In his latest book, Only the Paranoid Survive (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1996), Andy Groves tells how his company weathered radical changes in the computer industry—and not only survived but prospered. He describes a phenomenon that is critical in preparing competitive organizations for the future: the ability to see and react to strategic inflection points. A strategic inflection point is “a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change. . .
They are full-scale changes in the way business is conducted, so that simply adopting new technology or fighting the competition as you used to may be insufficient.” We in the armed forces can apply this theory by developing our vision and our supporting operational concepts, based on a realization that our operating environment has changed or is about to change.
What would a strategic inflection point look like to the military services? As early as 1911, Marine Captain Earl Hancock “Pete” Ellis saw one coming in the Pacific Theater. He looked at the growing power of Japan in the Pacific, the Navy’s need for advanced bases to project power in the region, and the likelihood that the Japanese would try to deny us that ability. Ellis believed that in the future, the nation would call on the Marine Corps to conduct amphibious assaults to seize islands for such purposes from the Japanese. In 1921, he articulated his vision in a seminal document: Advanced Base Force Operations in Micronesia. Ellis recognized an approaching strategic inflection point, which set in motion a new operational concept for the Marine Corps: amphibious assault. His premise was controversial, but his ability to foresee the coming change allowed us almost 20 years to develop the needed doctrine, tactics, and equipment.
The characteristics of today’s emerging post-Cold War world and our need to support “A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement” bring us to another strategic inflection point. To meet the newest set of dynamic requirements, we must ask three basic questions:
- Why will we fight?
- Where will we fight?
- Whom will we fight?
No one knows the certain answers to these questions, nor are these the only questions to be answered—but they form a useful framework for our discussion.
Why will we fight! The National Security Strategy defines our most basic vital interests as the defense of our territory and citizens, the defense of our allies, and the preservation of our economic well-being. We will do whatever it takes to defend these interests, including the unilateral and decisive use of military power. Today, more than 30% of the U.S. economy is dependent on foreign markets, and this percentage is forecast to increase exponentially through the year 2020. Because of this dependency, any threat to the global economy will have a direct impact on our decision to deploy and commit military power beyond our shores in the 21st century.
Where will we fight? There is a shift taking place in our geostrategic interests. Traditionally, the United States has been Eurocentric, but we now find a need to heed the engines of economic change that are making Asia a region of great importance. By 2020, the global economic center of gravity will have shifted from the West to the East. Today, in China and India, we are watching the emergence of two economic superpowers that together will have a major impact on the global economy. Both have a limitless pool of inexpensive labor that will compete successfully with other manufacturing and service-based economies in the world.
By 2020, 80% of the world's largest economies will be located along the Pacific and Indian Ocean rim. Today, 37% of U.S. overseas trade is with Asia, and U.S.-Pacific trade outstrips U.S.-European trade. By the year 2000, our Asian trade will be twice the size of our European trade. At the same time, economic growth will increase the ability of emerging nations to respond to perceived insecurity by obtaining military power, including high-tech weapons and weapons of mass destruction. These very same nations have economies that require vast amounts of oil—oil that is shipped through the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca. This mix of superheated economies, resource dependency, and readily available military arms is a basic and well-proved recipe for instability.
As the global economy grows and becomes more interdependent, instability—anywhere--becomes less and less tolerable. At the same time, geography will not change; the tyranny of distance remains a problem in Asia. Distance equates to time, and time equates to political leverage. The more immediate our involvement and the more rapid and credible our response, the more we will be able to influence events. We know that our permanent overseas land-based presence, particularly along the Pacific and Indian Ocean-Persian Gulf littoral, is not likely to expand, for both domestic economic and international political reasons. Thus, the only feasible solution for maintaining presence in this region will be to maintain a capable naval power-projection capability.
Whom will we fight? A new peer-competitor could arise, but this is unlikely to happen for the next decade or so. Our future opponents could range anywhere from a technologically adept middle-income country to more primitive Chechen-like rebels. As old nation-states fall, new ones emerge. The fall of the Soviet Union, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the tragedies in Somalia and Rwanda, and the conflict in Liberia all warn of the trend toward nations splintering along ethnic, religious, or tribal lines. This trend points to more than the usual crises between nations and within nations; there also is a greater degree of instability—in the current term: chaos.
The political dimensions of chaos are daunting enough, but when it is combined with the worldwide proliferation of high-tech weapons, chaos could be as lethal as a clash between first-rank military powers. In such increasingly lethal scenarios, warfare will be driven more by opposing mind-sets and intellects than by a simple calculus of hardware and personnel. Instead of trying to match us tank for tank and plane for plane, fighting the kind of high-technology, industrial-age war we saw in Desert Storm, adversaries will target our vulnerabilities: ports, airfields, and fuel systems. They also will target our information systems. Their combat organizations will neither possess nor employ the kinds of force structure our systems are optimized to find and kill—massed armor, massed troops, and fixed communications and transportation systems. In short, they will seek to fight us where we are least able to bring our strength to bear. Our opponents will be neither doctrinaire nor predictable, but they will be lethal.
Implications
Our ability to influence events in such a fluid and dynamic world rests on the capabilities we accrue in our armed forces. We must examine our organizations, our training, our equipment, and our institutional attitudes and set a deliberate course to cultivate the capabilities we will need tomorrow. Fundamentally, we must alter the way we view warfare. We must leap forward in our thinking, leap ahead organizationally, and leap over generations of accumulated hardware.
In the 21st century, the Navy-Marine Corps team must field a more versatile, capable, and responsive naval power-projection capability. Uncertainty and the tyranny of distance will require the United States to field naval expeditionary forces that can execute missions ranging from humanitarian relief to high-intensity conflict. They must be capable of operations in terrain anywhere from the open oceans to Third World urban slums. To do this, we need a force that blends high-technology and maneuver warfare with the advantages of sea basing. These requirements have given rise to the U.S. Marine Corps’ new operational concept: Operational Maneuver from the Sea (OMFTS).
The OMFTS Operational Concept
At the heart of OMFTS is the maneuver of naval expeditionary forces at the operational level of warfare, to exploit enemy weaknesses and deliver a decisive blow. Mere movement, however, does not qualify as operational maneuver. To be considered operational maneuver our efforts must be directed toward our opponent’s center of gravity. This center of gravity may be a physical object, a source of support, supplies, or even the enemy’s mindset. Even in the most seemingly chaotic circumstances, adversaries have an underlying structure: political, military, and societal. Operational maneuver will be directed at the structural underpinnings of our adversaries’ ability to resist the imposition of our will.
The search for decisive effect is common to all forms of operational maneuver—whether on land, at sea, in the air or space, or in the littorals, where land, sea, and air meet. What distinguishes OMFTS from all other types of operational maneuver is the extensive use of the sea as a means of gaining advantage. The sea serves as an avenue of friendly movement that simultaneously is a barrier to the enemy and a means for us to avoid disadvantageous engagements. This aspect of OMFTS makes use of, but is not limited to, such techniques as sea-based logistics, sea-based fire support, and the use of the sea as a medium for tactical and operational movement.
The capture of Seoul in 1950 was a classic example of OMFTS. It was a joint operation—unified under a single commander—that flowed coherently from San Diego, Sasebo, and Pusan, through an amphibious assault at Inchon, to key objectives well inland. The Seoul operation focused on a critical North Korean vulnerability: the lines of support (and withdrawal) through the Han River Valley. The operation maintained this focus throughout, leading to the destruction of the North Korean Army and the liberation of South Korea. Had the operation focused simply on the conduct of an amphibious landing, it would have generated only an operationally insignificant tactical victory.
Application of OMFTS
The application of OMFTS requires an understanding of and ability to orchestrate simultaneous engagement, tempo, interchangeability, and operational shock in an environment of operational depth and mission depth.
Simultaneous engagement calls for an ability to fight the entire battle as a single engagement, seeking to neutralize the enemy’s capabilities through the simultaneous but selective application of force across his full operational depth. This requires the employment of forces with multiple capabilities acting simultaneously, not in sequence. This includes the full range of combat support and combat service support, plus such specialized capabilities as civil affairs groups employed with engineer support battalions. Simultaneous engagement of hostile forces across their entire operational depth not only is the quickest way to seize the initiative and control tempo, but also allows a force of limited size to achieve decisive results against a larger force. The ability of the force commander to see the battlefield (or “battlespace”) in all its elements—as a single, seamless area—is key. This applies to political dimensions as well as to military aspects.
Tempo is the rate at which actions and interactions occur within a campaign. Controlling or altering that rate is essential to maintaining the initiative. Standard thinking about tempo defaults to a first-generation OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop, where we simply strike faster than a ponderous opponent or move around the battlespace more rapidly. Controlling tempo on a chaotic, urbanized battlefield will require far more than a quick deep strike against second-echelon targets or rapid movement around the battlefield. Instead, controlling tempo must be envisioned in more subtle and multidimensional terms— broadening our thinking beyond simple force-on-force scenarios by actively attempting to alter the enemy’s perceptions, as well as to attack the entire depth and breadth of his capabilities.
Interchangeability. Each warfighting commander-in-chief or operational commander must have a tool kit of forces and resources necessary to execute all assigned and potential contingencies. Thus, our forces need more than just multi-role platforms; we need multi-role organizations. More important, we must be capable of operational thinking that is not bound by notions of capabilities that can be applied only in certain, set patterns. For example, we must ask ourselves: What operations might an amphibious ready group with a Marine expeditionary unit (special- operations capable) [MEU(SOC)] perform beyond the conduct of amphibious landings and the 17 other standard MEU missions? How can our forces and resources become interchangeable to create synergies of combat power? Stretching our thinking in this fashion will be essential in coping with the chaotic situations that will confront us in the future, and is needed to develop the flexibility and adaptability to defeat the asymmetric threats we will encounter. It permits an expeditionary force, once committed, to adapt rapidly as missions and tasks change.
Operational shock is the result of rapid, system-wide physical and psychological breakdown. We seek the destruction or neutralization not only of our opponent’s resources but also of his mind. If we succeed in inflicting operational shock, the enemy becomes disoriented and is diverted from his objective. He loses decision-making ability for force employment. The Germans achieved this at Sedan in 1940, when the speed by which Guderian’s 19th Panzer Corps broke through the French defenses created panic and shut down France’s ability to respond coherently. In that case, news of the German advance spread through the fire control nets and neutralized the very thing—the artillery—that could have stopped the river crossing. We also can see this in the latter stages of the ground offensive during Desert Storm. The Iraqi command- and-control system disintegrated, and individual Iraqi units became so disoriented that they stopped functioning as military units, even though they had the means at hand to resist. Operational shock applies to low-intensity conflicts, as well. To accomplish this we must be able to “peel the onion,” to reveal the structure and support mechanisms of an opponent who may seem rag-tag and chaotic on the surface. The OMFTS force first may need to conduct a cultural intelligence preparation of the battlefield, to determine the sources of the opponent’s strength.
Operational depth. We must direct our efforts against the operational depth of the enemy. This is defined not only in terms of geographic distance, but in terms of time and function, as well. Operational depth allows commanders to sustain momentum and take advantage of all available resources to press the fight, attacking enemy forces and capabilities simultaneously throughout the battlespace. The geographic operational depth in which land forces normally operate is about 350 kilometers—Desert Storm was an example of this. Another example of operational depth is provided by our recent experience in Somalia, where we operated in depth, both in terms of geography (the entire country) and in terms of time (across two harvest seasons).
Mission depth. As our forces encounter the chaotic situations of future contingencies—much like the Somalia, Liberia, or Bosnia missions we’ve faced recently—they will need to operate not only across the geographical depth of a region but also across a wide range of conflict and tasks at the same time. This requires the ability to adapt and shift mission focus as the problem evolves, changing direction (in terms of mission) in mid-stride without losing momentum or effect. Mission depth is the ability to conduct a range of missions simultaneously across different levels of warfare. One illustration: Consider the range of operational tasks Desert Storm forces might have faced if the assault into Iraq had continued after the liberation of Kuwait. We likely would have seen simultaneous missions ranging from humanitarian efforts to full- scale assault. The important thing to remember is that We must visualize the entire mission and potential follow- on missions and build our force composition accordingly.
Required Capabilities
To attain these types of effects with OMFTS in the 21st century, the naval services must improve their doctrine, tactics, equipment, and training. The OMFTS force must Possess enhanced capabilities in command and control, intelligence, mobility, logistics, fires, and protection.
Command and Control. OMFTS forces must possess an integrated command-and-control system that allows centralized and decentralized operations to take place concurrently. This command-and-control system must be able to connect (by both function and distance) widely separated units, so each participant has situational awareness of what the others are doing, and is able to share what he is observing. We will have to replace our communication nets with information nets, in which all participants from flag rank down to private first class can gain access to information they need. In addition, this information network must not contain any seams generated by "stove-piped" or service-specific architecture. The OMFTS force will be fully integrated into the joint force, sharing information with all the players. We will attempt to attain a state of information dominance, but our opponents will make equal—if not greater—efforts to deny it to us, using both symmetrical and asymmetrical counters. The 21st century still will have its share of Clausewitzian "fog" for all warriors.
Intelligence. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, the naval services must try "to think anew" in terms of intelligence. Our seabases provide excellent platforms from which to shape the intelligence effort. In addition, we must create an intelligence system that can provide the joint force with tactical, operational-, and strategic-level intelligence, accessible to and tailored for all participants, allowing them to see more clearly either the adversary's or the conflict's structure and its support mechanisms. In this manner we can make educated judgments about the location of the enemy's center of gravity, how best to attack it, whether we have identified it correctly, or whether it keeps changing as the operation unfolds. This intelligence effort will provide information ranging from sniper locations, to enemy operational maneuver, to essential cultural information. Most of all, it will focus on identifying the opposition’s intent.
Mobility. The OMFTS force must be highly mobile at sea, in the air, and on the ground. Initially, it will have to sortie from widely separated sea bases, then from land and air bases, as it moves toward objectives deep inside the battlespace. The force also must have the ability either to mass or disperse forces expeditiously, under all weather and threat conditions. Projecting forces from sea bases in the 21st century must not create the friction it generates at present. The OMFTS force will generate an operational tempo advantage, by penetrating to the full depth of the objective area and shifting forces at will to allow simultaneous engagement. A mobile OMFTS force will help inflict a condition of operational shock on our adversaries.spite our inter
Logistics. The OMFTS force of the 21st century must be able to project logistical support much more effectively than we can today. Logistics cannot be examined in isolation. If we are to project forces deep within the battle- space and shift them effortlessly, we must provide the logistic support they need throughout their mission depth. We must design a force whose support apparatus allows it to generate the required operational-tempo advantage. If our assets and capabilities are interchangeable, we will be able to use them in mutually supporting ways and lower our logistics footprint. In addition, the OMFTS force must be able to provide logistic support for operations ranging from humanitarian assistance to high-intensity conflict. In this regard, the OMFTS force logistics infrastructure must operate seamlessly within the joint and nongovernment organization arena. For large-scale humanitarian operations, the OMFTS force often will be the first on the scene, and in time must be able to execute a rapid, efficient turnover to joint civic affairs or nongovernment organizational efforts.
Fires. The OMFTS force will rely on both lethal and nonlethal fires for support. These fires will be fully integrated with fires provided by other elements of the joint force, and will include air-, ground-, and sea-based fires. These fires should be able to range and influence both the area of influence and the area of interest. The OMFTS force will be combined-arms in nature. To provide operational and mission depth, the fires must be timely, discriminate, and proportional. Our tool kit must be diverse, with weapons that can be used against all types of targets, ranging from tank formations to urban riots or demonstrations. In other words, our tool kit must hold more than sledgehammers.
Protection. The 21st century operating environment will be far deadlier than anything we have encountered in recent years. If an obscure cult in Japan can deploy a nerve agent, then just imagine the breadth of capabilities our opponents may acquire in the future. The inherent mobility associated with sea-based forces offers protection beyond that of those forces assigned to fixed bases on land, and land bases can present lucrative targets, as we have seen recently with the bombing in Saudi Arabia. But the OMFTS force also must be protected from a variety of space-, sea-, air-, land-, and information-based threats. Not the least of these is the information-warfare threat. Our C4I, intelligence, and fires systems will be increasingly information dependent, and our opponents certainly will attempt to deny these capabilities to us.
How Do We Plan to Get There?
The Marine Corps is readying itself for OMFTS in the 21st century with three concurrent and interrelated efforts: we are “making Marines;” we are procuring and experimenting with advanced technologies; and we are institutionalizing innovation.
People. Before we move on to technology and equipment, we must talk about people. There is a danger in viewing 21st-century weapons and tactics from too much of a technological standpoint and underrating the human dimension. The Marine Corps will not do this. Our focus rests on the enhancement of the individual Marine and his ability to win in combat. Therefore, our most important OMFTS enhancement will be made in the training of the individual Marine. Ultimately, people—not machines—are the key to our success in war. Accordingly, we will equip our Marines—not just man our equipment.
On the battlefields of the 21st century, the junior enlisted Marine will have access to, and may need to use, more information than a battalion commander might today. We think that chaos in the littorals will require our Marines to be improvisers and innovators. They must be comfortable with high-technology weapons and information systems and trained to know what to do with them. Above all, the individual Marine must be a warrior without peer. We will leverage technology to provide demanding and realistic training for our Marines, allowing them to expand their warfighting envelope continually.
Equipment. The Marine Corps is aggressively pursuing few technologies to enhance our intelligence, information, communications, mobility, logistics, and fire-support systems, so that we can conduct OMFTS effectively. Because the Marine Corps is a naval service, many of the items necessary to conduct OMFTS are traditional Navy procurement items, such as ships, aircraft, and naval surface fire support. For example:
- V-22 Osprey. OMFTS requires the Marines to be able to strike from over the horizon and to project land forces deep into the enemy's interior. Our current medium-lift helicopter, the CH-46, does not have the range or lift capability to make this happen. The V-22 allows the OMFTS force to range throughout the entire operational depth of our opponents. For the first time, they will know that no matter where they try to maneuver, our land forces will remain within range, in V-22s flying from naval platforms. This helps generate tempo and inflict operational shock. The V-22 changes all the equations concerning maneuver and mobility.
- Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle (AAAV). The Navy and the Marine Corps developed the concept of over-the-horizon assault to avoid enemy strengths, to exploit weaknesses, and to protect Navy ships from increased land-based missile and sea-based mine threats. The AAAV is the third leg of the OMFTS triad (others are the air-cushion landing craft [LCAC] already in service and the V-22), and each leg is critical for the success of over-the-horizon assaults envisioned in OMFTS. The ability of the AAAV to transition swiftly from sea to land operations gives us a major increase in the ability to apply force in operational depth and to enhance our ability to inflict operational shock. Think of the relationship between these systems as you would combined arms. Even if our opponent can counter one of them, he will expose himself to exploitation by the others. This triad gives us offense in depth.
- Amphibious Shipping. A Navy-Marine Corps power-projection force provides unbeatable opportunity for maneuver. Sea basing allows the Navy-Marine team to establish a “presence” that can serve either to deter a potential conflict or, if conflict is unavoidable, to create a condition of operational shock in an adversary. Unlike the land-based aviation elements of power projection, a sea- based force “controls the clock,” and in turn gets to control operational tempo. Sea basing also brings a reduction in the vulnerabilities associated with land-based logistics depots. With adequate amphibious shipping, the Marine air-ground task force can conduct a simultaneous engagement through the use of V-22s, fixed-wing air support from STOVL (short take-off, vertical landing) joint strike fighters, and amphibious assault with LCACs and AAAVs. Lacking adequate amphibious shipping, OMFTS cannot materialize.
- Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). This aircraft will bring a quantum increase in fire support for OMFTS. Stealth technology, combined with STOVL basing flexibility, will allow the Marines to base this aircraft on a variety of platforms, from which it will be able to strike critical deep targets, provide close air support, suppress enemy air defenses, and conduct counterair missions. Like the V-22, the JSF gives the Navy-Marine Corps power-projection force superior capabilities in operational depth, shock, and interchangeability—all of which create operational dilemmas for our opponents.
- Innovation. Preparing the naval services for the 21st century requires more than tough training or the procurement of new equipment. It requires an institutional commitment to change. Laminating future technology on current doctrine and organizations is not the answer. To win in the 21st century, the naval services must steal a march on the rate of global change.
We have begun the process of combining new technology with innovative new organizations, doctrine, and training in one of our Corps’ most important initiatives, our Warfighting Laboratory. The Marine Corps schools at Quantico, Virginia, were instrumental in redefining the science and art of amphibious assault during the interwar years, and the Warfighting Laboratory will help us chart a course to master the challenges we see ahead. At the forefront of this effort is the testbed we call Sea Dragon, which is not a single innovation or idea, but rather a commitment to innovation. It is through this commitment to innovation that the Marine Corps will develop the doctrine, tactics, equipment, and training techniques that will bring success in the 21st century.
Conclusion
At century’s end, the Marine Corps finds itself poised at yet another strategic inflection point, every bit as profound as the one Pete Ellis saw shortly after the turn of this century. In response, we have developed and are refining a new operational concept for power projection—a naval-services capability that offers the joint force commander vastly improved maneuver at the operational level. Under this concept of Operational Maneuver From the Sea, we will continue to match advances in technology with updated doctrine, to undergird our national security strategy well into the next century.
General Krulak is the 31st Commandant of the Marine Corps.