USAF, Army Air and Missile Defense, and AirSea Battle

David Axe has a blog post up describing what I consider to be some seriously good thinking on the part of the Air Force when it comes to how to deploy Airpower in the Pacific.  In a nutshell, here's what the USAF is up to:

"By splitting its 40 F-22s into elusive, four-apiece “Rapid Raptor Packages,” the 3rd Wing at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska apparently hopes to sidestep one of the biggest threats to American air power in the Pacific: China’s arsenal of long-range ballistic missiles, primed to hammer American airfields in the event of a major war."

I assure you, it isn't just the Air Force that is thinking like this--the USMC, soon to be armed with the F-35B--is likely to deploy its Airpower in similarly dispersed fashion in a Pacific campaign.  One need go no further than the stated military objectives of the Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC), and other concepts nested within it, including Air-Sea Battle and the USMC/USA Concept for Gaining and Maintaining Access to find the intellectual underpinnings of this approach.  Chief among these objectives appears to be a desire to operate in a dispersed fashion, stated directly here (JOAC p. 31) as “A joint force will lessen its exposure by a combination of dispersion, multiple lines of operations, speed of movement, agile maneuver that reroutes around threats, deception, masking or other concealment techniques, and disruption of enemy intelligence collection through counter-reconnaissance, counter-surveillance, and other methods. Once arrived in the objective area, joint force elements can no longer use some techniques to avoid detection and will therefore rely on active and passive defense measures to defeat actual enemy attack.” The JOAC reinforces the importance of robust Phase 0 operations thusly: “…the challenge presented by opposed access will be determined largely by conditions created prior to combat…Preparing the operational area will be a continuous priority effort for combatant commanders, commencing well in advance of combat and continuing after combat begins…” (p.18).  

Sixty plus years of hunkering down in the Pacific has led to a situation in which a considerable amount of U.S. firepower is concentrated in only a few locations.  The defense of these locations is largely the responsibility of Army Air and Missile Defense (AMD), using the PATRIOT and THAAD systems.  Army AMD forces are currently postured in the Pacific providing protection to critical U.S. and allied assets in Japan and South Korea.  As with any military capability, decisions must be made about how those assets are employed and to what degree.  With respect to AMD, this process is known as the “CAL/DAL” process, which identifies a range of critical targets (the critical asset list, or CAL) representing assets/or locations that the defended force would wish to defend.  The defended asset list (DAL) represents that portion of the CAL to which available assets are ultimately apportioned after a process of prioritization.  This process takes into consideration threat capability and likely raid size, target characteristics, and available defending assets.  Ultimately, defended assets receive protection to a mathematical confidence factor based on the foregoing attributes.  Because ADA is not limitless, some CAL assets are not protected, and DAL asset confidence factors are not 100%.  Virtually all AMD assets in the Asia-Pacific are operationally employed in Japan and South Korea; that is, they are in place and “on mission”, providing air and missile defense to assets that the United States or its allies consider important.  

Japan and South Korea receive this priority for several reasons.  Mutual defense treaties top the list, as does the presence of considerable U.S. force structure in both countries.  Additionally, the lion’s share of AMD related exercises and theater engagement opportunities are focused on these two Northeast Asian countries, which is understandable given AMD’s theater posture and lay-down. 

Yet China’s attention is increasingly drawn South and Southeast, to the nations ringing the South China Sea.  Conflicting historical territorial claims mix with growing evidence of resource wealth on the sea-bottom to lay the predicate for future conflict, conflict which could threaten U.S. interests and those of friends and allies in the region.  And while these nations are not (in some cases) as close to Chinese missile batteries as Japan and South Korea, China’s ever-increasing missile bombardment envelope now includes most of East Asia, excluding Australia, nations such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand.  Both Thailand and the Philippines are also treaty partners with the United States, and Singapore has begun hosting a group of U.S. Navy ships at its Sembawang Harbor.  

So the mismatch emerges; we are proliferating locations and assets to be defended (as the USAF initiative demonstrates), while the primary means to defend them (ADA) remain fixed and largely immobile. Some Airpower enthusiasts would suggest that the stealth inherent in the F-22 (and the F-35B for that matter) mean that dedicated ADA for dispersed operations would be unnecessary or if some were needed, Navy destroyers and cruisers would provide it.  I would suggest 1) that is an unhealthy sense of confidence in stealth and 2) that the Pacific Fleet Commander has other jobs for those cruisers and destroyers than fixed base BMD.  The Army needs to quickly work with the Air Force to add some level of ADA to this package that could plug into a larger IAMD architecture and provide some level of protection to the Airpower there assembled.  One villager with a cellphone/radio is all it takes to target these airfields. 

The entire concept of dispersal has at its heart, the objective of creating doubt.  Doubt about where are forces are, doubt about how they are defended, doubt about where they will strike.

The creation of doubt—and its by-product, assurance to allies and partners—begins in peacetime through the development of innovative increased capabilities and concepts (such as the Air Force is considering here), and through increased and targeted engagement with traditional and non-traditional partners essential to obtaining the operational objectives cited in the Joint Operational Access Concept, not the least of which is force dispersal.  The creation of doubt continues with active engagement and exercises that stress Joint Force mobility and unpredictability while gaining operational experience and creating professional relationships throughout the region.  Should deterrence fail, years of engagement and exercises would have created a multiplicity of potential sites for Joint Force employment—greatly complicating the targeting problem of the Chinese.   To be honest, the PLA does not have a targeting problem when it comes to US forces; it has a math problem (i.e.--how many missiles are required to overcome the defense).

Put another way, while the current operational employment of Joint Forces Pacific offers a measure of protection to critical U.S. and allied interests, it is a known commodity which can be planned against and around.  China’s ability to produce (relatively cheap) projectiles cannot be matched by U.S. production of (more expensive) interceptors alone, at least under foreseeable budgetary environments.  The entire Joint Force--and especially Army ADA--must become more proficient at “thinning the quiver” of the PLA through mobility, deception, integration with other aspects of military power (i.e. cyber), and weapons diversity, all of which would increase the odds that in any given missile bombardment, holistic U.S. defenses are not automatically disadvantaged due to raid size.   

I am heartened by USAF thinking here, and I hope that they exercise this capability often and in many places.  I would like to see the newly muscular US Army Pacific commander (now a 4 Star) step up and begin to advocate for additional, mobile, networked ADA in the Pacific to exercise with and be employed alongside these USAF Rapid Raptor Packages--EVEN if when the shooting starts, the Rapid Raptor Packages deploy without the ADA.  What will have developed over the years would be an operational pattern that would complicate PLA planning.  All of this happens in peacetime; all the time.  This is an example of how Phase 0 employment of the force can act as a deterrent--which is something that critics of AirSea Battle rarely acknowledge as an attribute of the concept.  

Bryan McGrath

 

In Somalia, We Have a Problem

Events over the weekend that included the capture of an al Qaeda operative in Libya and a raid in Somalia are the focus of military conversations I've been involved in since Friday night. I have nothing to add to the news in public regarding the operation in Libya. Well done to all on that action. My focus, as it has been since the early days of the blog, is with Somalia.

By now everyone has likely heard a story regarding events Friday evening local time in Somalia, but because the story has been told many different ways and the media has been running a stealth auto-correct campaign to virtually every news article posted as new facts become known, allow me to tell the story as I know it to have happened so you are keen on the details as of October 8, 2013.

In the late evening of Friday October 4, 2024 local time Navy SEALs belonging to the now famous DEVGRU, or SEAL Team 6 depending upon your preference, inserted into Somalia by small boat near the coastal village of Barawe, Somalia. The objective of the SEAL team was to capture, alive, a Kenyan insurgent named Abdukadir Mohamed Abdukadir, known by the nickname “Ikrima.” As the SEALs approached a seaside villa, the target house, they came under fire from security posted near the villa. A firefight broke out almost immediately and the SEAL team came under heavy fire. Rather than fighting a frontal assault, the team withdrew under cover of helicopter gunships back to their boats and returned to a US Navy ship offshore.

Intelligence

One of the most interesting aspects of the action in Somalia on Friday is that the intelligence appears to have been very good. First we have the target, Abdukadir Mohamed Abdukadir (Ikrima), who appears to be a very smart target for the US in the context of a 'capture alive' operation. Ikrima is a foreign militant in Somalia with ties to al Shabaab Central leadership including Ahmed Godane, ties to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and ties to al-Hijra - a terrorist organization in Kenya with ties to al Shabaab that is believed to have executed the recent Westgate mall attack. As a central figure he represents an intersection between foreign fighters in al Qaeda, local Somali insurgents, and al-Hijra operating in Kenya. His escape from capture Friday night means he is basically a walking dead man.

The intelligence of the location was also very good, because it turns out the reason for high security was because not only was Abdukadir Mohamed Abdukadir at the villa, but Mahad Mohamed Ali, known as “Karate,” was also there. Mahad Mohamed Ali (Karate) is the leader of Al Shabab’s Amniyat division, the intelligence wing of al Shabaab. According to the Toronto Star, there was a third leader there as well, but the name is not given. The journalist only describes the 3rd individual as Abu Hamza, which is not a name and simply means kunya or "father of," which is not helpful in identification.

Regardless, the presence of three major figures - one of which was the head of al Shabaab's intelligence wing - suggests the intelligence regarding the target villa was good. It is worth pointing out that presence of both Abdukadir Mohamed Abdukadir (Ikrima) and Mahad Mohamed Ali (Karate) in the same place would appear to validate suspicions that the Westgate attack was not only well financed, well planned, and well executed but also demonstrates some coordination between al Shabaab Central leadership and expertise across other organizations in the al Qaeda network. It certainly should trouble folks that multiple large, well resourced al Qaeda organizations were potentially coordinated in the attack at a detailed level, even if the details themselves weren't disseminated widely prior to the attack. Combining expertise and resources from across the various al Qaeda associated groups not only increases the likelihood of attacks, but increases the lethal potential of those attacks.

Environment and Geography

When Kenyan military forces invaded Somalia from the south in October 2011, the offensive was a disaster. Invading during the wet season, the Kenyan Army soon found themselves, literally, stuck in the mud. After slogging their way through the mud for eight months, Kenyan forces were formally integrated into the UN sanctioned AMISOM force in Somalia. That's another discussion for another time, but basically Kenya was granted political cover by the rest of the world for invading Somalia. Finally, in September of 2012 the Kenyan force under the AMISOM flag liberated Kismayo from al Shabaab control. The loss of Kismayo represented the recapture of the last major city stronghold al Shabaab had in Somalia.

The AMISOM military leadership projected expectations that with the loss of control of major cities by al Shabaab, Somalia was at a turning point. The reality is, over the past year AMISOM has done little outside of skirmishes near the towns of Burkakaba, Dinsoor, and Tieyglow - small inland towns north and west of Mogadishu. The lack of offensive military activity by AMISOM since the fall of Kismayo has been matched by a lack of offensive action by al Shabaab, which has spent the last few months in an internal power struggle that appears to have been resolved with Ahmad Godane consolidating his power over al Shabaab in Somalia.

Somalia in October 2013 looks very different than Somalia in 2011, before the Kenyan Army invaded Somalia with the objective of seizing Kismayo. The most important feature change from a military perspective is how the posture of al Shabaab's forces has changed from one of a mobile force roaming the rural country in the exercise of establishing local control to one of consolidated control in a more garrison posture. When US special forces went to Barawe, they basically ran into a garrisoned force that had fortified the city, and it is important to understand that nearly every town under the control of al Shabaab is likewise a fortified town with a garrison force.

It is very important to understand what Somalia is today compared to what Somalia was prior to the AMISOM success of liberating Mogadishu and Kismayo. Westerners often describe Somalia as an ungoverned, lawless territory with an insurgency, but on the ground in southern Somalia it is more akin to a dispersed collection of independent city states loosely affiliated with the Federal Government of Somalia in Mogadishu or a collection of smaller, independent villages under local tribal control under a very strict al Shabaab rule.

In the north with Somaliland and Puntland - both territories are officially unrecognized but self-declared sovereign, autonomous but not yet officially independent states, and are not the focus of this discussion.

Obviously Somalia is much more complicated than I can summarize in a few paragraphs, but I feel this background is necessary for discussing the broader points below that are more relevant to this audience.

US Military and Somalia

In the last week of September, USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) was sent to Djibouti to offload all elements of the 26 MEU and take on board special operations forces including the SEAL team that executed the raid this previous weekend. When a US Navy ship has it's command authority switched over to SOCOM, there are a number of details involved, particularly when it involves an amphibious ship. First, all Marine Corps equipment is offloaded - air, sea, land - everything Marine Corps is taken off the ship. Special operations forces bring it's own everything - including aviation, and there is no such thing as "Joint" in the context of terminology used elsewhere when discussing the US military. There is no such thing as a traditional COCOM command structure for these type of military operations either. Basically, when SOCOM needs something from a COCOM for assistance in situations like Somalia, they tell the COCOM what to give them. It is a one way street, and the COCOM that is supposed to run military operations is often just lucky to get a memo after the fact regarding what happened. It shouldn't be this way, but this is the way counter terrorism policy under the Obama administration works when it comes to special operations forces, some drone activities, and Cyber warfare sourced from DC.

Command authority for special operations off Somalia are directed by the Joint Staff in DC and the National Security Council, with SOCOM integrated throughout. The COCOM is a sideshow when it comes to command authority of these kind of operations.

SOCOM is bringing the tactical and operational lessons learned from Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond to Somalia, with step one being grab some bad guys for intelligence purposes. It would be a mistake to call the events of last Friday evening a failure, because failing a primary objective is not the same as a failure. The reaction by al Shabaab since the Friday night raid suggests the impacts have, in fact, been anything but a failure.

In response to the raid by US special forces it is noteworthy al Shabaab Central leadership has been remarkably quiet, despite some in western media describing the US Navy SEAL action as a failure. You would think if they saw the events of Friday night as a victory they would be out shouting as much as loud as possible. Not so, none of the major players are doing any such thing. When US special forces hit the villa with some of al Shabaab's top people inside, considerable fear and doubt was injected into the organization. The population in Barawe, through Tuesday morning in Somalia, remains in lockdown with a curfew being enforced. Reinforcements have been sent to increase the garrison there. US intelligence was ultimately too good for al Shabaab's comfort level, and it is a good bet they have spent the last few days turning their own organization inside-out trying to plug security leaks.

Putting doubt into the enemy force is a feature of US special operations.

But the core problem still exists, and someone in the DoD needs to speak up. Somalia under al Shabaab in October of 2013 is a distributed garrison. In the history of special operations in Somalia, I am unaware of a single special operations incident in any area controlled by al Shabaab that took place in a populated town or city that didn't result in a major battle. Jessica Buchanan was in a secluded rural area nowhere near a town. Warsame was taken offshore. Indeed, every reported special operations action by every country that has been reported in the last several years took place outside a populated town or city. There should be no expectation that US special forces will successfully conduct any major operation without a major battle inside an al Shabaab controlled population center, because it has never happened.

And yet, that's apparently the new policy of the Obama administration. The US is apparently going to attempt to conduct low level military operations inside Somalia against al Shabaab forces that are postured like traditional Army forces with an expectation of success and a low profile. To protect SOCOM rice bowls, we are not going to use military forces in the region that operate under COCOM control, because SOCOM is not a joint force and in this case, insists it should not operate with the joint force. There will be no heavy forces provided by the Marine Corps available to help SOCOM if things go bad, and that is an intentional choice that the Command authority for Somalia operations - the Joint Staff in DC and the National Security Council - endorses.

It is policy to discard lessons from 1993 learned in blood in Somalia, but good luck trying to get an explanation from Susan Rice why this policy makes sense, because she is probably completely clueless smiling and nodding to her SOCOM handler oblivious to the details. The lack of experience on the President's National Security Council really does matter, and this is yet another example. Maybe General Dempsey should be asked that question, although given his leadership record, expect him to simply punt the answer to someone not picking up the phone at SOCOM.

I have long believed US special operations forces are incredible, intelligent, and always make good choices, but I have to admit I'm struggling with the policy that has been developed and is being executed by the Obama administration in Somalia in October 2013. From the outside looking in, this looks like SOCOM defending rice bowls for no reason other than defending rice bowls, and while I understand the political reluctance to use Marines in Somalia, it is very hard for me to believe the US is making the best use of Special Forces in Somalia when all of the targets of value are postured in military garrisons.

That isn't going to work.

Looking Ahead

It is going to be interesting to watch Somalia unfold over the next few weeks. I do not see a scenario where special forces find much success trying to grab useful intelligence sources from the fortified town areas al Shabaab controls, because al Shabaab knows we are coming and will have a huge numerical advantage in every fight. Does that mean President Obama will do nothing? Unlikely. The question is, how far is the President willing to go to achieve a meaningful strategic victory against al Shabaab?

Let's be honest, a drone strike on that villa Friday night would have been a huge victory for the US. It is unclear if we would have known how effective the drone strike would have been, but had the US killed Abdukadir Mohamed Abdukadir (Ikrima) and Mahad Mohamed Ali (Karate) that would have been a huge counter terrorism win for the US against al Shabaab.

Some of the instant analysis following this past weekends events suggest the President is moving away from a drone centric counter-terrorism strategy. Not so fast, because in Somalia his preferred alternative of using special operations forces on the ground isn't likely to work out well against garrisoned military forces. That is going to force a decision by the President:

1. Increase the use of Drones in Somalia.
2. Use the rest of the Joint Force as designed to augment special operations on the ground.
3. Nibble ineffectively around the edges of towns and in rural areas with SOF.

If the US tries to operate SOF in the fortified, garrisoned towns al Shabaab has control of, don't expect things to go well, because history consistently says it will not. The US faces significant operational problems in Somalia if the nation is indeed serious about increasing counter terrorism operations against al Shabaab. The celebrated option this week is using special operations forces on the ground, but the reality is, Somalia is the wrong place to send in lightly armed military forces, and US history in Somalia is a story why that approach to al Shabaab is a bad idea. In Somalia to use special operations forces on the ground effectively the options are either to heavily increase the use of drone strikes to wither down enemy force, or use heavily armed Marines to augment special operations forces in reducing the threat from the garrisons.

The use of Marines and assets of the Joint Force has the potential to significantly increase civilian casualties and the likelihood of US casualties, although used in hit and run operations also give the US a much higher potential for success in significantly damaging al Shabaab. That option may not be politically possible or desirable though.

Which takes us back to contemplating the use of drones, whose demise in recent days has been widely overstated.

AEI/Heritage Project for the Common Defense (Navy) Weekly Read Board

"Eyeing Gulf shipping, Iran's Mass Producing Submarines," by Zachary Keck (The Diplomat, 09/28)

"How doing more with less is hurting sailors- and the Navy," by Sam Fellman (Navy Times, 09/30)

"From Syria to South China Sea, Navies Cruise Back into Vogue," by Peter Apps (Reuters, 09/30)

"China-U.S. Military Ties Grow As Countries Eye Each Other At Sea" (Bloomberg News, 09/30)

"India and the Rise of the Indo-Pacific," by Vivek Mishra (The Diplomat, 09/30)

"Naval Supremacy Cannot be "Piggybacked" on Small Ships," by Lazarus (Information Dissemination, 09/30)

"China's Rising Tide in the Caribbean," by Rush Doshi & David Walter (Wall Street Journal, 09/030)

"We must maintain our power on the seas," by Ray Mabus (San Diego Union-Tribune, 10/02)

"Why America Needs Aircraft Carriers," by Scott C. Truver (Breaking Defense, 10/02)

"S. Korea-U.S. alliance under pressure from regional interests," (Chosun Ilbo, 10/02)

"Nonessential: Has Obama Given Up on the Asia Pivot?" by Alex N. Wong and Lanhee Chen (Foreign Policy, 10/02)

"How the U.S. Navy Handles Budget Cuts," by James R. Holmes (The Diplomat, 10/03)

"New Ship News: Sub Launched, Carrier Prepped, LCS Delivered," by Christopher Cavas (Defense News, 10/03)

"U.S. and Japan Agree to Broaden Military Alliance," by Jennifer Steinhauer and Martin Fackler (New York Times, 10/04)

"Asian superpowers jostle to join the aircraft carrier club," by Peter Shadbolt (CNN International, 10/04)

Bryan McGrath

An Apology, and a Book

First things first, I owe Galrahn and the readership here an apology. Over the last year or so my effort at Information Dissemination has slackened, with most of my contributions consisting of links to my work in other places. This post doesn't actually change that trend, but it does portend changes, as I'm now very close to finishing copy edits on my book. Much remains to be done, but I think now that I can finally begin redirecting my attention back to the kind of maritime and military questions that animate readers of this blog. Thanks very much for your patience.

With respect to the book... it's pretty much done, and it's available for pre-order at Amazon, at the University Press of Kentucky website, and elsewhere. It's an argument that readers at ID will be familiar with, and are likely to have strong opinions about, but it's at considerably greater length than the previous articles I've published. UPK has an eBook loyalty program that provides anyone who purchases a physical copy of the book with an electronic copy; take this into account when making a purchase decision. Publication is scheduled for March 6, 2014; I would obviously be pleased if you bought your favorite airman a dozen or so copies.

Because I consider the book a single, if central, part of a larger academic project, I'm also devoting some time to a Facebook page and a twitter feed. At the former I'm posting photos and documents that I came across during my work, and at the latter I'm tweeting a wide variety of aviation-oriented links, as well as book-tweeting works such as Richard Overy's immense, majestic Bombing War. Take a look if you're interested.

Clancy

Rest in peace, Mr. Clancy.