It is always nice to hear that "we done something right," particularly when that comes from a distinguished Marine. In the February 2008 Proceedings, Lieutenant General Bernard E. Trainor correctly credited The Maritime Strategy of the 1980s with making a significant contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union by preparing and visibly exercising the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps for "seizing the initiative at the outset of a war." Not surprisingly, the general focused on the role of the Navy and Marines on NATO's northern flank as an important manifestation of that strategy. However, for those of us who gave birth to The Maritime Strategy at CINCPACFLT headquarters at Makalapa, Hawaii, in the summer and fall of 1977, the offensive operations on the northern flank of Europe that came to be practiced in the 1980s were frankly an "unintended consequence."
With the passage of more than 30 years and the retreat into history of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, it is difficult to recreate the tense strategic context at the time Admiral Thomas B. Hayward commanded the Pacific Fleet and its Fleet Marine Force (1976-78). Nevertheless, it is instructive to remember the state of America's plans in the late 1970s for the employment of naval forces if war had broken out at that time.
Defending Europe
A quarter-century of preparations for World War III had put into place the nuclear deterrent scheme known as mutual assured destruction, or MAD, and the Navy's contribution to that overarching strategy—ballistic-missile-equipped nuclear-powered submarines—was well established. But also in place, and deeply rooted in defense planning, was the Euro-centric strategy embodied in NATO, with its scheme for an initially conventional defense of Western Europe, backed by an early resort to tactical nuclear weapons. The role of the Navy's conventional forces in this plan was relegated to protecting the reinforcement and resupply line of communications across the Atlantic.
As if the Earth was truly flat, there was no counterweight in the Pacific to the elaborate concentration of U.S. military power dedicated to fighting the Soviets in the Atlantic and on European battlefields. Army combat forces in the Asian-Pacific theater consisted of the 2nd Infantry Division, tied to the DMZ in Korea, and the understrength 25th Infantry Division, isolated in Hawaii without the lift to move anywhere. U.S. Air Force combat units consisted of just the tactical 314th Air Division supporting the Army in Korea and the Hawaii Air National Guard. Our bases in the Aleutians and elsewhere around the Pacific were literally defenseless. The Third Marine Expeditionary Force (then III Marine Amphibious Force) was split between Okinawa, Honshu, and Hawaii and the Navy amphibious ships that might move it were assigned to the European theater in the event of war. No definitive plans were in place for any of these forces to fight the Soviets in the Pacific.
The Pacific Fleet, likewise, was denuded of any wartime purpose in the Pacific except for its ballistic-missile submarines. Its role was to augment the Atlantic Fleet, replacing the ship losses after the crushing preemptive attacks by Soviet submarines and land-based aircraft expected in the Mediterranean, the North Sea, and elsewhere. How soon to start the Pacific Fleet moving around the Horn in a crisis was a serious question that defied simple answers. Exactly what it would do when it arrived in the North Atlantic was a question with no answer at all.
The ships allocated to the Pacific Fleet were fewer and, in some important cases, less capable than those in our sister fleet. The aircraft carriers Midway (CV-41) and Coral Sea (CV-43), for example, could not support the Navy's premier fighter of the day, the F-14. Five of the six carriers assigned were conventionally powered, despite the obviously broader reaches of the Pacific. Only one attack submarine in three was based in the Pacific. Perhaps worse, war reserve munitions were stored mainly in magazines east of the Mississippi, and the tanks near Pearl Harbor containing the Fleet's fuel reserves were maintained at minimum levels. Critical and expensive components of key weapon systems like rails for mounting long-range air-to-air Phoenix missiles on F-14s were in short supply and cross-decked from the carriers returning from deployment to those taking their places. Even fleet exercises were constrained to the equivalent of small-unit tactics and training ammunition was in chronic short supply.
Troubled by the lack of U.S. conventional warfighting capabilities in the Pacific, and the plan to virtually abandon the theater in a crisis, Admiral Hayward asked himself to what degree the Soviets must discount the U.S. threat to their own interests and territory when they made their correlation of forces calculations. Feeling themselves secure from attack on their Asian front, might they plan to take the offensive, using easily captured bases in the Aleutians, for example, as way stations for attacks on Canada and the western United States?
He also asked what decisions the Japanese and the Chinese might make in a crisis when they realized that America was forfeiting the Pacific in favor of concentrating in the Atlantic. Japan, under no real obligation to ally itself with the United States in a war with the Soviet Union and lacking the forces to defend itself, might be intimidated into neutrality, denying further use of the bases on which U.S. forward presence depended. More important, China might slacken its belligerent stance along its Siberian border, thus releasing enough of the Soviet Far East Army to overwhelm NATO no matter how successful the U.S. reinforcement stream across the Atlantic. Pondering these questions, Admiral Hayward made the professionally risky decision to prepare an alternative war plan for the Pacific Fleet and the Fleet Marine Force.
Sea Strike
The thrust of the alternative plan had to be offensive action. Only by going on the offensive against the Soviets somewhere in the Pacific as soon as possible after the outbreak of hostilities would decision-makers in Tokyo and Beijing be assured that the United States would fight to deny the Soviets hegemony in Asia. If America seemed to have not only the intention of staying and fighting in the Pacific but also the means to do so, these leaders would presumably act in ways that would change the Soviet correlation of forces. The Kremlin would have to weigh the collective threat to their Asian front as well as NATO's resistance to their assault in Europe. Moving large forces from their Far East military districts along interior lines of communication to mass against NATO would become much more dangerous if they were confronted with the possibility of a two-front war.
When, where, and in what measure would offensive action be taken? Admiral Hayward reconstituted his headquarters staff along the lines that proved so successful when Admiral Chester Nimitz occupied Makalapa, and he tasked the staff to identify Soviet targets that would be important enough to arrest the attention of Tokyo, Beijing and, of course, Moscow, if they were attacked. He impressed on the staff the need to plan for early action, because key decisions would be taken in these capitals at the outset of hostilities. Yet it would not be wise to pin the plan to an explicit timetable. Thus, the plan adopted the purposely vague descriptor of "prompt offensive action," and was later christened "Sea Strike."
Contemplating the inevitable attrition to the fleet in the conduct of offensive action, Admiral Hayward was inspired by Admiral Nimitz' guidance to his combat leaders on the eve of the Battle of Midway. He reissued to his staff the famous letter of instruction that counseled "calculated risk," and he pegged the acceptable losses at the same level that were sustained in 1942 by Admiral Nimitz in each of the four sea battles fought that year, reasoning that, as General Trainor wrote, they would be justified if the strategy was successful. Having fought his first battles, Admiral Nimitz could take satisfaction from the outcome: the back of the Imperial Japanese Navy was broken and the path to Tokyo was opened. The stakes for the United States in the Pacific in World War III would be no less dramatic.
Once the planners had settled on a set of Soviet targets that would meet the necessary criteria, all of the intellectual resources of the staff went to work to determine how the desired results could be achieved within the attrition limits deemed acceptable. Energized by the excitement of using the fleet for something far more important than a voyage around the Horn, officers displayed unparalleled ingenuity, and new analytical techniques were born, capitalizing on the newly available contributions of computers. Sea Strike had to be executable in every season so detailed research went into weather patterns in the northwest Pacific. Radio, radar, and acoustic propagation had to be known in advance with certainty, and old data was revalidated while new data were collected.
One-Two Punch
Perhaps the most important adjunct to the planning process was a "Red Cell" that used the best intelligence on the Order of Battle and capabilities of Soviet air and naval forces in the Far East to plan optimum force dispositions from the enemy perspective. It quickly became apparent that even those optimum dispositions could not prevent decisive attacks on the selected targets. Analytical routines such as "asymmetric firepower," "annihilation of air attackers by ambush," and "three-layer cover and deception" were debated and polished in the war room, often past midnight. The Makalapa headquarters had not been much renovated since World War II, and Nimitz' brilliant planners, Admirals "Soc" McMorris and Forest Sherman, would have felt right at home.
Recognizing that the threat of the offensive use of naval forces is a one-two punch that involves the exploitation of strikes by the fleet with forcible landings by the Marines, Admiral Hayward incorporated the Fleet Marine Force planners right from the beginning. The Marines fell to with a will, excited at finally having a mission in the Pacific that suited their special qualities. The SEAL contingent also joined in and proved they could be a "force enabler" out of all proportion to their numbers.
Perhaps the most important and compelling product of the planning process was a daunting list of "incompatibilities," those ingredients in the plan—materiel and otherwise—the want for which would doom the effort. Admiral Hayward took the reduction of that list as his personal responsibility and, over time, brought it down to a manageable set. One of his concerns was the lack of realistic training that would make precisely-timed long range air strikes over the trackless northwest Pacific achievable. He insisted that every aviator in every carrier squadron be briefed on the objectives of the plan, which was still just an unapproved alternative. Like the headquarters staff, the Marines, and SEALs, the pilots responded with enthusiasm, offering suggestions and constructive criticism that improved executability in many respects. Finally, he sought and incorporated the contributions of each of his flag commanders for air, surface, and submarine warfare as well as his two numbered fleet commanders.
Powerful Support
Probably none of this planning effort would have found final acceptance had not, by chance, a delegation led by the influential Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) arrived at Makalapa to evaluate the state of readiness of U.S. forces in the Pacific and the coherence of plans for the use of those forces. Senator Nunn had previously made an evaluation of U.S. forces in the Atlantic and in NATO and had found them wanting both in readiness and solid strategic rationale. He adamantly opposed the early resort to tactical nuclear weapons and worried that U.S. global force posture was dangerously out of balance. With the approval of his senior in the Pacific, Admiral Mickey Weisner, the CINCPAC, and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jim Holloway, Admiral Hayward laid out for the senator his reasoning in support of a new approach to the employment of U.S. naval forces in the Pacific, and he supported his position with the detailed plan for swift offensive action.
Senator Nunn was impressed and relieved, and he said so when he returned to Washington. In quick succession Secretary of the Navy Graham Claytor and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown appeared at the Makalapa headquarters, and they were also favorably impressed with the plan. They had been exhausted and dispirited by the litany of cautious and defense-oriented planning that they listened to every day in Washington. Suddenly, the in-situ contributions that could be made by U.S. Pacific forces—particularly the fleet—took on global strategic importance.
Within two years many things changed. The Joint Chiefs scrapped the plan for the cruise around the Horn and authorized a new plan based on prompt offensive action in the Pacific. War reserve munitions and fuel supplies found their way to magazines and tanks in the Pacific where they would be readily available. Plans were made and exercises conducted for the viable defense of the Aleutians. The list of "incompatibilities" shrunk to zero and the Pacific Fleet and Fleet Marine Force began rigorous practice for war in the northwest Pacific. Of course, all of this was visible to the Japanese who took heart and began to strengthen their own forces and join, albeit discreetly at first, in U.S. Fleet exercises. The Chinese observed the changes and maintained their belligerent posture along their northern border, making it an unacceptable risk for the Soviets to count on redeploying their Far East Army against NATO.
Perhaps most important, the Soviets shifted their best naval leaders and most modern equipment to their Pacific coast. They had to acknowledge that the correlation of forces on which their deployments were based had shifted—and not in their favor. By this time, Admiral Hayward had been appointed Chief of Naval Operations and had moved to Washington where he made Fleet readiness to fight the Soviet Union on two fronts his number one priority. The posture and exercises of the Atlantic Fleet and Fleet Marine Force were changed to encompass offensive missions and, importantly, the Soviets were put on notice that the U.S. Navy would no longer be hamstrung by suicidal rules of engagement.
Later, after the arrival of the Reagan administration, the energetic and imaginative new Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, seized on the concept of prompt offensive action as the fundamental rationale for a Navy of 600 ships. With this concept already well entrenched in the Pacific, he emphasized the ability of mobile carrier battle groups and Marine expeditionary forces to strike the Soviets on their vulnerable flanks in Europe. The analyses, tactics, and battle metrics pioneered at Makalapa were adapted to the Atlantic scenario. The Navy and Marines routinely practiced offensive action on NATO's northern flank as General Trainor related, and the thrust that began in the Pacific became a key part of the global strategy that sealed the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.