Distributed Lethality in the Information Age

The following contribution is by LCDR DeVere Crooks, USN.

In our July Proceedings article “The Face of Battle in the Information Age,” LCDR Mateo Robertaccio and I argue that the US Navy must make a deliberate effort to understand the practical realities of naval combat in the Information Age. The Navy expends a large amount of resources developing and testing discrete capabilities, tactics, and plans of relatively limited scope. But we have made little effort to step back and understand what has (or hasn’t) changed about the basic conduct of naval warfare since our last real experience with it 70 years ago. We can never fully appreciate the realities of combat until it happens, but we can do a lot more to understand how the revolutionary improvements in information transport and the increasingly contested nature of the Electromagnetic (EM)-cyber domain will affect our units’ ability to observe, orient, decide, and act against a determined and capable opponent.

As a surface warfare officer, I’m very excited by the possibilities of the “Distributed Lethality” concept announced by my community’s leadership in January and the energetic discussion that has followed. A renewed offensive focus for the Surface Navy and a return to Surface Action Group (SAG) employment are logical choices given the challenges we are likely to face and the capability available today and in the near future. The aircraft carrier remains the premier platform for global power projection, but it is only one of several tools that will be required to attack and overwhelm a modern anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) system. Distributed groups of capable surface combatants can deliver much of the punch required for the “offensive sea control” that enables force projection ashore. (I borrow that term from another great piece on revitalizing surface capability by CSBA’s Bryan Clark).

But what will be the practical realities of employing and coordinating SAGs in a highly contested EM-cyber domain? Are we equipped to deal with the increased confusion and uncertainty we will likely face? What changes in capability, training, and basic warfighting mentality might be required to weather these complications so we can effectively employ our weapons and tactics?

Answering questions like these requires extensive resources and experimentation. I’m encouraged to see Commander, Naval Surface Forces (SURFOR) and the Naval War College undertaking a program of wargaming to better understand the operational, organizational, and logistical implications of the Distributed Lethality concept. However, though I am not privy to the design and content of those wargames, I wonder whether they will be able to really get at the ground-level (or sea-level?) tactical realities of operating a SAG on a battlefield that is aggressively contested in all domains, especially the EM-cyber. As Mateo and I conclude in our article, that sort of understanding can probably only be reached through live experimentation with extended, loosely structured “free-play” between units that are subjected to as many of the strictures of a modern battlefield as possible. I hope that as Distributed Lethality matures experimentation of this kind will be conducted and the lessons learned carefully studied and incorporated into doctrine, tactics, capability acquisition requirements, and the like.

In the meantime, however, there are a few areas of concern that are immediately obvious and bear further examination as the concept is developed. The first and perhaps most critical area is that of communications and Command-and-Control (C2) in a contested EM-cyber environment. The Navy has begun to appreciate some of the myriad complications such an environment will bring, but significant gaps almost certainly remain in our technical capability and our proficiency.

It is a fair premise that a capable adversary will likely achieve some measure of success in attacking our C2 and administrative networks. In the case of an independently operating SAG, this probably results in intra-group and/or external C2 and other communications becoming unreliable, intermittent, or even actively manipulated, possibly for extended periods and without final resolution. We have notional doctrinal answers to the problem of disrupted C2 in our ethos of decentralized execution and our oft-repeated belief in Mission Command, but doctrine is only valuable to the extent it is internalized and practiced. Most surface warfare officers have very limited experience operating under disrupted, limited, or intermittent C2, especially for extended periods. It is also likely that our massively developed dependence on off-ship networking for every manner of administrative, logistical, and technical support will become a significant liability in any sort of extended scenario. And this says nothing of the possibility that these emissions or the data contained in them might be used by an adversary to target our forces. This set of issues can be neatly summed up by the following statement: we do not yet accept the EM-cyber domain as one that will be continually contested by a capable adversary, just as the air, surface, and subsurface domains will be.

There are solutions—or at least remedies—to these problems, though. On the hardware front there are a variety of promising line-of-sight (LOS) and low probability of intercept (LPI) technologies that can be applied to the intra-SAG communications problem, as well as a number of feasible solutions such as one-way High Frequency broadcast or networks of unmanned high-altitude communications relay systems for aspects of the long-haul communications problem. And there are some very promising technical and organizational measures on the way to improve cyber awareness and resiliency Navy-wide. Lastly, the organic technical skill and awareness of the Surface Navy’s shipboard personnel can be improved and contested communications and C2 can be better normalized as a part of our training and operations.

Perhaps the best way to “build in” the reality of a contested EM-cyber domain is to develop a SAG Communications Concept that incorporates hardware, software, doctrinal, and procedural components. Such an integrated concept could better equip our SAGs from the ground up to handle the environment for which they are intended while still maintaining (or improving) existing capability to plug-and-play with carrier strike groups or other forces.

There are of course a huge number of other human and technical challenges inherent in developing the integrated warfighting capability that Distributed Lethality SAGs will deliver. Many of these are being capably addressed within the Surface Community and the wider Navy. But I would again ask, have we stepped back and sufficiently considered the basic nature of the battlefield and the differences from the past in how we will understand and interact with it? Answering this is a tall order, and as stated above only deliberate experimentation can reliably reveal where the gaps and unexpected complications are.

In this context of warfighting capability, though, the area that is on the surface most concerning is battlespace awareness. How do we ensure that shipboard decision makers will be able to recognize adversary EM-cyber effects and fight through them to find, fix, and finish the forces that are delivering them and/or supported by them? And, as Jon Solomon termed it in his series on Cold War EW here last fall, how do we “condition crews psychologically and tactically for the possibility of deception?” Important technical improvements that can help with these problems are being fielded over the next few years with systems like the Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) and Ship’s Signals Exploitation Equipment (SSEE) Increment F. However, it is unclear whether we are ready to fully absorb these capabilities into our tactical procedures, or more importantly, our basic warfighting mentality. Will the electronic warfare operator continue to be a minor cast member with predictable lines in training scenarios, or will he or she become more appropriately a central node of information and weapons employment? Will much of the ship’s best information warfare capabilities continue to be hidden behind physical and figurative walls in the ship’s cryptologic space? Aside from changes in mentality and practice, what technical changes to our training and data sharing systems should be made to help transition these previously peripheral components of the shipboard—and group-level—warfighting organization to their rightful position at the center?

Overall, to truly sharpen the warfighting edge of the Surface Force we must carefully study all aspects of our readiness and capability, particularly as they relate to the ways in which naval warfighting has probably changed since WWII, or at least since the Cold War. It is also essential, though, that we do not forget those features of warfare that are timeless, such as uncertainty and confusion in the moment, or the certainty that a committed adversary will challenge us in ways we do not expect. As we develop this new concept and the capabilities that go with it, we must carefully experiment to test assumptions about how they will work in practice and look for gaps or things we didn’t expect. To be truly lethal, we have to understand the fight we’re preparing for as best we can and be confident that we’ve readied ourselves as much as possible

LCDR Crooks is a Surface Warfare Officer. 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 the U.S. Navy.

The Navy’s Combat Logistics Force and the 21st Century Threat Environment

Then-USS Arctic (AOE-8), Undated. (U.S. Navy Photo)
Note NATO Sea Sparrow launcher, forward Close-In Weapons System mount, and deckhouse-mounted SLQ-32(V)3.

Jon’s note: I’d like to introduce a new navalist voice, Chris Mclachlan. Although he’s at the start of his professional career, I’ve been thoroughly impressed by his maritime strategic insight over the several months he and I have been discussing such topics. When he suggested to me that he wanted to write about the logistical aspects of fighting a major war at sea in the Western Pacific, I lobbied hard for him to allow me to publish his work here at ID. I think you’ll see why.

On July 31, 2014, the House Armed Service Committee Subcommittee on Seapower and Force Projections convened a hearing to discuss Sealift Force Assessment. One concern expressed at the hearing was by Rep. J. Randy Forbes, the committee’s chairman, regarding the ability of the Navy’s Combat Logistics Force (CLF) to conduct its mission in a contested environment. Without increasing the CLF’s current level of capabilities to survive in such environments as well as shuttle fuel, ammunition, and stores to forward naval forces, the U.S. Navy will not be able to meet emerging threats in the Asia-Pacific. Currently, there has been little internal or public discussion on the ability of the CLF to sustain the operational tempo demanded of the Navy in a major conflict, let alone do so within a combat zone.

The current logistics fleet is derived from the 1992 “. . . From the Sea” and 1994 “Forward. . . From the Sea” strategic concept documents.  These concepts were based on the premise of general U.S. command of the open oceans, which meant that the Navy could focus much of its efforts in the littorals. The Navy’s ability to obtain virtually de facto sea control in the post-Cold War era allowed it to project power from close to adversaries’ coastlines and then be resupplied from sanctuaries these adversaries simply could not touch. It follows that the Navy did not foresee a need to escort its logistics ships to and from these underway replenishment locations. Nor did it assess that the logistics ships retained the need to defend themselves against missile or torpedo attacks. The Navy’s decision to replace the Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigates with the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) was greatly informed by this view.

Potential adversaries’ advancing capabilities for denying access and limiting freedom of maneuver in contested maritime areas have effectively negated the underlying premises of the Navy’s post-Cold War strategic concepts. In particular, China’s inability to seriously challenge the U.S. Navy during the 1996 Taiwan Straits Crisis persuaded it to develop capabilities to disrupt the U.S.’s ability to intervene militarily against Beijing’s interests in East Asia. Submarines, mines, land-based fighter and bomber aircraft, land-based strike missiles, advanced air defense systems are the major elements of China’s capabilities for denying maritime access to the East Asian theater. The employment of many of these weapons are cued by networked wide-area surveillance/reconnaissance systems located on Chinese soil, in the air, at sea, and in space.

The new environment poses a significant danger to U.S. naval operations. With a considerable forward presence in the Asia-Pacific, the U.S. Navy must sustain operations over what is often referred to as the “tyranny of distance.” Once in theater, if warships are unable to replenish at sea, they must then return to a friendly port. The process of transiting to a port, replenishing and then returning to a forward operating area may take days or even weeks. Forward ports and naval facilities are also becoming increasingly vulnerable to theater-range precision guided munitions. Such delays and risks would be untenable in a major conflict.

And yet, no moves have been made to arm the logistics fleet with point defense weaponry. Further threatening the CLF’s ability to operate in opposed environments is the Navy’s declining surface combatant force structure. The final retirement of all the Navy’s FFGs this year will have a major impact on the defensibility of forward- deployed ships’ logistical support chains. As previously noted, the LCS is incapable in its current and planned configurations to assume the FFGs’ Cold War-era role screening logistics ships’ movements in contested waters. The lack of  small surface combatants with medium range air defense and anti-submarine capabilities  means that vital DDGs would be utilized as CLF escorts instead of being utilized in carrier battlegroups or surface action groups. The forthcoming LCS-derived frigate will address only the anti-submarine portion of this capability gap.

In addition to the loss of the FFG escorts, the retirement of all of the Navy’s T-AOEs will further amplify the fleet’s combat logistics dilemma. T-AOEs are the most important logistic ship in the Navy’s inventory as the ship provides a “one stop shop” for combatants as it carries marine fuel, aviation fuel, dry stores, and munitions. Furthermore, it is the only replenishment ship that is fast enough to keep up with a carrier battle group and thus remain within its protective air, surface, and subsurface defenses. Due to budgetary constraints the Navy is planning on putting two T-AOEs in reduced status while keeping two in service. Without the T-AOEs the Navy is left with the less capable but more numerous T-AO and T-AKEs which supply fuel and ammunition/dry stores respectively. Both the T-AOs and T-AKEs are incapable of matching the speed of the carrier battle group and require more time to replenish combatants. Furthermore, it is not clear the Navy and the Military Sealift Command have enough of these ships to sustain a high operational tempo in a major conflict, or how severely CLF losses  would degrade this tempo. This represents a crucial area for war-gaming as well as campaign analysis.

Although the current logistics model was adequate for a post-Cold War world in which the U.S. Navy maintained essentially-uncontested command over the world’s oceans, potential adversaries’ development of advanced maritime denial capabilities demands a new approach. Fleet structure and composition is not properly aligned to support forward positioned surface combatants in a contested environment for extended periods of time. Ensuring timely and consistent logistics support to these combatants is central to the U.S. Navy ensuring American maritime supremacy. The presence of forward forces is critical to U.S. security.  Logistics ships must receive basic self-defense capabilities as well as be provided sufficient escort support for their transits through and operations within opposed areas. The Navy also ought to retain logistics ships that are capable of operating as part of battle groups: in active service if possible, and in ready reserve if necessary. Failing to do these things could cost the Navy—and the nation—dearly in the event of a future war.

Chris Mclachlan currently works as a defense contractor. He recently spent time working on defense issues at the House of Representatives. The views presented in this article are his own.

Expanding A2/AD: Is it Time to Start Worrying about the Eastern Mediterranean?

Note from Jon Solomon: My Systems Planning and Analysis colleague Jonathan Altman has long been interested in the Mahanian aspects of Russia’s foreign policy initiatives in the Eastern Mediterranean. Overshadowed by the ongoing Russian ground intervention in Ukraine or the headline-grabbing bomber sorties into the North Atlantic and Arctic, Russia’s cultivation of “places” and potential bases for its forces in that region over the past few years simply has not received much public attention from the security studies community. This needs to change, as the Mediterranean not only remains central to U.S. and European defense strategies, but is also a vital market as well as thoroughfare for Western economies. Jonathan has generously taken the time to outline his thoughts below on this overlooked topic.

Much has been written about the challenges posed by the Chinese adoption of what the U.S. military calls “A2/AD” (anti access area denial) in the Western Pacific. Accordingly, the Pacific remains a key focus area for both the U.S. Navy and Air Force, with the Navy promising to put 60% of its forces in that theater as part of the so-called “Pacific pivot.” Yet as focus remains on PACOM, the rest of the world is not standing still. This is exemplified in the Eastern Mediterranean, as the Russians have already begun laying the seeds to create an A2/AD zone in the region against the U.S. and its allies. If fully realized, an A2/AD envelope could put Western access to the Suez Canal, the Black Sea and the resource-rich Eastern Mediterranean at the mercy of Vladimir Putin.

There are three interrelated elements that make the development of an A2/AD zone in the Eastern Mediterranean possible for the Russians. The first of these is the prospect of a credible military presence, which in this case would most likely be provided by forward deployments from the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Armed with three (six by 2016) new enhanced Kilo-class diesel-electric submarines, 11,000 marines and a surface flotilla of 42 ships[1] as of last year, the Russian Black Sea Fleet is probably the most capable maritime force in the region. By contrast, the U.S. Sixth Fleet has a single command ship and four DDGs that will be permanently assigned to it from 2015 onward (though those DDGs are based on the other end of the Mediterranean in Spain), with only occasional rotational presence from ships passing through its area of regard on the way to or back from the Middle East. Though the U.S. does have allies in the region with credible maritime combat power, the Russians are working to drive wedges into these relationships; which not coincidentally is the second pillar of regional Russian strategy.

The Russian effort to decouple longstanding allies such as Turkey, Greece, and Egypt from political and military alignment with the U.S. is helped by policy choices the U.S. has made, as well as favorable circumstances the Russians can exploit. In the case of Greece, the formation of a coalition government by far-left and right wing parties that are deeply resentful of the European Union (and its American allies), committed to breaking out of the fiscal austerity “straitjacket” imposed as terms for European Union loans, and ideologically aligned with Russian “Eurasianist” geopolitical theory has opened new opportunities for extending Russian influence. The Russians have waded into this fray, supporting the Greek government politically and entertaining the possibility of assisting Greece with its debt issues. Greco-Russian relations have unsurprisingly warmed considerably. In the case of Turkey, Russia has taken advantage of a decade-long trend by the Erdogan government away from democracy toward authoritarianism. As the West has criticized Erdogan for imprisoning journalists, fabricating charges against political opponents, and repressing civil dissent, the Russians have remained supportive to the point that Erdogan is now praising Putin directly. The other Russian charm offensive in the region has been focused on Egypt. Faced with a virulent insurgency in the Sinai, and a U.S. Administration that until recently was withholding military aid as punishment for the suspension of democracy, Egypt's repressive military junta has instead turned towards the Russians for military equipment procurement for the first time since the mid-Cold War. The sum total of these actions is to cultivate Russian goodwill with three countries that control chokepoint access to and freedom of maneuver within the Eastern Mediterranean, not to mention use of the Eastern Mediterranean to access the Black and Red Seas. Neutrality by these countries in the event of a Russian-American crisis or conflict could be devastating to U.S. strategy.

With access for their credible maritime combat power vastly improved, the final aspect of Russian regional strategy is to secure and expand basing agreements. Limited by geography, the Russians have no port on the Mediterranean; anything they want to put in the region would likely come via the Black Sea (though assets could be deployed from there other fleets as well assuming they could pass through Gibraltar or Suez). Even though Turkey may be friendly with Russia now, basing agreements hedge against a risk of change in the political winds that could bottle the Black Sea Fleet up. Additionally, as Admiral Greenert states again and again, forward basing allows a Navy to keep more assets in theater, multiplying the impact of a smaller force. Russia's only base outside of the former Soviet Union is in Tartus, Syria, which of course is in the Eastern Mediterranean. Recently the Cypriots, long prone to Russian sympathies, agreed to an expansion of Russian port calls and even potentially an air base, giving the Russians an additional strategic location to use in the region. Current deployment of land based Russian-supplied Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles in Syria provides an additional boon to the area denial aspect of their approach, which could be augmented by further sales or deployments of Russian forces equipped with ASCMs to friendly countries.

According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the presence of Yakhont ASCMs in Syria alone has been enough to create a surface naval A2/AD zone in the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean. Furthermore, rolling the three Russian thrusts together, it becomes clear how an expanded Eastern Mediterranean A2/AD envelope could be enacted in the very near future. As Mahan famously wrote, the land features of a region can play a large role in determining maritime influence and access. For example, consider the military implications of a Russian deployment of advanced long-range SAMs alongside its existing Yakhonts in Syria, or perhaps a deployment of those SAMs in notional locations in Cyprus. Much has been written about the capabilities of Russian “triple digit” SAMs (in service S-300s and S-400s and the developmental S-500). S-500s will have up to a 600 km anti-air range according to some Russian sources - enough to blanket the region from Crete east assuming they are based in Cyprus (the same sources cite S-400 range at 400km and newer S-300 variants at a more modest 200km). The Russians may also seek to adapt these systems to enable integration aboard surface ships beyond the existing S-300F integration in Russian cruisers; further increasing deployment flexibility. A Russian deployment of Kilo-class submarines to the region would insert a further threat into the undersea domain at a time when more advanced but already overtasked U.S. nuclear submarines continue to decline in force structure. The degree to which U.S. and allied surface and air access in the Eastern Mediterranean would be imperiled by any single one of these potentialities, and especially by combinations of them, should be clear.

Fortunately there are options available to mitigate the risks of such an outcome. Beyond political, economic and diplomatic solutions, of which there are a great many possibilities, there are three broad Navy-focused options that could be pursued. The first of these, and the least desirable, would be transferring forces from other theaters to increase our capability in the Eastern Mediterranean. The issues in the Eastern Mediterranean are fundamentally a symptom of a U.S. Navy that is undersized for the global tasks assigned it and a NATO maritime force that no longer provides sufficient deterrent effect. To redeploy existing U.S. forces to the Mediterranean would simply exacerbate these symptoms in another part of the world. The second option, which is from a navalist's perspective the most desirable but simultaneously the most politically challenging, is to grow the size of the U.S. Navy. During the Cold War, carrier and amphibious group deployments to the Eastern Mediterranean were routine and kept the Soviet fleet in check. By contrast, the Navy’s current supply of day to day deterrence through credible combat power and presence is far outstripped by demand the world over.

Acknowledging this issue, and taking the fiscal policy conflict between Congress and the Administration into account, reinvigorating NATO Standing Maritime Groups may be the quickest and most feasible way to push back on the Russian A2/AD threat. Currently NATO operates two Standing Maritime Groups, though between them both only seven ships are combatants (and three of those were recently augmented above normal force structure). Given that no allied submarines and only a handful of helicopters exist within both combined groups, this force is highly vulnerable to Russian submarine attack or coercion. This could be addressed by augmenting the standing group assigned to the Mediterranean with allied undersea forces. Furthermore, with the allocation of dedicated land-based air power and additional surface combatants, NATO maritime forces’ credibility in the region would be greatly increased. To be maximally effective, this Standing Group should field electronic warfare capabilities and be trained to employ counter-surveillance techniques that can together defeat the over-the-horizon targeting systems supporting the Syria-based Yakhonts. Additionally, Standing Groups have the deterrent benefit of tying nations together as an attack on the group would affect at least a half-dozen different countries. To add further effect, NATO leadership should work to ensure Greek and Turkish participation (though perhaps not concurrently for historical reasons) in the Mediterranean Standing Group and cycle it through the Eastern Mediterranean regularly.

Whatever course of action the U.S. and NATO ultimately pursue, it is important for policymakers and strategists alike to recognize the gross implications of a Russian A2/AD envelope in the Eastern Mediterranean. Such an envelope would present grave challenges to U.S. influence in the region, and would imperil the free flow of commerce that is essential to U.S. (and global) prosperity.

Jonathan Altman is a Program Analyst with Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc. who holds a Master’s Degree in International Security from the Korbel School at the University of Denver. 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 Inc., 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] Though not all of these ships can be assumed to be self-deployable. Counting only principal combatants and amphibious ships, the Black Sea Fleet has 14 self-deployable ships; though it should be assumed that any deployment of these ships would be accompanied by some number of smaller combatants (missile boats or patrol craft), of which the Black Sea Fleet has 19.

A Case for Emplacing U.S. Personnel on Allied Ships in the South China Sea

Note from Jon Solomon: The article below was written by my Systems Planning and Analysis colleague, Jonathan Altman, to expand upon an idea he suggested during one of our running discussions on deterrence dynamics. Creating a credible extended deterrence ‘tripwire’ is never a simple task; this is arguably even more so at the low end of the conflict spectrum over maritime sovereignty rights or isolated unpopulated ‘rocks.’ I find Jonathan’s proposal quite interesting on that front, and offer it to you for debate.

In the South China Sea, the Chinese are using a “salami-slicing” approach to incrementally shift the norms and territorial balance to their favor, to the detriment of U.S. allies like the Philippines. Until now, the U.S. response to this challenge has been fairly muted; though calls for more transparency and respect for norms frequently come out of the Obama administration, few if any non-verbal steps have been taken to thwart the Chinese approach. However this need not be the case. The act of emplacing U.S. Government personnel aboard friendly nations’ vessels, perhaps including uniformed members of the armed services, could present a major challenge to current Chinese strategy in the region. I will talk more about why this tactic could be so effective in a later paragraph, but first I’d like to address why the Chinese salami-slicing approach has been so successful, and why other attempts to blunt it have had little effect.

To use the famous framework developed by Herman Kahn, Chinese “salami-slicing” strategy has proved effective because they have created conditions in which they have been able to establish and then sustain escalation dominance. By using fishing boats and other non-military craft to harass our allies, seize property, and increase their claims to land features in the South China Sea, the Chinese have rendered U.S. dominance in conventional arms immaterial. The U.S. cannot plausibly use military force to respond to Chinese uses of non-military power against a treaty ally. Because the US has not been able to respond decisively with tools that match the escalation level of those being employed by the Chinese, U.S. policy responses have been limited to official statements that have had little effect thus far due to the lack of leverage. A demand therefore arises for existing tools that can be easily (and cheaply) employed to symmetrically counter Chinese moves at the lowest rungs of Kahn’s escalation ladder. Though there are more tools beyond emplacing US personnel on friendly vessels, this particular tactic seems like a promising place to start. 

It’s critical to be clear up front; this is not an argument to formally dual-crew an allied ship. The legal framework and rules to enable that approach are simply too complex and ultimately unnecessary to achieve the desired effect. What is being suggested is that the U.S. should consider emplacing small groups of U.S. Coast Guard personnel or even other maritime agency personnel (such as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials) as ‘observers’ or ‘advisers’ aboard allies’ maritime law enforcement vessels, and military personnel aboard allied warships or military patrol aircraft. These personnel should principally be armed with cameras, and their purposes would be twofold. First, raise the stakes on Chinese aggression in the region. It is an entirely different calculation to conduct dangerous maneuvers against a Philippine patrol vessel with U.S. Government personnel on board. The Chinese seem comfortable pushing around smaller neighbors knowing that these nations have little recourse beyond lengthy (and largely ineffective) public and private diplomatic complaints. This calculation becomes much different if Chinese strategists were presented with the risk of threatening American lives (whether by ramming or other action) and thereby upsetting a more powerful nation to achieve the same effects. Think back to the Cold War; American soldiers in West Germany were not reasonably expected to defeat a Soviet incursion, but their presence ensured American casualties—which therefore committed American prestige. The ‘tripwire’ forces along the Central European front therefore committed the U.S. to mobilization and retaliation against any Soviet offensive. The same principle applies with American personnel aboard allied platforms.

The second purpose of emplacing American personnel would be to document Chinese transgressions. Even if the mere presence of American personnel does not deter all Chinese actions, providing a direct and timely conduit to the most expansive media networks in the world would likely cause a rethinking of strategy in Beijing. Since the Chinese have chosen to keep action in the South China Sea low on the escalation ladder, global public perceptions of Chinese behavior and Chinese plausible deniability of illegality remain important. If all of a sudden every Chinese transgression made its way onto CNN complete with a verified video account, it seems reasonable to believe that perceptions of China worldwide would be adversely affected, and that the chorus of world opinion might begin to bring uncomfortable attention on their actions as well as a loss of stature.

The intended effect of emplacing U.S. personnel aboard allied vessels ideally should be twofold. First, help our allies by lowering their risk of operations (such as resupplying isolated garrisons) and assuring them that the U.S. is a stalwart friend. Second, negate Chinese escalation dominance by forcing them to confront Americans in order to achieve their ends. This would force them into a choice between moving to higher level rungs on the escalation ladder and therefore incurring a greater risk of conflict with the U.S., or backing off. Whatever course they chose, their incremental approach would be dealt a setback.

Jonathan Altman is a Program Analyst with Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc. who holds a Master’s Degree in International Security from the Korbel School at the University of Denver. 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 Inc., 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.

Thinking about Offensive Naval Mining

Note from Jon Solomon: The article below was written by a Systems Planning and Analysis colleague of mine, Jonathan Altman. Following my post last month regarding how sea denial might figure into U.S. maritime strategy for deterring—or if necessary, defending against—Chinese aggression in East Asia, Jonathan pointed out to me several issues and scenarios  regarding the potential use of offensive mining in such a strategy that I hadn't considered. Jonathan has graciously agreed to share his observations with you here in order to broaden the ongoing debate.

Recently the concept of naval mining, specifically the potential advantages in using naval mines to achieve targeted sea denial, has received more publicity in naval themed publications and the blogosphere. Mining advocates’ hopes were emboldened just before Christmas when the “Cromnibus” was signed into law, containing a line of $10M for naval mining research and development. However, careful consideration should be given to just what employing mines might entail. Though not apparent from most public analyses, there are significant potential issues with employing naval mines offensively that need to be understood. The first of these is their connotation and associated baggage.

When the average (but informed) American hears the term “mine,” it generally conjures up images of a soldier in Vietnam or WWII missing a limb, or crying in the aftermath of a mine explosion that killed a dear friend. More historically aware Americans might think of WWI era sailors and/or civilians drowning in the frigid North Atlantic, or perhaps our own Sailors during the Korean War (the mine damage incurred by the USS Samuel B. Roberts in 1988 and the USS Princeton and USS Tripoli in 1991 did not result in ship loss). While maritime mining is quite different from land mining, we must not overlook the baggage that mining as a term brings to the table in the broader public sphere. Whole classes of weapons, many of which were quite effective, have been banned by the international community at various points in time (such as cluster munitions; despite continued US use of these weapons). Land mines are similarly the focus of international ire. This is not to argue that the United States should allow other countries to dictate what types of weapons it can employ, only that using weapons such as these should present a higher barrier to use because of the inherent perception loss that a state receives for using them. Fundamentally, a weapon that achieves the same effect without or with reduced baggage should be preferred.

Most recent advocacy with respect to naval mining is written in context of use (either in terms of notional wartime employment or latent peacetime deterrent value) against China, so that’s where the remainder of this piece is focused. Note however that many of the tenets enumerated in a China context could be applied to contingencies involving other illiberal non-Western states.

The foundational issue with employing naval mines offensively against the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is simply that it may not have the intended effect of keeping the PLAN bottled up inside its ports. For offensive naval mining to be effective, the Chinese would need to be deterred from sortieing their fleet out to sea. However, this would require a Chinese cultural aversion to losses that may not exist.  Chinese military culture has historically accepted exceptionally high losses as a price for victory (e.g. Chinese Civil War and WWII), and individual sacrifice for the greater good is respected[1]. Especially when one factors in the ample amount of old ships the PLAN has, there’s reason to suspect that when confronted with a minefield (or a small number of emplaced mines), the PLAN might manually force a Q route using low value, outdated but manned ships (this logic could similarly be applied to Iran or North Korea). This could render the minefield ineffective, and void the operational end that it was deployed to achieve. It should be noted however that this approach runs some risk of failure as narrow channels could be clogged by sunken hulls in an attempt to force a Q route; accordingly this tactic is not likely to be employed where maneuver space and/or water depth is restricted.

Even if offensive naval mining was effective in that it kept PLAN assets contained in port for fear of losses, larger concerns should exist in the mind of offensive mining supporters about what a devious foe could do to exploit this situation given mines’ reputation as indiscriminate killers. Too often in analysis of “the other,” whether in intelligence, military or even economic venues, we as Westerners with our own ingrained biases export these onto those who do not share them; a process called mirror imaging. Assuming that a foe would simply not take losses to force a Q route is one example of this; another is imagining that they would avoid acting in ways that are morally repugnant to Western norms to exploit a favorable opportunity.

Recent action in the South China Sea has shown the Chinese to be not only excellent strategists  (incrementally extending their legitimacy in a whole region without firing a shot), but also masters of information warfare (the Russians are not too shabby at it themselves). Applying this acumen to offensive naval mining, as soon as a minefield was discovered (or more likely announced to meet the rules of war); there would be tremendous advantage for the Chinese government to create the conditions where a US mine (real or perceived) kills a large number of Chinese (or third-party country) civilians. Here is where the tactical views of mining could become irrelevant in the face of a well-designed strategy. For example, even if a US mine is so “smart” that there is no way it could ever kill a civilian ship (no small feat), there would be nothing to stop the Chinese from packing a vessel with explosives and blowing it up themselves in the rough geographic region of the offensive minefield; preferably in full view of cameras and with plenty of innocents on board. This situation could be made even more challenging for the US if a legitimate mine had already sunk a military ship in a similar location, as deniability would become nearly impossible at that point.

The Chinese could conceivably also create the appearance that the U.S. had mined offensively when or where it had not. They could use the confusion that surrounded the “mine strike” for propaganda purposes as well as to justify ‘retaliation’ that was actually premeditated escalation. By selling the perception that they had responded rather than preempted, they would reduce the risk of being seen as an aggressor and would create a more favorable image to the world at large (a key component of information warfare).

There would probably be no way, and certainly no quick way, for the United States to prove to the watching global public that a Chinese non-military vessel’s loss in the above scenarios stemmed from a Chinese false flag operation as opposed to a genuine US mine.  The perception that the Chinese were the victim of an irresponsible US weapon could also be used as diplomatic leverage to strain US regional alliances and push neutral powers towards China. European countries could be especially sensitive to pressure from their publics to back out of openly supporting the US in this case.

Depending on when in a conflict the aforementioned incident is staged, a savvy adversary may be able to extract additional advantages. For instance, if conducted at a period of heightened tension, China could use the incident as a casus belli and follow it with an overt (preemptive) attack. This would be increasingly likely if the Chinese were already preparing for a major offensive; similar to the German false-flagged Gleiwitz incident in 1939. Any strain on the Chinese economy (the basis of Chinese Communist Party legitimacy) would make this option even more attractive.

Ultimately, it must be asked “what is the intended goal of offensively employing naval mines”? According to recent writing, it seems to be large scale but targeted sea denial enabled through a capability to strike targets in a discriminate fashion at a time and place of US choosing. Certainly this is a valid and desirable military end. The only question then is whether offensive mines are the best tool to accomplish this objective given their stigma and assumed ability to engage targets without human intervention. Some existing technologies that might be evaluated as alternatives to mines in this respect could include torpedoes, long-range anti-ship cruise missiles, or surface ship delivered anti-ship ballistic missiles. Future unmanned systems may also provide an option for selective targeting with a man-in-the-loop that would greatly reduce the baggage that comes with both the word “mine” and with the idea of a self-targeting weapon. In the end, a weapon that delivers targeted but wide area sea denial without the downsides associated with a naval mine is likely to be a valuable and increasingly necessary military tool to maintain United States maritime influence in many parts of the world.

Jonathan Altman is an analyst with Systems Planning and Analysis Inc, a defense contractor located in Alexandria, Virginia. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Security from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. The views expressed herein are those only of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of Systems Planning and Analysis, the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

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[1] Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, Rethinking Individualism and Collectivism: Evaluation of Theoretical Assumptions and Meta-Analyses. In this analysis of 250 cultures, the Chinese were found to be the most collectivist of all groups studied. Collectivist groups typically subordinate individual actions for the good of the group.