The Navy needs a new officer career path: amphibious expeditionary warfare officer (AEWO). Traditionally, the surface warfare community has been divided between the blue-water navy operating cruisers and destroyers and the green-water navy on amphibious ships, but the emphasis always has favored the blue-water side. Over the past 18 years of operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan, however, the Navy has significantly strengthened its expeditionary skills through numerous deployment cycles, individual augmentations, creation of the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, and manning brown-water units such as coastal riverine and inshore mobile boat units. As the war on terror winds down and the Navy refocuses on its traditional roles, it risks losing those hard-earned skills.
In a potential future conflict with a near peer, amphibious operations likely will play a key role. This is especially true if that future conflict is with China, and even a regional conflict with Iran almost certainly would require the use of amphibious forces. With this in mind, it is time for the Navy to create a cadre of naval officers specialized in amphibious and expeditionary operations to be able to work with their Marine Corps and Army counterparts in planning and carrying out amphibious operations.
In lieu of the current structure, where surface warfare officers bounce between blue-water and green-water assignments at sea and ashore, with limited experience in amphibious and expeditionary operations, there would be two distinct career fields. It could work like this:
AEWOs would source primarily from the surface community after completing their division officer tours. Surface warfare officers (SWOs) would continue to serve as division officers on amphibs as they do now; however, after the initial tour an aspiring AEWO would lateral transfer to the AEWO community to begin specialization. Department heads, executive officers, and commanding officers of amphibs would be AEWOs rather than SWOs. Likewise and more important, the staffs of the expeditionary strike groups and amphibious ready groups would be AEWOs.
AEWOs also would complete their shore tours in amphibious and expeditionary warfare fields. They would be placed with Marine Corps staffs as naval gunfire liaison officers and in amphibious units such as the assault craft units and beach groups on the East and West Coasts. The Navy Expeditionary Combat Command would be able to draw heavily on AEWOs and their expertise.
Assignments with coastal riverine and inshore mobile boat units no longer would be a sidetrack for a SWO training to someday command a destroyer but rather an important part of an AEWO’s training and expertise. Maritime civil affairs teams, which were prematurely disbanded over shortsighted funding concerns, could be reformed using AEWOs.
The creation of AEWOs would give the Navy an expertise in amphibious and expeditionary operations that it has not seen since World War II. As the Marine Corps refocuses on its traditional amphibious roots and chances of conflict in the Pacific Ocean grow, the expertise AEWOs would bring to bear would pay off in capital and lives saved.
