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| Admiral Stansfield Turner, 1983 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons) |
“The
fundamental element of a military service is its purpose or role in
implementing national policy. The statement of this role may be called the
strategic concept of the service. Basically, this concept is a description of
how, when, and where the military service expects to protect the nation against
some threat to its security. If a military service does not possess such a
concept, it becomes purpose-less, it wallows about amid a variety of
conflicting and confusing goals, and ultimately it suffers both physical and
moral degeneration. A military service may at times, of course, perform
functions unrelated to external security, such as internal policing, disaster
relief, and citizenship training. These are, however, subordinate and
collateral responsibilities. A military service does not exist to perform these
functions; rather it performs these functions because it has already been
called into existence to meet some threat to the national security. A service
is many things; it is men, weapons, bases, equipment, traditions, organization.
But none of these have meaning or usefulness unless there is a unifying purpose
which shapes and directs their relations and activities towards the achievement
of some goal of national policy.” -Samuel Huntington. “National
Policy and the Trans-Oceanic Navy.” Naval Institute Proceedings Vol. 80, No. 5, May 1954.
An armed service must
be able to provide solid justification for its requests to its political
masters (and in a representative democracy, those who elect them to office) for
a particular share of national resources. It cannot do this if it cannot
clearly articulate its strategic purpose.
As Huntington alludes
above, though, a service must also explain its strategic purpose to a second
and equally important audience: its own rank and file. Its officers and
enlisted, from the highest level staffs to the lowest level units, must
understand and embrace their individual roles within the service’s corporate body.
They must be informed as to which missions, tasks, and skillsets should receive
the greatest share of their physical and intellectual energies, not to mention
the service’s material and financial resources. A strategic purpose is
essentially a form of mission command; it serves as executive guidance by which
the service’s “little
platoons” at all levels and in all of its organizational
branches can self-organize in peace and in war for the betterment of the whole.
Without this guidance, Huntington observes, the service will not be able to
differentiate how the many things the nation asks it to do—or the many other
things it sets forth to do by virtue of its own collective professional
expertise—should be prioritized and balanced against each other. The end result
of an absence of focused purpose: chaos, confusion, and “physical and moral
degeneration” that percolates more-or-less out of view from outsiders until it
reveals itself tragically in a moment of national need.
The U.S. Navy’s
leadership of the early 1970s evidently feared exactly this kind of decay. A
decade of power projection into North and South Vietnam from offshore
sanctuaries had certainly educated the Navy as to the technical and tactical
intricacies of conducting land-attack strikes in spite of opposition from modern
air defense systems. But few of the Navy’s other missions during the Vietnam
War paralleled the missions it would need to fulfill in a war against the
Soviet Union. And on top of that, the Navy’s division into surface warfare,
submarine, and aviation communities—and the subdivisions of each of those
communities—made it difficult for the officer corps to view the service’s
missions holistically.[1] The
service needed a reassertion of its strategic purpose.
This was the role
filled by then-VADM
Stanfield Turner’s seminal article “Missions of the U.S. Navy” in the
March-April 1974 Naval War College Review. His ideas and
arguments regarding how the Navy should define its missions speak for
themselves. I’m going to quote a few that I found particularly applicable to
contemporary maritime strategic questions.
On the flowdown of
operational and tactical objectives from a service’s strategic missions:
“Focusing on missions helps
tactical commanders to keep objectives in mind. Anti-submarine warfare
tacticians often overconcentrate on killing submarines when their ultimate
objective is to ensure safe maritime operations. An example of a good sense of
objectives was the Israeli achievement of air superiority in the 1967 war. Even
though air superiority is traditionally thought of as a function of dogfight
tactics, the Israelis recognized that shooting the enemy from the air was not
the objective. Destroying Egyptian aircraft was. They employed deep surprise
attacks on enemy airfields to successfully achieve this objective.”(Pg. 3)
On the necessary
linkages between national strategy, a service’s definition of its missions and
the allocation of resources to those missions:
“…an amorphous mass of men, ships,
and weapons is difficult to manage because it is difficult for an individual to
visualize. By subdividing these masses into their expected output, or missions,
we are able to establish priorities for allocating resources—to know how much
we are spending for different objectives and to judge their consonance with national strategy.” (Pg. 3)
On sea control as a
principal mission of the Navy:
“The
new term “Sea Control” is intended to connote more realistic control in limited
areas and for limited periods of time. It is conceivable today to temporarily
exert air, submarine, and surface control in an area while moving ships into
position to project power ashore or to resupply overseas forces. It is no
longer conceivable, except in the most limited sense, to totally control the
seas for one’s own use or to totally deny them to an enemy.
…Four
U.S. national objectives which call for asserting our use of the sea and, by
the same token, denial of them to an opponent are:
·
To
ensure industrial supplies
·
To
reinforce/resupply military forces engaged overseas
·
To
provide wartime economic/military supplies to allies
·
To
provide safety for naval forces in the Projection of Power Ashore role” (Pg.
7-8)
On blockades as a
method for achieving sea control objectives:
“As opposed to the 18th
and 19th century tactic of forcing a major fleet engagement at sea,
today’s blockade seeks destruction of individual units as they sortie. If we
assume an opponent will be in control of the air near his ports, sortie control
tactics must primarily depend upon submarines and mines.
If successful, sortie control is a
most economical means of cutting off a nation’s use of the seas or ability to
interfere. Nevertheless, such established techniques have their disadvantages.
No blockade is 100 percent successful. Some units may be beyond the blockade
when hostilities commence and will remain to haunt opposition forces. Against
the enemy’s aircraft there is no static defense. Planes must be bombed at their
bases. Thus we must conclude that blockades are weapons of attrition requiring
time to be effective. But the lesson of history is perhaps the most instructive
of all—ingenious man has usually found ways to circumvent blockades.” (Pg. 8)
On the use of deception
to perform sea control tasks:
“Assertive Sea Control objectives
do not necessarily demand destruction of the enemy’s force. If the enemy can be
sufficiently deceived to frustrate his ability to press an attack, we will have
achieved our Sea Control objective.” (Pg. 9)
On the relationship
between sea control capabilities and deterrence:
“The perceptions
of other nations of our Sea Control capability relative to that of other major
powers can influence political and military decisions. What any nation says
about its capabilities influences the challenges that are offered or accepted.”
(Pg. 9)
On the
operational-strategic relationship between sea control and power projection
(underlined text is my emphasis):
“…we would note that only a fine
distinction separates some aspects of the Sea Control and Projection of Power
Ashore missions. Many weapons and platforms are used in both missions.
Amphibious assaults on chokepoints or tactical airstrikes on enemy airbases can
be employed as part of the Sea Control mission. Sea-based tactical aircraft are
used in Sea Control missions for antiair warfare and against enemy surface
combatants. The distinction in these cases is not in the type of forces nor the
tactics which are employed, but in the purposes of the operation. Is the
objective to secure/deny the use of the seas or is it to directly support the
land campaign? For instance, much of the layman’s confusion over aircraft
carriers stems from the impression that they are employed exclusively in the
Projection of Power Ashore role. Actually, from the Battle of Cape Matapan
through World War II, aircraft carriers were used almost exclusively to
establish control of the ocean’s surface. Today they clearly have a vital role
to play in both the Sea Control and Projection of Power missions.” (Pg.
12-13)
On the linkages between
naval presence and conventional deterrence:
“In a preventative deployment our
force capabilities should be relevant to the kind of problems which might arise
and clearly cannot be markedly inferior to some other naval force in the
neighborhood, but can rely to some extent on the implication that
reinforcements can be made available if necessary. On the other hand, in a
reactive deployment any force deployed needs to possess an immediately credible
threat and be prepared to have its bluff called. If another seapower, such as
the Soviet Union, is in the area, a comparison of forces will be inevitable.
…the Naval Presence mission is
simultaneously as sophisticated and sensitive as any, but also probably the
least understood of all Navy missions. A well orchestrated Naval Presence can
be enormously useful in complementing diplomatic actions to achieve political
objectives. Applied deftly but firmly, in precisely the proper force, Naval
Presence can be a persuasive deterrent to war. If used ineptly, it can be
disastrous. Thus, in determining presence objectives, scaling forces, and
appraising perceptions, there will never be a weapon system as important as the
human intellect.” (Pg. 14-15)
When reading Turner’s
full discussion of the sea control mission, it’s important to keep in mind that
he incorrectly asserted that “full regulation of the seas in wartime” was
something that was sought after—and possible—until the advent of the submarine
and airplane. As
I’ve noted before, Corbettian theory makes clear that
such a broad degree of control was never possible in the ancient world let
alone in the years leading up to the First World War. Turner was therefore
partially mistaken when he wrote that “it is no longer conceivable…to totally control
the seas for one’s own use or to totally deny them to an enemy” as that kind of
control never was conceivable.
I’m ashamed to admit
that although I had read
elsewhere how Turner’s article had influenced the Navy’s path
towards the Maritime Strategy of the 1980s, until now I had never taken the
time to read it (despite its 16 page length). Don’t make my mistake: download
it today and read it yourself. Despite being four decades old and its Cold
War-era context, there are few points in it that are not still fully relevant
to maritime warfare in the 21st Century.
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.
[1] John
B. Hattendorf. Newport Papers 30: U.S.
Naval Strategy in the 1970s—Selected Documents. (Newport, RI: Naval War
College Press, 2007), Pg. 31
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