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throughout the Navy Department of the United States- More than any other strategic philosopher, Mahan was responsible for the naval buildup which preoccupied these four nations at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”
Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
(Putnam, 1979)
If anyone since Mahan has appreciated the power of a written document to shape and energize a nation’s naval policy, it was surely John F. Lehman, Jr., during his tenure as Secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987. During the 1970s, according to Norman Friedman in his book T*
U. S. Maritime Strategy (Naval Institute Press, 1988),[1][2] |
Navy “ . . . failed to develop a public rationale for 1' desired force structure in terms the civilian decisi°n
b^-'uci a coherent strategy for how the resources would
sll|Timany people know that the Coast Guard would as- of 6 m>litary duties under command of the Navy in time
ne i War
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graduates of the service academy, men and
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aircraft. Neither could be supported by Department
, ers could understand.” But under Lehman, the Navy 50mered out its fundamental strategy for fighting the „ V'et Union and described the weapons and platforms (Ij ,f“ to win a protracted global war. Thus armed with j| Maritime Strategy” that provided a strategic ration- f 0r its budget requests, Lehman and the Navy’s uni- ej, et* leaders persuaded the Congress to approve an |j' -year naval buildup during the administration of Pres- Sll, Ronald Reagan. To the other services, which had no tj marketing plan,” the Navy’s good fortune some- ty. s Seemed to come at their expense. As Friedman he| e’ ^aving ‘‘an explicit naval doctrine has enormously othPed ’he Navy in selling its ideas, to the extent that the rabir Serviees, which have decided not to develop compa- J- strategy, have complained to their disadvantage.” d06 ^oast Guard needs to develop a national defense pi r>ne of its own. If the fifth armed service expects to c]/ ? significant role in wartime, it needs a document that the p exPla*ns to the Congress and the taxpayers what °ast ^uards missions in a conflict would be. If it p^ts the Congress to fund the platforms, weapons, and
too °.nnel it needs to fight, Coast Guard leaders must put ðer '■ used.
’ion'^e Navy’s maritime strategy, a Coast Guard na- Serva defense doctrine would focus public attention on the vice!Ce s contributions. Within the Coast Guard, the ser- W S r°*es ’n natl°nal defense and foreign policy are well qun- But outside observers often assume the Coast ’hat S mlssl°ns are purely domestic—this is the agency .Sets buoys, rescues boaters, inspects ships, licenses Notners, contains oil spills, and arrests drug smugglers.
’hen, the law establishing the Coast Guard’s mills' Unc’’ons Is vague. Titles 10 and 14 of the U. S. Code Coe as the legal authority for assigning it to protect U. S. ab s ln the Maritime Defense Zone; the law says nothing ThgU what the Coast Guard’s wartime missions should be. d0Service itself has done little to articulate a strategic Conr’ne- In part, this is because the Coast Guard has been Omed by the turbulent battle for funding in the last L Qe- The service has had to fight for every budget dol- (C ar,d more than once, for its existence. Moreover, the . ’ Guard’s officer corps is dominated by engineering-
■pe” who are not much given to strategic thinking iug e upshot is that the Coast Guard has had no govem- he^trategy for selecting its naval warfare missions. It has \y0 8u*ded not by a strategic vision, but by what it did in q,cd War II, what ships it has on hand, and the experi- e(J1/s °f its senior officers. The lack of doctrine has en- C0ra§ed constant, wearying controversy about what the ciilt ^Uard s military role should be. It has made it diffi- titj, to Se’ priorities. And it has led to confused and some- irrational procurement decisions.
Dm. ,e elections of the HU-25A Guardian and HH-65A ln aircraft in the 1970s are cases in point. Both are of Defense logistics systems, which means that in time of war the Coast Guard would have been operating two virtually unsupportable aircraft.
Ten years later, the Coast Guard reversed itself and purchased the search and rescue variant of the Navy’s SH- 60B Seahawk (the HH-60J), an aircraft from the Department of Defense inventory. This makes perfect sense, and conforms to the Coast Guard’s dual character: the HH-60J is a platform that the service can gainfully employ in peacetime while keeping it ready for wartime use. If the Coast Guard had had a consistent, long-term view of its defense role—in short, a doctrine—the first, flawed procurement decision might have been avoided. Acquiring platforms that the Department of Defense cannot support would have seemed an obviously bad military decision.
Despite its preoccupation with the budget battles and the intramural warfare among the agencies responsible for drug interdiction, the Coast Guard must find the time and the resources to develop a national defense doctrine. The service should establish a doctrine-planning staff of three to five officers, headed by a commander or a junior captain, with direct access to the top leadership. A five-to- seven member civilian advisory group could review the staff’s work and provide the leavening of an outside perspective.
What role should the Coast Guard assume in a war? Reality dictates that the Coast Guard will always be most useful when it takes on missions that the Navy cannot fill. The U. S. Navy of the next century will almost certainly be one composed and sized to meet the threat of the Soviet Union. It will be a force of large, high-technology, extremely expensive ships—mostly aircraft carriers, submarines, and Aegis combatants. Especially given the diminishing possibility that the Navy will achieve its goal of 600 ships, the force will be short on general-purpose, low-cost surface platforms. It is even possible that emerging technology will equip the submarine of the 21st century to do everything that surface ships can do today (except, of course, establish a presence)—shoot down aircraft, launch satellites, and operate remotely piloted vehicles.
The gap this high-technology Navy leaves is in low- intensity conflict (LIC). The Navy will be understandably reluctant to risk its few and inordinately costly surface ships in the restricted coastal waters of the less-developed nations where low-intensity conflicts are most likely to erupt. And it is doubtful that the Congress would increase the Navy’s funding to permit the development of a LIC capability.
But the Coast Guard could provide many of the platforms the United States would need for the naval component of a low-grade war. The Coast Guard has the forces available for LIC (platforms that make the Coast Guard roughly the tenth largest navy in the world). See the Almanac section—Force Levels, page 148. With the addition of some inexpensive combat systems these ships would be ideally suited for low-intensity conflicts. Moreover, there are also valid military and fiscal reasons to designate the Coast Guard as the Department of Defense manager for patrol boats and coastal gunboats.
Whatever the final form of a Coast Guard national de-
1. The Coast Guard fundamentally exists to perform its statutorily assigned maritime safety and maritime law enforcement missions. If there were no need for a U. S. maritime safety and law enforcement agency, there would be no need for the Coast Guard. National defense missions are not the Coast Guard’s raison d'etre.
2. Titles 10 and 14, U. S. Code, provide for the Coast Guard as a separate agency within the Department of Transportation and for its transfer to the Department of the Navy in time of war or when the President so directs. These statutes do not contain tasking or mission assignment (except for Maritime Defense Zone responsibilities), but are simply the legal authority for the Coast Guard to be an armed force.
3. The national defense mission shall be one of the Coast Guard’s three primary missions and shall be equal in importance to the other two, maritime safety and law enforcement. The multimission capabilities of its platforms and personnel shall not favor any one primary mission but attempt to balance the requirements of all three.
4. The following policies will govern the relationship between the Coast Guard and the Navy:
a. The Coast Guard does not seek nor intend to duplicate the already existing capa
bilities in the U. S. Navy. Rather, the Coast Guard intends to complement, to enhance, and to augment the Navy with its specialized capabilities. Coast Guard resources are a contributing component of the Navy’s Maritime Strategy.
b. The Coast Guard will provide the platforms and personnel, and the Navy will provide the combat systems for these platforms. By incorporating a combat capability in existing Coast Guard platforms, the Coast Guard will provide a low- cost addition to the nation’s defense resources.
c. The Coast Guard will support the Navy, as a general- purpose force-in-being, for operations in low-to- medium-threat environments. Generally, Coast Guard units will confine their operations to littoral waters in low-threat environments. Coast Guard capability to fulfill many of the platform requirements for the naval component of low-intensity conflict will be stressed.
d. The Coast Guard’s wartime missions will be based upon statutory responsibilities, with specific tasking from the Navy. The Coast Guard will assign naval warfare primary mission areas (NWPMAs) to all its platforms and selected shore facilities. These NWPMAs will be developed jointly with the Navy and periodically reviewed. The Coast Guard’s wartime missions will include, but not be limited to, the following (with specific activities under Navy Department cognizance, as appropriate)- naval control of shipping' aids to navigation; harbor defense and security; mme countermeasures; inshore undersea warfare; antisubmarine warfare; search and rescue and salvage; surveillance and interdiction; ice' breaking; explosives ordnance loading supervision, port security.
e. The Navy will assist the Coast Guard in platform selection and requirements for cutters and aircraft to
promote interoperability
and commonality considerations for logistics/training
support.
f. The Coast Guard will not
develop its own combat systems without Navy approval or participation. Thu Coast Guard will jointly develop with the Navy the Coast Guard’s tactical information systems an
command, control, 311
communications systems-
g. The Coast Guard will aV0> operations and procedures that would change in the event of mobilization f°r war. Coast Guard peacetime activities must closely parallel wartime activities-
fense doctrine might be, achieving it will not be easy. It will open old arguments within the service and require lengthy consultation with the Navy, the Department of Defense, and the Congress. No good doctrine develops without an outline, and I offer an opening shot in Table 1. Whether the Coast Guard’s doctrine grows along these lines or others, the service must have a doctrine. If the
£ ijp spent one of the most important week-
[2] I ends of his life reading from cover to A Acover Alfred Thayer Mahan’s new book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. . . . [Theodore] Roosevelt flipped the book shut a changed man. So, as it happened, did Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, when he read it-not to mention various Lords of the British and Japanese Admiralties, and officials