Expeditionary Warfare, Soft Power, and Naval Strategy

The expeditionary character and versatility of maritime forces provide the U.S. the asymmetric advantage of enlarging or contracting its military footprint in areas where access is denied or limited. Permanent or prolonged basing of our military forces overseas often has unintended economic, social or political repercussions. The sea is a vast maneuver space, where the presence of maritime forces can be adjusted as conditions dictate to enable flexible approaches to escalation, de-escalation and deterrence of conflicts.

The speed, flexibility, agility and scalability of maritime forces provide joint or combined force commanders a range of options for responding to crises. Additionally, integrated maritime operations, either within formal alliance structures (such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) or more informal arrangements (such as the Global Maritime Partnership initiative), send powerful messages to would-be aggressors that we will act with others to ensure collective security and prosperity.

United States seapower will be globally postured to secure our homeland and citizens from direct attack and to advance our interests around the world. As our security and prosperity are inextricably linked with those of others, U.S. maritime forces will be deployed to protect and sustain the peaceful global system comprised of interdependent networks of trade, finance, information, law, people and governance.

-- Cooperative Maritime Strategy for the 21st Century

The Cooperative Maritime Strategy for the 21st Century defines the Maritime Strategic Concept to be one of strategic defense in the spirit of Julian S. Corbett. Corbett's writings and perspectives on Maritime Strategy focused primarily on the strategic defensive instead of the decisive battle or strategic offensive, but he emphasizes within the context of his strategic defense concept that one must go on the offensive at the operational level as opportunity allows.

In The Long War, we observe the major surface combatant fleet and underwater service have taken a posture based on a strategic defense. This defensive posture enables potential competitors to build naval forces that can potentially challenge for Command of the Sea in the future, or build a future maritime environment for Uncommand of the Sea in the spirit of Corbett. This is natural in peacetime when there is strong maritime competition among the nations with the worlds largest economies. With the major war forces operating in a strategic defensive posture, we observe Expeditionary Warfare forces being configured as the offensive force at the operational level, and we also observe this is directly in line with the expeditionary spirit of the new Cooperative Maritime Strategy.

In particular, and by name, we observe the new concepts attributed to Sea Basing emerging as the tip of the spear for the offensive at the operational level in The Long War. What we have not observed is an offensive strategy, including an official definition and requirement for these Sea Basing operational concepts that defines the objectives of the offensive at the operational level.

We believe the importance of expeditionary forces has increased with globalization and due to the current environment of dispersed, well funded violent extreamlism, but in the process we observe the prominence of amphibious assault within the context of expeditionary forces has decreased. The reason for the decrease in prominence of amphibious assault has nothing to do with the requirement for assault from the sea, rather is due to the nature of the offensive being developed at the operational level to fight The Long War. In the Cold War, maritime expeditionary forces were tailored and deployed to deliver major war firepower to perspective enemy forces.

In The Long War, maritime expeditionary forces are being tailored and deployed to deliver soft power to prevent or mitigate disruptions and crises. The forces for offense in The Long War are completely different, they include traditional amphibious platforms for Global Fleet Stations and Afloat Staging Bases, but also introduce new platforms in Humanitarian Ships and Logistics ships supported by other non-combatant forces. The combination of traditional and non-traditional maritime forces form the material resources required for the offensive in The Long War at the operational level. The new force structure for the required operational level offensive explains why amphibious assault has lost its prominence in expeditionary warfare, but it requires a new definition set to explain how amphibious assault forces and Global Fleet Stations are equal offensive concepts at the operational level within a defensive strategy. This graph is a work in progress that we are tinkering with to establish the relationship.

We contend this graph represents Expeditionary Warfare's emerging role within the context of 21st century challenges. At the far right of the curve, we observe a soft power requirement for phase 0 operations being met by the Global Fleet Station and other nontraditional naval deployments like the use of Hospital Ships. Global Fleet Stations, what has been defined within the context of Sea Basing in the past, is a presence mission conceived as an affordable ship for "engagement" operations up and down a coast and as a springboard for humanitarian and small scale military operations.

We have also observed an "at-sea" aspect of expeditionary warfare emerging, which has also been described as Sea Basing, which I have termed using the historical based term "Afloat Staging Base". An example is the system of platforms that helped conduct the pirate operations off the coast of Somalia at the end of last year, and represents a presence mission at sea and into the littoral for the Navy similar to the presence operations on land that Global Fleet Stations provides. We predict that as both concepts evolve, the Afloat Staging Base will become the Sea Based logistics and support for the Global Fleet Station in certain theaters.

As is illustrated by the graph, we see both Global Fleet Stations and Afloat Staging Bases as part of the Strategic Defense Strategy of the US Navy today in the spirit of Corbett, however both also represent the offensive at the operational level aspect in the Long War that Corbett discusses. We see these operational level offensive concepts as on par with other offensive concepts like Amphibious Assault and the proposed Transshipment Dock that General Conway believes is Sea Basing. The major difference of coarse is scale of conflict, from Phase 0 all the way up to and including Major War. We also note that as the line on the graph goes higher, the cost for operations goes up.

Cost creates the largest challenge facing the US Navy and Marines today in developing Expeditionary Warfare for the 21st Century. Major War requirements demand both the Navy and Marines plan and fund the highest requirements, particularly in the budget constrained environment of today. This raises the challenge of finding platforms at very low cost for anything on the right side of the graph, and indeed anything that is high cost contributing to missions on the right side of the graph must contribute to its cost level all the way to the top of the left side of the scale.

We note that the challenge is philosophical as well, the question becomes whether the Navy will invest in the low end of expeditionary warfare to create the capability to influence more regional areas simultaneously for peacemaking, or will they choose to spend the bulk of budget funding on the Transshipment Dock to support the highest end requirement of Expeditionary Warfare for the warfighter. Under a constrained budget, the Navy will not be able to afford both, so it will be interesting to see at what level of war, major war vs soft power, the Navy decides to invest their limited material resources.

This is also why we see a naval humanitarian response to disaster, or a hospital ship deployment, as a means of grabbing the initiative and going on the offensive at the operational level within the Strategic Defensive context of the Cooperative Maritime Strategy for the 21st Century. Just as the method and means of war has changed for the Army on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan, we observe the method and means of war has changed at sea for the Navy as well.