As General Douglas MacArthur so ably demonstrated with the Korean War landing at Inchon, General Omar N. Bradley's 1949 testimony that "large-scale amphibious operations will never occur again" was premature in sounding their death-knell.
Amphibious operations are as old as warfare itself, yet throughout history military officials have repeatedly—and inexplicably—failed to recognize the need to develop the technology and expertise necessary to overcome an adversary's defensive capabilities and project power ashore. In 55 B.C. Julius Caesar was deterred from his initial landings in Britain by the threat of plunging fire from the defenders' javelins. Nearly 2,000 years later, the debacle at Gallipoli in 1915 had convinced most military thinkers—except for a handful of U.S. Marines toiling in obscurity—that modern weaponry gave the defender so many advantages that amphibious operations were not feasible. Furthermore, senior U.S. defense officials could not envision a scenario that would require amphibious capabilities and declined to invest limited resources in their procurement. They did not awake to the amphibious imperative until 1940, and only then after being shocked by the Germans' rapid capture of the French ports that had facilitated arrival of American forces during World War I.
This phenomenon repeated itself in recent years. Personnel engaged in joint capability development efforts have often assumed that forcible entry capabilities are an area where the United States can accept risk and cut investments. The rationale for this assumption exactly replicates the twofold 1930s argument: amphibious operations are far too dangerous in the face of modern anti-access weapons, and besides, scenarios that would require such operations are unlikely.
Platform of Choice
In an era of great strategic uncertainty and increasing challenges to access as described in numerous official planning documents and independent assessments, this argument defies all logic. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. military forces have been transitioning from a global garrison posture to an expeditionary one. Rather than being positioned close to areas of likely engagement, our forces are now based primarily in the United States and deploy overseas to meet operational commitments. These deployments are increasingly challenged by geographic, diplomatic, and military impediments to access. Amphibious capabilities provide a means to overcome all three challenges and apply across the range of military operations.
This assertion is substantiated by history. In the past 20 years U.S. amphibious forces have responded to crises at more than double the Cold War rate, jumping from an average of 2.27 to 5.2 events per year. All five doctrinal types of amphibious operations are represented within this tally, including four assaults, one withdrawal, three demonstrations, two raids, and 75 "other amphibious operations" such as noncombatant evacuations, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response. In addition to these, another 19 non-doctrinal applications of amphibious capabilities occurred, including strikes, maritime interception operations, no-fly zone enforcement, and support to mine-countermeasure operations.1
Furthermore, the geographic combatant commanders have significantly increased their demand for forward-postured amphibious forces capable of conducting security cooperation, regional deterrence, and crisis response. The combatant commanders' cumulative request for persistent amphibious forward presence in 2010, for example, equates to 3.5 amphibious ready groups/Marine expeditionary units plus four smaller, task-organized amphibious formations. Although a variety of ship types have been involved in the initial implementation of the much-publicized Global Fleet Station concept, amphibious ships—with their vertical and surface connectors, medical facilities, carrying capacity, and endurance—are increasingly viewed as the platform of choice for such activities.
Historical performance and increased demand reflect the usefulness of amphibious capabilities for projecting not only combat power, but smart power.2 In this latest "expeditionary era," short-changing investments in amphibious capabilities makes little sense.
A Realistic Assessment
For many years amphibious operations have been widely—and mistakenly—viewed within the Department of Defense purely in terms of large-scale amphibious assaults. While recognition is growing in some circles regarding the utility of amphibious forces for the range of military operations, there is also considerable uncertainty regarding the actual capabilities and capacities required to project power—both soft and hard—ashore in the 21st century. A realistic and comprehensive assessment of likely scenarios, potential adversaries, and anti-access capabilities is in order. The 2008 Joint Operating Environment provides a very broad but useful summation of the problem:
The battle for access may prove not only the most important, but the most difficult. One of the major factors in America's success in deterring potential aggressors and projecting its military power over the past half century has been the presence of its naval forces off the coasts of far-off lands. Moreover, those forces have also proven of enormous value in relief missions when natural disasters have struck. . . . Yet, there is also the rising danger with the increase in precision and longer range missiles that presence forces could be the first target of an enemy's action in their exposed positions.3
The implications posed by widely proliferated, longer-range anti-access weapons were highlighted in a recent Proceedings article. While it is nothing new for an enemy to look for ways to deter an opposing incursion,
What is relatively new is both the scale of the threat posed given the proliferation of advanced high-end systems, and the real potential for non-state actors to employ such technology . . . . All the services must prepare for a future in which power-projection can be sustained at greater distance than in the past and vulnerabilities reduced through better defense and dispersion.4
Four Implications
The implications are manifold and significant. First and foremost is that anti-access technologies have made power projection in the 21st century an extremely complex endeavor. But the path to overcoming them—identifying and thinking through likely scenarios, adversaries, and capabilities—remains timeless. Just as Caesar had to figure out how to suppress spearmen and bowmen long enough to land his legions before the ancient Britons' cavalry could respond, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had to neutralize German machine guns, mortars, and artillery to build up sufficient combat power in World War II before the Panzers could counterattack. As the range and precision of weapons continually increase, future commanders will likewise have to discern their opponent's capabilities and tactics to devise appropriate means and methods for overcoming them.
A second implication—a reminder, really—is that we must expect anti-access technologies and tactics to not only evolve, but to do so at an accelerated rate and in surprising ways once conflict erupts. In the 1920s a Marine Corps planner, Major Pete Ellis, assessed the nature of a potential war against Japan and correctly identified the requirement for, and challenges of, getting a landing force across a coral reef covered by dug-in machineguns and high-velocity, direct-fire guns. It took the Navy and Marine Corps 20 years to become proficient at solving that problem through the use of tracked landing vehicles and the coordinated employment of naval gunfire and sea-based close air support. It took the Japanese less than a year to recognize the overwhelming power of such assaults and to change tactics and weapons. They stopped defending on the beach in favor of a more protracted fight inland, which would tie the Fleet to the objective area longer and expose it to kamikazes, Baka bombs, and suicide boats. Future adversaries can likewise be expected to repeat this pattern of accelerated adaptation.
After overseeing more than two decades of development, the United States is starting to field over-the-horizon capabilities designed to negate the effectiveness of widely proliferated first-generation antiship cruise missiles (ASCM). In the interim, ASCMs have become a more lethal threat with longer ranges and higher speeds. While only a limited number of countries possess advanced ASCMs, such weapons are likely to become more widespread over time. The ongoing effort to produce antiship ballistic missiles (ASBM) will, if successful, pose an even greater challenge to access.
Even as U.S. forces devise ways to overcome these weapons, or perhaps to operate successfully within the threat envelope, they must also anticipate that such success will force adversaries to quickly adapt, perhaps in desperate ways. An understanding of how select opponents might adapt—based on assessments of their likely strategies, technological capabilities, and cultural proclivities—is essential if we are to avoid costly surprises. Concurrently, we must recognize that some level of surprise may be inevitable. We must improve our ability to adapt in kind to at least mitigate the impact of an unanticipated response.
A third implication—another reminder—is that amphibious operations are fundamentally joint operations. Because they are a Marine Corps specialty, however, they are frequently assumed to be a Marine Corps problem. This mindset manifests itself in two ways. The first is that, in fulfilling its Title 10 responsibility for developing the "equipment employed by landing forces in amphibious operations," the Marine Corps pursues solutions designed to minimize service interdependencies (such as the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle). The second is that key interdependencies (such as mine-countermeasures capability) are often given low priority by another service. Resolving the "chicken or egg" aspect of this mindset in unimportant. What is important is that Title 10 assigns all the services specific responsibilities regarding amphibious operations. It also directs each service to coordinate its efforts with the others. The emergence of a new "expeditionary era" should be giving every service added incentive toward fulfilling this congressional mandate.
Fortunately, it appears that the services are, in fact, getting energized in this regard. In recent months, discussion of expeditionary warfare issues has been reinvigorated within the operating forces of the Navy-Marine team. The challenges of gaining and maintaining operational access have become a hot topic within the Navy and Air Force, even as the Army and Marine Corps wrestle with ensuring their future force structure balances capability with deployability. It is not enough for these issues to be debated internally or in service-to-service discussions. They must eventually expand into a fully joint dialogue, inasmuch as power projection will be predicated on the joint force achieving air, maritime, and cyber superiority. This may require fundamental changes to service capabilities. For example, prior to assuming his current office Undersecretary of the Navy Robert Work coauthored a study describing how ASBMs—with an effective range far greater than manned carrier aircraft-would drive the Navy to unmanned combat air vehicles.5
A fourth implication is that even those amphibious operations conducted for benign reasons—humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, or non-combatant evacuations—might be subject to interference from non-state actors or rogue states. While a fully integrated anti-access defense is unlikely to be present, these parties may still possess sophisticated and lethal capabilities, used in combination with irregular tactics, to threaten U.S. access and the conduct of such missions. Operation United Shield, the 1995 evacuation of UN forces and relief workers from Somalia while under the threat of surface-to-air missiles, exemplifies the complexity and scope of such hybrid challenges to access.
As described by the combined task force commander, General Anthony Zinni:
The operational tasks during the execution phase were extremely complex. We would conduct two night amphibious landings in the Mogadishu port and airfield; . . . a Non-combatant evacuation of UN, media, and civilian agencies personnel; and two night amphibious withdrawals. These difficult tactical evolutions were tough enough, but the mix of coalition forces, the nighttime executions, and the prospect of doing these under fire compounded the difficulty exponentially.
He added that civilian crowds, especially mobs and looters, "were always a major problem . . . and they were one of the warlords' most effective weapons."6
Operations in such uncertain environments will subject select military capabilities to restrictive rules of engagement. Amphibious forces will therefore be forced to rely on a combination of improved defensive capabilities, ship-to-shore connector speed and agility, responsive counterfire, non-lethal weapons, and information operations, to include the non-kinetic neutralization of potential adversaries' command-and-control systems.
A Framework for Analysis
The problem and its implications require a coordinated and comprehensive joint service exploration. This assessment may be framed by answering three broad questions:
- How will the joint force gain and maintain operational access?
Relatively few countries currently have the capability to deny U.S. operational access, and an even smaller number of scenarios have been identified in which they might actually do so. Some scenarios, however, pose a significant threat that cannot be ignored. Long-range ASBMs would present a major threat to access.
Similarly, the speed of the latest generation of ASCMs and their long range, which can be further extended by using ships and aircraft as launch platforms, will challenge operational access. The threat posed by weapons of mass destruction may provide the means for an adversary to deter nations within the region from providing basing rights.
Furthermore, attacks on information systems and networks—including the satellites so crucial to their operation—will likely be employed to neutralize U.S. intelligence, command and control, and weapon systems. These and other emerging challenges to gaining and maintaining operational access will not be present in every, or even most, power-projection operations. Identifying these threats, however, as well as the methods and means for overcoming them, will provide the foundation for developing a comprehensive set of power-projection capabilities.
- How can naval forces achieve freedom of littoral maneuver?
Being able to effectively transition from the sea to the shore is essential to all successful amphibious operations. The challenges to maneuver in both the seaward and landward portions of the littoral will vary based on geography, weather, the purpose of the mission, and the nature of the operating environment, which might be permissive, uncertain, or hostile.
These challenges may include aircraft, antiair weapons, diesel submarines, suicide boats, guided rockets, artillery, mortars and missiles, sea and very shallow water mines, natural and man-made obstacles, potential counterattacks by enemy maneuver forces, or disruptive actions by irregular combatants. Given the availability of anti-access weapons to non-state actors, amphibious operations in an uncertain environment may prove more problematic than those in an openly hostile one.
To date, the Marine Corps has focused its efforts on developing over-the-horizon maneuver capabilities to offset widely proliferated first-generation ASCM. The opposite approach would be to rely on the Navy, Air Force, and special operations forces to neutralize challenges to littoral access sufficiently to make near-shore delivery of the landing force a lower-risk endeavor. In all likelihood, a combination of approaches will be appropriate.
- What will enable the arrival of follow-on joint forces?
Given the anticipated limitations on amphibious lift, the majority of joint forces will arrive by strategic sealift and airlift. Military sealift and merchant marine vessels, which transport the preponderance of the joint force's materiel depend, at least currently, on access to secure ports. Similarly, strategic airlift requires a degree of secure supporting infrastructure within the objective area. The likelihood of existing ports and airfields being undamaged, either by combat action or natural disaster, may be remote. The ability to conduct rapid repair of existing facilities and/or establish expeditionary ports and airfields is likely to be the key requirement. Select enhancements—such as the ability to conduct at-sea transfer of personnel and equipment—may help reduce the dependence of strategic sealift on infrastructure in favor of a more sea-based approach. Enhancing inter- and intra-theater connectors to permit near-shore offload may also provide a means to reduce this dependence.
The United States not only has a continued strategic requirement for amphibious capabilities, we must adapt those capabilities to meet the challenges of a new era. Unfortunately, the term "amphibious operations" all too often conjures up the image of large-scale World War II assaults, which were—however necessary and valorous—very costly affairs. This imagery inspires admiration for the fortitude of those involved, even as it generates aversion to repeating their sacrifice. We cannot let this aversion dissuade us from pursuing the amphibious capabilities the nation requires. We can, however, seek to develop them in a way that makes a similar level of sacrifice unnecessary.
1. Data have been compiled from a number of sources, including: the Commandant of the Marine Corps' Memorandum for the Secretary of Navy: Reductions in Seapower, of 15 November 1989; Chronologies of the United States Marine Corps, 1982-2007, and official histories produced by the History & Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps; Sea Power for a New Era: 2006 Program Guide to the U.S. Navy, Appendix A "Navy-Marine Corps Crisis Response and Combat Actions," produced by the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations; and the Naval Review issues of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 2003-2006.
2. "Smart power" is the ability to combine "hard" and "soft" power into a successful strategy. Harvard professor Joseph Nye originated these terms.
3. 2008 Joint Operating Environment: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force (Suffolk, VA: U.S. Joint Forces Command, 2008), p. 44.
4. Michele Flournoy and Shawn Brimley, "The Contested Commons," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, July 2009, pp. 19-20.
5. Thomas P. Ehrhard and Robert O. Work, Range, Persistence, Stealth, and Networking: The Case for a Carrier-Based Unmanned Combat Air System, (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2008).
6. Tom Clancy with General Tony Zinni and Tony Koltz, Battle Ready, (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2004), pp. 289-290.