For at least the past 25 years, defense cognoscenti have discounted both the likelihood and the viability of amphibious assault, to say nothing of its necessity today. We hear the terms “area denial” and “anti-access,” which supposedly make littoral naval operations—especially amphibious assaults—impractical and too costly. Even the Navy seems to subscribe to this thinking.
But war is unpredictable and bloody. The cost of operations must always be weighed against the benefits of success and price of failure. If future national interests require an amphibious assault on some unanticipated battleground, it doesn’t matter how unthinkable that may be, how they do it, or how many Marines are killed. What is important is that it be done; whether with helicopters, surface craft, or other devices is irrelevant. Marines must always be ready for an assault mission from the sea. Their only job is to figure the best way to do it—not whether it can or should be done.
In August 1990 the National Command Authority, surprised by Iraq’s unpredicted invasion of Kuwait, feared Saddam Hussein would continue his offensive to seize the oil facilities of eastern Saudi Arabia. That he stopped at the Saudi border allowed us to, at our leisure, muster for Desert Storm. But if the Iraqis had continued and invaded Saudi Arabia, the only practical option in gaining access to the kingdom and its facilities would have been by brute force, meaning an amphibious assault to regain the occupied territory and then liberate Kuwait.
Significantly, the Defense Department recently released transcripts of Hussein’s first Gulf War council meetings, captured after the second war. In them the Iraqis worried about an American amphibious assault force afloat off their coastal flank and the need to defend against it. (Iraqi line divisions were uselessly redeployed for that purpose.) As it turned out, no landing took place. Today this is referred to as a deception. But it was a real contingency plan, not a bluff. The Marines were prepared to storm the beaches below Kuwait City if General H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s “Hail Mary” strategy had faltered.
Those who raise the specter of precision-guided missiles and a variety of modern weaponry as insuperable obstacles to naval-force projection forget that their World War II predecessors faced comparative and equally deadly obstacles. What could be more of an area-denial or anti-access weapon than a kamikaze? The amphibious planners of the day in all theaters were fully aware that amphibious assaults required certain conditions to be met before they were attempted. Local control of sea, undersea, and airspace was a must. Doctrine developed by the Navy and Marine Corps spelled out specific tasks associated with those requirements.
I taught amphibious operations at Command and Staff College more than 40 years ago. While I no longer have my old manual at my side, I remember that area denial and anti-access were treated as alphabetical target categories. As I recall it, A targets were those that threatened approaches to the amphibious objective area (anti-access), that is, enemy air, surface, and sub-surface weapons and associated equipment such as radars. There was a detailed intelligence requirement to locate and identify them. Once that was done, a target list was disseminated and missions were assigned for their destruction ahead of movement to the area.
B targets could interfere with the landing itself (area denial), and C targets dealt with post-landing threats. All identified threats were dealt with methodically. There was always full awareness of the necessity to cope with unlocated and unidentified threats and challenges. Amphibious assaults were expected to have surprises and be bloody. But when they had to be done, they were done.
I reject the belief that the nature of warfare and its basic instrumentalities have changed even as we assign them new terms. An enemy’s sophisticated defenses differ from those of the past only in characteristics. As in the past, they can be canceled out by good planning and use of our not-inconsiderable countermeasures. Amphibious assaults may be few and far between. But when the need arises to storm a hostile beach, we must remember that we’ve been there before, know how to do it, and have the means to do so.
If the nation takes refuge in the judgment of naysayers and removes the amphibious arrow from its quiver, it surrenders unique military capability. To our enemies, we become just another predictable adversary.