Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson’s desire to minimize use of “A2/AD” may have made no headway with the rest of the Department of Defense (DoD), but it remains a necessary step. Antiaccess/Area Denial simply means too much to some and too little to others. CNO correctly points out in his National Interest article (“Deconstructing A2/AD,” 3 October 2016), “A2/AD is a term bandied about freely, with no precise definition, that sends a variety of vague or conflicting signals.” There is more to it, however.
The problem is that A2 and AD are two distinct concepts. Antiaccess is a strategy in which combat operations are but one part. In contrast, area denial represents tactics—often largely indistinguishable from standard land warfare or sea-denial operations—that can be used to achieve antiaccess objectives in a military campaign. Area-denial tactics can support antiaccess and other strategies. If an opposing force needs to apply area-denial tactics in a combat situation—particularly on land—then their antiaccess strategy likely has been defeated.
An antiaccess strategy is designed to keep a superior military away from one’s region. It is intended to either deter interference by an outside power while achieving a regional military conquest or, if deterrence fails, achieve a quick victory while avoiding a force-on-force contest.
Weaker nations know that a superior power will win if they allow the adversary to build up forces in their region. By allowing U.S. forces to build up in Saudi Arabia after capturing Kuwait, for example, Saddam Hussein was doomed to lose the 1991 Gulf War. The objective of an antiaccess strategy is to convince the outside power to go away and accept the de facto results. Since nations and non-nations rarely start a war intending to lose, adopting an antiaccess strategy when a stronger force may intervene makes logical sense.
Antiaccess warfare was the strategy of Imperial Japan in World War II. Japan was determined to conquer the Dutch East Indies, China, and everything in between. Since the Philippines and Guam were in between, that would invite conflict with the United States. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto and other Japanese strategists knew that in a protracted war, Japan would lose. The United States was the superior power capable of outproducing every nation. Yamamoto knew he had to achieve victory in six months. His strategy was to destroy the U.S. fleet, sever the line of communication with Australia, and compel the U.S. government to accept a negotiated agreement given the high costs in lives to fight its way back into the region.
Of course, the Pearl Harbor attack had the opposite effect. The antiaccess “great wall” of Pacific islands was breached at Midway, and U.S. forces—primarily the Navy and Marine Corps—took it apart brick by brick. U.S. forces faced and defeated the most determined antiaccess strategy in our nation’s greatest naval war.
Given U.S. current military and diplomatic capabilities any nation faced with a force-on-force conflict with the United States would logically choose an antiaccess strategy. Any Chinese military expansion, for instance, would likely seek to drive U.S. forces out of the region (diplomatically if possible, militarily if necessary) and prevent them from coming back. The primary battlefield would obviously be maritime. Similar situations exist in other parts of the world and need to be understood.
The problem is AD has driven our attention away from A2. By conflating strategy with tactics, we too easily neglect the non-military aspects of antiaccess warfare, minimize the role of deterrence, and focus like a laser beam on tactical analyses of opposing weapon systems. Analyzing the warfighting capability of Chinese DF-21 missiles versus aircraft carriers is important but it does not equate to studying the ways and means required to defeat an antiaccess strategy.
As the CNO maintains, from the tactical perspective, “the A2/AD problem is currently well understood—challenging, but understood.” Yet, the strategic diplomatic, information, military, and economic requirements to counter antiaccess strategy are not as well understood and must be analyzed with the same fervor as is area denial. By separating A2 from AD, perhaps we can begin to understand the strategic picture as well as the tactical details.