First of all, yep, I'm incredibly tardy with this post. But hey, better late than never, and Thanksgiving gives me both time off from the Real Job(tm) and enough tryptophan to force me to stay in one place long enough to both think (a very little) and write (hopefully enough).
When I left off, at least before the comments, I had finished advocating applique rocket fires for entry-phase and post-landing responsive fires, possibly using GMLRS/HIMARS fired from ship deck positions. Then we had a good go-around in the comments, which I won't rehash. What I had promised you was some discussion of the relevance and necessity of this capability (naval surface fire support) in the foreseeable future.
There are really only two uses for this capability. The first is to support an active amphibious landing, and the second is to provide fire support for troops within range of the littoral whether or not they were originally landed across the beach. Precision strike fires on high value targets and deep interdiction (at least according to my own windage last time) are not NSFS missions. So we have two situations that might come up - one, the U.S. maintains an amphibious forced entry capability which produces the concomitant fires requirement, or two, the U.S. or allied ground forces become engaged within NSFS range of the U.S. surface fleet in such a manner that their organic artillery support and aviation support are either unavailable or require augmentation.
Several modes of argument suggest themselves. We might argue this by force structure, by trends, or by strategy. Arguing it by force structure is almost circular, since the size of the U.S. Marine Corps is legislated at two divisions - and the Marine Corps defines itself by the ability to perform amphibious force entry. It's not completely circular, though - the USMC does a lot of things, and there's nothing that says this capability couldn't be dropped in favor of other ones such as airmobile assault. I'm going to skip the force structure argument for another reason, though - force structures and capabilities should, I think we'd all agree on this blog, be informed by strategy and requirements. While the opposite causal chain still holds due to the 'come as you are' nature of modern war, let's take the high road and think about this far enough into the abstract to actually tackle the question of 'why' or 'why not.'
We might argue it by trends. Here is a list (incomplete) of the past sixteen years of U.S. military actions where naval or ground forces were required.
1992 Kuwait - military exercises in response to Iraq's refusal to recognize border
1993 Bosnia - military intervention via NATO
1993 Macedonia - several hundred soldiers deployed
1994 Haiti - US troops deployed to Haiti (up to 20,000) in uncertain conditions
1996 Liberia - Embassy evacuation
1996 Central African Republic - Embassy evacuation
1997 Albania - Evacuation of U.S. personnel from Tirana
1997 Congo/Gabon - Standby deployment for evacuation
1997 Sierra Leone - Evacuation of U.S. personnel from Freetown
1997 Cambodia/Thailand - US forces deployed to Thailand on standby for evacuations from Cambodia
1998 Guinea-Bissau/Senegal - US forces deployed to Senegal on standby for evacuations from Guinea-Bissau
1998 Kenya/Tanzania - US forces deployed to Kenya to provide security and disaster relief after bombings of US embassies in Kenya/Tanzania
1998 Liberia - US forces deployed on standby for evacuations from Monrovia.
1999 East Timor - US forces deployed as per UN for stabilization.
2000 Sierra Leone - US naval forces deployed on standby for evacuations.
2000 Yemen - US forces deployed to Aden in response to USS Cole bombing
2001 Afghanistan - US forces engage in Afghanistan following 9/11
2002 Phillippines - US forces deployed to train with, advise and assist Phillipine forces
2002 Cote D'Ivoire - Evacuation of U.S. personnel from Bouake.
2003 Iraq - U.S. and allies invade Iraq to topple Hussein government.
2003 Liberia/Mauritania - U.S. forces sent to secure and if necessary evacuate U.S. embassy in Mauritania.
2003 Georgia - U.S. combat troops sent to Georgia for counterterrorist deployment.
2003 Djibouti - U.S. combat troops sent to Djibouti for counterterrorist deployment.
2004 Haiti - U.S. troops sent to secure Embassy and additional troops later to support U.N. mission.
2004 Various - 'GWOT' deployments in Georgia, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen and Eritrea.
2006 Lebanon - U.S. forces deployed to evacuate U.S. personnel/citizens from Lebanon prior to Israel/Hezbollah conflict.
2007 Somalia - US forces active in strikes on GWOT targets.
2008 Georgia - US forces enter Georgia for relief following Russian invasion.
2008 Somalia - US naval forces deployed in commerce protection off Somalia against non-state piracy from shore havens.
There has been no shortage of U.S. military deployments. While it is true that there is only one case where an actual forced entry might have been plausible - the 2003 invasion of Iraq - it is also true that there are at least two cases where the capability might have been called into play had circumstances turned out differently. I would identify the 1992 Kuwait deployment, the 1994 Haiti deployment, and the 2007 Somalia actions as possible forced-entry situations. I would also tag the 1992 Kuwait deployment, the 1994 Haiti deployment, the 2002 Philippines deployment, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 2004 GWOT actions and 2007 Somalia GWOT actions as possible use cases for offshore fire support for engaged troops even without a beach crossing.
This is not a scientific look at the particulars of these cases, I will be the first to admit. But it appears on first glance that while a full amphibious assault has not been seriously envisioned since the decoy maneuvers of the first Gulf War, there have been numerous potential situations where an amphibious capability and associated fire support have been applicable even if not applied.
I would argue that having a capability in order to not use it, after all, is in no way a strange position for U.S. armed forces. In this particular instance, the assurances that this capability is no longer relevant seem to be somewhat misleading unless we limit our discussion to 'full scale amphibious assaults.' Even then, the capability can serve without use; it is true that U.S. force movements, especially sea mobile ones, acquire a value they would not have without the ability (if not the inclination) to move those forces across the interface - and as the first three posts in this series pointed out, that capability is hand-in-glove with the requirement for the fire support of those troops.
From a strategy point of view, Galrahn has made the point better than I could that the capability for small, agile but capable intervention forces based around the MEU or MEU(SOC) offer the capability to handle most of the notional situations outlined above. One constant of American warfighting has been to consider American manpower a precious, scarce resource (I have written on this and the history behind it in the past prior to blogging here; I may consider posting some of my reasoning if I can get it cleaned up). Given that, American doctrine tends to emphasize the use of firepower as an augmenter of and substitute for troop presence whenever possible. If smaller, agile Marine units are to be used for intervention, then maximum support of those Marine units (whether transiting ashore in a hostile environment or carrying out missions within reach of the sea) is dictated - and as I discussed earlier, for particular phases of such operations, there is no substitute for high-volume responsive fires. If these interventions are kept small, there is even less likelihood that organic artillery assets will be available on shore, putting an even larger burden on external fire support capability.
Finally, I too am a reader of Capt. Hughes and his predecessors. With the U.S. Navy as a predominant fighting force in the blue water, there remains the ability of a materially inferior opposing force to choose its engagements carefully and do disproportionate damage to those targets that the U.S. Navy is tasked with protecting - such as commerce, support or seapower exploitation units rather than seapower combat units. One means of forcing an opposing fleet involved in a
guerre de course to engage, fixing it for your own assets to address, is to provide it with a target that it cannot realistically pass up. The threat of a forced entry operation against coastline that fleet is tasked with protecting is perhaps one of the strongest such motivators - and that threat is only possible if the credible capability to wield it exists.
These are the reasons that I consider a plausible surface fire support capability to be necessary for U.S. operations and for U.S. strategic reasons for the next decade or two, at the minimum. Unless U.S. strategy is changed to de-emphasize the capability to exploit sea control via on-shore intervention, NSFS will be something looked for avidly in the heat of action if those interventions do take place. While I'm not suggesting that such interventions are impossible without it, it will certainly result in much after-action finger-pointing and soul-searching if the need for it arises and the capability is not there to answer the call.
Hence, I spend time and energy considering how best to perform the mission rather than (at present) wondering whether the mission will be required.
On November 5th, 2005 a cruise ship named Seabourn Spirit was attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. It was an unusual target at the time, Somalian piracy was almost exclusively cargo ships at that time due to the smaller crews. The crew of the cruise ship repelled the attack using a long-range acoustic device, which generated a focused, painful noise that turned the pirates away.
