Piracy Exploits Our Strategic and Tactical Flaws

Bob Timburg may be out, but he left a gem of an issue of Proceedings well worth a read. I won't lie, the big black cover got my attention, and I read it cover to cover over the weekend enjoying every article. December Proceedings is interesting, timely, and diverse in opinion and content offering just about every angle one would want to the issue of piracy.

The two free articles, The Overstated Threat by Commander John Patch, U.S. Navy (Retired) and What Makes Piracy Work? by Virginia Lunsford are both excellent.

As someone who thinks we should always account for history before deciding the course to take in the future, I found Virginia Lunsford's article outstanding. I really have nothing to add, except put it on your must read list and enjoy.

The other article however caught my attention. It is one of those articles I completely agree with in principle, but think we need to be careful in consideration regarding the way ahead. Until an international framework is developed for fighting piracy, I see no reason for the US to engage in that fight. We are already fighting two wars and piracy is not a threat to our freedom of navigation in those seas, so there is no reason to either panic or rush into what will be a very difficult challenge. The ultimate solution, international cooperation, is very much aligned to our national strategy interest, so patience serves our strategic interests. However, with that said, I found something in Commander Patch's very interesting article that bothers me a bit.

Indeed, common misperceptions abound. While maritime piracy incidents capture media attention and generate international calls for action, the piracy threat is in fact overstated. It is nothing more than high-seas criminal activity, better addressed by law enforcement agencies than warships. As a localized nuisance, it should not serve to shape maritime force structure or strategy.

The distinction between piracy and terrorism is neither semantic nor academic. If piracy, the responsibility lies with local law enforcement officials, not the military. But maritime terrorism means scrambling the Navy.

I agree in both theory and principle that force structure or strategy should not be shaped by piracy, and I completely agree the threat is being overblown, but what bothers me is that the tactical nature of piracy is currently circumventing our tactical capabilities available for response. Somalian piracy by itself is certainly nothing more than a well organized crime syndicate, but because it is only piracy or because the nature of the activity is criminal is not a valid reason to be dismissive of the challenge to force structure or strategy here. The tactical capabilities pirates are using do scale, they are not simply limited to criminal activity nor should we expect them to always be, and at the end of the day we are still left with a menace that is exploiting our tactical weaknesses and we must approach that realization with our eyes wide open.

Here is the big problem. The tactical nature of piracy requires the US Navy to reevaluate both the shape of maritime force structure and the way we look at our force structure in the context of strategy, and if we fail to do so, we will not be prepared for the challenges of the 21st century. Allow me to expand on these points.

Shaping Maritime Force Structure

It is pretty easy to see how to adopt pirate tactics for wartime, the tactical changes are simple and would be very effective. Rather than trying to capture commercial traffic, the only change necessary to inflect serious damage on the enemy is to set enemy shipping on fire rather than try to capture the ship. Start several fires, prevent the crew from putting them out by applying pressure through force, and you can create major havoc on the high seas. How cheap are incendiary bombs and devices? How difficult is it to start a fire on a ship? How often do ships carry cargo that is flammable? See the problem? The tactics used by pirates scale very well to the disruption of commercial shipping, and could be effective against warships in littoral spaces, but only if you can't directly address the tactics utilized by pirates. If you can't stop the tactics of pirates today, how do you expect to secure shipping in a time of war?

This is even more troubling when you consider this is a likely problem facing maritime forces in the future, because such tactics are more readily available to the nations the US Navy is likely to fight in the future. The necessity to saturate the maritime domain with enough manpower to inspect, deter, and enforce strict protection of the maritime domain without destroying the local maritime industries is essentially the same challenge faced by land forces conducting a COIN operation. Has the US Navy even considered the necessity to operate in the maritime domain similar to the posture one would find in Afghanistan? Naval forces will require similar characteristics in the maritime domain to what you find with a widely dispersed Army populated across a large physical area, but I don't see evidence the Navy recognizes that future requirement.

We consolidate capabilities into larger and larger ships that number fewer and fewer, and thus reduce our capability to disperse enough ships to enforce security. What is the small deployable vessel that can sustain itself for a week at sea conducting security operations off an ungoverned coast? That manned node in the networked force doesn't exist today, and without it the US Navy has left itself open to the irregular capabilities of a dispersed enemy force best represented tactically by the camouflaged, blended local population pirate vessels operating off the Somalian coast. Piracy may be criminal in nature, but in that regards we are lucky, because the criminal activity currently not a strategic threat is giving us important insight into our tactical shortfalls in capabilities.

I don't want to give the wrong impression, I'm not saying widespread adjustment is needed. I am suggesting that this is an evolution of the strategic concept of Sea Basing that is not trivial. The necessity to deploy large numbers of manned vessels that can sustain themselves up to a week is the game changing capability requirement for the 21st century. It is similar to the game changing requirement we came across in the 20th century, the necessity to field large numbers of small aircraft from the sea to fight war. Well, I would phrase it slightly different, the necessity to field and sustain large numbers of small vessels at sea is the game changing requirement necessary to maintain the peace in the 21st century. I truly believe this btw, it is why I compare the mothership in the 21st century to the aircraft carrier of the 20th century, and also why I compare the Freedom to the Langley...

Strategic Realignment

Oh you think we would be able to solve the problem of small boat attacks on commercial ships with a kinetic force of unmanned platforms instead of manpower? Think again. Lets face it, 21st century strategy is not offensive in nature, it is defensive in nature. The kinetic solution at sea only works under a rules of engagement policy that allows for the death of any target, without clear identification. Which rules of engagement policy would that be? Mike Burleson best represents this type of false hope strategic logic, for the most part, I disagree with Mike on just about everything he advocates for because his strategy for a precision weapon centric tactical focus works only if offensive action is permitted under any circumstances. The way I see it, Mike's vision is dead right for how to fight major war, but couldn't be more wrong when the goal is to maintain peace.

Maritime Strategy isn't just military strategy at sea. Military strategy is centric to winning war, but maritime strategy must appreciate the requirements of both war and peace.

While it is true the Navy's maritime strategy accepts the realities of an irregular warfare campaign, the organization and force structure of the US Navy largely does not. We see tactical capabilities through the prism of destroying an enemy platform designed for war, but the challenges at sea facing the US Navy in the 21st century have largely been specific to the platforms utilized during peacetime. Our tactical capabilities are brilliant when used in an indiscriminate destruction centric campaign for eliminating known threats, but which campaign would that be? The problem facing the US Navy is that force structure is not aligned with strategy, because our national strategy is not permissive to an environment of war that includes the random killing of innocents, even accidentally. Our national strategy is specific to the preservation of life, thus restrictive RoEs, and until that changes we must realign our tactical capabilities accordingly, and that in itself is a strategic adjustment.

People like Mike don't seem to understand that, and in order for him to advocate his conceptual idea of war at sea that could be effective in the 21st century, he would first have to make the political argument that all out war is a permissible activity in the hybrid warfare challenge usually found in peacetime. I don't see this strategic, and very political viewpoint adjusting anytime soon. In that regard, I differ very much from the position articulated by Commander Patch, the enemy has found a tactical weakness in both our strategy and force structure by exploiting our preservation of life and capitalizing on our absence of a meaningful maritime force structure capable of managing dispersed threats at sea that requires clear identification.

While piracy may not be cassius belli to adjust accordingly, the tactics represented by piracy give us a glimpse to a future we are not prepared for. Instead, we expect the glorified camera on a UAV to instantly distinguish friend and foe, and the attached weapon system to solve the problem. False hope.