The services must provide Joint Force Commanders (JFC) with the maximum number of strategic and operational options for them to successfully meet the breadth, depth, and longevity of the myriad future challenges they face. To develop and maintain a capable force structure mix, it seems prudent that we wrest maximum flexibility from our current weapon platforms. We should thus examine how to expand the use of our carriers throughout the range of joint expeditionary operations.
One suggestion is to reconfigure carrier strike groups into formations better suited for the operations they will most likely encounter during deployment, such as the joint sea base, of which the aircraft carrier would be the nucleus. At face value, using carriers in this manner is not a radical idea given its support, at least in spirit, in the 2006 Naval Operations Concept.1 It becomes potentially more radical with the suggestion that they be used routinely as force-projection platforms for selective ground forces to conduct a variety of distributed operations from the sea. This borders on cultural heresy at the suggestion that the ground forces include Army units.
The last suggestion begs several culturally based questions. Army readers might ask: Why do we need joint seabasing? Navy readers: Why tie-up potent strike systems as ground force projection platforms? And Marines will wonder: Why is the Army poking around in our backyard? These questions must be viewed from the joint force commanders' perspective.
Why Joint Seabasing?
One must first understand joint seabasing for what it is and isn't. It offers the necessary means to facilitate assured access and entry from the sea, allowing us the use of the sea as a secure base of maneuver to counter military, political, and geographical anti-access environments.2
Yet joint seabasing is but one method of projecting ground forces for rapid operational employment. More additive than alternative, it is a scalable capability that expands operational maneuver options by rapidly projecting power from over-the-horizon to seize the initiative and, by synchronizing with other means of force projection, support the employment of much larger ground forces—forces that would deploy not from but through the seabase. By no means does seabasing threaten to mothball current strategic airlift or sealift fleets. Nor does it fall into the exclusive domain of the relatively few brigades supported by afloat prepositioned equipment sets, unless of course that is the operational requirement.
Why is this important? The Capstone Concept for Joint Operations states that the joint force must adopt a new paradigm of simultaneous deployment, employment, and sustainment to conduct operational maneuver from multiple points of origin, over inter- and intra-theater distances. It must do this while carrying out several integrated/interdependent actions in multiple directions and domains. As if this isn't sufficiently challenging, with the proliferation of advanced yet relatively inexpensive technologies, we anticipate our adversaries will better be able to counter our ability to project power, both by military/technological and political/hegemonic means. This is especially true if we remain limited to deploying forces by way of well-developed but predictable air and seaports.3
Fully developed joint seabasing promises to amplify the historical value of amphibious warfare by confronting an enemy with multiple dilemmas to resolve. It also decreases our own predictability and vulnerability by projecting ground forces ashore through multiple air and seaports that have joint capabilities to support those forces with extended air and missile defense and fire support. Seabasing also reduces shore-based sustainment infrastructure and the time required to emplace it, especially early in the campaign.
Why Large-Deck Carriers?
Carriers will remain in the Fleet for quite some time. The future operating environment still recognizes the possibility of engaging in combat operations with traditional near-peer challengers during which carriers will most certainly be needed in their capacity as the centerpiece of the Navy's battle force. As well, notwithstanding current advances in unmanned systems, carrier-based aircraft remain well suited to attack global insurgency, especially given its potential spreading to other locations; for example, given a different anti-access environment, the Air Force bombs that neutralized Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would likely have been delivered from carrier-based aircraft. Conversely, it would take considerable time to build a fleet of unmanned vehicles with the equivalent sustainable combat significance.
Another key reason for keeping CVNs in the Fleet is that their large size provides the maximum available flexibility toward increasing their joint expeditionary relevance. To that end, optimizing both current and future force capabilities will require whole-hearted adoption of a joint interdependent mind-set. As outlined in the capstone concept:
Interdependence is a Service's purposeful reliance on another Service's capabilities to maximize complementary and reinforcing effects, while minimizing relative vulnerabilities to achieve the mission requirements of the JFC. . . . Prerequisites for interdependence are: interoperable systems, broad understanding of the differing strengths and limitations of each Service's capabilities and how they are applied, clear agreement about how those capabilities will be integrated in any given operational setting, and absolute mutual trust in and commitment to interdependence throughout the joint force.4
One potential mission envisions employing Army air assault forces from carriers to conduct vertical maneuver operations, the coupling of air and ground maneuver with long-range precision fires to cause multiple problems for an opponent. Years of wargaming results indicate that this capability would provide significant operational agility where access by land or air is constrained and when operational requirements exceed Marine Corps force capacity. Dubbed the joint Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB), this capability proves more significant as the adversaries' anti-access capabilities increase.
New War, New Thinking
Beyond joint forcible-entry operations aimed at establishing a lodgment to introduce follow-on forces, future counterinsurgency operations could also be skewed toward conducting more single-mission strikes and raids to reduce the exposure of ground forces to continuous asymmetric threats. This capability would also provide an advantage in conducting weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation missions, if so required. Other potential joint interdependent missions include large noncombatant evacuation operations, foreign and domestic civil support, consequence management, humanitarian/disaster relief, and security assistance and regional stability operations.
Employing Army helicopters from Navy ships would not be a perfect fit as they lack the attributes of sea-going aircraft, but it has been done successfully in the past on an ad hoc basis. Thus, there is merit in formalizing this practice. One means of mitigating Army aircraft challenges would be a "lily pad" concept: use conventional strategic lift to deploy Army aviation assets and troops to an intermediate support base, and then embark them on carriers for intra-theater transit and employment.
In conjunction with the ongoing Joint Seabasing Capability Based Analysis, the Army is establishing a multi-service integrated capability development team to examine the feasibility of enhancing the current ad hoc capability with some afloat forward staging base variant. The near-term objective will be to conduct operations with light infantry forces to provide reinforcement to existing Marine Corps ship-to-objective-maneuver capabilities. The long-term-and transformational?objective will be to adapt emerging Joint Heavy Lift, Stryker, and, potentially, Future Combat Systems technologies and organizations to complement the Marines' maneuver capabilities.
The development team will look at all possible platforms, including the acquisition of dedicated vessels. However, a priority will be to examine what can be done in the near-term using existing assets, with the intention of adding new capabilities as they are refined. Again, a near-term marriage would not be perfect, but perfection is a rare commodity during war. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously observed that we have to go to war with the force we have, not the one we want.5 The true test becomes how quickly we adapt the force we have.
While such operations can be conducted from large deck amphibious vessels, their smaller size considerably reduces the degree of employable combat significance. More important, they would be used for concurrent Marine Corps operations. They could certainly be so used if Army forces were assigned to provide sequential reinforcement during the campaign, but to achieve the maximum advantages ascribed to joint seabasing, the primary focus should remain on providing joint simultaneous capabilities.
Army Forces On Carriers?
The Army has always come from the sea. Certainly, the Normandy and Inchon invasions stand as historical examples; so too the massive sealift operations undertaken in the first Gulf War and Iraqi Freedom. Thus the Army is not seeking a new niche capability, and it's certainly not looking for a roles-and-mission fight with the Marine Corps. Arriving by sea is an Army core competency and the increasing anti-access environment demands it do so with less dependence on developed air and sea ports.
As for arriving by aircraft carrier, the Army seeks to help close the perennial gap between the arrival of early entry and follow-on forces, as noted by the 2003 Defense Science Board Task Force on Seabasing.6 Using surge CVNs as joint afloat forward staging bases could provide one such gap-filler.
Some see a joint Afloat Forward Staging Base capability as redundant to Marine Corps air assault capabilities. However, wargame findings repeatedly indicate an insufficient overall capacity. This shortfall becomes more precipitous for future operations because of an operational tempo that will likely require continued Marine Corps engagement in sustained operations ashore.
Opportunity At Hand
The carrier debate should not be related to that of its historic battleship predecessor, nor should it devolve into an inter-service domain supremacy or roles-and-mission budget battle. It should be viewed simply as an opportunity to collaborate on leveraging extant joint force capabilities to enhance strategic agility, thus providing the joint force commanders with more options to successfully meet growing operational challenges.
We have entered a period that many cite as being one of the most-if not the most?dangerous in our history. The tremendous dual costs of sustaining current operations while transforming the force will place increasingly severe stress on the federal budget and, in turn, the nation's economy. This situation is made all the more ominous given the stark reality that our economy is a target.7 In turn, the services will need to collaboratively prioritize future capital investments on a scale perhaps not seen since World War II—or perhaps ever. This is not to infer that logistics-more specifically, money-should be the primary driver of strategy and force structure. One does need to consider, however, a broad application of Rear Admiral Henry Eccles' adage: "The essence of flexibility is in the mind of the commander; the substance of flexibility is in logistics."
We must exercise pragmatic logic in striving to develop and maintain a force structure capable of meeting the breadth, depth, and longevity of the many and disparate security challenges facing us now and in the future. In doing so, we must ensure that we harvest maximum capability from our investments—including the use of traditional platforms in non-traditional ways. In this light, using CVNs to project Army ground forces ashore may well be the most critical operational requirement the next time the commander-in-chief asks "Where are the carriers?"
1. The naval challenge is "the need to remain capable of traditional naval missions while simultaneously enhancing our ability to conduct non-traditional missions" which will require "enhancements to organizing, training, equipping, deploying and operating." This will necessitate continuous development of innovative methods, including the abilities to conduct distributed operations, re-group capabilities for maximum employment options ("Aggregate, Disaggregate, Re-aggregate"), and optimize the combination of people and platforms into adaptive force packages, the latter of which will in turn call for naval force packages to be complemented with joint and inter-agency elements in order to fulfill the entire range of traditional and non-traditional naval missions. "Eventually we will have new tools to complement our current force, but in the near term we must learn to use what we have in new and innovative ways to best contribute to the nation's security." 2006 Naval Operations Concept for Joint Operations, pp. 8, 11, 26-29.
2. Command of the commons is the "unparalleled capacity to leverage oceans, space, and air and the corresponding ability to negate their use by our antagonists." Barry R. Posen, "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," International Security 28, no. 1, Summer 2003, pp. 5-46.
3. Capstone Concept for Joint Operations, Ver. 2.0, July 2005. pp. 4-23.
4. Ibid. p. 17.
5. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Town Hall meeting in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, 9 December 2004.
6. "Final Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Sea Basing." Office of the Secretary of Defense, 15 August 2003, pp. 29-32.
7. Abu-Ubayd al-Qurashi 2002 essay in Al-Ansar. "A Lesson in War" indicated al Qaeda's intention to follow the principle of attacking enemy centers of gravity. "A conviction has formed among the mujahedin that American public opinion is not the center of gravity in America. . . . This time it is clearly apparent that the American economy is the American center of gravity." Michael Scheur, Imperial Hubris ? Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Dulles, VA: Brassey's, Inc., 2004), p. 101.
Captain Horres, employed by System Studies and Simulation, Inc., is a senior military analyst at the Army Capabilities Integration Center. He served in numerous operational and staff assignments including deputy director for operations and director of global distribution, Surface Deployment and Distribution Command.