert will be a continuation of the direction ADM Roughead has taken the Navy over the past four years, and that the appointment represents a move towards consistency. The alternative is that ADM Greenert will put his own stamp on the Navy, which history shows to be what usually happens with a new CNO. The prominence of big deck aircraft carriers is the primary operating guideline for the Navy today, and it is also the biggest target in a period where budget pressures are threatening the big ticket capabilities like aircraft carriers. It seems very unlikely that as CNO ADM Greenert would challenge the prominence of aircraft carriers as an opening move. However, that doesn't mean ADM Greenert doesn't have his own plans though, so we will just have to wait and see what his vision is.

Assumptions Challenged

AirSea Battle doctrine development began to show what some have recently began advocating more vocally, that the precision missile regime supported by CRUDES and submarines has replaced the aircraft carrier as the most capable strike regime from the sea in the future. It is suggested aircraft carriers are no longer affordable and investment in greater quantities of CRUDES and submarine power would allow the Navy to extend the strike power of the fleet considerably, and shift the role of aviation towards more of an ISR and support element rather than as the primary strike element. In other words, the argument is that precision missile advancements that would be realized with investments in next generation Harpoon and Tomahawk replacements - not to mention advanced gun technologies like rail guns - would change the paradigm, and the aircraft carriers role in naval warfare would change to support the surface 'strike' force, not the surface force supporting the big deck aircraft carrier 'strike' wing as has been the model since WWII. Along with new gun and missile systems for strike, laser systems like FEL would be incorporated into the surface fleet changing the paradigm in other ways for fleet defense as well.

This future surface force would then move the Navy towards a future with a common hull design that emphasized capacity instead of capability in requirements. The emphasis on capacity would leverage IPS to provide maximum power for open architecture systems in supporting AEGIS networks for offense and defense while deployable systems (UAVs, UUVs, USVs, MH60s, RHIBs, etc) are leveraged to extend the network of every surface combatant. Smaller aircraft carriers would over time replace the large deck aircraft carriers to provide critical naval airpower capabilities in support of the fleet. Built in large quantities, these surface combatants in conjunction with an expanded submarine force would form a networked precision guided weapon regime that is distributed for total battle network survivability.

This is ultimately a distributed model of naval force that emphasizes the quantity of platforms and systems dispersed in overlapping, integrated networks that when combined with the Air Force to provides the United States the maximum combat capability against challenges posed by enemy forces. This model of naval forces would not emphasize a handful of primary concentrations of firepower (the limited number of big deck aircraft carriers) that the enemy could focus on to disrupt the overall capabilities of the naval network, indeed it is believed a larger number of smaller carriers providing advanced aviation capabilities would be sufficient to meet requirements in supporting a new distributed naval force structure.

That emerging theory is... just theory.

The Navy still believes that the big deck aircraft carrier and highly sophisticated nuclear submarine remain the kings of the maritime battle field. The theory goes that concentrations of firepower like big deck aircraft carriers can be better protected from future threats by expanding the roles and capabilities of submarines. It remains the argued position of the Navy that military operations involving air systems can be sustained longer when continuously deployed from large deck aircraft carriers, and further it is believed that with unmanned systems that have longer range and endurance, even greater sustainable operational rates are achievable in the future. The surface force would still be a precision firepower regime, but would be focused on defending the concentrated long range strike capabilities provided by aircraft carriers rather than being a distributed strike capability itself. This model is the existing model of US naval power with a few tweaks, and primary emphasis of Navy development would include an evolution in submarine roles and missions expansion and longer range unmanned aircraft carrier systems (like UCAS) that would primarily bolster the weaknesses being highlighted in the development of AirSea Battle doctrine.

The Navy believes that as the gaps in capability of aircraft carriers and submarines revealed by AirSea Battle doctrine development are addressed over the next decade, the Navy will be in a far superior position to make the argument for AirSea Battle doctrine more along the lines of the way the Navy originally intended. It should be noted that as the Air Force moves towards Prompt Global Strike, which at a very high cost has limited value in AirSea Battle doctrine due to it primarily being an investment towards a quality capability rather than a quantity capability, Air Force investment is also moving towards a position in the future where naval strike capabilities from big deck aircraft carriers will be as relatively effective but presumably more survivable than Air Force alternatives - thus both services are on a path towards an AirSea Battle doctrine developed 5-10 years from now that would presumably allow the Navy argument to be far stronger then than the Air Force argument is today.

The problem with all of this is that in the meantime, the budget pressures still exist and the enemy always has a vote. Will UUV development advance as ADM Roughead hopes (PDF) and meet the requirements to allow the submarine force to get into the enemy's OODA loop thus disrupt and add defense to concentrations of naval forces centered around big deck aircraft carriers? Is the era of precision missiles drawing closer to a conclusion as ADM Roughead has stated in the past? Is the unmanned approach to warfare against sophisticated adversaries even reasonable given the reliance on satellite communications availability during high end combat operations? Should naval forces be organized differently, IE, be organized around a different strategic objective than the existing organizing motivation towards fighting the big one?

Furthermore, will the force hollow under near term budget cuts while the Navy is focused on meeting gaps in existing forces and organizational doctrine? Would the Navy truly find stability by cutting excess under an optimized Joint model, or simply hollow the force in a different way? How can the Navy bet on any single future when the technologies for all possible futures are still yet to be realized?

The one sure bet that everyone seems to understand is that AirSea Battle will require a culture change, requiring both the Navy and the Air Force to concede traditional capabilities to the other and optimize on a Joint capability theory for warfare. Without the service leaders out front talking about the necessity for change, there will be no culture change - only resistance in institutionalized defense of each respective services capabilities. It must be stated that the existing naval force model Navy leaders are dedicated to protecting is based on lessons learned painfully during and since WWII, and all alternatives are based primarily on theories and very limited combat experience involving technological capabilities developed since then.

But it's always been that way... Prior to WWII ships of the line and later battleships derived from the big gun dreadnaughts were always thought to be the superior combat capability at sea, because they always had been. It wasn't until Pearl Harbor that very smart people realized technology had advanced with submarines and aircraft carriers, and roles for naval forces had already changed. If precision weapons launched from warships and submarines ever reaches a point of superiority over aircraft, and submarines or surface combatants are heavily armed with those precision weapons, would Navy leaders recognize the transition towards quantities of surface combatants being superior to big deck aircraft carriers had taken place, or would Navy leaders repeat the same error often cited to the WWII era Battleship Admirals?

Will you be able to tell the difference? Would I be able to? There were many signs before WWII that the aircraft carrier had emerged as the dominant capability of that age, but we also know for certain the battleship never at any point became obsolete in WWII - indeed the Iowa class battleships that served in WWII participated in the 1991 Gulf War.

There are arguments that signs are evident today regarding the precision weapon regime deployed from submarines and surface combatants may have already overtaken the aircraft carrier as the dominant combat capability of the modern battlefield. It is not at all uncommon to read that the big deck aircraft carrier is obsolete, even in the pages of Proceedings. What if it is obsolete? What if it isn't obsolete, but we begin to believe it is? Perhaps with the hindsight of history we are right to criticize those Battleship Admirals for failing to recognize the rise to prominence of the aircraft carrier, or perhaps more realistically - modern Navy leaders, analysts, and politicians could easily make the same mistake today by holding strong to their faith in the dominate weapon system of our time as proven by history as we know it - the big deck aircraft carrier.

The Path Decided

The selection of ADM Greenert suggests a future towards continuing the Navy on a path that focuses on the concentrated strike power of aircraft carriers and enhancing the infiltration and disruption capabilities of submarines, at least that was the impression I got with the announcement of his nomination as CNO. This vision is assumed and has never been stated publicly, indeed the way the Navy communicates often leaves most observers guessing as to which direction the Navy is going - particularly the last few years where change is more common than consistency. Navy leadership discusses the future in the context of technologies rather than strategic objectives achieved through a vision, which basically describes a Navy story in the context of industry rather than a story of service to the nation. A statesman like Hyman Rickover is unlikely to pop up to describe the merits of a global nuclear submarine force providing credible deterrence against threats to American freedom, and President Obama is very unlikely to channel his inner Theodore Roosevelt and advocate seapower as a way to promote global influence with naval power. Everything today is focused almost entirely on budget, and little discussed by Navy leaders is strategic, much less strategic vision or communication. It isn't that the Navy doesn't have a credible story to tell, it is simply that the Navy doesn't know how to tell a credible story. On some topics the Navy has so little credibility left that they are unable to tell a believable story at all.

The credibility challenge and inability to articulate the future is starting to create serious problems with the Navy, because without an articulated strategic concept - Navy leadership has failed to inform political leaders regarding the future in a way that helps guide political choices in difficult budgets. Indeed, the absence of Navy credibility that is often built on consistency has become a huge problem for the Navy, because it leaves them open to having the future shaped for them, rather than by them.

Consider for a moment that the Navy is not telling a story because perhaps the Navy is taking a wise approach towards waiting to see what is real, and what isn't real. For example, the future of naval aviation - whether the discussion is F-35C or unmanned combat aviation systems - is still very unclear. The Navy doesn't have a Hornet replacement of any type ready to field today, and while a lot of investment in both the Joint Strike Fighter and the UCAS offers possibilities; these systems lack a narrative that overrides the uncertainty surrounding the programs. What will be the capabilities and limitations of both platforms, and will they compliment each other effectively has hoped? What does future ISR look like when surface combatants and submarines field unmanned systems, and what does the Littoral Combat Ship bring to the total battle network? Will these complicated emerging networks of systems be both reliable and credible, or will the network requirements be too vulnerable to stress and disruption in the future warfare environment to make many of these technologies useful?

How much of a capability increase will unmanned underwater vehicles offer the a smaller submarine force, and will those new technologies legitimately close the gap that exists with fewer submarines? Are there additional requirements that aren't well understood yet in terms of communications, and can the power requirements for unmanned underwater vehicle endurance, speed, and combat capability be met in time to meet the need? How much risk is assumed if the technologies are unable to be developed in the time frame desired, and if too much risk exists - what other options does the Navy have?

What happens if lasers and rail guns and advanced missile technologies all pan out, and other nations begin fielding these technologies before the US Navy does? What happens if the power requirements for fielding many of these technologies exceed the available power of the main surface fleet - or even the projected surface fleet of the Burke Flight IIIs? How quickly can the Navy design and field a new surface combatant with these technologies? One thing that goes unmentioned, these advanced technologies on the surface combatant force are unlike other technologies being discussed, because they are not dependent upon robust communication networks that could potentially be seriously compromised by the enemy.

What if the Navy is quietly handling these known unknowns and allowing the technologies prove themselves to determine the future without predetermining that future based on bets in specific technologies? Would anyone even know, because that isn't anywhere near the story that is being told. AirSea Battle doctrine development takes a hard look at the known knowns and the known unknowns. In the meantime, the rest of us are left with the unknown unknowns because the future of the Navy isn't articulated, and partial visions come out in various articles in Proceedings that get plenty of discussion - by everyone but the Navy.

The absence of a credible story by Navy leadership allows others to shape the future for the Navy. Last week, the Senate cut funding for the rail gun and the free electron laser (FEL). It was reported today by the always brilliant Janes reporter Sam LaGrone that the Navy apparently didn't see the cuts coming.

If the Navy didn't see those cuts coming, then who would influence the Senate to make these cuts when these technologies are among a group of technologies that are competing for the future of the Navy - indeed potentially central to the competition for the future of the US Navy that compares the capability of the surface fleet with the capability of the big deck aircraft carrier. Without rail guns and FEL, there is no debate regarding future technologies the Burke can't support due to lack of mission power requirements, and there is no threat to the prominence of aircraft carriers, because surface combatants will lack the specific technologies to do anything other than launch missiles. Therefore if one cuts rail guns and FEL, one shapes the future towards specific choices.

Does the Senate even realize that those industry interests who have lobbied them for these cuts are potentially making enormous strategic decisions regarding the future of the Navy? These cuts are attacking the primary technologies that are in direct competition for how Navy forces could organize and operate in the future if the various competing visions of AirSea Battle doctrine development are to believed as legitimate. Cut rail guns and lasers and one would protect aircraft carriers and the prominence of AEGIS missile defense - technology interests that many in industry will and apparently are working overtime to protect.

The Navy lost the narrative on AirSea Battle because the Air Force has a more credible story to tell today, and with several years of battlefield testing the unmanned capabilities of the US Air Force future are a reality today vs the Navy's research and limited deployment of similar systems. In a few years, there could be a different story to tell, but the Navy is still working on the technologies that will determine what that future story will be. In the meantime, the absence of Navy leaders offering a vision - or even multiple competing visions - of what the future may be is avoided for the sake of protecting the present fleet from budget cuts. The absence of an articulated vision to guide budget cut choices has allowed others to step in and take the narrative for themselves.

I don't know what ADM Greenert plans to do as CNO, but it is my hope he does things ADM Roughead was never very good at doing - dare to offer folks a vision of the Navy worth believing in. It doesn't have to be right, it simply needs to align with investments and offer enough imagination with detail that people are inspired by the future of the Navy. These stories are important, and without a credible strategic concept the Navy is not guiding choices of decision makers. That dream and inspiration that inspires imagination on behalf of the Navy, and most critically the strategic vision from Navy leadership doesn't exist today - and that is why the Navy is losing the narratives battle to others, be it industry or the Air Force, and allowing others the potential to make strategic choices for the Navy.

Moment of Movement Approaches

I have actually been writing content for the blog over the last week, but have decided not to publish any of it. Some of it is good; some not so much. There is no question I have missed a lot since February, and yet given the broadside across the bow of the maritime services shared in the recent speech by the SECDEF, maybe I simply picked the right moment not to be distracted by the daily noise.

May 2010 will be remembered as the month the Navy was given the first clear signal that change is coming since the cold war ended. It is important to note that the speech for the Navy League was only the first step though - with the second step coming on Saturday. If you thought the last Gates speech was interesting - wait until you hear the next one...

And that will be followed by the Air-Sea Battle rollout coming on the 18th. In other words, we live in interesting times. These two speeches and the battle doctrine rollout all signal one thing - there is a serious moment in the near future where the Navy is going to move from where they are today - into what they will be tomorrow. It may be a major shift, or more likely, only a small one - but with his speech the SECDEF clearly stated he is now the voice for changing the Navy and directing them towards the future. Gates had already done this with the Army and Air Force, and the Navy and Marines both knew this was coming. The Army lost Future Combat Systems and the Air Force lost the F-22 - so you have a track record to work with regarding what they Navy will lose.

But what has the Army and Air Force gained - or said another way - what are those services becoming as they shape for the future? How have those services improved with the changes previously made by Gates? How do we apply that logic to the meaning behind the SECDEFs words?

Everything the Secretary has said so far is subject to interpretation. When I broke down the SECDEFs speech, the only clear message I find being sent is the call for "change." Gates did not say "reduce aircraft carriers" or cancel the EFV. There was no specific instruction on equipment, rather what he did was call for fresh ideas. In many ways, I read the speech as a premature endorsement of the Air-Sea Battle - which still lacks a great deal of detail itself. In other words, the Navy is about to be handed a big idea, and will soon be told what the budget will be to 'make it work and get it done.'

There will be two kinds of reactions. It will be the ones with ideas towards a new direction, and those with complaints. Which group will get the most attention as they push their agenda to the masses? I think that will be a dynamic worth watching.

Maybe it is because I come from no school of internal DC influence, but my interpretation of the speech suggests that I see a bit of everyone in the direction the SECDEF is pointing - and the only thing we can say for certain is that Secretary Bob Gates reads Proceedings. I see a little Bob Work, a little Bryan McGrath, a little Peter Swartz, a little Andrew Krepinevich, a little Jerry Hendrix, a little Wayne Hughes, and even some CDR Salamander in the SECDEFs speech about the Navy. If I was completely delusional, I'd suggest the SECDEF reads the Navy blogosphere - but instead I'll simply say it looks to me like the people who are influencing the thinking of the SECDEF regarding the future Navy is reading at least as broadly as I am regarding alternative visions of the Navy.

Which leaves me thinking there is only one Admiral who must have the ear of the SECDEF regarding the future Navy - and his last name is neither Mullen nor Roughead. I think we all know of which man I speak...

It is very rare that SECDEF tea leaves are so easy to read, so perhaps I have completely misread them. Combining subtle and blunt in speeches takes skill - and Secretary Gates works his magic in his speeches like a grand master does the chess board. I have no inside information, but I'd bet the private channels among naval strategists are buzzing like bee hives since the SECDEFs speech, and the digging of trenches has already begun.

Who will make up the new generation of leaders is now the most important question to ask following the Gates speech - and on my calendar it looks like we have 16 months to ask and answer that question. The SECDEFs speech started by discussing people on purpose. Over the next 16 months the identification of those Navy and Marines 0-4 through 0-6 currently in the service with the vision and insight the SECDEF discusses will become the priority. Those papers written at the NPS or NWC matter more today than they did last month, indeed - you never know where the origins of ideas might come from.

There has never been a better time for a Navy or Marine officer to write for periodicals like National Defense Magazine, Joint Forces Quarterly, or Proceedings.

The moment of movement - the first time the Navy has made significant changes since the cold war - approaches. It is noteworthy because for 99% of the people in today's Navy, it will be the first time in their career they have worked during a time of internal movement. For the Marines - well, the shake up will be even more profound. Up until now, all both services have had to do is adapt to technology. What is coming is much more difficult.

Any change is always hard, but for the maritime services - it could end up looking and feeling like a System Perturbation for those in the maritime service community. Accordingly, it is also possible that is how they read it - even if the final impact of coming changes is disproportionate to the amount of actual change that takes place.

Publish Post

Enjoy your Friday, because after the SECDEF speech on Saturday - everything changes yet again.

Edit: Link fixed above. I can't believe i messed up the one link in the post I think matters most....

AirSea Battle

Andrew Krepinevich has a new report out this week for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments titled Why AirSea Battle?

The report discusses the critical role that the US military’s power-projection operations have played in providing for the security of the United States and its allies since World War II. The report then goes on to describe military modernization efforts by China and Iran designed to deny the United States the ability to sustain military forces in the Western Pacific and the Persian Gulf. It concludes by arguing that a new Air Force-Navy AirSea Battle concept is needed to preserve a stable military balance in these two primarily aerospace and maritime domains.

"The US must adapt its power projection forces—along with corresponding changes in its military capabilities and force structure—or face the prospect of losing military access in these two key regions," concludes Krepinevich. "The importance and urgency of finding a new approach is reinforced by the priority afforded to AirSea battle in the Quadrennial Defense Review released on February 1st."

Direct link to the report (PDF). I am going to read it a few times before commenting. AirSea Battle is a popular current "inside baseball" subject - popular enough to be specifically cited in the QDR, but it is still very much unclear if the final product becomes anything more a new wine in old barrels.

I will continue to be out much of this week, but this week as I am unavailable LtCol Roger Galbraith, Director of Public Affairs at Marine Corps Combat Development Command and Marine Corps Base Quantico will be blog posting from Expeditionary Warrior 2010.

Reconfigurable and Customizable - But Communication is the Key

If you are looking for clues regarding what Navy force structure is likely to look like in the upcoming QDR, then this months issue of Seapower Magazine has a must read article on Page 12 titled Irregular Warfare (that link is not for mobile devices). Well done Roxana Tiron and the Navy League for this very informative article, because as of right now it stands as the most important citation regarding the future of the US Navy. Despite the title, the article really has little to do with "Irregular Warfare" directly and instead discusses how the Navy is taking a broad approach to fleet constitution to address the range of challenges the Navy faces in the world today.

A couple weeks ago I discussed emerging force structures under discussion right now, and in particular I hinted that the "boxes" structure in particular appears to be the prevailing theory for fleet constitution. The Seapower Magazine article informs us to some degree the line of thinking with that approach. I'm focusing on this section of the article, but to understand the full context I highly recommend reading the article in full.

Destroyers, large deck amphibious ships, Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) and High-Speed Vessels (HSVs) all have good-sized flight decks and fairly large, open spaces that are reconfigurable, Burke said. And all can play a role along the wide spectrum between low-end irregular warfare and high-end asymmetric or conventional warfare.

"The fact that they have these open spaces that are reconfigurable or communications suites that are modular, all that contributes to that ability to be agile," he said.

As far as the spectrum of warfare is concerned, "the HSV is probably the ship that is most geared toward the low end; the LCS is a step up; the amphib is a further step up; and the DDG [Arleigh Burke-class destroyer] is even a further step up," Burke said.

"Although they all have capability in a variety of areas, they do have a sweet spot, if you will, and in some cases that sweet spot - it could be very narrow. What we try for is keep them really broad."

Burke cited the DDG as one of the best examples of a multimission platform. It can help with relief operations, perform missile defense operations or prove critical to taking down pirates off the coast of Somalia, he said.

"It is large enough to have a helicopter. It has a very capable radar that allows it to see missiles, but it also allows it to have the wherewithal to fight ships on the ocean, and it has a pretty significant communications capability," he said.

Burke also stressed that the Navy's aircraft carriers should not be viewed as Cold War symbols, but rather as platforms with "big versatility." Carriers can perform anything from launching combat operations to assisting in humanitarian relief efforts.

In essence, the Navy is designing a battle fleet constitution that emphasizes open architecture combat systems, flexible payload space, and distributed operations. Together, these attributes call for self deployable ships with common combat systems and open payload space.

Small "boxes" = JHSV + LCS

Medium "boxes" = CruDes + SSN

Large "boxes" = LDP-17 hull + SSGN

X-Large "boxes" = LHA/LHD + CVN + MPF

In all but Cruisers, Destroyers, and Attack Submarines, the boxes will carry loads of open payload space. All but JHSV and MPF (at both ends of the payload spectrum) are armed. The Cruisers, Destroyers, and Attack Submarines will carry flexible weapon batteries with VLS or VPT, and in the case of SSNs, reconfigurable torpedo rooms are coming with the next evolution of the Virginia class (Tango Bravo comes home).

The Navy is fundamentally shifting the way fleet forces are used towards a reconfigurable and customizable payload capability that tailors to the Combatant Commanders requirements. This design will be coupled with the development of the AirSea Battle doctrine, a doctrine that will attempt to merge network-centric warfare theory with mobility to create flexibility. There is a lot to like about what is under development when viewed as a whole, but I still have several questions regarding what I believe will be holes in the theories, and one major concern.

In everything I have read, heard, discussed, or been lectured regarding the future of the US Navy, I sense the Navy developing a new set of principles of war that include Unity of Command, Unity of Effort, Objective, Attack, Speed, Maneuver, Control, Flexibility, Precision, Surprise, and Communications. Of what little I know, I find it all very smart.

At the end of the day though, assuming all of this comes together for the QDR as is being advertised, everything hinges on the last principle of Communications. The Navy can do almost everything they are planning to do - only as long as they address the enormous problems and challenges ahead with communications. Everything they want the future to look like hinges on communications, and it is the one area the Navy is furthest from its necessary destination.

When I say that I think the LCS needs to be a communication node enabler for the battle fleet, and that the Command Ships rumored to be cut from the future force are going to be sorely missed, I'm not kidding. If you think the price of the LCS is the biggest problem facing that project, just wait until the communication problems throw a monkey wrench into the module development. That will come just before everyone in navy leadership gets really pissed off because unmanned systems development stalls due to poor communications planning.

The Navy needs a new communications strategy to make all of these new ideas work, and they needed that strategy yesterday. Those non-routable, MB/KB, SATCOM centric sea based network links back to the ever increasing shore based infrastructure aren't going to cut it, but no one appears willing to tell the boss where the limits of technology exist under the current system. SATCOM is really not very hard to jam you know, so battle group commanders need to learn to love NCTAMS - and its limitations. Until a naval battle group network at sea can scale COTS like IEEE 802.16 just to pass an email, all these 21st century ideas will flop in total failure.

No worries though, I suspect the first example will be the LCS. Its just a hunch, but I suspect communications is the main reason why the LCS is deploying without any unmanned systems. Just saying...