Revisiting ADM Stansfield Turner’s Classic “Missions of the Navy”

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 18^th and 19^th 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 21^st 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.

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[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

Thinking About Escalation Management in East Asian Strategy

There are plenty of articles and monographs published each year regarding U.S. strategy options for defending our allies in East Asia from Chinese or North Korean military aggression. The debate is not lacking for new strategy proposals, or debates over doctrine and operating concepts, or examinations of how each country’s forces stack up against each other. It is sorely lacking for serious examinations of escalation management.

Too often I come across a piece that claims the Chinese nuclear arsenal makes any wartime strike against a target on Chinese soil a fool’s errand, or that the Kim regime’s nuclear arsenal makes any military retaliation against a violent North Korean provocation an exercise in extreme risk. Both are perverse oversimplifications. If there’s anything we learned during four and half decades of thinking about deterrence policies and contingency plans during the Cold War, it’s that confrontations between nuclear-armed powers are competitions in extreme risk taking that don’t have predeterminable answers. Hence, the concepts of escalation dominance, escalation management, and “threats that leave something to chance.”

That’s what makes Vincent Manzo’s article in the latest Joint Forces Quarterly an absolute must-read. Manzo delves into the myriad escalation management considerations U.S. leaders would have to deal with in an East Asian crisis or conflict. His piece is one of the few I’ve seen that invokes the deterrence theories of Thomas Schelling in Sino-American or Korean Peninsula contexts. Manzo leaves few stones unturned in identifying the major escalation dynamics that would define crises or conflicts involving those countries. Beyond the calculus of deliberate escalation, he explores the many potential sources of accidental or inadvertent escalation that might occur on both sides in an East Asian clash.

Manzo’s article is heavily influenced by RAND’s seminal 2008 monograph on escalation management in the 21^st Century, and makes for an excellent companion piece to Forrest Morgan’s outstanding 2012 paper on escalation management with respect to Russia. I can’t recommend all three of these works enough: they are essential reading for informed commentary on contemporary strategy with respect to these potential adversaries.

My sole quibble with Manzo’s arguments is a very minor technical one. While he does address means of bounding hypothetical attacks in the physical and cyber realms in order to attempt to signal restraint as well as capability, he does not note that the same is possible in the electromagnetic realm. Attacks against an adversary’s command and control networks, or wide-area surveillance and reconnaissance systems for that matter, do not necessarily risk extreme provocations or retaliation. It depends on the what, when, and how of the attack. There’s a fundamental difference in risk between jamming or exploiting a datalink to missile-carrying aircraft at sea vice one to missile Transporter Erector Launchers on land. Likewise, there’s a big difference between attacking a datalink to a definitively known non-nuclear capable unit vice one that might be nuclear-capable. The same is true with jamming or deceiving a sensor designed to detect and track surface vessels vice one that is clearly used for ballistic missile early warning. Some forms of electronic attacks leave no immediate calling cards; after-action signals analysis may be required to realize that it even occurred. Others attacks involve passive means: presenting false targets to a surveillance or reconnaissance system, or using obscurants to prevent detection by that system. All these carry far less escalation risk than deliberate electronic attacks against known strategic forces. But again, this issue is minor in the scheme of Manzo’s first-rate work.

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.

Sea Lanes Protection Between the First and Second Island Chains in a Notional Sino-American War

On Tuesday, I summarized China’s potential wartime anti-ship capabilities between the First and Second Island Chains. It stands to reason that the U.S. and allied ability to avoid or parry any PLA attacks in these waters would depend upon the margin of temporary localized maritime superiority—or sea control, if you will—that could be extended around a transiting convoy, replenishment group, or naval battleforce.[i] This margin would likely be highest in the waters that could be persistently covered by fighters, Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft, and wide-area anti-submarine aircraft operating from the Marianas, Japanese home islands, or the central/southern Philippines.

As this sea control coverage thinned out with range, PLA forces would in theory gain more operational flexibility. This might be offset, however, through the intelligent use of the one or two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers available in theater during a war’s opening weeks. I’ve previously noted how these carriers ought to be used to provide situation-dependent sea control support to Surface Action Groups (SAG) operating further forward, and alluded to their utility in providing situation-dependent tactical support to defenders in embattled First Island Chain territories like the Ryukyus. The positioning required for those tasks could also allow their fighters and AEW aircraft to screen CLF groups, military sealift convoys, and prioritized commercial vessels transiting outside effective land-based air coverage. With two carriers working together, it might even be possible to occasionally use actual or simulated shipping as ‘bait’ for luring Chinese strike aircraft raids into aerial ambushes.

It additionally should be noted that the U.S. and allied ability to delay or prevent the Chinese Ocean Surveillance System (COSS) from locating and correctly classifying transiting ships would severely complicate the PLA’s ability to cue effective anti-ship attacks. Emissions control, operational and tactical deception, and physical as well as electronic attacks against COSS assets would be essential aspects of any U.S. and allied sea lanes protection campaign. Emissions control and tactical deception would also greatly complicate PLA strike aircraft and submarines’ job of locating, correctly classifying, and targeting protected shipping. The use of “decoy groups,” perhaps using a mix of unmanned systems and actual manned low campaign-value platforms that together simulated a convoy or naval battleforce, might induce PLA attackers to waste precious time and weapons inventories engaging false targets. Better yet, it might cause them to move out of positions from which they could detect and intercept actual shipping. Attacking decoys would be particularly harmful to PLAN submarines, as every weapon wasted (and in the case of AIP boats, fuel burned moving into attack position and then "breaking datum") would eat into the amount of time the boat could remain on patrol before needing to head home for replenishment, and the time spent "breaking datum" would be time the boat would not be able to hunt effectively. Effective deception and concealment would likely have detrimental psychological effects on PLAAF and PLAN crews; over time these effects might become debilitating—and highly exploitable by U.S. and allied forces in their own right.

Lastly, U.S. political leadership might opt to selectively strike PLAAF airbases, PLAN submarine bases, and related PLA infrastructure on the Chinese mainland with long-range guided munitions in order to suppress PLA operational tempo. This would be especially likely if the PLA had set the escalation precedent of striking allied territories first at the opening of the war. Such strikes would have to be highly bounded and selective in terms of their targets in order to mitigate escalation risks. U.S. Navy submarines and U.S. Air Force intercontinental-range strike aircraft would probably perform these strikes, with additional strikes launched from Aegis combatants operating as offensive SAGs. Reducing the PLA’s ability to cycle anti-ship attackers into the Western Pacific would be of immeasurable help to the sea lanes protection effort.

With all these combined arms contributions in mind, the principal screening challenge from a surface combatant standpoint would be defending convoys and CLF ships against “leaker” anti-ship missiles fired by PLA strike aircraft and "pop-up” missile or torpedo attacks by PLAN submarines. The density of the PLA threat in a given area arguably would determine an escort’s necessary capabilities. Aegis combatants’ area air defense capabilities would probably be highly desirable for escort missions in the vicinity of the Ryukyus, Taiwan, and Luzon given the proximity to the Chinese mainland. It’s important to remember, though, that the U.S. only has nine Aegis combatants permanently homeported in Japan (with two more coming by 2017), and these warships would probably be charged with escorting the Navy’s Japan-homeported carrier, protecting the Navy’s Japan-homeported amphibious warships, executing offensive SAG missions, and performing ballistic missile defense tasks. The Navy has thirty-eight other Aegis combatants homeported in the Pacific, eleven of which are homeported in Pearl Harbor. However, not all would be surgeable due to the inter-deployment maintenance and training cycle (and this says nothing of the surge-readiness impacts stemming from the 2011 Budget Control Act). We might theorize that of the five West Coast-based carrier battleforces, the first might already be forward deployed in or near the Western Pacific as a crisis peaked, the second and third might be surgeable for arrival forward within 30 days, the fourth might be surgeable within 90 days, and the fifth would have to complete its ships’ (abbreviated) overhauls and pre-deployment workups before surging. Some of these Aegis combatants would not be detachable from their carrier battleforces, and those that were detachable might be needed more for offensive SAG operations.

Not all of the Aegis combatants would necessarily deploy with carriers, though. If we assume that two-thirds of the Pearl Harbor contingent surged as a crisis peaked, we might have seven Aegis combatants available for tasking along the First Island Chain. These warships would be well-placed for protecting shipping to the Ryukyus, Luzon, or eastern Taiwan. Even so, their use for these missions would trade against their use in offensive SAG operations.

The story would be similar with respect to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s (JMSDF) Aegis contingent. Japan fields six Aegis DDGs and plans to build two more by 2020. Nevertheless, their principal mission of homeland ballistic missile defense would prevent some number of them from performing sea lanes defense operations. The South Korean Navy’s three Aegis DDGs are not counted in this analysis as it is unlikely they would be offered up for operations that did not involve direct defense of their country’s sea lanes.

It should be clear that Aegis combatants’ use for direct protection of shipping would trade against a large number of other high-priority missions. Moreover, Aegis combatants would generally be tethered to the western half of the waters between the two island chain lines. This would hardly preclude their use for sea lanes and CLF protection, for example as a forward screening layer by virtue of their positions, but they probably wouldn’t be able to closely escort shipping all the way from port to port.

Therein lies the logic of a small surface combatant possessing medium-range anti-air and anti-submarine capabilities. Such a combatant would be entirely sufficient for close escort within waters in which air defense is provided by friendly AEW and fighter aircraft supported by aerial refueling aircraft. Closer to the Ryukyus-Taiwan-Luzon line, this kind of combatant would backstop Aegis combatants’ defensive coverage of a convoy.

The proposed LCS-derived frigate will possess the towed active and passive sonar arrays as well as helicopter capabilities needed for effective anti-submarine warfare. CSBA’s Bryan Clark has also outlined how it could receive the requisite anti-air capabilities for shipping escort.[ii] These improvements would not allow the LCS-derived frigate to detect a submarine-launched sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missile raid beyond effective shipboard radar coverage, though. Land or sea-based AEW support via the Navy Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air capability would be crucial to that end.

Bryan has additionally proposed a longer-range shipboard anti-submarine missile than the legacy Vertical Launch Anti-Submarine Rocket; such a weapon could be very effective in disrupting a PLAN submarine’s attack preparations.[iii] It’s worth pointing out that if COSS could not provide a PLAN submarine with a targeting-quality tactical picture to support firing anti-ship cruise missiles from over-the-horizon, the PLAN submarine would have to close within the range of its onboard sensors. If we assume the primary use of sonar for this purpose, that range might be one to two convergence zones from a target (perhaps 30 nautical miles in the first case and 60 nautical miles in the second case). A shipboard “rocket-thrown torpedo” able to quickly reach out to the first convergence zone and ideally also the second would thus be highly useful.

It’s important to note that the JMSDF already fields two light destroyer/heavy frigate classes that would anchor shipping protection in the approaches to the Japanese home islands and Ryukyus.[iv] As I noted earlier, though, there might not be enough of them to fully carry the shipping escort load within the waters Japan was primarily responsible for protecting. This suggests the utility of the LCS-derived frigate gaining medium-range anti-air capabilities.

One final point is that there would be a demand for LCS-derived frigates to participate in offensive SAGs. It would accordingly be desirable to backfit as much of the LCS-derived frigates’ anti-surface and anti-submarine capabilities as possible into legacy LCS hulls in order to free up as many of the frigates as possible for shipping protection tasks. The logic for using backfit LCSs instead of the frigates in forward-operating SAGs is simple: since the frigates are not presently slotted to receive medium-range air defense capabilities, and since Aegis combatants would be principally responsible for SAG air defense anyway, then the inclusion of backfit-improved LCSs instead of air defense-capable frigates in the SAGs would not alter the existing concept of operations.

The bottom line is that protection of shipping, including the CLF, would likely be far more resource-intensive than is often assumed in the strategy debates. Sea lanes protection would be absolutely critical to the U.S. prevailing in the war, and as such merits extensive study and analysis. I will note that I have never participated in campaign analysis of these questions, nor have I ever been “read into” any such analyses that might have been conducted. Detailed quantitative analysis may very well prove that some of my key assumptions and conclusions are incorrect. Even so, my errors almost certainly center on the specifics of the threat and not on its general nature or the needed seriousness of the offsetting response.

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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[i] The discussion that follows is heavily influenced by CAPT William J. Toti, USN (Retired). “The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW.” Naval Institute Proceedings 140, No. 6, June 2014. Toti’s article is seminal on modern anti-submarine warfare and should be read in its entirety in parallel to this post.

[ii] See Bryan Clark. “Commanding the Seas: A Plan to Reinvigorate U.S. Navy Surface Warfare.” (Washington, D.C., Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2014), 27, 50-51.

[iii] Ibid; 27.

[iv] A third similarly-capable JMSDF destroyer class exists but would generally be tied to providing air defense support to Kongo-class DDGs on ballistic missile defense patrols.

Even “Pure Defenses” can be Provocative to a Potential Adversary

Every so often I see it asserted that the deployment of a certain kind of military force or system into a specific area would not be provocative to a potential adversary because would be ‘readily recognizable as a purely defensive capability,’ e.g. something that could not be used for offensive purposes and therefore the opponent ‘will tolerate.’

For example, a country defending a land border might opt to deploy light ground forces armed with short-range anti-armor/personnel weapons in frontal areas during peacetime to increase the likelihood of bogging down any potential ground offensives by an opponent. In contrast, this defender might garrison its heavier armored and artillery forces far enough in the rear so that it would be virtually impossible to rapidly and covertly sortie them for offensive operations against the opponent’s own territory.    

Another example might be placing anti-air systems in locations where they could only be used to defend one’s own (or an ally’s) territory; e.g. they would lack the reach for any other purpose. The same would be even more true for ballistic missile defense systems.

These kinds of deployments would be “purely defensive” by any reasonable standard. And yet they could still be highly provocative. How is this possible?

As I noted in my SSQ article on conventional deterrence:

Even purely defensive assets are often interpreted by one side as means by which the other seeks to reduce its vulnerability to deterrence. An opponent may also be provoked if it perceives it is less able to successfully threaten or employ military force for grand strategic compellence due to the defender’s improved denial or punishment capabilities. Inadequate geographic buffering between the two sides further reduces any “margin for error.”[i] It is simply impossible for deterrence to avoid arousing some degree of fear or resentment in a potential adversary.

By this logic, a potential adversary whose peacetime foreign policy rests on the ability to militarily menace the defender would be provoked by the loss of coercive clout. Or the opponent might interpret the “pure defense” to be a shield that reduces the defender’s vulnerability to retaliation if the defender was to use other forces to attack the opponent first. The opponent might not pursue war over these kinds of defensive deployments, but it would likely take actions using some or all of its tools of national power to offset the defender’s moves or ‘punish’ the defender for its ‘audacity.’ In the military sphere, the opponent might double down on fielding offensive capabilities and capacity. The opponent might even seek to provoke a crisis with the aim of manipulating the defender into limited concessions.

None of this means the defender should not field the forces it deems necessary to defend itself or its allies from attack. Far from it! My point is that a belligerent potential adversary is going to be provoked to some degree no matter what defensive moves the defender takes. Yes, defensive force deployments that increase crisis instability ought to be avoided. Under some situations, a force deployment might not be worth the provocations it would likely elicit. All the same, the defender has the inherent right to protect his sovereign territory and his allies’ sovereign territories.

There’s an added wrinkle, though, in that it will rarely be possible to field a true “pure defense.” Strategic and operational defense often requires some tactical offense. For instance, a potential adversary might imply he’d use his own territory as a sanctuary for bombarding the defender’s forces or territory, or for pressuring the defender’s sovereign air and waterspace (as well as the international approaches to both). The defender would be justifiably motivated to deploy tactically offensive systems into positions and postures from which they could quickly (but not necessarily immediately) threaten either the aggressor’s offensive systems or countervailing targets.

Likewise, many systems are inherently usable for both defensive and offensive purposes. For example, a country might declare that anti-air and anti-ship missile batteries placed in coastal areas are intended solely for territorial defense, but the reality is that their reach might pressure an opponent’s ability to move sea and air forces (or commerce) through the covered areas. That kind of effect might or might not be deliberate; the other side will be provoked either way.

The approaches the defender uses to place tactically offensive capabilities in the field can be calibrated. Not all of these kinds of forces need be placed far forward at high readiness postures; those with particularly high campaign-value should be held in rearward areas during peacetime or a crisis in order to reduce their vulnerability to an opponent’s preemptive strikes. Reciprocal confidence-building measure regimes can also help reduce the risk of provoking an opponent’s fears. But it takes both sides’ goodwill and commitment to peace for a regime like that to function. In the absence of such cooperation, a well-meaning defender will have to accept that the measures he deems essential to ensuring defensive effectiveness will be provocative to his opponent. The costs and risks of a given defensive move under consideration will have to be weighed against the costs and risks of not making that move. There’s never a free lunch for a defender, and pretending otherwise is misguided.

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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[i] Janice Gross Stein. “Deterrence and Reassurance,” in Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War, vol.

2, eds. Philip E. Tetlock et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 17.  It is not clear such a thing as a geographical barrier even exists in the age of long-range aerospace strike.