Pentagon Stands Up AirSea Battle Office

On Wednesday AirSea Battle officially went prime time. Well, sort of. More accurately AirSea Battle became official enough for the Pentagon to barely discuss publicly, but I'm not sure we really learned much except that the hype will likely get as much attention as the truth. I'll start by noting what folks are reporting in the media.

Phil Ewing at DoDBuzz:

At any rate, Wednesday’s defense officials said they wanted their office to become “a focusing lens” to help the services deal with tomorrow’s problems of anti-access and area denial — wherever they occur. The three officials did rhetorical backflips to avoid saying the word “China,” insisting they wanted their work to be applicable in any operational theatre.

Their profusion of buzzwords and jargon; their reluctance to define exactly what “Air-Sea Battle” is; and their refusal to talk in concrete terms left several reporters scratching their heads as to what exactly the briefers were talking about.

“Air-Sea Battle is not a war plan, not a [conops] plan, not an operational plan, it’s a framework of design which articulates and describes what the problem is,” one official said.

To that end, the new office will “Facilitate inter-service and inter-agency coordination during the development of the concept, supervise the implementation of ASB-related training, manning and equipping; and manage the executing the ASB concept,” the official said.

In other words: Air-Sea Battle is Air-Sea Battle, and the Air-Sea Battle Office will be charged with promulgating Air-Sea Battle. Simple, see?

Based on Phil Ewing's reporting, all we really learn here is that straight answers to reporters questions were hard to come by in the briefing. Bill Gertz must of been in the same briefing, because the article he wrote on the topic basically skipped everything the services said. Instead, Bill Gertz went out and found someone else to give us an (unofficial) explanation.

A senior Obama administration official was more blunt, saying the new concept is a significant milestone signaling a new Cold War-style approach to China.

“Air Sea Battle is to China what the maritime strategy was to the Soviet Union,” the official said.

During the Cold War, U.S. naval forces around the world used a strategy of global presence and shows of force to deter Moscow’s advances.

“It is a very forward-deployed, assertive strategy that says we will not sit back and be punished,” the senior official said. “We will initiate.”

The concept, according to defense officials, grew out of concerns that China’s new precision-strike weapons threaten freedom of navigation in strategic waterways and other global commons.

That is probably one way to look at AirSea Battle, but I'm hoping that there is more to it than a simple cold war style maritime strategy directed at China. Indeed, I honestly believe there is a lot more to it, but the perception drives the narrative in politics. Luckily, Chris Cavas has an article in DefenseNews that helps add clarity to the confusion.

"It's about access and freedom of action and making sure you have enough of what you need to get after your goals and protect and preserve your vital assets," one defense official said Wednesday at a press background briefing.

The Pentagon stressed that the office is "not about a specific actor, not about a specific regime." Officials resisted efforts by reporters to link the effort to China's rising capabilities.

"We're talking about taking our current state to a higher level," said one defense official.

"Air-Sea Battle represents change," the official said. "Three dimensions of change - institutional, conceptional and material."

Broadly, a Pentagon official agreed, the concept is a highly classified clearinghouse, set up to consider a wide range of current and potential threats. ASBO is charged with gaining familiarity with a vast number of capabilities and potential responses already available in the military, and matching them with threats.

"This is not about telling the combatant commanders to do their job," a defense official stressed. "It's about maintaining a military advantage to operate in the global commons."

A key priority for the office, a defense official said, is "to develop air and naval forces that are integrated."

US Army - MIA in ASBO

The official DoD announcement regarding the establishment of the Air-Sea Battle Office (ASBO) was posted on their website Wednesday. The first thing that folks immediately pointed out was that the US Army was missing from the arrangement. As I have watched the reaction of some, the question I have is whether leaving the US Army out of the ASBO loop was a sin of omission or commission?

I'm not sure anyone but Chief of Staff. Gen. Raymond Odierno can answer that question honestly, and I'm not sure he would. I have long believed that we will know that strategic thinking is active in the Pentagon when we see actions that under normal 'accepted' rules of Pentagon group-think; ideas and actions are untenable. The obvious absence of the US Army from the ASBO loop would qualify as one of the normally politically untenable actions - unless one was thinking and planning based on strategy first, and making a conscious decision to deal with political consequences later.

It is unclear to me if the US Army intellectual apparatus is taking seriously the strategic calculations the United States is making in regards to the balance of power in Asia in the context of defense and foreign policy politics today. Allow me to suggest that if the US Army is being resistant to strategic calculations the Pentagon is making in the political context of today, a sin of commission is absolutely appropriate. If the US Army is willingly engaged with the strategic shifts taking place in Asia, then a sin of omission would be inappropriate.

Now I don't know what you have heard, but about 99.9% of what I have heard suggests the US Army has been resistant at every possible level to the development of AirSea Battle - and that resistance is almost entirely driven in motivation by preservation of budget. If that is true, and I believe it is, it doesn't bother me at all that the US Army has been left out of AirSea Battle. They need to get refocused, because in the context of a smaller future US Navy, the nation is very likely to need their capabilities in any realistic application of AirSea Battle.

Here is what I have not seen yet - a single US Army officer or advocate write down a single idea that suggests a force structure adjustment within the US Army to prepare for any military confrontation by which AirSea Battle doctrine would be necessary. We are talking about the US Army intellectual community that has penned a gazillion words in regards to the strategic, tactical, operational, or doctrinal challenges of Iraq and Afghanistan and makes up about 70% of the defense think tank community in the United States. Army supporters need to wake up, because this is a rich intellectual space waiting for ideas.

For example, lets presume for a moment that AirSea Battle - as driven by the US Navy and USAF - does apply too much emphasis and focus on a possible military confrontation with China starting in the 2015 and beyond time frame. What happens if, for example, US policy somehow gets us engaged in a limited military capacity with Iran instead? A lot of folks may not realize this, but the last counter-insurgency style campaign the US fought before Iraq and Afghanistan was not Vietnam, but was Iran in Operation Preying Mantis. Much like the asymmetrical disruption of the logistics lines-of-communication US military forces faced in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Iranians leveraged asymmetrical capabilities like small boats and mines to disrupt lines-of-communications in the Persian Gulf during the tanker war. Iran didn't have much depth to their capabilities in 1987-1988, but they do today.

I also note that during Operation Preying Mantis, the US Army was one of the main contributors to the "AIR" portion of military operations, as it was the US Army's 160 SOAR Little Birds that flew up and down the Gulf patrolling for irregular warfare threats. While that role might fall to SOCOM today, new roles for the US Army in AirSea Battle might include Cyber Warfare, air and ballistic missile defense in the region, and distribution of force for training and defense from asymmetrical attacks like sabotage.

It is hard to imagine a future war under AirSea doctrine where the 101st and 82nd Airborne are sitting on the sidelines instead of being deployed to heavily reinforce vulnerable infrastructure, but unless I've missed something, I haven't seen a single US Army officer put pen to paper on the subject.

So in my opinion - Yes, the absence of the US Army is noteworthy, but I see as much evidence the US Army is responsible for that as I see that the other services are responsible for that. If the other services never saw a role for the US Army in AirSea Battle, it's hard to fault anyone but the US Army for not getting engaged and highlighting their capabilities IMO. When it came to Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Navy did exactly that - and the six thousand IAs in the region to this day are legitimate proof of that.

Is ASB Legit?

I am not encouraged by the reporting of Phil Ewing on DoDBuzz regarding AirSea Battle. The Maritime Strategy as proposed by John Lehman was specific and operational, and it sent clear signals to the USSR. AirSea Battle is generic and conceptual, which sends mixed signals to China. I do not see value in sending obvious mixed messages in public to China, just as I do not see value when China sends obvious mixed messages in public to the US.

Vice Adm. Scott Swift hit this point yesterday from Hong Kong when he said "We need to be as transparent as we possibly can" when it comes to China. When the folks conducting the AirSea Battle briefing with reporters go out of their way to avoid China in the discussion, they basically undermine exactly what Vice Adm. Scott Swift is saying. It we are truly trying to avoid 'small incidents with unpredictable consequences' with China, then we can't avoid discussing China in a military context.

For example, in his speech in Hong Kong Vice Adm. Scott Swift also discussed the need for more diplomatic and military dialogue in the region, which has become the key talking point among military leaders on China. Noteworthy, not once has any significant military leader (OK I'll give you one, but his influence is still unknown) reciprocated by calling for greater diplomatic and military dialogue between China and the US. When our public message to China is 'we want more transparency and dialogue, from you' while at the same time we can't even mention China publicly in our maritime strategy or AirSea Battle doctrine, we become the ones serving bullshit popsicle's.

So is AirSea Battle Doctrine development legitimate? Maybe, but it is very hard to tell. AirSea Battle looks on the surface to be more about technology for operations, tactics, and budget at the military level rather than a strategic level review of defense capabilities and resources on par with the maritime strategy developed against the USSR. That may also be why AirSea Battle finds itself in a political bind - AirSea Battle is about planning for war, not an integrated foreign policy and defense strategy for managing political confrontations short of war.

The development of an integrated foreign policy and defense strategy to deal with rising powers like China is actually a fairly easy topic to discuss, but planning for war against rising powers like China is not. In some ways, I also think that is the great flaw of AirSea Battle though. If I was on the AirSea Battle development team, one of the first things I would call for is the development of an associated "integrated foreign policy and defense strategy" specific to major competitors like China, North Korea, and Iran. Why? Because defining the political red lines helps contingency planning, and anytime one adds political dynamics to military planning it allows the planners to potentially prepare on-ramps and off-ramps towards escalation control should hostilities break out.

Somehow I don't think the topic of AirSea Battle is going away anytime soon - even if the military has nothing useful (or something unbelievably stupid) to say publicly on the subject. I strongly believe that if there was a separate development activity that was focused on an "integrated foreign policy and defense strategy" that shaped the public policy discussion and conditions which AirSea Battle doctrine would be implemented, at least the focus on AirSea Battle would not be so acute. Such an activity would also give the US a process by which to be more transparent to China with intentions, and raise the bar of expectations for China to reciprocate in kind.