Joint Maritime Operations - Security

Today, the United States and its partners find themselves competing for global influence in an era in which they are unlikely to be fully at war or fully at peace. Our challenge is to apply seapower in a manner that protects U.S. vital interests even as it promotes greater collective security, stability, and trust. While defending our homeland and defeating adversaries in war remain the indisputable ends of seapower, it must be applied more broadly if it is to serve the national interest.

- A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower

This post continues the Developing Joint Maritime Operations series by examining security as a category of military activity within the context the Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. From section 5 in the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations Version 3.0.

Security activities seek to protect and control civil populations and territory -- friendly, hostile, or neutral. They may be performed as part of a military occupation during or after combat, to help defeat an insurgency, or in response to a humanitarian disaster. Unlike combat, they seek ultimately to reassure rather than compel. Security activities conclude successfully when civil violence is reduced to a level manageable by law enforcement authorities.

Recent experiences have revitalized awareness of both the importance of security activities and the capabilities needed to conduct them effectively. There now is widespread acknowledgment that security activities may be as essential to success in war as combat; they cannot be relegated to a relatively few special-purpose units, but instead must be treated as a competency required of all U.S. general-purpose forces.

Because the premises of security are quite different from -- indeed, often opposite to -- those governing combat, preparation for conducting security missions requires deliberate education and training in areas ranging from cultural awareness and the laws of armed conflict to acceptable methods of population control and the administration of justice.

Effective security requires a visible and enduring security presence in the communities to be secured. Until that presence can be furnished by indigenous civil law enforcement personnel, nothing can replace sufficient trained and disciplined military personnel on the ground.

Joint forces engaged in offensive combat must be prepared to establish security in populated areas from the moment organized resistance in those areas has ceased, and must continue to do this until the threat of civil violence no longer exists or until other instruments become available to control it. Joint force commanders must consider the requirements needed to conduct both activities simultaneously while preserving sufficient flexibility for dealing with unforeseen events.

The beginning paragraph regarding security in the CCJO states "Security activities seek to protect and control civil populations and territory -- friendly, hostile, or neutral." I have to admit that I was confused with Captain Addisons suggestion in Proceedings this month discussing the CCJO that "the Navy's most fundamental core capability-sea control-is expressed in a particular service dialect that tends to lose something in the joint translation."

It begs the question: Which adjective, noun, or verb created the language confusion between "Joint" and "Navy?"

The 5th Fleet website discusses maritime security operations by noting naval forces "conduct maritime security operations to help set the conditions for security in the maritime environment. From security arises stability that results in global economic prosperity." I believe it would be fair to associate a connection between "maritime environment" in 5th Fleet slang and "civil populations and territory -- friendly, hostile, or neutral" in the JFCOM dialect. If we are not treating the civilian population of the worlds littorals as the civil population and the sea as territory, then who does Captain Addison believe needs to be protected and controlled with sea power?

CCJO notes that "the premises of security are quite different from -- indeed, often opposite to -- those governing combat..." I have long believed warfighting and peacemaking represent two opposing and, at the same time, complementary (completing) applications of military power, and can be best represented in imagery as a Yin-Yang. If black is war and white is peace, this analogy can be used to recognize the white dot as peacemaking forces as a requirement for winning war, just as the black dot represents warfighter capabilities as a requirement for managing peace.

Highlighting the phrase "preventing war is as important as winning war" in CS-21, I note that balance is critical for military power to adequately address the 21st century threat conditions. In examining the metrics of the successful 21st century peacemaker on land, I note manpower is the one absolute requirement. Virtual presence through unmanned systems is in effect the absolute absence of sailors, and I firmly believe the presence of Navy sailors is the one irreplaceable factor in fostering peaceful relations for forward deployed seapower.

When I read this section of the CCJO, it read to me like the entire section on security has direct guidance application to the US Navy. In fact, replace 'ground' with 'sea' and this section in particular highlights the challenge the Navy faces in being able to realistically conduct sea control operations against irregular challengers in the 21st century.

"Effective security requires a visible and enduring security presence in the communities to be secured. Until that presence can be furnished by indigenous civil law enforcement personnel, nothing can replace sufficient trained and disciplined military personnel on the ground sea."

One of the first paragraphs in the CS-21 introduction establishes the naval environment, described as "The oceans connect the nations of the world, even those countries that are landlocked. Because the maritime domain - the world’s oceans, seas, bays, estuaries, islands, coastal areas, littorals, and the airspace above them - supports 90% of the world’s trade, it carries the lifeblood of a global system that links every country on earth."

This statement in CS-21 clearly articulates littoral regions globally as part of the Navy Department's mandate, suggesting again that the CCJO is speaking directly to the Navy when discussing 'communities' of the sea. It has become accepted in the Navy that littorals do not end at the waters edge, and do extend onto land. This clearly brings communities in the littorals within the maritime domain and into the US Navy's mandate for security.

I read the section on security as a wake up call to the Navy to begin development of joint operational concepts that will allow sea based forces to enforce security in the maritime domain while simultaneously establishing indigenous civil law enforcement when possible. In other words, the US Navy must have the capabilities necessary to enforce sea control in ungoverned seas and stand up an indigenous coast guard at the same time, and right now the Navy is incapable of doing exactly that in places like the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden where irregular enemies are operating at sea. The problem isn't just policy, and it isn't just piracy; human trafficking in the Gulf of Aden continues to compound problems for the government in Yemen - a country that also has terrorist organizations with increasingly sophisticated military capabilities known to be logistically supplied by sea (which is why the Saudi's have a naval blockade off the Yemen coast).

The link between the sea and terrorist organizations is not much different than the link between the sea and nation states - that link is logistical and economic. Economy is often cited as the long term exit strategy for counterinsurgencies and failed states. That would tend to elevate CCJO's guidance on security to a vital primary (not supporting) role for naval operations supporting the nations wars. I remain unconvinced that Navy force structure planners take the vital primary role of maritime security operations in support of the existing wars seriously, and as such the forward deployed forces struggle with the assets they have and make do without the essential capabilities necessary to be effective.

The CCJO section of security is speaking directly to the US Navy, indeed it lines up with many concepts within the US Navy's own operational and strategic guidance. What I continue to find stunning is how Navy strategists treat maritime security operations as a social project in executing international cooperation, suggesting cooperation is the strategic objective. Maritime security is a military activity supplementing (and when necessary substituting as) indigenous security forces in ungoverned seas.

Examples where emphasis on cooperation instead of capability include both CTF-150 and CTF-151. Both Task Forces have been multinational success stories of cooperation, but both have also been remarkably ineffective in achieving significant strategic results towards the purposes they were established.

CTF-150 was established to monitor, inspect, board, and stop suspect shipping to pursue the "War on Terrorism" in the Horn of Africa region. Since May of 2002 however, arms have flowed to terrorist organizations and criminal groups throughout the Middle East and east Africa, and Al Qaeda elements have now entrenched themselves in both Somalia and Yemen - and are unlikely to stop there. CTF-151 was established in response to piracy attacks in shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia. Despite success in the Gulf of Aden, piracy is spreading throughout the Indian Ocean and the problem has grown well beyond the means of even the large international coalition to contain.

If the Navy is a results oriented organization, how can Navy leadership look at the activities of CTF-150 and CTF-151 and claim success today? When terrorist networks in the specific region these Task Forces operate are expanding to other countries, piracy hijackings remain constant, and human trafficking continues to compound the regional humanitarian problems - the strategic objective to limit regional conflict with forward deployed, decisive maritime power is not being achieved.

The more problematic issue though is how dismissive naval leadership is regarding the maritime security problems in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean today. I see the casual dismissal of maritime security issues in that region as an example of widespread General Sanchez Syndrome. Until the Navy acknowledges and addresses the serious MSO deficiency issues in the current force structure plans, policy makers should continue to get a pass and the Navy should shoulder the blame. It is completely irresponsible for the Navy to claim with CS-21 to be the system administrator of the global economic transportation system and yet casually dismiss administrative responsibilities when the system is being systematically exploited by irregular enemies that don't fit adversarial profiles that are easily matched with existing force structure.

I often wonder how much the absence of a strong, comprehensive command for green water operations is hurting the Navy, because without such a command to develop operational doctrine for littoral operations, there are few advocates for improving security operations at sea that would influence force design, development, tactics, IO techniques, ISR capabilities, cooperative security engagement, and training for operations in populated littorals. MSO continues to be the most common and most important operational activity of every 21st century navy, and yet it has less dedicated command emphasis within the Navy organizational structure than every other naval capability in the US Navy.

During combat operations, maritime security operations will be necessary to secure and protect the lines of communication supporting Joint forces conducting combat operations. With the Navy using the warfighting combat fleet as a maritime security fleet during peacetime, the net effect during wartime will be to trade security operations for combat operations, a terrible choice that a properly designed and balanced force structure would never need to make. Together combat and security may indeed often be "opposite" as the CCJO suggests, but at sea they are also complementary (completing) applications of naval power.