Thursday, March 12, 2024

A Taxonomy of Forward Naval Presence

Robert Rubel has an excellent article in this month’s Proceedings on the challenges of balancing the overseas naval presence necessary for executing America’s post-Second World War forward defense strategy with the need to restore and preserve the readiness of our war-winning surge forces. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Work observed last November, the mismatch between the strategic demand signal for peacetime presence and our supply of combat-ready deployable forces has passed the threshold of unsustainability. New strategic solutions are necessary.

There will be no ‘silver bullets,’ however. Each potential option will come with tradeoffs regarding deterrence utility, war-waging capability, peacetime operating tempo and readiness, political supportability (both here and in allied/partner nations hosting our forces), and so on.

It is therefore absolutely necessary to have precise terminology that characterizes how a given degree of forward naval presence in a given region inherently affects our approaches to deterrence and defense in that region. Robert has supplied exactly that with his article.

Robert’s taxonomy, from maximum to minimum:

·         War-winning power forward, or rather the standing presence necessary to defeat a given adversary quickly and decisively.

·         Assured defense, or rather a standing presence sufficient to successfully defend an embattled ally but not necessarily defeat the adversary.

·         Delay/Disruption, or rather the standing presence necessary to prevent a fait accompli or otherwise ‘hold the line’ in defense of an ally until war-winning surge forces arrive in theater.

·         Trip Wire, or rather a standing presence designed specifically to incur a (presumably assured) American intervention using surge forces but not to credibly achieve defensive tasks on its own.

·         Virtual Presence, or in other words the use of U.S. political or treaty commitments to surge forces in the event of a conflict in lieu of any standing forward-positioned forces to perform deterrence or defense tasks.

·         Random Deployment, or in other words the use of unpredictable deployment locations and durations to elevate potential adversaries’ uncertainties regarding opportunities for aggression.

Let’s be clear: a ‘war-winning power forward’ presence is only achievable against the weakest of opponents. Even then, the U.S. has never possessed sufficient naval forces to sustain this degree of presence for long periods of time without severe disruptions in presence or rotational deployment durations in other regions.

Assured defense and delay/disruption are consistent with our post-Second World War forward strategy. As the Navy’s force structure declines, however, maintaining sufficient presence for assured defense against a reasonably strong opponent will likely come at the expense of the presence for assured defense against opponents in other regions. We will likely find ourselves relying more on delay/disruption to succeed. This is a manageable problem, but it requires sober thinking about campaign design, operating concepts, force positioning and postures during peacetime and crises, force structure, and the like.

It should be obvious that Robert’s taxonomy is relevant not only to naval forces, but also to the land-based services. I sincerely hope that his article is used as a starting point for the much-needed tradeoff analyses regarding how our Joint forces will achieve standing presence in our many overseas regions of interest.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency. 

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