The Navy is rewriting its guiding doctrine publication for the first time in 50 years. It will prepare tomorrow’s combat commanders to make good and quick decisions involving tactical or strategic factors.
The U.S. Navy does not have a written doctrine that guides the employment of its numbered and theater forces at the operational level of war. Tactical doctrinal publications cannot fill this gap. This situation adversely affects the Navy's ability to incorporate its new and emerging warfighting concepts as part of joint doctrine. It also weakens the Navy's influence in writing joint doctrine, which, in turn, affects the Navy's ability to operate as part of a joint or combined force.
This situation is on the way to being resolved: the Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC) is writing a new edition of Naval Doctrine Publication (NDP) 1: Naval Warfare. Scheduled for completion in 2003, this publication will be the Navy's first service-wide doctrinal document in 50 years. It will replace all existing NDPs. The new NDP-1 will be written from the operational art perspective and will focus on the employment of U.S. numbered and theater forces at the operational level of war.
Why the U.S. Navy Needs a Doctrine
The U.S. Navy's lack of doctrine adversely affects jointness because the sister services are poorly informed—or uninformed—about the Navy's views on the employment of its forces in joint/combined major operations and campaigns. Communications among the services and with allies and coalition partners also suffers in the absence of service doctrine.
Although the U.S. Navy formally adopted a strategic vision of fighting in the littorals, no doctrinal document explains in detail how U.S. naval forces should be employed in such a highly challenging environment. There are several reasons for this state of affairs. Many officers think the U.S. Navy does not need a doctrine because war at sea requires a large degree of freedom of action for naval commanders. Hence, their thinking goes, any doctrine would be too rigid and could impose undue restrictions on the commanders' decisions. There also is a belief that implied principles of naval warfare and the success of the U.S. Navy's tactical doctrine make service doctrine unnecessary. Perhaps the most intractable problem, though, is the U.S. Navy's obsession with technology and tactics, which leads it to interpret "doctrine" to mean only tactical doctrine.
The need for an all-encompassing doctrine is obvious. Among other things, the Navy, like the other services, is obliged by law to develop a service-wide doctrine. It needs to embrace the operational level of war as its focus in the employment of numbered and theater forces. A doctrine for the theater-wide employment of U.S. naval forces is needed so joint force maritime component commanders and their staffs use proper techniques and procedures in preparing plans for their joint force commanders.
A well-written and properly focused service doctrine will increase the professionalism and skills of commanders and their staffs at all levels. The U.S. Navy needs service doctrine to educate and train its tactical and operational commanders and their staffs in a common operational outlook, to enhance operational thinking and thereby bring about badly needed balance between tactics and operational art. At the same time, higher-level tactical commanders—for example, battle group and amphibious group commanders—cannot act in accordance with the operational commander's intent without knowledge and understanding of operational art. Consistently applied service doctrine also enhances understanding of common operational terms.
Requirements
The new NDP 1 should be an authoritative but not directive document. It is critical that commanders use judgment and logical thinking in applying doctrine lest it tie their hands in war at sea, where rapidly taking advantage of opportunity is vital. The nature of the physical environment, the often vast distances to be traversed, and the high intensity of modern combat at sea, combined with sudden and drastic changes in a situation, make any excessively directive doctrine unworkable. Naval warfare is too complex to be governed by a simple set of rules.
Thus, NDP 1 should provide a broad and flexible framework for the employment of naval forces in both peacetime and wartime. It should be a dynamic document, constantly tested through war games, fleet battle experiments, plans, and exercises. Operational lessons learned in peacetime and in combat should be used to refine, modify, or rewrite the existing doctrine. Prevailing assumptions should be openly, continuously, and vigorously challenged; otherwise, the new NDP 1 will become too rigid and disconnected from reality. This implies a willingness on the part of senior leaders not only to tolerate but also to encourage constructive criticism by mid-grade and junior officers.
In the 1930s, doctrine in the French Army not only was imposed from above but also was not meant to be dissected below. Junior officers refrained from discussing fundamental doctrinal problems because such discussion might have entailed criticism of their superiors, which would have been interpreted as a violation of discipline. Regulations bearing the approval of the French General Staff were treated as gospel. Lack of open debate on doctrine and innovation was one reason for the French military's unpreparedness and the ensuing national catastrophe in 1940.
The new NDP 1 should not be driven by the tactics of platforms and weapons or of combat arms. It should not identify by name the theater or the potential opponent. The Navy's capabilities should be expressed in broad terms (e.g., carrier battle group, amphibious ready group, carrier air wing, or the emerging carrier strike group, expeditionary strike group, cruise-missile submarine/special operations forces strike force, etc.) rather than in terms of specific platforms or weapon systems (e.g., the Carl Vinson [CVN-70] Battle Group, III Marine Expeditionary Force, F/A-18 Hornet). It should explain the tenets of command organization and not any particular organizational option. Otherwise, the doctrine not only would be too directive but also quickly would become outdated.
The new publication should be all-encompassing, providing the strategic context in which U.S. naval forces operate. It should explain those aspects of U.S. national security and military strategy relating to both traditional Navy roles and missions and the emerging role in homeland defense. Specifically, it should be based on the "Sea Power 21" strategic vision. The new NDP 1 should reflect as accurately as possible the culture of the U.S. Navy.
The new NDP 1 should be based on an understanding of war at sea. As on land, the course and outcome of a war at sea cannot be predicted with precision. Opponents have wills of their own and can frustrate the most carefully laid plans. War at sea is characterized by uncertainty and chaos, and chance often plays a large role. Friction and fog can be reduced but never eliminated. War is an art, and it is futile to try to make it a science.
The U.S. Navy's new doctrine should provide a clear, concise vision of future war at sea that revolves around an operational concept. Currently, network-centric warfare is focused on the tactical level of war at sea. It will not achieve its full potential, however, unless it is applied at the operational level. Hence, the new NDP 1 should explain in some detail how the netting of U.S. naval forces at the tactical level can be transformed into an operational concept to be applied in planning and executing major offensive and defensive naval operations.
The new document should reflect the U.S. Navy's current strategic vision toward fighting in the littorals—although it should not ignore the possibility of open-ocean fighting. It should highlight the need to cooperate with other services and multinational forces. In the littorals, a high degree of jointness and "combinedness" is required for success.
A properly written service doctrine should take into account projected capabilities. The U.S. Army's AirLand Battle concept did not exist in 1982 when FM 100-5: Operations was published, but Operations accurately predicted the Army's capabilities several years in the future.
The new NDP 1 should explain in some detail the role and importance of leadership both in peacetime and in combat at sea. The human and psychological factors in naval warfare should not be disregarded, as they are by too many information warfare enthusiasts. Just throwing in the term "human-centric" will not do. NDP 1 must focus on the key aspects of leadership and war fighting; otherwise it will fail in its main purpose.
Operational Art Input
The new NDP 1 should be based on input from operational art. This means the entire document should reflect the operational perspective of warfare at sea.
There is no agreement in the U.S. military today on what operational art or operational warfare is. In one definition, it is described as the employment of one's military forces to accomplish strategic objectives in a theater of war or theater of operations through the design, organization, and conduct of campaigns and major operations. It involves fundamental decisions about when and where to fight and whether to accept combat. Its essence is identification of the enemy's center of gravity and concentration of superior combat potential to achieve decisive success. In generic terms, operational art can be understood as that intermediate component of military art, between strategy and tactics, concerned with both the theory and the practice of planning, preparing, conducting, and sustaining major operations and campaigns to accomplish operational or strategic objectives in a given theater.
The new NDP 1 should focus on operational and strategic objectives, not, as is fashionable today, on so-called effects-based operations. Hence, sea control and its variations should be explained in some detail. The Navy's official statements rarely discuss sea control or sea denial, although these objectives are as valid today as they were in the past. Instead, they use terms such as battle-space dominance and battle-space attack, reinforcing the focus on tactics. The Navy's emphasis on littoral warfare requires it to explain its views on choke-point control/denial and basing/deployment area control.
The new NDP 1 should focus on planning, preparing, executing, and sustaining major naval operations as part of a maritime/land campaign or the employment of naval forces as part of a major joint/combined operation with a strategic objective. Major naval operations are the principal method of combat force employment to accomplish objectives of warfare at sea at the operational level. The problem for the new NDP 1 is the Navy's failure to recognize a major naval operation as a method of combat force employment.
The U.S. Navy frequently uses the term naval operation for a naval action or the performance of a naval mission, which may be strategical, tactical, logistical, or training. It also is described as the process of carrying out or training for naval combat to gain the objective of any battle or campaign.7 These two definitions are so broad as to be meaningless. Among other things, the operational level of war is not recognized; nor is it true that the purpose of a naval operation is strategic in character.
In generic terms, a major naval operation could be described as a series of related battles, engagements, strikes, and other tactical actions conducted by diverse naval and combat arms of other services, in terms of time and place, to accomplish an operational objective in a given maritime theater of operations. Major naval operations normally are an integral part of a maritime, or sometimes land, campaign. In today's terms, a campaign in a conventional war consists of a series of major operations sequenced and synchronized to accomplish a military strategic or theater-strategic objective. In modern times, campaigns have been inherently joint or combined in nature.
A major naval operation aims to change drastically the operational situation in a part of a maritime theater. This can be accomplished by the destruction or serious weakening of a major part of the enemy fleet at sea or of its bases; by destroying a major enemy convoy or by successfully protecting one's own; or by seizing or defending a major island or choke point. Major naval operations are the most effective way to avoid attrition warfare at the operational level. They require larger forces than a single battle or engagement, and they are planned and conducted in accordance with the tenets of operational art. They are not just a sum of tactical actions, but a synthesis of diverse tactical actions. Major naval operations require meticulous planning and preparation and are difficult to plan, prepare, and execute.
The success of a major naval operation is significantly enhanced by an adequate theater-wide command-and-control structure; intelligence; command-and-control warfare; fires; logistics; and protection.
Levels of War
The new NDP 1 should focus on the operational level of war in a maritime theater. At the same time, it should explain the linkage between the operational and tactical level of war on one hand and the strategic level of war on the other.
For the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war, a corresponding level of command should be established. In U.S. terms, the strategic level consists of two sublevels: national-strategic and theater-strategic. The national-strategic level of command has exclusive responsibility for command and control of the country's armed forces in peacetime and in time of war. Each U.S. geographic combatant command is responsible for a given area of responsibility, or a theater containing several potential national strategic objectives. In time of hostilities, each geographic combatant command is responsible for the employment of all military and nonmilitary sources of power at the theater-strategic level of war. A theater-strategic commander would be assigned a single national (or alliance/coalition) strategic objective to be accomplished. He then would translate this strategic objective into a single or several theater-strategic objectives, and for each of them a respective operational level of command encompassing a theater of operations should be established. It is there that the operational level of war would be conducted. It is there that a single theater-strategic objective would be accomplished through the planning, preparation, and execution of a single campaign or a major joint/combined operation.
The tactical level of command is established to ensure the successful employment of military forces to accomplish assigned tactical objectives as part of a major operation or campaign. This level of war is conducted in a much smaller area than the operational level, ranging from a combat zone or sector to a battle space.
Conclusion
A U.S. Navy doctrine focused on the operational level of war is long overdue. It offers several potential benefits, including improved operational thinking at all levels of command; enhanced education and training, to achieve a common operational and tactical outlook and vocabulary; and successful application of task-oriented command and control. The strategic vision of "Sea Power 21" cannot become a reality without it. Sound operational doctrine would make the Navy's roles and missions better understood by other services, thereby enhancing jointness and its ability to operate with allied and coalition navies.
The new NDP 1 should focus on employment of U.S. numbered and theater forces at the operational level of war. The U.S. Navy needs to return to its traditional but still valid role of obtaining and maintaining sea control. Hence, it should embrace major naval operations as the principal method of combat employment of its forces to achieve operational (and sometimes strategic) objectives at sea.
Dr. Vego is Professor of Operations, Joint Military Operations Department, at the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. He also is a member of the team writing the new NDP-1 Naval Warfare. A frequent contributor to Proceedings, Dr. Vego is the author of Soviet Navy Today (Arms and Armour Press, 1986); Soviet Naval Tactics (Naval Institute Press, 1992); The Austro-Hungarian Navy 1904-1914 (Frank Cass, 1996), and Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas (Frank Cass, 1999). He holds a bachelor’s in modern history, a master’s in U.S. history, Belgrade University, and a doctorate in European history from George Washington University.