The U.S. Navy has a long history of contributing to homeland defense. But its most effective way of keeping the nation secure is and always has been the capability of deploying and striking far forward.
Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, demand for close-in naval harbor and offshore homeland J defense was immediate. Capturing the national mood, Congressman W. J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-LA) suggested a "Navy cruiser might be needed in the Potomac River to protect the airspace."
The response of U.S. Navy forces was swift, substantial, and in some ways unprecedented. Carriers and cruisers deployed rapidly off U.S. coastal cities, and a hospital ship deployed quickly to New York, where a fast sealift ship already had been pressed into service. A U.S. Naval Reserve strike fighter squadron provided air cover over President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas, and Navy E-2 Hawkeyes provided surveillance coverage. Other Navy and Naval Reserve units responded as well.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard also had sprung to action. Much of its force structure on the East Coast sped for New York to provide security for the evacuation of a million people from lower Manhattan. Cutters began to enforce new control measures, which included keeping civilian vessels away from Navy ships. The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Vern Clark, poured more watch slanders into the National Maritime Intelligence Center and told then-Commandant of the Coast Guard Admiral James Loy that he would help in any way he could. Naval base security was beefed up, and later 13 small Navy-manned patrol coastal (PC) warships transferred to the Coast Guard's operational control.
And then it was over at home for most of the Navy. True, many small changes were made and continued to be made, largely by dint of hard work by officers, sailors, and civilians alike. Base security stayed heightened; new barriers appeared at gates and in the water; Navy master-at-arms forces expanded; and a couple of innovative joint harbor defense command posts were established. The PCs stayed with the Coast Guard, and some in-port warships with air defense capabilities received collateral assignments. Some new research-and-development projects were launched. Navy and joint staffs ground out plans, Navy intelligence efforts in maritime domain awareness increased, and a few imaginative force-protection games and fleet exercises were and are being run. The Navy's new Fleet Forces Command also became a component of the even newer joint Northern Command, charged with homeland defense missions. (In early 2003, the CNO's Strategic Studies Group at Newport, Rhode Island, began to develop a future concept of operations for "sea supremacy in the defense of U.S. shores.") But no major changes in naval programs or force dispositions ensued. Congressman Tauzin's cruiser never did steam up the Potomac.
Far forward in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere, the response—and counterattack—was not only immense and immediate, but also sustained. Carriers raced into position oft Pakistan, one carrying special operations forces. So, too, did amphibious ready groups and their Marines, cruise-missile-capable nuclear-powered attack submarines and surface combatants, and maritime patrol aircraft. The Navy's contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom was quick, in strength, and most important, like the operation's name—enduring—as it mounted smaller forward operations in the Mediterranean and the Straits of Malacca. Just more than a year later, the Navy deployed even larger forces far forward to deal with Iraq (even taking with them some of the PCs and part of the Coast Guard).
Why the big difference? Why was the Navy at the forefront of the far-forward attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq, yet willing to take a backseat to the Coast Guard at home? Why did the Navy respond to one of the worst failures in defense at home in history principally by striking farther forward than it ever had? Current national policy and naval strategy provide much of the answer. History, however, also provides some clues.
1775-1815: Submersibles and Gunboats
During the War for Independence, the colonies had the Continental Navy, state navies, Army-led navies, and privateers. Inventor David Bushnell, a private citizen, deployed the world's first underwater weapons for homeland defense: the submersible Turtle, as well as floating gunpowder-stuffed barrels.
The navies deployed by the states and the Army generally stayed close to home, but the Continental Navy's civilian masters and officers thought the best place to hurt the British from the sea was forward (in the Caribbean) and even far forward (on the coasts of Britain itself). That navy's first action was an amphibious raid on the Bahamas to acquire materiel for the Army. Later, John Paul Jones landed in England, and it was no accident that he fought his duel with the Serapis off Yorkshire's Flamborough Head—not off Long Island's Montauk Point.
The precedent was set. The new United States—even in the 18th century—was a country with global interests, facing threats from far across the sea for which it needed a navy with global reach and power. It also fielded other forces that could well mind the defense store at home.
Once the nation had achieved its independence, it set up a Revenue Marine to enforce customs laws and stop smugglers at sea and an army to fortify and defend ports as well as secure the interior. (Predating both was the establishment of a Lighthouse Service in 1789, the first U.S. government agency and one that played a supporting role in homeland defense over the years.) A host of naval enemies, however, soon challenged the United States and its commerce. The principal foes were: Revolutionary France, the Barbary States, and an old enemy, Great Britain's Royal Navy. In response, Presidents George Washington and John Adams created and deployed a new U.S. Navy balanced between big frigates for forward operations and galleys for coast defense. (At the same time, President Washington established the forerunner of what became the U.S. Army Coast Artillery.) The frigates and other blue-water warships cleared French privateers from U.S. coasts and then moved quickly forward against the French in the Caribbean—and even the Hast Indies. (Later they took on the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean, and the British again all over the Atlantic and even in the Pacific.) For that Navy's forward operations against the French, it took along key elements of the Revenue Marine. The galleys turned out to have little to do.
President Thomas Jefferson decommissioned most of Adams's frigates and other seagoing warships, but he built and deployed dozens of little gunboats for naval homeland defense. When the threat posed by the Royal Navy during the War of 1812 became overwhelming, the previously wide-ranging and victorious frigates eventually were blockaded in their ports, protected by the guns of Army fortifications and by the wiles of still more private inventors and their crude but innovative underwater mines. For coastal defense, President James Madison built a new inshore barge fleet. They, along with the gunboats he had inherited, generally had little utility, although some acquitted themselves well in fighting antiaccess delaying actions on the Chesapeake Bay and at New Orleans with General Andrew Jackson. Navy sailors left their ships and joined soldiers in the homeland defense of Washington and Baltimore, while the afloat Navy racked up its greatest victories fighting jointly with the Army on the Great Lakes, off the nation's "north coast."
The end of the war in 1815 marked the end of the nation's and the Navy's great experiment with naval homeland defense. By and large, it was not a great success. Rather, wartime naval success for the United States appeared to lie far forward, on the open sea.
1815-1890s: Mines and Monitors
Following the War of 1812, the U.S. Navy again deployed far forward—first to Mexico and later the Confederacy—to blockade and help invade these enemies. Threats to the U.S. coasts in the 19th century largely were the responsibility of the Army. Navy officers sat on the joint boards that planned coastal fortifications and coast artillery, and along with the Army ran the nation's lighthouse system. An 1841 war scare with Britain spawned a U.S. Navy Home Squadron for homeland defense. But when the scare dissipated quickly, so too did the squadron—to the Caribbean. Public and congressional calls during the Civil War for naval offshore protection met with disapproval from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and his officers. Welles opted instead for pursuing a forward strategy.
Naval technology developed throughout the 19th century, including innovations potentially useful in naval homeland defense. Private inventors designed coastal steamships, floating batteries, and underwater weapons, but funding was limited. Later, during the Civil War, civilian John Ericsson put a revolving gun turret on the warship Monitor, which proved famously effective in the contested inshore waters of Hampton Roads, Virginia.
Meanwhile, the Confederate Navy, subject to Union blockade and amphibious assaults and short on resources, deployed a host of naval homeland defense systems, including ironclad rams, obstructions, underwater mines, and even a submersible torpedo boat, the H. L. Hunley. The Confederacy, too, deployed some forces far forward. Its small fleet of blockade runners—especially its commerce raiders—ranged all over the world.
After the Civil War, a severely shrunken U.S. Navy maintained some turreted monitors, experimented with underwater harbor defense mines, built a flotilla of coastal torpedo boats, and even constructed the Katahdin, an innovative big coastal defense ram. But the pull of forward operations stayed strong. The Katahdin proved almost useless.
Coastal and harbor homeland defense concepts played a respectable role in the debates over U.S. naval policy and strategy of the late 19th century. These concepts ultimately lost, however, to arguments for a battle fleet that would train offshore but was intended to deploy forward. Meanwhile, Navy officers sat on more joint boards dealing with Army-and some Navy-homeland defense responsibilities, while the Revenue Service continued its normal homeland security operations, complemented by a new Lifesaving Service.
1890s-1918: Naval Districts and Army Mine Planters
During this period, the Navy's emphasis, as usual, was on forward deployment, this time with a fleet centered on turreted battleships. Torpedo boats for homeland defense gave way to torpedo boat destroyers. The rising Navy budget could fund many programs, however, and the Navy joined the Army in a series of actions to strengthen its role in homeland defense. Navy officers sat on the usual joint homeland defense boards, state naval militias were formed, a few more monitors were commissioned, Naval Districts for coastal defense were created, and a new harbor and coastal defense weapon—the submarine—was deployed. Coastal defense remained primarily an Army responsibility, with its newly created Coast Artillery Corps strengthening coastal artillery sites and deploying a new fleet of Army-manned harbor mine planters.
The Spanish-American War forced the Navy to retain front-line units offshore until adequate intelligence allowed it to deploy those forces forward to the Caribbean. Thus the Navy reluctantly put a Flying Squadron off Norfolk and a Northern Patrol Force off New York and melded state militias and some federal agencies into an auxiliary force. The Revenue Marine supplied not only craft for homeland defense, but also cutters for forward operations.
The Army saw territories acquired in the Caribbean and the Pacific as colonial appendages, requiring strong defenses in their own right, while the Navy saw them primarily as advance bases to support the fleet. Meanwhile, the Marines made plans to defend the Navy's advance bases and seize even more, while the Revenue and Lifesaving Services amalgamated to form the Coast Guard.
In the second decade of the 20th century, aircraft, obviously useful for coastal patrol, began to enter the fleet. It was not long, however, before naval officers started thinking of giving aircraft greater range and sending them to sea in a variety of ways for use in forward operations. Likewise, the Navy's submariners began to discuss and design long-range fleet boats.
During World War I, the Navy took over the Coast Guard and mobilized coastal undersea, surface, and air assets to protect the East Coast from German submarines, which finally launched an attack on U.S. coastal shipping in 1918. The bulk of its forces, however, operated forward in and around Europe, performed transport and convoy duty all across the Atlantic, or drilled offshore to repel a German battle fleet that never came.
1919-1941: Joint Plans and Harbor Defense
After World War I, the Navy continued to plan for forward operations—especially in the far Pacific—and for the integrated development of all its forces to support them. Meanwhile, the Army continued to modernize its coastal defenses at home and cope with the implications of its growing aviation element. Army Air Service (later Army Air Corps) officers dreamed of deploying a transoceanic strategic bombing force. Because such a policy was anathema to an all-but-isolationist country, the Army airmen couched their arguments in terms of the need for homeland defense air forces. This stratagem put them in head-on competition for scarce budget resources with both the Army Coast Artillery and the Navy. The Navy viewed its own forward operations as the nation's "first line of defense" and—not unnaturally—bristled at the idea that it would let enough get by to necessitate a "second line."
Joint coastal defense planning and exercises were a norm during this period, but interservice disagreements led the Navy to reinforce its focus on the distant and open sea. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard enforced Prohibition, with the help of a Navy-loaned flotilla of destroyers.
As another world war loomed in the late 1930s, the Navy built and deployed new boom and net tenders, harbor minesweepers, blimps, seaplanes, patrol craft, and even a couple of new coastal submarines. Eventually, the Navy once again acquired land-based long-range maritime patrol aircraft. Destroyer patrols were instituted outside harbor entrances, and new Marine Defense Battalions were formed to defend U.S. Caribbean and Pacific possessions (and even Iceland).
When the battle force moved to Pearl Harbor in 1940, its defense in port became a job for the fleet as well as the local naval district and the Army. The Navy also created naval Coastal Frontiers—later Sea Frontiers—to coordinate with similar Army homeland defense commands. And the Navy temporarily took over the Coast Guard again from the Treasury Department in November 1941.
World War II, 1941-1945: Pearl Harbor and Sea Frontiers
World War II started for the U.S. Navy with a massive failure of homeland defense at Pearl Harbor. Immediately, President Franklin D. Roosevelt directed the unification of the local Army and Navy forces in Hawaii and Panama into joint commands. The Marines wound up guarding Southern California for a short time.
The threat to the coasts during at least the early days of World War II was real. Nevertheless, the U.S. Navy's vision stayed forward. The coast artillery and harbor minefield defenses still primarily were Army responsibilities. Harbor security and beach patrol were duties of the Coast Guard, under the Navy. The Navy did deploy various types of net and boom defenses at its bases, however, and conducted coastal sea and air patrols beyond harbor entrances. Ignoring agreed prewar joint doctrine, the Navy resisted establishing joint Coastal Frontiers, although local harbor defense command posts were manned jointly. The Navy (and its Marine Defense Battalions) focused homeland defense efforts on Pacific island defense but soon shifted to meet the German coastal submarine menace, working alongside the Army Air Forces and the British and Canadian navies and air forces. Fighting off the U-boats was primarily the job of the Sea Frontiers. Eventually, U.S. Army airmen left the antisubmarine mission to Navy sailors, who had instituted convoys and deployed more patrol craft and land-based blimps and patrol planes off U.S. coasts and forward.
The Navy approach to combating U-boats turned to offensive hunter-killer operations in the mid- and eastern Atlantic, complemented by coastal and transatlantic convoys and by British and U.S. forward air attacks-at-source on German submarine pens. The Atlantic Fleet ran anti-submarine warfare (ASW) operations in the mid- and far Atlantic, while the Sea Frontiers did the heavy lifting against the submarines off the coast. From 1943 on, all were overseen by the intelligence fusion efforts of Admiral Ernest King's Tenth Fleet in Washington.
1945-1980: Early Warning Barriers and Vietnam
At the beginning of the Cold War. U.S. Army and Army Air Forces units were stationed forward in Europe and Asia. The U.S. Navy reigned supreme at sea and off the Eurasian littorals. During the Cold War, homeland and coastal defense faded almost completely from the missions of all the U.S. armed services.
Soon after World War II, the Army turned its mine planters over to the Navy, which soon discarded them. The Navy turned the Coast Guard back to the Treasury Department again, rolled up its harbor nets, decommissioned its net layers, and used its Naval District and Sea Frontier commands for logistics and administration. Maritime patrol aircraft moved to new forward bases in Europe and Asia and in mid-ocean to track Soviet submarines.
The Navy displayed a flurry of interest in mine warfare, harbor defense, submarine nets, and naval control of shipping (NCS) in the early 1950s. Except for NCS, however, this interest began to wane again in a few years. Convoy, not coastal patrol or harbor defense, then was accepted as the correct defensive counter to enemy coastal submarine operations.
For a time in the 1950s and 1960s, continental air defense against Soviet bombers-largely an Air Force and Army responsibility-expanded but then contracted again in the face of a new Soviet missile threat and the requirements for U.S. strategic offensive and conventional forces. The takeover of Cuba in the late 1950s by Soviet allies revived interest in the coastal defense of the southeastern United States. The Navy's main contribution to this continental air defense effort was brief but significant. For a decade, the Navy deployed a large fleet of converted destroyer escorts, Liberty ships, and long-range land-based early-warning aircraft as radar pickets strung out as "barriers" across the North Atlantic and North Pacific. The Navy helped in the air defense of Florida as well, and Navy guided-missile cruisers exercised for port air defense when at home. In the late 1960s, elements in the Navy were studying—and ultimately rejecting (at least at the time)—the concept of a sea-based antiballistic missile intercept system.
To counter Soviet missile submarines ranging off U.S. coasts, the Navy deployed offshore underwater sound surveillance systems (SOSUS). maritime patrol aircraft and blimps, and ASW carrier task forces. The Navy's most potent ASW weapon, however, proved to be the forward-deployed nuclear-powered attack submarine. Along with the Navy's combat-credible forward fleets in the Mediterranean, western Pacific, and later the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, these forces illustrated yet again the Navy's preference for forward operations.
By the late 1970s, Navy interest in and capabilities for harbor and offshore homeland defense had all but disappeared. Offshore SOSUS was a success, and new forward facilities were corning on line, while the ASW carriers were decommissioned. The barriers, too, went away. Satellites and SOSUS were expanding the nation's open-ocean surveillance capabilities to such an extent that it appeared unlikely any enemy military force could appear undetected on U.S. coasts. The Sea Frontiers and Naval Districts were disestablished. Navy relationships with the Coast Guard regarding defensive coastal warfare had, however, been rekindled temporarily, but far forward off Vietnam, not off the U.S. coasts. After the war, small patrol craft all but disappeared from the Navy inventory, although some new gunboats did enter the fleet. The tiny and uninfluential naval coastal warfare reserve units kept alive what expertise remained in harbor patrol and defense.
1981-11 September 2001: Maritime Defense Zones, the Drug War, and Missile Defense
The rising tide of the Reagan administration's defense program in the 1980s and the U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy lifted all boats, including even homeland defense. Aegis cruisers, coastal mine hunters, a new generation of patrol craft, and new coastal warfare equipment entered the fleet with homeland defense capabilities or potential. Civilian fishing boats, U.S. Naval Academy yardcraft, and the naval reservists to man them were pressed into service as craft of opportunity (COOP) harbor minesweepers. The homeland defense responsibilities of the Coast Guard and the Naval Reserve were coalesced formally into Maritime Defense Zones at home. And a new naval liaison officer (NLO) program was created by the Naval Reserve to help protect key Navy assets at home from sabotage. Still, this was all small beer compared to the simultaneous build-up of a forward-deploying "600-ship Navy."
Then, the Soviet Union collapsed. The Navy's emphasis, however, remained on forward operations-against the world's rogue states. Concerns over threats to the U.S. coasts, which never were high, waned yet again. The COOP program disappeared. The NLOs became NEPLOs (naval emergency preparedness liaison officers), refocused on homeland security and disaster relief instead of homeland defense. The Maritime Defense Zones, the Navy's coastal warfare units, and the Coast Guard's port security units all reoriented to—no surprise—deploying forward with the fleet, especially in the Persian Gulf.
The little remaining residual maritime homeland security focus shifted to guarding the shores from the surreptitious importation of illegal drugs. Naval theater ballistic-missile defenses were planned and begun as well. Navy base security again turned a corner in 2000 in the wake of the terrorist attack on the guided-missile destroyer Cole (DDG-67) in Yemen. Improved security measures began for U.S. Navy warships in all ports.
Which brings us to 11 September, today, and probably tomorrow. The Navy's strategy slogan of the 1990s, "Forward . . . From the Sea" could just as well have been "Forward . . . From the Start." Even the Navy's current planned ballistic-missile defense efforts focus forward, against missile threats in boost or mid-course phases. (Debate in naval circles on the wisdom of this stance continues.)
The United States has had the wisdom and good fortune to develop strong military seagoing teams over time to serve both home and away. Each team has a long tradition of supporting the other, reinforced in recent years by increased interest in and capabilities for jointness, especially on the part of the Navy. The Commandant of the Coast Guard's offer of assistance to the U.S. Navy in Vietnam in the 1960s was reciprocated by the Chief of Naval Operations' offer of help to the Coast Guard in the wake of the attacks of 11 September. The U.S. Army also has long-standing homeland security and defense responsibilities, especially regarding consequence management. Air Force responsibilities for national air defense are of more recent origin but also of major significance. Navy support for and cooperation with its sister services in these areas has been continuous, meaningful, and increasingly close, if small. Nevertheless, as mandated by the Bush administration, as articulated in the Navy's current vision, and as reflected in its historical experience, the U.S. Navy continues to concentrate its efforts on deterring and striking threats to the homeland forward.
It always has—and to good effect.
Captain Swartz has been on the research staff of the Center for Strategic Studies of the CNA Corporation since retiring from the Navy in 1993. A Vietnam War veteran and career U.S. Navy strategic planner, he chaired the panel, “How Will the Services Fight Better?” at the January 2003 U.S. Naval Institute/AFCEA West 2003 symposium. His most recent Proceedings article, “Let Us Dare to Read, Think, Speak, and Write” appeared in the October 1998 125th Anniversary Issue. Captain Swartz gratefully acknowledges contributions to this article by Commander Scott Breor, U.S. Navy (Retired); Captain Sean O’Brien, U.S. Navy; Captain Patrick Roth, U.S. Navy (Retired); Alexia Suma; and Daniel Swartz.