21st Century Amphibious Capability

Col William T. Hewes’ superb September 2011 MCG contribution, “An Uncertain Future,” struck a chord with me.  His mention of Gen A.A. Vandegrift’s 65-year-old congressional testimony that “the ‘bended knee’ is not a tradition of our Corps” made me pause and consider what Gen Vandegrift might think and say today. After looking at recent Department of Defense (DoD) policy and budget decisions and some Washington-based think tank reports suggesting further reductions in the size of the Marine Corps, I believe he would be compelled to repeat his famous line on our traditions but would add, “nor is the rigid mind.”

A glance at the Corps’ illustrious history of innovation, improvisation, and adaptability would bear that out. We have been as adaptive in taking on new intellectual challenges in tight budget eras as we are closing with and outmaneuvering the enemy in combat. That is the key to the Corps’ continued success, in the field and in Washington’s hallways, not our end strength or a single hardware program like the expeditionary fighting vehicle. We need to continue that history and apply our creativity to the growing antiaccess threat, instead of simply becoming self-deterred by what some adversary may be able to do a decade from now. Nor should we return to the heady days of the Revolution in Military Affairs of the 1990s when defense reformers were enamored by technological illusions that magically made the inherent complexities of modern warfare disappear. These illusions have an uncanny history of coming back to haunt future commanders presented with living adversaries. We need to rethink the problem of modern amphibious warfare and reexplain the benefits that accrue to amphibiously adept powers.

As the current Under Secretary of the Navy noted in a speech in San Diego last year:

…the historical evidence of strategic advantage that accrues to maritime powers with amphibious capabilities is significant across the full range of military operations. Moreover, the strategic/political costs of allowing adversaries to prevent access or to be perceived as having created  ‘no go’ areas for U.S. forces are high and unacceptable.

We should be looking forward not backward to World War II operations in the Pacific or the Nation’s Cold War grand strategy. That is good history, but the security context has been altered. As Col Hewes noted, we should not feel that we are entitled to some sympathy or political support because of past deeds, or the sacrifice that many Marines made in Al Anbar, Iraq, or Helmand Province, Afghanistan. We need to look forward and explain how vital Marine Corps contributions to national security are in this modern context, not 1952.

Our entire Marine network must be as articulate and forceful as Col Hewes was and go further by explaining the strategy and operational advantages gained by the Nation’s investment in versatile amphibious forces. 

Strategic Environment 
       

DoD’s leadership has given clear indications that the Nation faces challenges in ensuring that U.S. security interests can be met. The last Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) stressed the importance of overcoming antiaccess challenges. In the last QDR the fourth major mission area is “deter and defeat aggression in anti-access environments.” The QDR was predicated upon a long-term evaluation of the strategic environment. The QDR detailed an unpredictable and dangerous security environment and displaced comfortable Cold War-era planning assumptions and methodologies.

Then-Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates made it clear that we risk deceiving ourselves and emboldening future adversaries by assuming that future conflicts would look like the past. Likewise, the U.S. Joint Forces Command produced a highly regarded description of the future, titled the Joint Operational Environment. That forecast concluded:

…the United States may not have uncontested access to bases in the immediate area from which it can project military power…. The battle for access may prove not only the most important, but the most difficult.

The QDR also presciently captured the asymmetric nature of future adversaries. Creative, adaptive opponents will employ an array of forces, methods, and means to deflect U.S. military superiority. Some adversaries may pose a direct military competition using symmetric means of war. More likely, our enemies will look for niche capabilities and try to employ asymmetric methods that offset U.S. strengths. Due to high levels of global connectivity, rampant weapons proliferation, and the availability of low-cost commercial and dual-use technologies, potential adversaries can easily acquire new systems or enhance legacy systems and platforms to radically enhance their combat power. As noted in the QDR, these capabilities will increasingly be used to deny us access to regions where our interests are threatened. 


Seabased expeditionary forces are well suited for overcoming many, if not all, of the constraints posed in these official documents, and supporting the joint force commander (JFC) in executing joint operations. Freed from the political constraints or negotiating costs of using the ports or airfields of third parties to permit the introduction of the joint force, naval expeditionary forces afford the JFC an ability to both assemble and directly introduce U.S. forces into the objective area. Using the relative security of the seabase operating in international waters, and exploiting the integrated power projection capability of naval expeditionary forces, the JFC can directly control his area of interest, strike directly at his principal objectives, or seize ports and airfields to facilitate follow-on elements of the joint force.

The Marines bring a lot to the table, and we need to be equally proficient in explaining this. Right now, many in Washington believe the Corps is fixated on outdated and risky operational concepts and the most costly or “exquisite” hardware solutions. Nothing could be further from the truth.  Doctrinally, we have never sought to limit the employment of amphibious forces to scenarios that involve only assaults directly against the strongest part of prepared defenses. Actually, for the past generation, Marine planners have sought to apply the tenets of maneuver warfare by seeking gaps in the enemy’s total system, by creating and exploiting vulnerabilities. Furthermore, efforts for the past several years at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command have focused on achieving the capability of avoiding enemy strengths, striking directly against critical vulnerabilities and enemy centers of gravity. We developed operating concepts like ship-to-objective maneuver and capabilities embodied in systems like the MV–22 Osprey that allow us to strike directly at operational objectives deep inland instead of merely conducting costly, manpower-intensive, attrition-based operations.

We need to better explain the numerous advantages we bring to the fight and let policymakers and the joint community make conscious decisions rather than continue to be misguided by advocates seeking pride of place in America’s arsenal with many valuable platforms but narrow applications with untested assumptions as well. 


Strategic Advantages 
       

A robust forcible entry capability affords our Nation numerous strategic advantages.  

These include:

Produces credible deterrent. The capability of conducting powerful joint entry operations at a time and place of our choosing produces a credible deterrent against would-be aggressors. This deterrent is more lasting than just the impact of long-range fires because it threatens regime survival or the loss of something the adversary holds dear.

Negates adversary antiaccess strategy. To the degree that a joint forcible entry capability can avoid defensive systems or slice through, or over, littoral regions, we can negate an adversary’s antiaccess strategy. Since antiaccess strategies and capabilities appear to be on the rise, this advantage is increasing in value in today’s strategic calculus. If we ignore the need for overcoming antiaccess strategies and techniques or assume away access challenges, future landings could become “the Omaha beaches of the 21st century,” in the words of Andrew F. Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. 
       

Generates a cost-imposing strategy.  At the strategic level, our forcible entry capability is part of a cost-imposing strategy. Our investment in power projection forces and littoral dominance requires an adversary to invest in a host of surveillance and defensive systems against the full range of military operations. Conversely, if we did not pose the potential for decisive forcible entry operations, future aggressors could invest more intensely in a narrower sphere. For example, if an adversary was not concerned about preserving his territorial integrity or preventing the introduction of U.S. ground forces, he could invest heavily in surface-to-air systems to counter our air superiority and impose heavy costs on U.S. air assets. Thus, the presentation of our forcible entry capability serves to extend an adversary investment portfolio and dilutes his overall effectiveness relative to our full-spectrum capabilities.

Assures access. In the simplest terms, a forcible entry capability assures access.  We can hope that foreign governments will provide overflight rights or port and airfield access. We might be able to negotiate and purchase intermediate or theater basing, and they may even be robust or mature enough to support major U.S. operations. But ultimately, U.S. interests should not be held hostage to hope or the whims of third-party states that may not share our interests. At the end of the day, the United States must possess the capability to project decisive combat forces into an area where its national interests are at stake. As we have seen in operations in Afghanistan and against Iraq, there are political dynamics at work that will constrain or completely eliminate access to countries and facilities when the United States is conducting military interventions. (See Table 1.)

Table 1.

Operational Considerations

In addition to the aforementioned strategic effects of maintaining today’s robust forcible entry capability, there are additional operational benefits the JFC gains from a seabased forcible entry capability.

        Preserves operational independence.  The security environment places a premium on operational independence.  A seabased forcible entry capability preserves this aspect of operational independence since the joint force is maintained in international waters, based on sovereign American ships. Such a seabased posture maximizes the freedom of maneuvers of the joint force and minimizes the need to arrange overflight rights for airspace or negotiate third-party ports or airfields. Of course, such ports and airfields may be quite a distance from an objective area, even if they were available.

        Sets initial conditions. The ability to rapidly introduce maneuver forces and decisive operations allows a JFC to seize the initiative and alter the initial conditions of a conflict. Using precision fires and distributed forces to mass effects, the JFC can retain the initiative and force the opponent to react to us. Using our networked capability to rapidly transition from a standing start to high tempo operations, we can negate the adversary’s lethal assets and seize a positional advantage across the breadth and depth of the battlespace.

      Generates operational surprise. The ability to use the sea as a wide maneuver space provides the combatant commander with the ability to maintain some degree of operational or tactical surprise. The adversary may know that a naval task force is off his coast, but the depth and breadth of the penetration points that the task force may employ can be hundreds of miles apart. Even in an age of commercially available imagery and information, we can still generate operational surprise.

        Extends competitive space. Joint forcible entry extends the competitive space in both spatial and functional dimensions. By creating and using a much larger battlespace, we can achieve a greater standoff capability from an adversary’s surveillance and fire systems. In operational terms, this means that an adversary must possess larger, more expensive systems with longer range target acquisition or delivery means if he wants to track or reach out to hit the joint force. This imposes additional costs and a degree of difficulty on the opponent.

        Dilutes enemy defensive capability. Also in operational terms, amphibious forcible entry operations have historically served to dilute the enemy’s ability to conduct defensive operations by stretching out his formations in an attempt to defend against potential landings. This weakens the enemy force that might oppose us and possibly delays his reaction times. The diversion of seven Iraqi divisions in Kuwait during Operation DESERT STORM is just the most recent example.

        Poses operational dynamics and dilemmas. Finally, forcible entry operations generate a range of dynamics for our adversaries by their combination of operational maneuver and fire. These combinations pose a series of dilemmas for the opposing commander and his forces. Our adversaries can respond to our deep maneuver by concentrating and moving against us, while exposing themselves to our fires. If they remain fixed in place, they can be isolated and eliminated in detail. In any event, whatever the enemy does, he faces a continuing series of dilemmas for which he has no options.

Some might contend that the United States need not risk its ground forces in contested zones, and that we should rely on our extraordinary reach; the persistence of our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets; and on our precision strike capability. Such powerful strikes, it is alleged, offset the need to make the investment in amphibious assets for littoral maneuver. Such arguments favor optimism over historical evidence. Department of the Navy officials have tried to debunk this notion:

I would be worried if we were going to narrow our power projection capability to a single dimension or mode. This would simplify the adversary’s planning and investment calculus, and preclude the ability to pose dilemmas to future adversaries. We can destroy the adversary’s networks and his critical nodes with multiple kinds of kinetic and nonkinetic strike assets, but these have yet to be proven as decisive. Power projection cannot be just precision strike; we must create dilemmas strategically and operationally.

Rapid force closure. Leveraging the conditions set by forward deployed naval forces and other forward-based joint assets, elements of the joint force will arrive at locations en route to the objective area via strategic lift and self-deployment. These flow-in forces will then move directly to the seabase via intratheater assets. Seabased capabilities will ensure access to all equipment for inspection, maintenance, testing, and selective reconfiguration of tactical loads, resulting in a compressed reception, staging, onward movement, and integration. New developments in high-speed vessels, high-speed lighterage, vertical-lift assets, landing craft, and advanced surface assault vehicles will enable phased at-sea arrival and assembly of flow-in forces. This combination of capabilities compresses deployment and employment times of additional flow-in forces to permit power projection within days rather than weeks or months.  This accelerated deployment provides the JFC with an immediately employable exploitation force or reinforcing elements for the early entry force. 


Generate organizational agility, reach, and tempo. To meet the demands of the joint force, future seabased platforms and systems should provide for selective offload of specific forces, equipment, and supplies. This provision will allow a commander to tailor forces for specific missions. Regardless of whether the mission is a logistics-intensive humanitarian relief operation or a large-scale ship-to-objective maneuver in a major contingency, selective offload optimizes force packaging for employment across a wide range of contingencies. In today’s uncertain planning environment, such flexibility must be built into our capability packages to increase the joint force’s agility.

Littoral maneuver is designed to unhinge the adversary from his prepared defenses and concealed positions, making his force easier to detect and strike. The ability to employ highly mobile ground forces, with organic and naval fire support systems, in concert with aviation platforms operating from the seabase or austere airfields ashore expands the operational reach of the force and generates the warfighting impact. Littoral maneuver also contributes to increased operational tempo by increasing speed and maneuverability while decreasing or eliminating operational pauses.



Conclusion

Today’s dynamically changing world mandates vigilance and fresh thinking. Classical amphibious assaults with long planning cycles, ponderous force closure timelines, and vulnerable beachheads are “old think.” The Marine Corps has recognized that fact for quite some time. However, in a world with many destabilizing areas and with increasingly urbanized littoral regions, we have not seen the end of the need to deter aggression or respond rapidly to crises. 


Nor has the Nation lost the need to rapidly insert combat forces inland and violently strike against our adversaries. In fact, critical DoD and joint planning documents argue for greater access challenges, not less. With the many benefits of conducting forcible entry operations from the sea, viewed as part of a joint operation, remains both a viable and very necessary capability. This capability is consistent with the tenets and operational goals of today’s defense strategy and provides the Nation with a distinctly asymmetric capability of its own.

Amphibious capabilities are well worth the investment required even in this age of austerity. Calls to reduce amphibious capabilities based on old history are overlooking their strategic effect on past and future crises. Accordingly, Marines need to be thoroughly familiar with, and articulate about, the advantages they confer to our national command authority and combatant commanders. To divest this capability in the face of increased antiaccess and area denial challenges is contrary to U.S. national security objectives and strategy. It concedes no-go areas to future adversaries, undermines our diplomacy and alliances, and allows adversaries to focus resources on our remaining power projection options. That would be a mistake.

Without these capabilities, the joint warfighting community cannot assure the leadership of this country that the joint force can immediately and effectively gain access to and respond at some “dark corner” where America’s security interests are at stake. That is the day this country ceases to be a global power.

Notes

1. Work, Robert O., Prepared remarks, Marine Corps Association Dinner, Carlsbad, CA, February 2010.

2. Gates, Robert M., Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review, DoD, Washington, DC, February 2010.

3. Mattis, Gen James N., Joint Operational Environment 2010, U.S. Joint Forces Command, Suffolk, VA, February 2010.

4. Work, prepared remarks.

5. Barno, David W., Nora Bensahel, and Travis Sharp, Hard Choices: Responsible Defense in an Age of Austerity, Center for a New American Security, Washington, DC, October 2011.