This post continues the Developing Joint Maritime Operations series by examining combat as a category of military activity within the context the Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. From section 5 in the Capstone Concept for Joint Operations Version 3.0.All joint forces are designed, organized, equipped, and trained to execute one or more of four broad types of military activities. These are the basic building blocks from which joint operations are constructed. As indicated above, most joint operations will require some combination of two or more of these activities arranged and weighted to accomplish the mission.
Combat aims at defeating armed enemies -- regular, irregular, or both. It concludes successfully when those enemies capitulate or are destroyed. It is the demonstration of credible combat power that primarily deters aggression.
Historically, one or both of two defeat mechanisms have been employed in combat. Attrition wears down an adversary’s human and material resources. Disruption attacks his organizational cohesion or effective functioning so that even if elements of the enemy system remain undamaged, the enemy cannot operate as a coherent whole. Both defeat mechanisms also psychologically affect the enemy’s will to fight.
When it can be achieved, disruption reduces the need for attrition, saving time and reducing human and material costs. But the vulnerability of an enemy force to defeat by disruption is sensitive to both its intrinsic character and the conditions of battle. Generally, the more rigidly structured an enemy, the greater his adherence to decipherable doctrinal patterns, and the greater his reliance on continuous command and control, the greater his vulnerability to disruption. Conversely, the more imbedded an enemy in the theater of operations, the less transparent his activities, and the less dependent on external sources of logistical support, the less his vulnerability to disruption.
Because they tend to operate dispersed on familiar terrain, avoid regular patterns, and employ episodic and often redundant command chains, irregular forces tend to be more difficult to disrupt than regular forces. More difficult does not mean impossible, however, and given sufficient time and intelligence resources to unravel an irregular enemy’s tendencies and structure, even an irregular adversary can be disrupted. Too often, however, combat against an irregular enemy degenerates into a battle of attrition in which success favors the side with the greater stamina or the willingness to apply the greater ruthlessness. Given the future described in the Joint Operating Environment, developing knowledge and doctrine for disrupting irregular enemies comparable to that which exists for regular enemies should remain a priority.
Combat activities and capabilities can vary widely depending on context. The capabilities required to detect and defeat regular forces operating from advanced warfighting platforms can be very different from the capabilities required to defeat irregular forces that blend in with the civil population. Both will be very different from the capabilities required to detect and defeat adversaries operating in space and cyberspace.
The trends described in Section 2 promise a more varied, ambiguous, and politically volatile combat environment than U.S. joint forces have ever before encountered. While the central task of combat to impose defeat will not change, how to do so decisively will become increasingly complicated. Moreover, while combat is the essential activity in war, there is much more to winning wars than defeating enemy forces in combat. Above all, joint forces in the future will need to be able to apply combat power in more varied, measured, and discriminate ways than ever before.
There is a lot of complimentary and competing interests at play in applying this guidance to the maritime environment. An example of a complimentary interest is the application of the described defeating mechanisms of attrition and disruption against traditional and non-traditional adversaries, while an example of a competing interest in this guidance might be the traditional and non-traditional adversaries themselves. In the maritime environment, ways is determined by means until such a time humans learn to move at sea without platforms, so in examining ways of applying this guidance to operations at sea, equipment considerations must be made.
In his book
Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, Captain Wayne Hughes raises the topic of fleet survivability by noting that one hallmark of naval combat in history is that it becomes a war of attrition. In examining the position of the US Navy today, both relative to the rest of the world Navies and relative to the threat environment at sea today, I believe the US Navy fleet today to be a highly survivable battle fleet. I believe he combination of deadly accurate offensive firepower and the range of defensive capabilities, compartmentalization, and redundancy allows the US Navy fleet to be highly competitive when engaging combat against adversaries - thus well prepared for combat employing the defeat mechanism of
attrition.
With 9000+ ton cruisers and destroyers, the US Navy surface fleet today is a fleet of maneuverable hard points that offers the Navy a wide range of capabilities in dealing with known threats. In my opinion, today's surface fleet is designed to compete during combat operations in a war of attrition against traditional and non-traditional adversaries.
When we factor in the highly capable submarine force and add range to our aviation assets flown from US Navy aircraft carriers, I believe we find capabilities that enable the defeat mechanism described in the CCJO as
disruption of traditional adversaries.
The problem I have with the force structure of big deck aircraft carriers, large nuclear attack submarines, and very large cruisers and destroyers is that when it comes to applying the defeat mechanism of
disruption as described in this guidance, which can also be described as the defeat mechanisms of
dislocate,
disintegrate, and
isolate in the
US Army FM-30 Operations Field Manual, these platforms alone cannot do it. The Littoral Combat Ship has become too expensive and was already too large for this function, indeed I look forward to one day discovering exactly what "combat" capabilities the LCS will contribute to the US Navy other than a single helicopter. As a vessel with only point defense weapon systems, the LCS is almost certainly going to drain the fleet of combat power during periods of warfighting, and almost certainly will end up being used as an enormously expensive and barely capable (due to manning issues) maritime security and support ship.
I contend that absent a system for manned platforms capable of saturating distributed operations at sea the US Navy begins with a serious deficiency when developing Joint Operations against non-traditional and irregular warfare challenges.
You should be asking why?
An Information SystemWe can find the answer by exploring the taxonomy of every information system and applying it to combat. Every information system consists of the four elements sense, decide, act, and communicate, and by examining how information systems apply to combat I believe the challenges for the Navy can be made explored.
With the best leadership and maritime training taxes can buy, naval officers in command have consistently demonstrated excellence in combat situations making good decisions and acting on those decisions, and that applies to decisions made both to use and not use force based on circumstances - another guidance point highlighted in the CCJO btw. An example of using force would include the Maersk Alabama incident, while an example of reserving the use of force was the Strait of Hormuz crossing incident with the blue Iranian boats swarming in intimidation in 2008.
The challenge to the information system by irregular enemies is with the element of sense; specifically detecting stimuli from the environment sufficiently to make a combat decision. The organization and communication of intelligence gathering capabilities and in particular the continued heavy reliance on technology solutions for intelligence information of populations at sea, challenges naval combat operations against irregular enemies.
When the information system supporting combat is working, modern technology combined with a well trained sailor gives the US Navy unmatched advantages in naval combat. Efficient detection and identification of enemy activities allows commanders to execute combat operations with precision weapons to destroy the enemy. This includes both traditional and irregular enemy forces, but also includes asymmetrical capabilities like littoral submarines, mines, and swarming boats. In the absence of a working information system, the US Navy could be challenged by even relatively simple threats from both traditional and irregular enemies. Just as irregular enemy forces attempt to disrupt the US Navy information system by concealing themselves from detection, advanced traditional adversaries attempt to disrupt our communications with the intent of disrupting the entire sense - act - decide process.
The Navy continues to make significant investment towards insuring communication networks and protecting the information system against disruption. It is important, however, to note that in naval aviation the P-8, BAMS, ScanEagle, H-60, Growler, and Hawkeye programs are centric to developing a comprehensive information system against adversaries with advanced military combat capabilities. As Congress focuses on the tactical strike fighter shortage issues, a significant issue to be sure, it is just as important for the US Navy to emphasize the necessity of these other aviation systems. Without them, disruption potential by the enemy is increased and combat effectiveness for our forces in disrupting enemy capabilities will be diminished.
The areas of combat most vulnerable to disruption of the information system by an advanced military adversary include mine warfare, anti-submarine warfare, air defense, and ballistic missile defense. This suggests that just as air and space based systems are emphasized in the information system, underwater information systems must continue to be a priority in research and development towards production systems available to all fleet assets.
As Naval Warfare Doctrine Pub 1 points out, MacArthur’s leap frog operations were spectacularly successful, almost casualty free, and represents an example of operational maneuver from the sea achieved by bypassing Japanese strong points. The Navy-Marine team in the Central Pacific advanced farther, faster, and by-passed many strong points as Japan was pushed back in the Pacific. Today, networks of irregular enemies are using a similar model of maneuvering around our fleet (which can be described as sea based hard points) to expand networks throughout regions where weak governance exists.
Disrupting these operations is inhibited primarily by a lack of actionable intelligence that distinguishes enemy operations and legitimate commercial activity. The Navy has attempted to utilize a number of technologies to close the intelligence gap at sea. The latest buzzworthy capability, Maritime Domain Awareness, hopes to utilize electronic detection in large areas of sea to develop behavior patterns of illicit activities with hopes this terrain mapping system will inform regional commanders where limited assets at sea should be deployed. As computers remain incapable of determining intent of vessels detected at sea, and as computers are unreliable in distinguishing threats from normal behavior in large environments of legitimate maritime activity, this approach is akin to setting up a motion sensor in a mall and expecting an analyst to predict who will be the criminal based on the characteristics of their movement like speed, direction, and destination.
Lessons Learned or Lost
It is remarkable just how few of the successful tactics against irregular challenges used by our nations land military forces have been adopted for use at sea, particularly in light of how the utilization of our traditional naval force structure in dealing with irregular challenges has been woefully ineffective so far in the 21st century.
There are many examples.When the US Navy had to implement an operational defense capability for the Iraqi coast following the warfighting phase of OIF, it turned out the traditional force structure couldn't do it. In response the Coast Guard was called in for resources, a barge was chartered (Ocean 6), and the Navy called in 5 Cyclone class PCs to perform the duties. While I believe it is fair to call this a joint operational concept, the Iraqi coastline is only 58km long! The Navy found themselves scrambling for joint assets just to defend a single fixed installation at sea, and once those joint assets were engaged, only then was the US Navy able to capitalize on the existing fleet to add layers of robust defense to the ABOT and KAAOT Oil Terminals.
When discussing irregular enemies, the CCJO specifically says "
they tend to operate dispersed on familiar terrain, avoid regular patterns, and employ episodic and often redundant command chains, irregular forces tend to be more difficult to disrupt than regular forces. More difficult does not mean impossible, however, and given sufficient time and intelligence resources to unravel an irregular enemy’s tendencies and structure, even an irregular adversary can be disrupted."
On land battlefields of irregular enemies US ground forces have saturated populated spaces with manned combat power to disrupt enemy operations and develop intelligence against enemy forces.
I contend that as long as the US Navy rejects alternative force structures that significantly increase the number of manned platforms able to operate in any region of sea, the US Navy will consist primarily of what Andrew Krepinevich of CSBA describes as "
Wasting Assets" when it comes to dealing with irregular warfare challenges at sea. Armed with the defeating mechanism of attrition, the US Navy lacks sufficient presence to disrupt irregular enemies towards a strategic objective, and because irregular enemies at sea do not need to attack US Navy platforms, the US Navy will also fail to achieve positive strategic object with an attrition defeat mechanism against irregular enemies. While it is absolutely true naval aviation over match all known surface platforms utilized by irregular enemies on the sea, the effective stealth operations in littorals leveraged by current irregular enemies at sea prohibits the US Navy from ever delivering its unmatched combat power.
The CCJO states "
Too often, however, combat against an irregular enemy degenerates into a battle of attrition in which success favors the side with the greater stamina or the willingness to apply the greater ruthlessness." This statement reveals the significant dangers that comes with an approach that ignores the development of an effective irregular warfare disruption capability for the US Navy. Considering the populations on land around most of the places irregular enemies are operating at sea today are already suffering from shortages of basic needs like food, a ruthless approach towards vessels potentially used in irregular warfare could, for example, destroy regional fishing and compound existing problems by insuring widespread starvation.
I contend that when applying the CCJO towards naval combat against traditional enemies at sea, the fleet is highly superior and ready to survive against and disrupt challengers. I also contend that when applying the CCJO towards naval combat against irregular enemies at sea, the current direction of the US Navy emphasizes the survival of a fleet incapable of being a disruptive influence due to its small numbers and large platforms, resulting in a "fleet in being" incapable of achieving strategic objectives against irregular enemies at sea.
Just as in the case of ABOT and KAAOT, applying CCJO guidance to this deficiency suggests the US Navy not only requires significant numerical contributions from international partners and the US Coast Guard to make up the current numerical deficiency at sea to address irregular enemies, but very importantly, the US Navy must dedicate themselves towards contributing significantly more additional manned US Navy assets to exercise control of seas and develop the intelligence necessary to disrupt irregular enemy activities with the fleets extensive combat capabilities.
Until the information system of the Navy develops the comprehensive human sensors and communication networks that integrate green water and blue water forces for combat operations, and addresses the intelligence challenges associated with local populations at sea, the US Navy will not have a sufficient information system to counter irregular enemies. Heavy reliance on open communication ship-to-ship radio with local populations at sea has proven insufficient to support of a comprehensive information system against irregular enemies that use stealth by blending into the local population at sea. Until the information system deficiencies with the local population are addressed through force structure changes that emphasize the presence of sailors in the ungoverned territories at sea irregular enemies are operating, I contend the Navy will continue to find itself disrupted by the irregular enemy in executing sea based combat operations.
In the advocacy of a new force structure to conduct combat operations against irregular enemies at sea, I do not make a specific recommendation for developing networks of distributed manned platforms capable of saturating ungoverned spaces at sea. However I note there are several options and such a system would not require a significant portion of the existing naval budget.
This news is too good not to mention.
