Influence Squadrons - The Next Evolution

Fifth, we will increase the buy of littoral combat ships -- a key capability for presence, stability and counterinsurgency operations in coastal regions -- from two to three ships in FY '10. Our goal is eventually to acquire 55 of these ships.

- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, April 06, 2024

I have a question. Does Secretary of Defense Robert Gates really know anything about maritime presence, maritime stability, maritime counterinsurgency, or maritime irregular warfare for that matter? I think Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is really smart, but I don't think he has ever been challenged in a debate regarding naval issues. Honestly, I don't really think he has ever given it much thought.

Gates talks a lot about the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I would begin with the question what are the characteristics of successful doctrine, tactics, and strategy in those irregular warfare spaces? My next question would be, what do those characteristics have in common with the Littoral Combat Ship?

To summarize it in a simple way, irregular warfare requires sustained presence of manpower, but the Littoral Combat Ship doesn't have the endurance for sustaining itself, and as a requirement the platform is short on manpower. Who is advising the Secretary of Defense on naval capabilities?

I believe that Secretary Gates can understand this stuff, I just don't believe he has ever been exposed to enough of the debate in the Navy to understand why his comments make no sense at all. The Navy discussion regarding the littorals needs new ideas forwarded by navy officers for public debate to help push the littoral conversation down the road, something that has not happened in a long, long time. I was very pleased when one such discussion was printed in this months issue of Proceedings.

Commander Harry Hendrix has an article in April's Proceedings titled Buy Ford, Not Ferrari. This is a large article, and after seeing a few initial conversations of the article my first impression is that people are getting hung up on his prescriptions for the large forces, which in my opinion, is perhaps the least important aspect of the article. What jumps off the page for me, and what I believe makes this article one of the most important articles written in Proceedings in a long time, is what is new.

The next step on the Navy's path to a new future should be the creation of "Influence Squadrons" composed of an amphibious mother ship (an LPD-17 or a cheaper commercial ship with similar capabilities), a destroyer to provide air, surface, and subsurface defensive capabilities, a Littoral Combat Ship to extend a squadron's reach into the green-water environment and provide some mine warfare capabilities, a Joint High Speed Vessel to increase lift, a Coastal Patrol ship to operate close in, and an M80 Stiletto to provide speed and versatility.

The Influence Squadron should also heavily employ unmanned technologies to further expand the squadron's reach. Unmanned air, surface, and subsurface platforms could be deployed and monitored by the various vessels, extending American awareness, if not American presence.

These forces, operating every day around the world, would represent the preponderance of visible U.S. naval power. Their understated capabilities would epitomize America's peaceful, non-aggressive intent, and would carry out the new maritime strategy's stated purpose of providing positive influence forward. However, the Influence Squadron, carrying credible firepower across a broad area of operations, could also serve to either dissuade or destroy pirate networks that might seek to prey upon increasingly vulnerable commercial sea lines of communication.

Creating 16 of these squadrons, ten in the Pacific, six in the Atlantic, would allow the Navy to forward deploy six to eight squadrons at any given time, expanding American influence around the world. Pacific-based squadrons would routinely deploy to the east coast of Africa, the Persian Gulf, the waters off Malaysia to include the Strait of Malacca, the archipelagic waters of Indonesia, the waters in and around the Philippines, and the regional waters near Japan and Korea.

Atlantic-based squadrons would visit the Caribbean, South America, the north and western coasts of Africa as well as pushing up into the Black Sea to visit Georgia, the Ukraine and other partners in the region. Sometimes, however, Influence Squadrons, no matter how well they are placed, will not have the necessary concentration of capabilities to meet the emergent challenges. It would be at this point that the next force along the scale of naval response would be dispatched.

The "Influence Squadron" should sound very familiar to readers here, because it is essentially the strategic concept forwarded on this blog of what I have previously called Littoral Strike Groups. Essentially, it is a call for an organizational framework of ships to operate IN the littorals instead of conducting operations in the littoral from over the horizon. I particularly like the idea because it leverages coastal patrol vessels (PCs) and small fast boats (M-80s), supported by a combination of a Marine Company (LPD-17), credible firepower (DDG-51), unmanned systems (LCS), and NECC capabilities (JHSV) with credible littoral centric capabilities. I don't really care about the debate regarding the specific platforms, it doesn't matter and is parochial to the discussion, the specific platform should be derived from requirements planning anyway. What is important is the layered blue-green-brown water approach which I believe is strategically solid as a driving requirement for a littoral organizational squadron, and a tactical necessity for any legitimate littoral influence.

My only point would be this. On the coastal patrol vessels and the small, fast boats the payload is manpower, not missiles. Armed with guns, built for endurance and to be sustainable, capable of having crews rotated at sea while equipment can be repaired at sea; this type of sustained organizational task group can establish regional maritime domain awareness by distributing sensors, leverage helicopters and armed UAVs to engage in combat when the task is required, and be the physical presence to uncover opposition forces operating with stealth in the complex human terrain of the littorals. In this type of organization, the Littoral Combat Ships can be C2 nodes for multiple coastal patrol vessels and small, fast boats operating as ink spots on regional seas.

This type of organizational task group becomes the perfect match for all of our desired cooperative partnerships. We know the LPD and JHSV are the desired platforms for our Global Partnership Stations. We have seen the good results with both of those platforms. We also know our littoral forces need the sensors and capabilities the LCS delivers, and we need the warfighter capabilities of our AEGIS ships to protect our organized task forces, so both of those platforms make sense. What we also need though are the low end, small platforms that can work with partners at the level they are comfortable with, the PC and small, fast boat level.

In my opinion, this where the Bob Work idea, the idea discussed by Thomas Barnett a few weeks back in Congressional hearings, comes into play. The PCs and the small, fast boats are built to be worked in conjunction with partners. We train regional coast guards using these platforms, and as our partners develop proficiency as a coastal security force, we give these small vessels away as part of a strategic concept of building regional coast guards.

Am I biased in favor of the strategic concept being forwarded? Absolutely. I think the details regarding the specific ships needs to be gamed out, tested thoroughly, and survive the acquisition process for the coastal patrol and small, fast boats (and probably the mothership), but from a strategic conceptual perspective this idea is hitting a grand slam in my opinion.

And it shows a hell of a lot more thought regarding how to deal with the key capabilities for presence, stability, and counterinsurgency operations in coastal regions than our own Secretary of Defense.

One final point.

I do a pretty thorough job of research, I think, and I can only find one other article written by an active duty Surface Warfare Officer since the 313-ship plan was released that talks specifically about the need to change Navy force structure. It turns out, that article was also written by CDR Hendrix, who wrote Dead Reckoning in the March 2008 Armed Forces Journal. In other words, there is exactly ONE active duty Surface Warfare Officer with the gonads to pen an alternative to the Navy's current force structure plan in public with his name on it.

I think that is incredible!

If I am inaccurate, I welcome being corrected on that last point.

(Turns out, Harry Hendrix is an aviator, meaning there are still 0 SWOs who have produced a force structure in public, with their name on it, since 313)