The Large-Deck Carrier: Part 4

For previous installments, see Parts I, II, and III

Carriers and Power Projection

Naval conventional land-attack strikes that must be launched from a contested zone’s inner sections early in a war will probably be performed by guided missile-armed submarines because of their stealth and survivability. Strikes that can be launched from the contested zone’s outer sections likewise can be primarily performed at relatively low risk by guided missile-armed surface combatants. As noted in my Tuesday post, however, the U.S. Navy presently lacks the technical and logistical capabilities needed to reload submarine and surface combatant launchers underway or otherwise in ad hoc locations such as defended anchorages. The need for forward-deployed missile-armed units to cycle through unthreatened friendly ports for pierside reload, combined with this contingent’s relatively small size prior to reinforcement by units sortied from rearward bases in-theater, transferred from other theaters, or mobilized from the homeland, will create significant challenges in sustaining friendly operational tempo.[i]  

Urgently developing the capabilities to overcome this campaign-critical limitation is imperative, but it must be understood that doing so may only mitigate potential operational tempo impacts—not eliminate them. It follows that one must be careful when asserting how an underway/ad hoc launcher reload capability should inform force structure. For example, it has been argued that surface combatants could become decisively more efficient than carriers in the strike role if the former’s vertical launchers could be reloaded underway, and that increasing surface combatant force structure at the expense of carrier force structure would accordingly be warranted.[ii] A key concern with this argument is that it is not clear how it factors in the specifics of launcher reload operations at sea. The nominal duration of a reloading event, the minimum distance the forward reloading area must be from the enemy’s effective reach to execute the event at acceptable risk, and the combat logistics force’s capacity for cycling ammunition ships between rear bases and forward reloading areas all must be explicitly accounted for. It therefore is difficult to tell whether such a concept of operations would be sustainable indefinitely or only during short ‘surge’ periods throughout a protracted conflict.

Even if launcher reload operations could be structured such that they would minimally perturb missile-armed SAGs’ operational tempos, one must not overlook the carrier air wing’s previously-discussed roles providing forward surface combatants with sea control support. Indeed, there might be a breakpoint below which any marginal decrease in carrier force structure to afford increases in surface combatant force structure might not yield any operational tempo benefits—and might actually decrease this tempo while increasing campaign-level risks. With fewer carriers, there would be fewer air wings available at any one time to support SAG operations within a contested zone. Against a near-peer foe with robust theater-wide maritime denial capabilities, this could severely curtail SAGs’ operational tempos—and the overall friendly force’s campaign tempo—in its own right. Neither this nor the launcher reload logistics issue automatically repudiates analysis suggesting surface combatants’ advantages in the strike role, but they do highlight how additional operational analysis and fleet experimentation is necessary to validate such assertions. 

As an alternative, one might argue land-based long-range strike aircraft could assume a large share of the strike tasks presently held by the carrier air wing. If a war was brief, this arrangement might be sustainable. If a war became protracted, though, standoff-range strike missile inventories’ depletion and the likely limited quantities of long-range penetrating bombers suggests large-deck carriers’ operational maneuver and power projection capabilities might become increasingly useful to the theater commander. The advanced ordnance inventory management issue is hardly new to U.S. Navy campaign planning and strategy development. For example, during the early 1980s the Navy estimated there were only enough torpedoes in shore-based stockpiles to rearm 30% of the fleet’s submarines in the event of a major conventional war with the Soviet Union.[iii] As the Royal Navy’s 1982 shipboard weapons, sonobuoy, and missile decoy expenditures in the Falklands unequivocally demonstrated, this particular problem is a core characteristic of modern maritime war. It is entirely possible that ordnance consumption rates might be far higher in practice than what is expected within standing contingency plans.[iv]

The same would be true if the operational tempo needed to prevent an aggressor from attaining its political objectives was so intense or the target sets that must be struck—especially to support frontline defenders—were so expansive that the theater commander simply could not avoid leaning heavily upon large-deck carriers’ strike capabilities.[v] Finding where all the above ordnance inventory management and operational tempo thresholds might lie over the course of a protracted campaign, as well as evaluating their potential severities, will be a crucial operational analysis and war gaming task.

Assuming large-deck carriers will be asked to shoulder however much of the Joint power projection load is necessary at a given time, a paramount campaign-level objective of Joint kinetic and non-kinetic strikes early in a war must therefore be to temporarily disrupt if not permanently attrite an adversary’s wide-area oceanic surveillance-reconnaissance-strike capabilities. When these supporting fires are combined with effective battleforce-level deception and concealment tactics, brief power projection (and sea control/denial) operations by dispersed multi-carrier task forces from the contested zone’s outer sections may be viable even during a major war’s initial phases.[vi] Indeed, the high lifecycle costs and considerable vulnerabilities of potential adversaries’ maritime surveillance/reconnaissance systems-of-systems are generally overlooked in arguments contrasting the large-deck carrier’s lifecycle costs and tactical efficacy relative to individual network-dependent weapons.[vii] The key point is that not all strikes necessarily need to be able to reach, let alone penetrate deep within, an aggressor’s homeland on a war’s third let alone three-hundredth day to be strategically valuable. Just as important to preventing an aggressor’s fait accompli may be strikes that challenge the aggressor’s sea control in certain areas, or that otherwise create conditions supporting eventual friendly sea control in the approaches to isolated friendly territories within the contested zone.

The extent to which the large-deck carrier can thusly contribute is a function of the air wing and its ordnance, not the ship. If the air wing possesses medium-range strike aircraft and organic aerial refueling capabilities, Joint forward forces gain an important tool for launching strikes from a contested zone’s outer periphery in support of defenders fighting within the zone’s middle sections. The frequency and responsiveness of these kinds of strikes would increase as the adversary’s maritime surveillance-reconnaissance-strike capabilities are worn down. Should the air wing’s fighters carry longer-range standoff weaponry and be supported by high-confidence cueing, strike footprints could increase by several hundred additional miles and potentially bring the contested zone’s inner reaches into play fairly early in a war, albeit with a lower number of carried weapons the further the aircraft must fly. In fact, evolved longer-range variants of existing strike weapons could offer ‘gapfiller’ capabilities along these lines at reasonable cost and risk while the long-range, autonomous, unmanned naval strike aircraft technologies that will eventually be needed due to potential contested zones’ anticipated continual peacetime expansions are matured.[viii] As noted previously, though, inventories of such weapons will likely not be large enough to permit protracted standoff-range strike operations. The most logical use of these weapons, therefore, would be to poke holes in an adversary’s defenses (however localized and temporary) that other friendly units armed with more plentiful shorter-range weapons could then exploit. It is also important to point out that not all of these weapons will be kinetic, whether they are long or short-range. Some of the most campaign-critical carrier air wing weapons will be electronic attack systems that must be physically brought within line-of-sight of an adversary’s distributed surveillance/reconnaissance sensors and their supporting data networks’ RF relay nodes.

As alluded to in the previous paragraph, large-deck carrier power projection’s other and often unrecognized aspect is Joint forward aerial refueling. Long-range, high capacity, carrier-based aerial refueling was a most unfortunate post-Cold War budgetary casualty.[ix] The same permissive environments that allowed fixed-location carrier strike operations over the past twenty years also permitted the air wing to fall back upon U.S. Air Force theater-range aerial refueling resources. Unfortunately, the theater-range conventionally-armed missiles potential adversaries now use to hold forward friendly airbases at risk increasingly threaten those resources. The carrier air wing’s maximal offensive as well as defensive employment depends upon assured access to timely aerial refueling at range, and this means a carrier-organic capability must be restored since ‘buddy stores’ on shorter-range fighters is insufficient.

There is a Joint angle, however, in that carrier-based long-range aerial refueling can also support Air Force operations when forward airbases for the latter’s refueling aircraft are unavailable or in maritime areas where they ought not to be risked. Based closer in relative terms to the contested zone, carrier-based refueling aircraft can also step in when Joint forward operational tempo rises beyond what Air Force refueling aircraft can support alone. This same logic would apply to the air wing’s screening, AEW, and electronic warfare support of Air Force operations within the contested zone.[x] Carriers’ inherent mobility can additionally be used to position over-ocean aerial refueling rendezvous that enable the Air Force’s use of unpredictable or unanticipated routes for penetrating as well as retiring from opposed areas. 

Tomorrow, a concluding look at how the air wing's capabilities and composition will determine carriers' future doctrinal roles

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[i] Van Tol, 40, 46-47, 56, 78, 90.

[ii] CDR Phillip E. Pournelle, USN. “The Rise of the Missile Carriers.” Naval Institute Proceedings 139, No. 5 (May 2013): 32-33.

[iii] RADN William J. Holland, Jr., USN (Ret). “Strategy and Submarines.” Naval Institute Proceedings 139, No. 12 (December 2013), 52.

[iv] See 1. “Lessons of the Falklands.” (Washington, D.C.: Office of Program Appraisal, Department of the Navy, February 1983), 3, 11, 34, 36; 2. ADM Sandy Woodward, RN. One Hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 12, 97, 176-177.

[v] For another take on the campaign-level ordnance management dilemma as related to carriers, see Robert C. Rubel. “National Policy and the Post-Systemic Navy.” Naval War College Review 66, No. 4 (Autumn 2013): 26.

[vi] Solomon, 88-94, 99-103.

[vii] A more accurate comparison would count the lifecycle costs and consider the relative limitations and vulnerabilities of the various sensors and network infrastructure necessary for the adversary to effectively use such a weapon. For instance, the lifecycle costs of the satellite(s) relaying targeting data from a reconnaissance scout, any sensor-equipped satellites cueing the scout or supporting weapons targeting, and the navigational satellites providing the positioning data this entire enterprise depends upon are neither inexpensive nor without serious vulnerabilities. Several generations of these satellites will also have to be procured over a carrier’s lifetime. It would not be surprising if the carrier’s lifecycle costs still exceed the surveillance-reconnaissance-strike system’s lifecycle costs, but they would likely be much closer than popularly thought. It follows that one must holistically examine what is actually obtained with those expenditures, as one cannot properly pass judgment on the former’s tactical efficacy and survivability relative to the latter without comprehensively examining the latter’s tactical efficacy and survivability when subjected to protracted withering, combined arms attacks by friendly forces across multiple warfare domains.

[viii] For a strong argument in favor of such unmanned systems, see Thomas P. Ehrhard and Robert O. Work. “Range, Persistence, Stealth, and Networking: The Case for a Carrier-Based Unmanned Combat Air System.” Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2008.

[ix] See discussion of KA-6 Intruder in Norman Polmar. U.S. Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 16^th Ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 367.

[x] Van Tol, p. 27, 45.

AirSea Battle - A Strategy of Tactics?

AirSea Battle is gaining public notoriety, even as an official description is yet to exist. AirSea Battle is now part of general answers and specific questions in Congressional hearings suggesting there is some anticipation on Capitol Hill what exactly this widely touted but never officially discussed series of ideas might be.

The focus of AirSea Battle appears to be to counter the growing challenges to US military power projection in the western Pacific and Persian Gulf, although in public use AirSea Battle is now used almost exclusively in the context of China.

CSBA described AirSea Battle as A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept. The use of the term "operational" implied AirSea Battle is intended to be developed as a battle doctrine for air and sea forces. Milan Vego recently took this one step further in Proceedings and recommended AirSea Battle be developed as one of several operational concepts for littoral warfare, although I think there is room to develop AirSea Battle doctrine for joint operations in several different geographic conditions.

All we really know about AirSea Battle is that we don't know a lot more about it than we do know, so every time someone writes about AirSea Battle from a position of some authority as to what AirSea Battle actually is - it's worth noting. In the latest example, we learn a lot.

A new Armed Forces Journal article by J. Noel Williams titled Air-Sea Battle is perhaps the most important contribution to the AirSea Battle discussion to date, because it starts a valid public discussion with criticisms of AirSea Battle - criticisms that cannot be ignored or dismissed. The article should be read in total - it's worth it. Because the article is very long difficult to cover in a single blogpost, I'm going to focus on only a few specific aspects of the article that stick out to me; a few of the criticisms and the implied competing doctrines.

Criticisms of AirSea Battle

This paragraph contains a lot of room for more discussion. The author's argument is that AirSea Battle doctrine appears to be a symmetrical approach to Chinese military capabilities. It should be noted that AirSea Battle doctrine is specifically being developed as an asymmetrical approach to Chinese area and access denial capabilities.

AirLand Battle posited an asymmetric approach in relation to the Soviet Union. AirLand would attack all echelons of the Soviet force with aviation and long-range fires because NATO was badly outnumbered on the ground. In contrast, ASB is symmetrical, pitting U.S. precision strike against Chinese precision strike. Since ASB is by definition an away game, how can we build sufficient expeditionary naval and air forces to counter Chinese forces that possess a home-court advantage? Is it prudent to expect the weapon magazines of an entire industrial nation to be smaller than those of our Navy and Air Force deployed more than 3,000 miles from home? What happens when the vertical launch systems of our ships and the bomb bays of our aircraft are empty?

Logistics is going to be a challenge in any military campaign where an enemy has the capacity to strike at our lines-of-communication, so in that sense the logistics points are not really a compelling argument for me against AirSea Battle. Logistics is a challenge in any military endeavor that can be applied to any doctrine. It is fair to note logistics is a huge challenge for the US today in Afghanistan, and hardly a major challenge specific to any single theater of war. I do like the last question though, because it is a question Congress needs to be asking all the time as budget pressures force difficult choices on Navy force structure.

The bigger question here is whether AirSea Battle doctrine represents a symmetrical apprach of "pitting U.S. precision strike against Chinese precision strike." I think the authors statement represents a fair question, but I am hesitant to agree with the author that this conclusion is accurate. Any battle doctrine between the US Air Force and US Navy should build towards a precision fires regime, so I am unclear as to why that is implied a problem with AirSea Battle. Furthermore, because AirSea Battle is supposed to be a battle doctrine - a joint US Navy and USAF operational concept - the authors strategic level argument fails because it compares tactical methods as symmetrical comparisons. Just because Taliban forces and US Army forces in Afghanistan might both employ accurate, precision fires, that doesn't mean both sides are engaged in symmetrical warfare on the battlefield. How forces are used on a battlefield is often much more important to measuring the symmetrical or asymmetrical nature of combat than the weapons forces utilize on a battlefield, and I have yet to see much discussed on that aspect of AirSea Battle doctrine development.

A military confrontation with China would be the biggest national security challenge since World War II, yet ASB advocates suggest it can be handled by just two of the four services. To the outside observer, this is astonishing; to the insider skeptic, it is absurd. Many ASB advocates I have talked with or have heard speak on the subject follow the logic that we will never conduct a land war in China, therefore long-range precision strike is the only practical alternative. What is missed in this line of thinking is that there are other, more fundamental choices that also don’t require a land war in China. It would appear there is an unstated assumption by many that conflict with China must include a race across the Pacific to defend Taiwan; many war games over the past decades have solidified this point of view. Unfortunately, this assumption is outdated. Chinese capabilities now, but especially 10 years from now, simply preclude a rush to Taiwan and would require a very deliberate campaign similar to that described in the aforementioned CSBA report to gain access. Without ground forces and with limited magazine capacities, what happens once we get there? What now, lieutenant?

I have heard everything mentioned in that paragraph discussed myself in person by those who are developing AirSea Battle doctrine, and I myself found what was said by AirSea advocates both "astonishing" and "absurd." The parochial, shortsighted nature of AirSea Battle that fails to include ground forces as a capability in major war is so thoroughly shortsighted that even as a hard Navy partisan I have a hard time believing AirSea Battle doctrine development has as much support as it does. The parochial nature of the AirSea Battle discussion informs me, an observer, that AirSea Battle is nothing more than an idea to advance a political agenda for the Navy and Air Force, and by political I am speaking specifically about justification of budgetary investments.

Competing Doctrines

Army Col. Gian Gentile, writing in Infinity Journal, expresses similar concerns about the impact of optimizing the Defense Department for counterinsurgency operations — in other words, optimizing for the opposite end of the spectrum recommended by ASB. The logic of the criticism is the same, nonetheless, since optimizing forces for an uncertain future is a prescription for getting it badly wrong. Gentile argues that counterinsurgency has become a “strategy of tactics.” He explains that when nations “allow the actual doing of war — its tactics — to bury strategy or blinker strategic thinking,” it leads to disaster, such as in Nazi Germany, where the German Army’s tactical excellence in Blitzkrieg could not rescue the regime from its fundamentally flawed strategy.

It is possible that, like Blitzkrieg, the U.S. could prevail in the tactics and operational art of ASB and still suffer strategic defeat.

So what’s the rub specifically? ASB initially was conceived as a way to increase interoperability between the Air Force and Navy through increased training and improved technical interoperability. Given the overlaps in their strike capabilities, especially in aircraft, it makes perfect sense for the two most technical services to work closely to ensure interoperability. But like its progenitor, AirLand Battle, ASB has progressed to an operational concept to address a specific military problem. While AirLand Battle was conceived to counter the Soviet Union, Air-Sea Battle is billed as the answer to growing anti-access/area-denial capabilities generically, but as everyone knows, specifically China.

CSBA described AirSea Battle as "A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept," so I am unclear how ASB progressed into an operational concept when ASB was actually introduced as an operational concept. Operational concepts are what drive doctrinal development, so if a service was going to develop battle doctrine the logical starting place would be to develop an operational concept. Am I missing something here?

I agree with Col. Gian Gentile that counterinsurgency has become a "strategy of tactics," kind of. It is more accurate to say that the US military developed a population centric operational concept intended to address a specific battlefield problem in Iraq, and the operational concept drove development of counterinsurgency doctrine. That operational concept and subsequent doctrine became tactics employed by troops on the battlefield that through trial and error, led to a wealth of lessons learned on the battlefield and ultimately, a political victory by means of military power that our national leaders could live with.

What followed the successful execution of a population centric operational concept, often generically described as "COIN" although it is much more than just counterinsurgency, was an intellectual Enterprise consisting of a politically diverse group military and policy intellectuals, and it was that intellectual Enterprise (or industry) - through open source intellectual rigor and debate - that began a process of broadly articulating strategic and policy ideas and recommendations based on the experiences and lessons learned from the successfully employed battlefield tactics.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the author frames AirSea Battle as akin to being a competing doctrine to COIN, pitting a high end warfare AirSea Battle doctrine represented by the US Air Force/US Navy against a small wars COIN doctrine represented by the US Army/US Marine Corps. This competition is political, which is another way of saying it is almost entirely intended to influence budget decisions. I tend to think that would explain why US Army leaders see a future where intervention is required in small states that are more likely to be unstable as a result of the rise of regional powers; and why US Navy leaders see a future where rising regional powers leads to instability throughout the world suggesting the focus should be on deterring hostilities and maintaining escalation control between major powers.

There is not a national security policy that settles this debate, or said another way, the National Security Strategy of the United States (PDF) is so broad, generic, and ultimately useless that almost any version of the future use of military forces is accurate, and the the DoD can do just about everything and anything and meet the strategic guidance.

Which leads me back to reminding folks that since we enacted Goldwater-Nichols, the military services don't actually do strategy. The military services are responsible for the development of tactics and doctrines for forces that get pushed up to the strategic level - which is the COCOMs, who develop and execute strategies from the political policies of US civilian leaders. Because the military services are not effectively engaged in strategic development as a result of Goldwater-Nichols, and all they really develop themselves anymore is doctrine and tactics, the services attempt to leverage the doctrines they develop to influence politically up to strategy and policy. The services manage budget and tactics/doctrine, so for them it is only logical to match budget to doctrine/tactics, not budget to strategy/policy.

COIN and now AirSea Battle are representative of how doctrine becomes advocated in political form for purposes of justifying the budgets of the services. Goldwater-Nichols has built a wall that separates strategy (COCOMs) and budget (Services), and the results are that 25 years later the nation has yet to develop a coherent national security policy or strategy that meets the challenges of the 21st century.

Budgets controlled by the services get aligned with doctrine/tactics resulting in the US military being remarkably brilliant tactically but unquestionably adrift strategically. My concern is, and I think the article by J. Noel Williams suggests, that while AirSea Battle may be a smart development for the US Air Force and US Navy towards a joint battle doctrine; AirSea Battle will also be the next military operational concept forwarded as a political idea that acts as a substitute for the absence of a coherent 21st century national security policy.

You know that strategic process Secretary Panetta discusses that will guide budget decisions? We are going to look globally incompetent if that "strategy" reads like it was informed by a doctrine rather than a policy.

Daunting Question

Well, the compressed first course at National War College has come to a close. In just a few short weeks, we have heard from the EUCOM Commander, the Secretaries of State and Defense, several former ambassadors, and a variety of faculty and guest lecturers. It has been something of a whirlwind, but has given me much to think about.

Unfortunately, the busyness also allowed me to avoid addressing a common challenge to new authors: What to write about? Taking the third item of Admiral Stavridis' advice, "Read, Think, Write", here I go: I plan to start a broader discussion of the Coast Guard role beyond American shores with two rhetorical questions at the bottom of the post. Before I get to those, I will explain my concern.

I believe that the public has little awareness of the work of the Coast Guard beyond our shores, nor that the Coast Guard, analysts, bloggers, pundits, etc (I include myself in this grouping) do a very effective job of changing that. In the looming fiscal tightening, questions of value and return on investment should rightly be asked. Those who see value in various missions of the Coast Guard, as well as the Coast Guard itself, have a responsibility to make that value, tangible and intangible, known; not to overstate or exaggerate the case, but to get the case out there. It strikes me that we all talk to each other, in various forums, but rarely is the point made to the broader public.

Limited public awareness of what Coast Guard ships, aircraft, and people do worldwide undermines the competitiveness of the capital projects that enable those missions. I suspect that, for ID readers, this is an easy case, and that I will even receive some suggestions on how to improve my points. My concern, however, is that in agreeing with each other (at least to some extent), we have neglected to tell anyone else.

So now to my rhetorical question, followed by a challenge to us all:

In the foreign policy context, How is the Coast Guard an instrument of national power?

The challenge question to all of you who believe you have an answer to the first (including me): What can we do to better pass that word to the broader public?

I leave both of these as open questions until my next post, which should be two weeks or so. Please share your thoughts on this point by comments (preferred) or e-mail.

The views expressed herein are those of the blogger and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Commandant or of the U. S. Coast Guard. Nor should they be construed as official or reflecting the views of the National War College, National Defense University, or the Department of Defense.

Inter-Service Rivalry

My WPR column this week is about inter-service rivalry:

Because different services perform different missions, not all contribute equally to certain grand strategic tasks: The Royal Navy's contribution to the counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan is severely limited, while the British army does not normally contribute to anti-piracy patrols such as those off of Somalia. Inter-service conflict focusing on resources, therefore, is about the prioritization of particular strategic goals. Each service, like any other bureaucratic organization, tends to believe that its own parochial missions fall more in line with national security goals than those of the other branches. The classic example of a resource conflict involves that of a warship versus army brigade: The units have different capabilities, perform different jobs, and suggest a different focus for national strategic priorities. Nations may find themselves forced to choose between options, but can reconcile limitations by adjusting strategic commitments.

A different kind of inter-service conflict involves mission allocation. In the last century, the need for collaboration between air, ground, and sea assets has increased dramatically. The primary driver of such integration has been the expansion of warfare into the third dimension. Aircraft now represent an organic part of most military missions, from ground assault (close air support) and interdiction (exploitation) to anti-submarine warfare and counter-sea operations. Aircraft are as necessary to the efficient and successful execution of tactical- and operational-level military tasks as infantry, armor, and artillery. However, bureaucratic walls have been erected in both the United States and the United Kingdom placing different elements of these missions in different services.

This was part of a longer piece on why inter-service conflict seems so much more bitter in the UK than in the US; long story short, the answer has more to do with the structure of government and division of power than it does with the tighter fiscal climate. This isn't to say, though, that the US services won't start bickering with one another if serious defense cuts come down. Another implication is that breaking organic elements of a particular mission (say, ASW) into separate services is a really bad idea, because the services rarely agree on prioritization. Giving the RAF responsibility for any aspect of naval air is always a bad idea because the RAF doesn't give a damn about naval air, and this failure to give a damn has dreadful consequences for the ability of the RN to do its job. I think it's clear that the answer to the question posed at the end of this article should be a resounding "no," because the RAF is exceedingly unlikely to provide useful support for the naval mission.

Finally, while I don't want to heap too much abuse on the RAF, it's not a surprise that destructive inter-service conflicts seem to most often happen on the boundaries between air forces and other services. Airpower is an integral, organic part of most modern military missions, and erecting bureaucratic service barriers between infantry and close air support makes about as much sense as creating such barriers between infantry and artillery.

Thinking About the Joint Force

Bryan McGrath's article on The Navy and Jointness is a very timely discussion. For those who have not been following this discussion as it has gained momentum over 2010, or have not heard of Captain Victor Addison, a bit of background. This years first prize winning writer for the United States Naval Institute Proceedings author of the year award was Captain Victor George Addison, U.S. Navy, whose four articles carried the day:

• You Can't Always Give What You Want, Captain Victor G. Addison Jr., U.S. Navy, Proceedings Magazine, January 2010 Vol. 136/1/1,283
• Got Sea Control?, Captain Victor G. Addison Jr., U.S. Navy and Commander David Dominy, Royal Navy, Proceedings Magazine, March 2010 Vol. 136/3/1,285
• The Answer Is the Carrier Strike Group . . . Now, What Was the Question?, Captain Victor G. Addison Jr., U.S. Navy, Proceedings Magazine, July 2010 Vol. 136/7/1,289
• The Joint Force's "Wildcat Offense", Captain Victor G. Addison Jr., U.S. Navy, Proceedings Magazine, October 2010 Vol. 136/10/1,292

The first prize winner for Proceedings every year is chosen based in part on impact and influence - and these articles have had impact and influence to the discussion of the Joint Force in Washington. As the budget shrinks and the services are being tasked to meet the demands of 21st century challenges, efficiencies must be achieved. One way it is believed efficiencies can be achieved is with a more optimized Joint Force, as to some the Joint Force is seen as an obstruction towards more optimized and better utilized individual military branches.

As an unintended insult to every legitimate defense reporter I know, the CNA Center for Naval Analyses folks, like the rest of the strategic community in DC, treat bloggers like Salamander and I as media. While Bryan McGrath is a blogger here on ID, folks who know him know he is not media and is very much an insider. Both Sal and I understand the reasons for the various distinctions and do appreciate those reasons.

Bryan and I don't actually talk much and I was unaware he was going to be at the CNA event on Wednesday, until just now when I looked closer at a copy of the CNA invitation I had previously obtained. In the spirit of CNA treating me as media, I'll play the role of media. Here was the CNA invitation that Peter Swartz didn't send to me, and I didn't get from Bryan.

Invitation: UNCLAS CNA 1 Dec workshop: US Navy Strategic Perspectives

You are invited to participate in an UNCLAS workshop at CNA on 1 Dec, from 0800 to 1700, on "Developing US Navy Strategic Perspectives for 2011 and Beyond." It is anticipated that this will be the 1st in a series of at least 3 such workshops over the coming year.

A draft agenda follows. More detail will be provided in the near future as planning for the event continues.

0800-0830 Registration, breakfast

0830-0840 Welcome. Why we are here. Beginning of a process. Expected product. (Ms. Nancy Dolan, Deputy Director, OPNAV Strategy and Policy Division (N51B) (Project Sponsor)).

0840-0900 Welcome aboard/ admin/ discussion of the larger project (Peter Swartz , Dr. Dan Whiteneck, Bridge Colby (CNA))

0900-0930 Baseline brief & short discussion #1: What do current naval/Navy “capstone” documents say: Strategy, operational concept, strategic plan, doctrine, guidance, etc. (Peter Swartz, CNA)

0930-1000 Baseline brief & short discussion #2: What do current Marine Corps “capstone” documents say: Strategy, operational concept, strategic plan, doctrine, guidance, etc., especially Marine Corps Operating Concepts (3rd ed.)? (Lt Col Daniel Paris (N51 Marine Corps LO)

1000-1030 Baseline brief & short discussion #3: What do current joint concepts documents say, especially CCJO & JOE, that Navy strategists & concepts developers need to know (Dr. Ken Kennedy, CNA rep at NWDC, formerly at JFCOM)

1030-1045 Break

1045-1115 Baseline brief & short discussion #4: What do CAPT Addison’s 4 Proceedings articles (Jan-Oct 2010) recommend & why? (Peter Swartz, CNA; CAPT Vic Addison, N511))

1115-1300 Break, Working lunch, break: Moderated discussion: Comparing and contrasting the documents and their concepts: Similarities, differences; convergences, divergences (CAPT Pete Haynes (N511)

1300-1430 Issue panel #1: Should the Navy become more joint and more supporting of other services, to achieve Navy goals for the Nation? (3 panelists TBD, then open discussion)

1430-1445 Break

1445- 1615 Issue panel #2: Is increased Navy-Marine Corps integration desirable, to change the joint force paradigm in the Navy’s desired direction? (3 panelists TBD, then open discussion)

1615-1700 Wrap up: Restatement of the problem. Discussion of options for the way ahead

Participants are expected to be conversant in the contents of the documents mentioned above, prior to the workshop.

Breakfast snacks, lunch, afternoon snacks and beverage service will be provided. Parking chits will be validated.

Please let me know by COB Friday, 19 November, if you will be able to participate. More to follow as it becomes available.

This event should prove informative and useful to OPNAV as well as to all participants.

We are looking forward to hosting you at CNA on 1 December.

These types of events are non-disclosure, so we will not be getting an attendance record nor any minutes from the conversations that took place. When Salamander and I heard about this, his comment was:

Where's the bloggers' corner? ;)

Methinks they will talk a lot about what we talked about on Midrats yesterday....

He was talking about Midrats Episode 45 with John Patch, which is a really good hour of Navy talk btw. It would appear that the bloggers corner turned out to be Bryan. To add to Bryan's piece, I will contribute a few thoughts of my own.

The DoD is trapped in consensus business models based on "enterprise thinking". This is true in military and senior civilian circles. Leaders want no risks, no down sides, and everyone around the table must be happy at the end of the day, so the DoD can carry the message upstairs with everyone covered at all levels.

This is why today the Navy is covering Afghanistan with close air support from two aircraft carriers, when one or two squadrons on land can do it cheaper and by being closer, potentially more effectively.

Nope, everyone must play, and it is the same with war planning and contingencies. Everyone must play, no matter how smart it is or how stupid we all recognize it to be. The business culture ultimately hurts COCOMS more than it helps, providing strategic assets like aircraft carrier strike groups to CENTCOM for tactical operations over Afghanistan at time when the Lincoln carrier strike group could be a strategic asset for PACOM dealing with the situation in North Korea.

Victor Addison represents an emerging centrist position on Joint Services thinking today, while Bryan McGrath is considered more in the context of a radical on the fringes on this issue. In his article, Bryan says Victor told him they are closer than Bryan thinks - and maybe that's true. Or maybe Victor is being a centrist building a consensus -- which is what centrists do.

I have my own thoughts developed over a year of watching this conversation emerge, but I do find myself in agreement with those who suggest that the Joint Force must collectively evolve or we will watch our capabilities across the entire board dissolve due to paralysis. Change is hard - and rarely do we find leadership in the services willing to change at the right pace to be effective. The story of changing anything in the DoD over the past 2 decades is that change is either too slow to be adopted and developed, or too fast to be implemented well.

Turnover and priorities of civilian leadership combined with the absence of a Grand Strategy are contributing factors that prevent a mature utilization and more effective Joint Force. Joint Force approaches that must be all inclusive for parochial reasons and the perception of relevance is a problem today. We have all seen, heard, or read how the CNO boasts more sailors on the ground in support of the war effort than the number of sailors at sea. The necessity to inject the Navy into ground warfare duties is, I believe, a byproduct of what the Joint Force mentality has evolved into. I believe Joint Force paralysis is reflected in the ratio between contractors and military folks in the war theaters, why the Army would protest the development of an AirSea Battle doctrine, and why it has become more common to rely on SOCOM than going through the hassle of developing the right Joint solution.

This all inclusive, round table enterprise approach has opened Joint Force solutions to legitimate criticism by those like Bryan McGrath - a criticism that suggests we are at a point where the absence of a Joint Force approach might be better for the individual services than how the Joint Force framework operates collectively today. I wouldn't go that far, but I do believe this is a serious problem due to economic pressures, demand on ground forces in the war theaters, demand on sea and space forces in the Pacific, and demand by the taxpayer for the USG to be responsible meeting the broad range of commitments with the limited national resources available and within the context of the nations poor economic condition.

I encourage our professional readers to think about these issues. Guest posts on this topic are welcome, both here or at USNI Blog if you or your chain of command feels that location is more appropriate. This is a complicated issue being taken very seriously by the nations civilian leadership, as the CNA Workshop both implies and demonstrates. It is a political issue, and it is a parochial issue. It is not an issue that can continue to be punted down the road - not if the nations economic situation is going to be handled seriously by civilian leadership in Washington.

The Unbearable Being of Jointness

The good folks at the Naval Institute were kind enough not to put my contribution to the May issue behind a firewall. I made a bit of this argument at Heritage last month, and it is one I will make with increasing frequency elsewhere--especially now that The Eye of Sauron (Gates) has fixed its gaze on the Navy.

Bryan McGrath