Screening Asymmetrical and Symmetrical Threats at Sea

The latest Office of Naval Intelligence report (PDF) on the activities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at sea is getting some attention. Coverage of the report to date comes from The Threat Matrix, DoDBuzz, and Defense News. They all have interesting takes with their reporting of the report, but I want to offer a few initial thoughts on my read of ONIs analysis.

This section in the ONI report creates an interesting discussion because it follows a bit of logic that may not be accurate as presented.

Preparing for an Asymmetrical War

In studying these conflicts, the IRGC decided that Iran should plan to fight an asymmetric war against potential enemies. According to the IRGC commander, an asymmetric war would involve "working on all the weaknesses of the enemy and the maximal usage of our capability." By choosing an asymmetric approach, however, Iran is not abandoning modern military technology. The IRGC claims that Iran would use its growing arsenal of modern weapons, including cruise missiles, modern mines, and submarines, but in a different way and at a time and place the enemy would not know or expect.

During the 1990s, the regime sought to rebuild from the Iran-Iraq War and bolster its national defenses. The IRGC, the favored military force due to its performance in the Iran-Iraq War, took the lion's share of Iranian Iran's VOSPER-class corvette SAHAND after being attacked by the United States Navy during Operation PRAYING MANTIS in 1988 defense funding, increased domestic weapons production, and ramped up the procurement of weapons from Russia, China, and North Korea:l. Naval acquisitions included C802 anti-ship cruise missiles (both sea- and land-launched systems) and numerous patrol boats.

The IRIN devoted the bulk of its acquisition funding to order three KILO-class attack submarines. Submarines had long been on the IRIN's list of desired platforms. During the Shah's reign, the navy had ordered both U.S. TANG- and German TYPE 209-class diesel submarines. Despite the change of regime, the navy's Shah-era plan to acquire submarines was finally realized.

With the receipt of new equipment, Iran continued to develop its naval tactics. Even the IRIN focused on developing integrated tactics using several weapons and platforms simultaneously (including its new submarines, smaller missile boats, mines, aircraft, and land-based missile systems) to overwhelm an enemy. Aware of its weakness against a modern air campaign, Iran also began decentralizing its command structure in order to decrease its reliance on communications and enable continued resistance in the event of an attack. Iran has continued enhancing nearly all its weapons systems and developing its tactics, watching and learning from regional conflicts, through the 1990s to the present time.

While asymmetry is the cornerstone of Iran's access denial strategy, there are many other concepts that Iran is incorporating into its naval construct. Passive defense, capitalizing on favorable geography, and the primacy of Iran's moral cause are important factors in Iran's naval planning.

What exactly is asymmetrical about submarines, smaller missile boats, mines, aircraft, and/or land-based missile systems? Swarm tactics with small boats does not represent an asymmetrical military capability, rather it represents a symmetrical naval tactic that is well chronicled as far back as Themistocles.

The way this Office of Naval Intelligence report describes Iranian capabilities as "asymmetrical" does not encourage me, because it essentially groups equipment and tactics that are common among small nations - littoral submarines, missile boats, mines, shore based anti-ship missiles - as an asymmetric military capability. That is fundamentally inaccurate, these capabilities are symmetrical even as these capabilities specifically target what is seen as a weakness in US Navy Fleet forces.

All of these naval capabilities - littoral submarines, missile boats, mines, shore based anti-ship missiles - are simply exploiting the absence of a single naval element of combat in the US Navy:

Screening - The use of forces to help protect other more valued unis, accomplished by some combination of antiscouting and escorting, and often by scouting as well. (definition source)

In other words, the US Navy intentionally does not screen our fleet with combat power (the LCS is a mothership, not a surface combatant) and when a potential adversary develops tactics to exploit our intentional absence of this element of naval warfare, we call it asymmetrical? Sorry, but the equipment and tactics being developed by countries like Iran represents symmetrical tactical evolution, not asymmetric naval capabilities.

This is an example where a conventional wisdom based on experience tests modern naval theories as the Navy develops fleet constitution. Modern screening theory in war suggests that abundance of scouting and antiscouting will eliminate the requirement for physical escorting. Traditional screening theory in war suggests physical presence is a requirement, and cannot be substituted by scouting and antiscouting capabilities alone.

For me, this goes back to my core theories of naval warfare discussed repeatedly on the blog. This is an example where the pursuit of two objects, preventing wars and winning wars, speaks directly to the duality of the joint services maritime strategy, but it also takes critical thinking to apply the pursuit of both objects to our force structure as to avoid tension. The pursuit of War and Peace (2 objects) at sea have different requirements, and how the requirements are different can be applied to the element of combat at sea known as screening.

The broad application of strategy for a dual approach presents a new context for thinking about how to use seapower strategically, and in my view represents a circular theory of war for using seapower for both warfighting and peacemaking.

Julian Corbett believed the object of naval warfare "must always be directly or indirectly either to secure the command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from securing it." In that spirit I observe an antipodal point in this circular theory of warfare to be the processes that mitigate the disruption of command of the sea to promote peacetime commerce. As part of this circular theory, peacemaking responsibilities for the Navy exist both prior to warfare (cooperative partnerships) and after warfare (reconstitution of commerce and security), also described as the periods of time absent war. I observe that peacemaking relies upon the application of warfighting to regain command of the sea when command is lost.

In a globalized world prone to “System disruptions” that can come from a variety of state and non state threats, I acknowledge up front that as antipodal points warfighting and peacemaking are not diametrically opposite. Because the use of hard military power can promote peacemaking in pursuit of the object of warfighting (Command of the Sea), and the use of soft power can be leveraged successfully in warfighting in pursuit of the object of peacemaking (promoting conditions that prevent war), the tension is exposed in the gray areas within the broad strategic approach the Navy is taking. In that context I promote a conceptual view for the Navy's broad view of strategy that can be best described as a yin yang, representing warfighting and peacemaking as two opposing and, at the same time, complementary (completing) applications of seapower in the pursuit of the interests of the United States. I believe this theory of modern naval warfare scales, and can be applied not only to doctrine, but operations and fleet constitution as well.

I believe that peacemaking is a manpower extensive effort at sea, just as it is on land. However, technology has enabled the lethality of unmanned systems in warfighting, so warfighting is trending towards systems that require less manpower. With that said, one must understand the limitations of technology - unmanned systems cannot - nor will ever - substitute for physical presence. All efforts to substitute unmanned systems for physical presence in the fight against piracy off Somalia is - in my opinion - validation of this theory of modern naval warfare. With that said, Somali piracy is asymmetrical as it exploits the characteristics of the local population at sea for concealment and strikes with flexibility against the rest of the population at sea. The capabilities to bring combat power against fleet forces being discussed in regards to Iran - littoral submarines, missile boats, mines, shore based anti-ship missiles - are symmetrical, not asymmetrical.

In other words, the IRGC is developing warfighting capabilities with warfighting equipment while the Somali pirates represent a peacemaking problem. As such, curbing piracy is a manpower intensive exercise of seapower while destroying military equipment during wartime does not necessarily constitute a manpower extensive endeavor, indeed unmanned systems and aircraft are the preferred tools of war.

Therefore I am inclined to believe that modern naval warfighting theory is correct: that scouting and antiscouting can substitute for physical presence in providing screening for modern naval forces during wartime. However, when there are restrictive Rules of Engagement, black and white become blurred by a heavy dose of fog of war (gray), and peacemaking capabilities like physical presence becomes a mandatory requirement for effective screening of fleet forces.

The question the Navy needs to resolve is whether IRGC capabilities (which are capabilities being developed by many potential adversaries, including China) are in fact symmetrical or asymmetrical, which said another way raises the question whether the equipment used by the IRGC and other potential adversaries attempting to exploit our absence of physical presence in screening will be capable of defeating our scouting and antiscouting capabilities to engage with credible combat power against fleet forces. It is a difficult issue to resolve with theory alone (although fun to debate anyway), but as physical presence is a requirement for screening in peacetime, I think we should be building the small escorts to provide that combat capability anyway - thus we would have the escorts for physical presence in screening our fleet forces in wartime if indeed that capability was required.