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In concept, .. From the Sea” fits well into a resource- constrained Defense environment. A strategy of preparing to fight two near-simultaneous mid-intensity regional conflicts will stretch naval forces to the limit, however. Some potential operations will have to be conducted in economy-of-force theaters, where we will not have a marked quantitative advantage.
History can be helpful in examining our departmental strategic concept through this lens of austerity. The 1942-43 Battle of Guadalcanal, for example, is known to all sailors and Marines—but going beyond the courage of those who fought on and around that island, we can make two observations that apply to “. . . From the Sea.”
The United States never was able to generate overwhelming combat power on or around Guadalcanal. For months, the Allies fought the Japanese at rough parity. It was an asymmetric parity: the Japanese had night naval superiority; the Allies dominated the day. Air superiority fluctuated, and never was total for either side. Ashore,
Marines and Japanese soldiers both bore the burdens of poor intelligence and intermittent logistical support.
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What parallels do we see today? When there is a rough quantitative parity of forces, a qualitative differential—in things like leadership, command and control, training, and doctrine—provides the edge. This is as true today as it was in the Solomon Islands. And ”... From the Sea” is a qualitative leap forward in naval thinking that can help us maintain our edge.
In the future, we will often be forced to operate in economy-of-force theaters, and we will also be operating in a political environment in which there is an “economy of national will.” The American people will not tolerate high casualties in military operations they do not view as critical to our national security. Either under U.N. auspices, or multilaterally—or even unilaterally—many of our likely tasks will not affect the national security of the United States directly. Many of our future operations are going to have objectives that—while important in a regional sense—may not be seen as vital in Peoria. Against this backdrop of unwillingness to suffer losses, the Cable News Network will be present to report every action in real time: every crashed helicopter; every minor raid gone astray.
As in the Solomons campaign, the unexpected and unlikely will dominate operations on future battlefields. The U.S. Navy spent the decades before Pearl harbor drilling for a fleet action—an open-ocean, unlimited-visibility gunnery reprise of Jutland. Doctrine, training, and equipment all converged on this expectation. But what did the navies do at Guadalcanal? They fought a bloody series of task-unit sized, close-range, limited-visibility brawls, dominated by the tactical lethality of the Japanese Long Lance torpedo—a weapon whose potential was un-
Proceedings / January 1994
dreamed of before the war. That the Navy eventually won control of the Solomons “Slot” had less to do with prewar doctrine than with the temper of the sailors who discarded the old teachings of formalism and the dominance of the naval gun. Instead, they created a workable on-scene tactical doctrine, and came to adopt maneuver, radar, and the torpedo as the Holy Trinity of success in Ironbottom Sound.
Turning to the four capability areas of . . From the Sea," we can identify some of the challenges that face us. All can be overcome, and much work is being done on them at present.
Command, Control, and Surveillance
This is the key capability—the framework within which all other capabilities must be expressed. Let us begin at sea. We will typically be operating from a seabase initially, perhaps a Marine air-ground task force on board amphibious shipping or perhaps a carrier battle group operating with a naval expeditionary group. As the naval expeditionary group approaches its littoral target area, the principal task of the command-and-control system will be to process the potentially overwhelming amount of information that will be pouring in from surveillance systems. It will be necessary to identify an opponent’s centers of gravity at the operational and tactical level, and determine the critical vulnerabilities that will form pathways to them. We cannot always count on having the luxury of a passive foe who chooses to display a static array of forces on a billiard table. Further, there is no natural law that says that every high-tech war must be fought in the desert, with unlimited visibility and generally favorable weather.
How will we attack an enemy’s centers of gravity, and with what systems? The synchronization of not only joint but often multinational manned attack aircraft, cruise missiles (air-, land-, and sea-launched), naval gunfire, and shorter-range land systems requires a command-and- control system that is redundant, yet discerning; simple, yet capable of achieving synchronization of fires at the decisive place and time. It will need to be capable of rapid identification and servicing of high-value and high-payoff targets through the full depth of the battlefield: from the sea, to inshore, to the deep battle, perhaps hundreds of miles in the enemy’s rear.
Just as important—how will we protect our own force from the readily available, cheap, highly potent missile, aircraft, gun, and mine-warfare systems in the Third World? Increasingly, tactical decisions about reactions to these weapons will have to come in real time, during which the volume and sophistication of imagery and other technical analyses will never yield a complete picture of “the other side of the hill.” In addition, these command- and-control and surveillance systems must be capable of functioning afloat during the transition of command across the beach, and from command posts inland.
What about the leaders we will need to command these naval expeditionary task forces operating ashore and at sea along the littorals? Command in littoral warfare calls for generalists—officers with broad and varied backgrounds—not specialists tied to unique occupational fields, warfare communities, or weapons platforms.
Command should be exercised from both ashore and afloat. Today, when the line between the land and sea is blurring, it may be more appropriate for the commander of the operation to be ashore—and that commander may need to be a Marine instead of a sailor, depending on the circumstances. On the other hand, there may be situations in which the commander afloat also may need to be a Ma
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rine—a good case in point would be peace enforcemefli operations like those in Somalia, where there was no set rious naval threat to the naval task force and where tlr
focus of all efforts clearly was on events ashore.
Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher and his carriers 3 Guadalcanal were forced to disengage, and it may pro'1 necessary for part of the naval expeditionary task force t‘ maneuver far away from the littoral—for replenishment force protection, or to fulfill a priority requirement. If thi happens, but the main effort remains ashore, then con1 mand of the task force should be moved ashore also" once the appropriate command-and-control architecture' established.
Battlespace Dominance
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This is attained by detecting, targeting, and destroyini enemy forces that present a threat to our maneuver asho® or afloat. It also can be achieved by degrading the enemy ability to conduct his own operations. In the littoral, thi will be accomplished by the synchronized use of carried based and other aviation, surface-warfare assets, suh marines, and the Marine air-ground task force itsell through its aviation combat element and ground-based i® direct-fire systems. The naval expeditionary task ford often will have to lean heavily on joint assets, dependi®: on the environment and nature of the threat. At Guadal canal, for example, commanders integrated long-ran®1 Army Air Corps fighters into their Navy-Marine team 11 assist in providing combat air patrols over the beachhead during the gap between the withdrawal of the carriers a®1 the establishment of Henderson Field ashore. These typ® of activities are going to become increasingly common i( the future, as all services pool their shrinking resource- to deal with unchanged—or even increasing—operation3 demands.
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The central dynamic will revolve around an ability 11 fuse multisource information into understandable intelh gence, which translates into targeting that will support th‘ commander’s concept of operations. In the littoral, U-S forces usually will be in a coalition world, which will r® quire efficient sharing of targeting and intelligence dat® This can be difficult, because of technical incompatibil1’ ties and cultural biases, but the cost of failing to share high. A case in point: On the afternoon of 8 Aug®5' 1942, an Australian scout plane spotted a Japanese tasl force of heavy cruisers racing south down The Slot fro®1 Rabaul, on a beeline for the still-unloading amphibia® force off Guadalcanal. This timely report was not act®" upon by the tactical commanders. The result: Early in $ morning of 9 August 1942, Admiral Mikawai’s eight cruh' ers surprised the Allied cruiser screen protecting the trany ports in the battle of Savo Island—an enormous ope®3 tional setback for the U.S. Navy.
The breakdown, between allies who spoke the same 1®® guage, was essentially procedural. Obviously, the pote®' tial is even greater when we fight alongside friends wh1’ speak a different tongue. Preventing things like this involve coordination of fires, airspace, and ground m3' neuver, through the integration of useful intelligence fro*1’ surveillance systems. Rapid battle-damage assessme®1' will be needed, so the commander can weight his attacks^
Proceedings / January
and his intelligence effort- of maneuver.
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Complicating this situation will be the fact that the naval expeditionary task force will be spread from far out at sea to well inland, conducting multimodal warfare against diverse threats. Inshore, they will face a growing diesel-submarine threat and significant sensor problems as the Navy attempts to adapt platforms like the Aegis cruiser and the nuclear submarine to shallow-water, close-horizon operating environments. Many potential opponents now believe that they will only have to get lucky once— against a carrier or a big-deck amphib—to raise the stakes high enough either to break a coalition or to place great pressure at home on U.S. decision makers. The close-in environment presents a congested, short-range antiaircraft warfare picture—often complicated by the presence of civil air—combined with all the problems of shallow-water antisubmarine warfare, with its bizarre thermoclines and poor sonar conditions. It is a tough place to operate.
Emerging weapons technologies, with things like sensor-fused weapons, promise greater on-target effectiveness and greater survivability for our manned aircraft. These new weapons promise much, but their utility in places less inviting than the desert remains to be proved, and they will be less capable against foes who do not fight in armor-heavy formations with Soviet-style tactics.
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I f The change of terminology from “ship-to-shore move- [).$’ ment” to “ship-to-shore maneuver” is a key conceptual I f change. Thinking like this reflects the need to envision latf moving from the sea to objectives inland with great ra- tjil*' pidity, while retaining the combat power necessary to win. ■e,s Naval expeditionary task forces must be able to reach in- land rapidly, finding gaps in coastal defenses where posts' sible—but, if necessary, by breaching beach defenses. In ol" any situation, we must be able to get ashore by both air 0ii5 and sea, and any naval expeditionary force configuration that cannot give us this dual option has serious flaws. Once tl>^ ashore, elements of the Marine air-ground task force will require the neccessary mobility to maneuver against jji$' equally capable foes.
This is truly the heart of the matter: the naval expeditionary force must be able to project credible, sustainable l-jlT combat power directly against a foe’s center of gravity, .gfi' without becoming entangled in prepared defenses. If it is ^ necessary to go in through prepared defenses the force must 3 be capable of performing the myriad of tasks necessary to breach them, and our improving—but still gravely de- .gfl ficient—mine warfare capability comes to mind. There are
,fjt* other areas we need to look at, as well—integrating such
Proceedings / January 1994
In addition, we cannot ignore the political ramifications of collateral damage that even precision weapons can cause. In wars that are less than total—potentially, most of our future wars—we may not be able to use weapons, however effective, if their political cost outweighs their tactical gain. There may be a time and place when nearperfect accuracy just will not be good enough. That is not a pleasant thought, but it is a consideration we cannot ignore when we look at new systems and the application of existing technologies.
future systems as the advanced amphibious assault vehicle, the MV-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, and our existing air-cushion landing craft (LCAC) into our maneuver.
Sustainment
The way we sustain these rapidly moving, geographically disparate elements is of fundamental importance. If we assume that the amphibious task force will remain 25 miles offshore, with at least part of the Marine air-ground task force’s ground elements some 40 miles inland, the magnitude of the problem becomes clear. The essence of sea-based logistics is that the logistics flow will come from ships scattered across the sea echelon area, possibly over an extended period of time. We have tried seabasing across short distances, but we never have really worked the concept at true over-the-horizon distances, or with a large force. New technologies like the LCAC give us greater flexibility and speed for force sustainment, and the innovative use of maritime prepositioned ships, integrated into our naval expeditionary task forces will help. The core problem will remain one of providing rapid, responsive transportation of bulk supplies and equipment from ships to organizations ashore. Using part of a maritime prepositioned force squadron in support of naval expeditionary task force operations offers exciting possibilities, if we can protect the ships and secure the requisite port and airfield.
Deception
Deception operations are of paramount importance. Deception cuts across all four capability areas, and may be one of the greatest combat multipliers we have. We can translate our inherent mobility advantage at sea into operational advantage ashore—through imaginative maneuver and the use and development of appropriate systems for fixing the enemy, and blinding him when necessary.
The Future
The American people expect us to win quickly and cheaply. That is an unintended legacy of Operation Desert Storm, one we will have to learn to live with. On balance, it is not an unreasonable demand. Whatever solutions we devise in the near term eventually will have to function over the long term, in ways and in environments and against foes that will be very different from today’s tidy planning scenarios. Therefore, our weapons, platforms, and doctrine must be strong and flexible enough to accommodate unforeseen changes in the face of the enemy. In future wars, the first battle may be the last one, because conditions may not again allow us the luxury of time to adapt to a new opponent. We may not have a leisurely six months to recast our platforms, weapons, and doctrine to counter the latest version of the Tokyo Express.
We will be expected to get it right—with minimum casualties and material cost—the first time, every time.
General Mundy, the 30th Commandant of the Marine Corps, is an Honorary President of the Naval Institute.
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