In January 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta released Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, a strategic guidance that emphasized the “need to recalibrate capabilities and make selective additional investments to succeed” in ten missions, including the ability to “project power despite anti-access/area denial [A2/AD] challenges.” The charge to recalibrate and reinvest was a tacit acknowledgment of what the Marine Corps has long recognized and sought to address: The 21st century operating environment requires an analysis of how we must operate in the future.
Internal political turmoil in once-friendly nations as well as reluctance among others to host forces will continue to reduce political and physical access to land bases within, or adjacent to, unstable regions around the globe. Naval forces, operating in international waterways without dependence on host-nation permissions, provide a means to cooperate with global partners, respond to a crisis on short notice and, when necessary, project power and influence in these critical regions. While the unique characteristics of naval forces allow them to operate without need for political and physical access, emerging threats increasingly imperil their ability to do so. The naval ability to maneuver within, around, and through these contested spaces remains central to the success of military campaigns—and must be maintained and asserted.
A significantly different approach to seaborne power projection should result in a more integrated application of naval and joint capabilities to overcome A2/AD challenges, control the sea, and project power. This approach requires projecting and sustaining forces over greater distances via multiple entry points supported with organic surface and air-delivered fires. Platforms and connectors must be designed to meet these demands and operate from austere forward locations and a wider variety of existing ships to increase capability, capacity, and forward posture. This approach will also require the non-traditional use of current and expected capabilities.
Challenges within the “New Normal”
The Marine Corps provides an expeditionary force in readiness focused on assuring access, building partners, responding to crises, and projecting power while operating forward under the threat of potential adversaries. Thus, readiness for the Marine Corps means being prepared for immediate, effective employment in any type of crisis or conflict. Underpinning this readiness is the ability to operate within contested environments and project power. In the past, power projection included rolling back challenges to access and creating the conditions for landing and subsequent inland maneuvering. This approach was premised on the advantage of maintaining sea control and assuming enemy defenses could be uncovered, destroyed, or countered.
However, this advantage is no longer guaranteed, and the assumption is no longer valid. Today, both state and non-state entities exploit technology and the proliferation of precise, lethal weaponry to challenge operations. These credible threats, once the purview only of great powers, have become commonplace globally. Coastal defense and antiship cruise missiles, mines, and small attack craft are inexpensive counters to sea-control efforts. The use of hybrid tactics can further complicate power projection by delaying force concentration, interdicting intermediate support bases, more precisely targeting finite assets such as amphibious ships, and disrupt lodgments ashore.
With the proliferation of lethal weaponry increasing at the same time U.S. defense resources are decreasing within a transitioning national-security strategy, the dominance enjoyed by U.S. forces over the last 70 years is likely to erode. This will see the United States operate with greater parity against both near-peer conventional forces and non-state adversaries. Despite the hope that greater interoperability may generate synergies between capable but limited assets, any gains in domain superiority will likely be localized, temporary, and contested.
Adversaries employing hybrid tactics could anchor their “hive” defenses on strongholds located in favorable terrain and selectively conduct engagements for a specific effect. This might include an “ambush” approach, which seeks to inflict maximum casualties while minimizing losses, trading space for time, and avoiding a fixed positional defense that risks forces being destroyed in sequential detail. On the offense, an enemy might seek to infiltrate and attack “secure” areas, imposing on us a continuous effort to locate the enemy, achieve sea control, and gain access. Other characteristics of “hybrid approaches” include:
• Attempts to intimidate our allies and impact regional access while targeting U.S. and coalition basing.
• Seeking to avoid intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaisance (ISR) and strike by blending with civilian populations and commercial maritime traffic.
• Sheltering marquee systems until they can exploit tactical opportunities.
• Employing scouts in civilian attire, vehicles, or ships to cue antiship cruise missiles; coastal defense cruise missiles; fast attack craft/fast inshore attack craft; guided rockets, artillery, mortars, and missiles; and unguided direct- and indirect-fire systems.
• Exploiting civilian networks to support command, control, and intelligence activities.
• Planning to operate in degraded communication environments.
• Using combined arms across the littorals for both long-range and close-in ambushes.
• Integrating long-range, multiple-launch rocket systems with precision and cluster munitions to target slow-moving amphibious formations or other concentrations of forces at the sea-land interface.
Exploring How We Must Operate
Amphibious forces must evolve to be capable of operating under integrated naval command and control; maneuvering with reduced signature from greater distance; controlling air and surface landing sites; and dispersing and concentrating as needed to achieve military objectives at sea and on land across the modern littoral environment. Operations will not methodically unfold in accordance with the historical model of deliberate planning, embarkation, rehearsal, movement, and action. Rather, they will derive from a more dynamic crisis response process that involves rapid planning and initial employment of forward-deployed forces, rapid maneuver of additional capabilities, and rehearsal and employment of the composited naval force.
Given reduced regional access and basing restrictions, capacities of land-based aviation may not provide the same advantages we have enjoyed in the recent past. Amphibious forces operating forward will be reliant on long-range joint aircraft and maritime-based aviation for strike and ISR support. Given the proliferation of area denial capabilities, amphibious ships in the littorals must be protected by platforms like cruisers or destroyers that can defend against air, surface, and sub-surface threats but do not routinely deploy with them. This spread of area denial systems also highlights the need for all-weather surface fires to protect shipping and to support maneuver and control of landing sites ashore from operating areas beyond radar or missile range to support ashore.
Additionally, we must rely on weapons of greater precision and lethality to better mitigate area denial hazards and smaller signature aviation and surface craft to support deployment and sustainment at greater distances. In this vein, small boats and riverine craft with organic fires, reduced signature, high speeds, and command-and-control capabilities are readily available to provide a capacity to project and sustain entry forces in the littoral environment.
Crises that threaten lives and national interests rarely allow deliberate condition-setting by responding forces. Strikes and raids, noncombatant evacuations, and disaster-relief efforts—often complicated by the actions of state and non-state actors—will require rapid, timely responses from naval forces, frequently into contested areas where adversaries intend to deny our ability to operate. In many of these tactical situations, forward amphibious forces will rely on long-range, low-signature capabilities along with responsive fires and ISR from air and surface assets.
The need for immediate action must be complemented by prudent steps to reduce risk. By partnering with special operations forces to assess and shape the operating environment, forward naval forces can seize critical infrastructure, key terrain, and lodgments for expeditionary bases. They may also be called on to seize littoral terrain, deny its use by the enemy and neutralize hidden and re-locatable land-based A2/AD systems.
Given the adaptive nature of the threat, operations in the littorals will not focus on “rolling back” enemy capabilities. Rather, they will focus on creating opportunities for more dispersed power projection. Opportunities can come from using deception to shift enemy attention from the landing forces by causing reactions that increase the adversary’s electronic signature and correspondingly increase its vulnerability; creating gaps in the A2/AD system to leave the enemy only with localized area denial defenses; and providing bubbles of support and protection to entry forces.
Amphibious Ship Availability
The number of amphibious vessels available to support the requirements of combatant commanders presents challenges to determining how Marines should operate in the future. The decrease in operation and maintenance dollars, given the fiscal realities of today and years to come, has severely affected the operational availability and overall health of the Fleet. Challenging the inventory are the rotational requirements associated with forward presence. On a regular basis, four ships are forward-stationed in the Pacific and two to three amphibious ready groups (ARGs) are either preparing to deploy, in-transit, or deployed on-station forward with their embarked Marine expeditionary units (MEUs). These forces provide combatant commanders with an amphibious crisis-response capability. When deploying ARG/MEUs on a rotational basis, deployment-to-dwell ratios are applied to account for unit recovery, pre-deployment training, and additional maintenance requirements. As a planning factor, four ships are required in dwell for each ship in a rotational deployment.
In the event of a crisis, amphibious ships already on the scene provide an immediate response with organic forces. In practice, the initial response force would likely consist of a forward ARG/MEU, a special-purpose Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF), or possibly a joint high speed vessel (JHSV) with embarked Marines. This force could be reinforced from other available ARG/MEUs in transit, along with a fly-in force and a maritime prepositioning ship squadron.
Other forward naval forces as well as global response forces will composite with the on-scene force. These naval forces are a “come as you are” force—forward and ready as configured for employment. Critical to employment is an immediately deployable joint task force-capable Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) headquarters to establish command of the compositing force. In crisis a MEB can employ within hours and bring the full weight of a sustainable naval task force with a MEB within 14-25 days.
The requirement to composite forward in compressed timeframes poses questions, especially for the command and control of naval forces. The importance of command arrangements developed in coordination with all naval components and the joint force maritime component commander cannot be understated. The inter-relationship of these forces along with maritime sealift presents challenges to the “littoral maneuver” construct that will need to be examined and resolved.
“Littoral Maneuver” Force Attributes
In this time of increased fiscal austerity and global crises, we need to break old paradigms regarding how we organize and employ naval forces so that we can better meet the combatant commanders’ operational requirements. “Forward and ready for crisis” must become the drumbeat of naval forces. We need to explore alternative formations from a variety of ships that are dispersed across a wider geographic area—while retaining the ability to composite forward for larger operations. This is the essence of littoral maneuver and the key to responding to crisis and meeting our nation’s needs.
More integrated operations with naval and joint forces. To more effectively operate within the modern operating environment, the Navy and Marine Corps must become more integrated as “littoral maneuver” forces with the unique ability to operate across air, land, and sea. One approach is to fuse the functions, responsibilities, and authorities traditionally associated with the commander of the amphibious task force and the commander of the landing force into an integrated blue/green staff that achieves greater unity of effort, increased speed of action, and seamless execution of sea control and power projection. When concentrating forces greater than an ARG/MEU, an integrated naval command element should be deployed or regionally available to command the reception and employment as the “littoral maneuver” force builds over time.
Additionally, the Theater Special Operations Commands and Navy and Marine Corps component commanders should establish complementary, forward-deployed forces capable of persistent engagement, crisis response, and joint entry. Such a relationship would leverage the cultural and operational characteristics shared by these forward forces with the capabilities of sea power. This will facilitate rapid coordination during crisis and enable the cross-domain synergy envisioned by joint operating concepts.
Gaining entry and landing site control. Effective littoral maneuver forces must be able to: 1) operate across increased distances to overcome area denial challenges and gain entry; 2) reduce the signature of entry forces to promote surprise and survivability; 3) disperse and concentrate throughout the maritime domain to maintain adaptability and flexibility of action; and 4) leverage responsive surface-and aviation-delivered fires. With entry, the challenge includes controlling dispersed entry sites—essential to maneuver in the maritime domain. There are multiple means available to gain control of a landing site: ISR and fires, maneuvering to seize or isolate a landing site, or clandestine insertion and physical occupation.
Reduced signature. Maneuvering in the maritime domain requires low-signature forces deploying from multiple platforms: amphibious ships; submarines; surface combatant and non-combatant shipping; intermediate support bases; and intra-theater lift. Capable but vulnerable power-projection platforms cruising in formation, once the traditional hallmark of great sea-going powers, are exposed targets in the 21st century. The electromagnetic and optical signatures of current amphibious ships are liabilities within the emerging littoral environment. Lacking sufficient organic self-defense capability, amphibious shipping today relies on distance from the threat as well as supporting platforms for protection in an A2/AD environment. An effective littoral maneuver force will require reducing or obscuring ship signatures and integrating protection and firepower on-board.
The requirement to operate across greater distances demands long-range ship-to-objective maneuver, conducted by forces that are fast and hard to target. Such forces require sustainable, connector-transportable vehicles capable of embarking Marines and providing mobility in difficult terrain; small craft to provide a high-speed surface maneuver advantage from over the horizon to the coastal regions, bays, estuaries, and inland waterways; and landing craft with speed, endurance, range, and capacity to deliver combat capability ashore.
Fires in support of maneuver. A dearth of naval surface fires and the limited range of the preponderant 5-inch 54 caliber gun requires the current landing force to rely heavily on air support during entry operations. While the expeditionary nature and increased capability of the F-35B will dramatically improve capabilities, air support alone will not satisfy the fire support needs of the littoral maneuver force. Air support is the product of a finite quantity of aircraft whose operations are limited by available flight decks, deck-cycles, basing, and competition with operational shaping requirements. With improved effective range, naval surface fires can suppress or defeat area denial weapons, protect shipping and connectors, and support maneuver and control of landing sites ashore. Organic Marine Corps solutions such as 120-mm mortars embarked within a MV-22 or on small craft can immediately provide credible fires to forces operating on land. Long-range multiple-launch rocket systems or other surface missiles could also be considered as a means to support maneuver while denying the enemy the freedom to do the same.
Smaller and more maneuverable. The littoral environment imposes the need for the littoral maneuver force to traverse complex terrain in craft that offer speed, endurance, and durability in an affordable package. Force elements projected and sustained with lower signature craft will be tasked with controlling landing sites for follow-on MAGTFs or elements of the joint force while reducing threats to shipping ashore, allowing the larger force greater freedom to maneuver at sea. Long-range vertical assault aircraft will project the littoral maneuver force deep into the landward portions of the operating area. Small boats will provide high-speed surface maneuver advantages to the entry forces, and light landing craft and light armored vehicles will offer similar surface maneuver characteristics while providing light infantry assault forces with much needed mobility, logistics, and protection. Landing craft and boats will traverse throughout the littoral environment, from ship, to objectives ashore, and back again, exploiting their maneuver advantage repeatedly throughout the maritime domain. These craft, and the platforms they transport internally, must also provide mobility to the littoral maneuver force ashore, allowing it to navigate inland waterways, ascend coastal mountain ranges, and disperse and concentrate as the environment and threat demand.
Forward-deployed vs. CONUS-based presence. Amphibious forward presence supports broad requirements that contribute to preventing conflict and developing partner nation capability and projecting power to enable crisis response or to gain entry and deter or defeat an adversary. As a result, combatant commander demand for persistent rotational amphibious presence continues to climb. Improving responses to crises, reducing transit times, and efficiently employing a constrained amphibious ship inventory requires increasing forward deployment/basing rather than increasing deployments from the continental United States (CONUS). Currently, one ARG/MEU is forward stationed in the Western Pacific Ocean, providing continuous partner nation engagement and capability to the commander, U.S Pacific Command. This ARG/MEU is unique, as it is tailored and forward-based to provide relevant service on a continuous basis and should be examined as a potential model to inform more efficient and effective ARG/MEU global posture under the littoral maneuver force construct.
At the onset of a crisis, forward-deployed littoral maneuver forces such as an ARG/MEU or special-purpose MAGTF can serve as coordinating and enabling elements for a larger naval or joint force arriving later in theater. These same forces, forward-deployed in adjacent theaters, along with other readily available global response units, can maneuver across command boundaries to concentrate as part of the aggregating force. Additionally, Navy, Marine, and special operations forces arriving on strategic airlift, maritime prepositioning ships (MPS), JHSV, or other forms of sealift can be included in the aggregation to ensure the littoral maneuver force is agile, integrated, and responsive to a blue/green command and control structure.
Logistics and sustainment. New deployment-employment concepts for a number of platforms old and new—the JHSV, littoral combat ship, MPS, mobile landing platform (MLP), large, medium-speed roll-on/roll-off ships (LMSR), and the dry cargo ammunition ships (T-AKE)—provide additional alternatives for sustaining the littoral maneuver force. When integrated into amphibious formations, these will provide the littoral maneuver force additional flexibility and capacity. As additional forces are flown into or across the theater, they can access stores available on these ships and connect to the maneuvering force via landing craft. Additionally, the MLP, LMSR, and T-AKE vessels have the potential to revolutionize force projection by providing the ability to conduct at-sea transfer and selective offload of heavier vehicles, tanks, and fire-support platforms.
The world’s littorals are key to global access and a critical part of the future operating environment. Ensuring our maritime advantage requires an integrated naval approach that seamlessly blends sea control and power projection operations within a contested maritime domain. The Marines and the Navy must be able to maneuver and sustain over greater distances through multiple entry points, supported by organic air and surface naval fires. Amending how we will operate requires continuous study and experimentation. It will require time, and will ultimately change joint and service doctrine, organization, training, material, logistics, personnel, and facilities. Developing this capability requires more closely integrating the Navy and Marine Corps at the institutional and operational levels. Where and when have yet to be determined, but if history is any guide, our nation needs to be able to respond quickly and operate effectively in the littoral environment.
The following members of the Ellis Group also contributed to this article: Lieutenant Colonels Ford Phillips, Sean Filson, Robert Clark, John K. Adams, Gregory Wardman, Rodrick McHaty, and Major Timothy Kamb.