In Naval Aviation Vision 2010, the Naval Aviation Enterprise describes how it supports the Navy's A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (CS21) through forward presence, deterrence, sea control, power-projection, maritime security, and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief. These capabilities underpin naval aviation's seamless integration into the Navy's portion of the nation's maritime partnership-and-security strategy. But by virtue of its dominance above the sea, naval aviation is well-suited for broader partnerships beyond those possible in the maritime domain. The Navy has the opportunity in a very deliberate manner to take CS21 a step further by harnessing naval aviation's core abilities for an innovative, aviation-focused partnership capability.
As each service adjusts to the Building Partnership Capacity and Capability (BPC) roles and missions described in the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, National Military Strategy, Quadrennial Defense Reviews (QDR), Guidance for the Employment of the Force, and the Guidance for the Development of the Force, they are correctly focusing on activities centered around their core competencies.1 For example, CS21 and its subsequent implementation document, the Naval Operations Concept 2010, describe how the Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Coast Guard would like to conduct maritime partnership activities. In the December 2008 Air Force Global Partnership Strategy—Building Partnerships for the 21st Century, the U.S. Air Force describes how it could "build airpower capabilities" around the world in support of higher-level strategic objectives. The U.S. Army Security Assistance Command leads and manages security-assistance programs and foreign military sales cases to build partner capacity, supporting combatant command engagement strategies and strengthening U.S. global partnerships.2
The United States cannot afford to overlook opportunities to implement its partnership-building strategy efficiently; the concept of aviation partnerships with other nations should not be the exclusive purview of the Air Force or any other service. It is important to understand that the call for greater BPC has been made to all branches of the military. The U.S. public demands and expects that each element of the nation's air power—the Air Force, naval aviation, and Army aviation—come together and execute flawlessly. Just as they fly and fight together, so too should they implement aviation-partnership activities in a coordinated and standardized manner. The services have the collective expertise as well as the collective responsibility to develop a comprehensive aviation-partnership capability in support of America's broader strategic objectives.
Environment-Shaping Potential
Naval aviation can dramatically shape the future security environment through partnership-building. BPC is one of several irregular warfare (IW) capabilities benefiting from shifting resources, particularly in the highly publicized Fiscal Year 2010 budget proposal of the Department of Defense (DOD). For naval aviation, the concept goes beyond the relationships that develop during standing exercises with nations that have mature air power (although they too should be included). What's needed is a comprehensive approach dedicated to partnerships with an array of partner-nation aviation stakeholders, both established and emergent.
In naval aviation partnerships, information sharing, advising, and training should occur in or near the partner nation as part of the deployment patterns of carrier strike groups and expeditionary strike groups, for two reasons. First, this arrangement places greater emphasis on the concept of presence as a key conflict-prevention tool. Second, it increases the likelihood that the aviation capabilities of critical emerging powers are not overlooked. The partnership can be modeled after a composite expeditionary air-wing organization, with the capability and resources to embark pre-planned partnership detachments. Part of such a detachment's major features should include maintenance mentors, instructor pilots, specialized regional/cultural/linguistic personnel, other support staff, training aids, and aircraft. Partnership detachments could integrate into the deployment preparations of the ship-air fleet-response plan. Just as the operational aviation elements use the plan to prepare for combat operations, so too could partnership personnel take advantage of this time to make preparations to ensure training continuity and partner-nation coordination.
When considering the depth and scope of naval aviation partnerships, the Navy must understand the varying degree of and demand for aviation throughout the globe. Smaller nations for whom getting airborne is a major feat will most likely have the highest demand signal. Many resource-starved nations in Africa are unable to operate aviation assets to maintain adequate levels of safety and security within their borders. On the third largest lake in the world, Lake Victoria, officials estimate that as many as 5,000 people drown each year.3 The lake's territorial custodians have no meaningful vertical-lift (or maritime) search-and-rescue capabilities.
Moreover, African nations are increasingly striving to resolve regional conflicts. In December 2008, the combined forces of Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Southern Sudan conducted military operations against Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army in the Congo's Garamba National Park. The Ugandan People's Defense Force (UPDF) provided much of the air support for the campaign. In addition to rotary-wing gunships (fewer than ten Mi-24 Hind gunships), the UPDF Air Force for the first time integrated fixed-wing MiG-21s (four of seven were fully operational). Within ten days of the commencement of hostilities, a fatal MiG-21 accident reduced the Ugandan fixed-wing tactical aviation fleet by 25 percent. The impact of a safety failure on a smaller country's air force, especially during regional stability operations, can have a devastating impact on its ability to sustain the mission and weaken its credibility among the population. A naval aviation partnership with the UPDF Air Force could have been instrumental in preventing this avoidable maintenance-related mishap.
Naval Aviation's Risk and Opportunity
The United States' only bluewater and full-scope aviation capability will fall victim to budgetary pressures if naval aviation fails to become adept in non-kinetic partnership missions. Stimulated usually by budgetary pressures, the value of naval aviation has been frequently questioned in spite of its ability to respond to global crisis or demonstrate national resolve. In its efforts to justify naval aviation, the Navy tied its necessity to the roles, missions, and operational circumstances of the world wars, the interwar period, and the Cold War. Naval aviation weathered the critical scrutiny of Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara and his systems-analysis "whiz kids," who profoundly affected the decision-making culture within the Department of Defense.
The military experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the economic turmoil of the 21st century, and DOD's deliberate approach to an affordable military balance will likely drive naval-aviation force-structure decisions. The U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan de-emphasizes the employment of sea-based aviation and the long-range interdiction missions for which naval aviation is well suited.4 In both countries, the United States and its allies quickly achieved complete air superiority and unlimited access—conditions favoring land-based aviation. Add to this the current prevailing economic turmoil that has generated increased attention to government spending. In the context of rising non-discretionary spending, volatile world markets, frozen credit markets, and government bailouts, DOD will have an uphill battle to justify defense-spending levels. And perhaps most significant, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is shifting military strategy and investments to capabilities needed to succeed in current conflicts and those the United States is likely to encounter in the future.
Secretary Gates unveiled his strategy of "balance" in Foreign Affairs and in the FY 10 and FY 11 President's Budgets, the 2010 QDR, and the Future Years Defense Program.5 In May 2010, Secretary Gates remarked at the Navy League Sea-Air-Space Exposition, "We simply cannot afford to perpetuate a status quo that heaps more and more expensive technologies onto fewer and fewer platforms, thereby risking a situation where some of our greatest capital expenditures go toward weapons and ships that could potentially become wasting assets." Secretary Gates consistently voices the notion that U.S. military capabilities needed now and in the future are profoundly different from the defense program's current focus. The Secretary still feels that the United States must maintain "existing conventional and strategic technological edge against other military forces."6
But how much edge? How much will become trade-space for IW capabilities? It is conceivable that conventional warfighting capabilities for which there is sufficient overmatch (e.g., force application and precision strike) will become the financial offsets for IW. Programs with large investment accounts that appear to offer no immediate return on investment may be particularly attractive. Perhaps dual-use programs or those that are tangentially supportive of irregular warfare will be less vulnerable because they more clearly fall within the Secretary's conventional-to-IW hedging strategy. It seems likely that only those programs for which there is a persuasive and direct connection to IW will withstand downsizing or execution.
Well before the Secretary's declarations in Foreign Affairs, naval aviation was already exhibiting budgetary trends that failed to keep up with other areas of defense spending. While naval aviation in recent years has kept pace with the Department of the Navy's budget levels, the overall DOD has experienced an 87 percent rate of growth. Reflecting the trend toward investment in IW, the U.S. Special Operations Command has experienced a rate of growth of over 227 percent. It is speculative to conclude that naval aviation has become an unwitting resource-pool for other areas of defense spending. But it is not unreasonable to conclude that the unremarkable growth of naval aviation could somehow be related to other areas of exceptional growth such as IW.
Faced with this shifting reality, naval aviation has essentially two choices. First, it can overlook external criticism and maintain a conventionally biased approach—a profoundly risky strategy which, relying on historical justification and rationale, simply will not stand up to today's prevailing circumstances, strategic direction, and enormous budgetary pressures. This unwise tack will bring naval aviation closer to joining the horse cavalry and the battleship in the bone yard. A more promising way forward is to develop and integrate a core IW capability into its framework. Naval aviation partnerships have the potential to do just that, directly supporting national strategic objectives by enhancing the aviation capabilities and capacities of partner nations. The latter of the two options, the one that looks to the future instead of leaning on the past, is more consistent with naval aviation's history and innovative culture.
Advantages Accrue
Naval aviation partnership strike-group integration will require some modification to the current airwing model and require combatant commands to carefully manage risk within their areas of responsibility. The current aircraft carrier model is based on 44 strike fighters able to service hundreds of targets for 30 days at a time. Unable to fully resource ten carrier air wings simultaneously, the Navy provides 44 strike fighters by routinely shifting aircraft from air wings in the post-deployment phase. These scheduling challenges place non-deployed air wings in degraded states of readiness, making them unsuitable for deployment. Modifying the strike-fighter mix and embarking a partnership detachment (with its complement of trainer aircraft and personnel) may be one way to lessen aircraft transfers and increase Fleet-wide readiness levels.
Some second- and third-order effects from naval-aviation partnerships are also advantageous, if less obvious. Fundamentally, such partnerships will enable the United States and host nations to more fully grasp the extent to which they are prepared to deal with terrorism, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and other regional contingencies. Very often, developing countries, particularly those in areas with rocky histories, are forced to confront legitimacy issues by weary and skeptical populations. Naval aviation partnerships can become key components for humanitarian missions, search-and-rescue efforts, and law enforcement—all of which enhance host-nation legitimacy and governance. In an ideal situation, the partner nation, rather than the United States, would benefit from the service-oriented messages generated from the effective use of vertical airlift in the aftermath of, for example, the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, or the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Naval aviation partnerships will be in a unique position to reveal opportunities for foreign military sales or foreign military financing to DOD's security-cooperation professionals. Embarked partnership detachments could contribute to Fleet-wide readiness levels because of increased operational-aircraft availability ashore. These higher readiness levels will provide combatant commands with a larger, better prepared, surge-capable force. Finally, partnership operations will foster increased interagency cooperation. Some aviation missions—border security, fish and wildlife management, law enforcement, and others—may fall within the purview of the host-nation's civilian sphere rather than its military. When policies and laws won't allow the U.S. military to interact directly with partner-nation civilian organizations, the State Department will have to serve as a key interlocutor.
Getting Airborne
Three immediate action items are necessary to move naval aviation partnerships forward. First, naval aviation must move beyond its management-efficiency focus and begin to think strategically about how to more effectively align the community with broader national security objectives. For the partnership initiative to succeed in a future of rising overhead costs and fewer resources, naval aviation must expand its view beyond the standard aviation-readiness requirements. Its metrics need to be revisited and expanded to include the skills, personnel, and equipment requisite to partnership activities. Introducing an innovative partnership capability may spawn new ideas on how to improve naval aviation to better meet the challenges of a complex, irregular, and unpredictable global environment.
Second, the Naval Aviation Enterprise should coordinate and collaborate with combatant commands, the Air Force, and Army aviation to develop standardized doctrine, training, and organizational optimization. Combatant commands conduct annual theater-security cooperation conferences to elicit service support for their campaign plans. These venues can provide naval aviation with the necessary perspectives to create and synchronize aviation partnership capabilities.
Naval aviation partnerships will benefit greatly from the relevant expertise of the other services. Since 1994, the Air Force Special Operations Forces (AFSOC/6SOS) mission has been to assess, train, advise, and assist foreign aviation forces in air-power employment, sustainment, and force integration.7 The Air Force has taken a number of steps to integrate this capability into its general-purpose forces. It considers partnership capabilities as a core mission in support of its United States Air Force Partnership Strategy—Building Partnerships for the 21st Century document. Unlike CS21, which only outlines a partnership strategy for the maritime domain, the Air Force strategy takes advantage of its entire workforce by addressing partnership capabilities for the air, space, and cyber domains. Heidi H. Grant, the Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force for International Affairs, is energetically leading the development of doctrine, integration of language and culture assets, and the creation of an Air Advisor Academy.8
Failure to coordinate extensively between the services could jeopardize the success of aviation partnerships. Imagine a scenario in which Navy and Army aviation maintainers are deployed to a partner nation to conduct, among other things, corrosion-control techniques for panel fasteners. For their teaching to be effective, the maintainers must deliver a standardized training module. At the very least, this synchronization requires pre-deployment coordination and perhaps even the temporary setting aside of parent-service maintenance practices.
Third, a pilot program needs to be conducted for naval aviation partnerships; the National Guard Bureau could provide the ready template. The National Guard's State Partnership program pairs Army and Air National Guard units of the 50 states and four U.S. territories with various other countries' militaries worldwide to promote familiarization and mutual exchange of ideas and joint training.9 The Arkansas Air Guard, for example, has a partnership with Guatemala. This pre-existing relationship could permit the Naval Aviation Enterprise to observe and better understand the intricacies involved in developing and conducting partnership activities.
Forging Bonds for the Future
Naval aviation is at a momentous crossroads. Unlike the other major force-shaping events of the 20th century, the conclusion of the Cold War made a less than significant mark on the way the community viewed itself. In the context of the prevailing strategic imperatives and conditions, naval aviation must re-evaluate how it is aligned with American foreign policy objectives. The Secretary of Defense has asked the services to develop irregular-warfare capability while maintaining their conventional edge. His request is neither unfair nor unreasonable. But make no mistake: Those who fail to act will risk becoming trade-space for IW. As leadership decisions affect the current and future size of naval aviation, the nation could be exposed to an unacceptable level of risk. The Navy therefore must make a more meaningful and persuasive case to retain its conventional edge and embrace IW. Naval aviation partnerships should not be viewed as simply another mission area, but rather as a framework through which all other mission areas can be supported and enhanced. The real question the Navy must answer has more to do with understanding naval aviation's purpose when not actively conducting combat operations. The answer may be found in CS21: "We believe that preventing wars is as important as winning wars."
Yesterday's deterrence seems to be giving way to more proactive methods of conflict prevention through partnership capacity-and-capability building. The most promising strategy for the Navy to mitigate current and future strategic risk is to develop a comprehensive aviation partnership capability that is fully integrated into the overall mission.
1. For background on DOD's BPC policy and definition, see Quadrennial Defense Review Building Partnership Capacity Execution Roadmap, 22 May 2006.
2. U.S. Army Security Assistance Command fact sheet, www.usasac.army.mil/Documents/USASAC%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf.
3. Allafrica.com, http://allafrica.com/stories/200907300157.html.
4. U.S. Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3.24 & 3-33.5, pp. 364-365.
5. Robert Gates, "A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age," Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009.
6. Robert Gates speech, 3 May 2010, www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1460.
7. 6th Special Operations Squadron factsheet, www2.hurlburt.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3496.
8. For USAF BPC doctrine development see USAF Air Command & Staff College, Lemay Center for Doctrine Development and Education. For culture and language, see Air Force Culture and Language Center. For Air Advisory Academy, see Air Force Education and Training Command/A3Q.
9. Randy Saldivar, "Texas Air Guard Flies with Czechs," http://www.ng.mil/news/archives/2009/10/101309-Texas.aspx.