From Defense Aerospace

 

New Maritime Strategy Released

(Source: US Department of Defense; issued Oct. 17, 2007)

 

The Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard have released “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower,” a unified maritime strategy that explains the comprehensive role of the sea services in an era marked by increased globalization and change. This is the first time a unified maritime strategy has been signed by all three of the sea services.

 

The strategy integrates seapower with other elements of national power in addition to that of friends, partners and allies. It states that protecting the homeland and winning the nation’s wars is matched by a corresponding commitment to preventing war. Additionally, it codifies the requirement for continued development and application of existing core capabilities of forward presence, deterrence, sea control and power projection, while recognizing the need for expanded capabilities of maritime security and humanitarian assistance and disaster response.

 

“This strategy addresses the balance of capabilities of our maritime services. It reaffirms our core capabilities of forward presence, deterrence, sea control and power projection. It also commits our maritime forces to increased international cooperation for the benefit of all,” said Navy Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of Naval Operations. “It reflects the expectation of the people of the United States to be a strong maritime force to protect our homeland and work collaboratively with partners around the world to secure and stabilize the global waterways that are critical to our prosperity.”

 

“While we must maintain a balance of forces to be able to deliver credible combat power as deterrence, we also believe preventing wars is as important as winning wars,” said Marine Gen. James Conway, Commandant, U.S Marine Corps. “We need to be the most ready when the nation is least ready.”

 

“Keeping the seas safe and secure from a broad range of threats and hazards is in everyone's best interest, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, Commandant, U.S. Coast Guard."The key to global prosperity and security is through cooperation and coordination."

 

The strategy was developed collaboratively, using an open and inclusive approach that drew upon the insights of academic, business, civic and military leaders and strategists. The resulting strategy binds maritime services more closely together than they have ever been before to promote stability, security and prosperity at home and abroad.

 

 

Sea Services Unveil New Maritime Strategy

(Source: US Department of Defense; issued Oct. 17, 2007)

 

WASHINGTON --- The new U.S. maritime strategy elevates war prevention to the same level of importance as warfighting. Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations; Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps; and Adm. Thad W. Allen, commandant of the Coast Guard, today unveiled “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower” at the International Seapower Symposium, in Newport, R.I.

 

Representatives from 98 countries attended the symposium. Roughead said it was fitting that the new strategy was briefed at the event, because it is an outgrowth of talks with allies that began at the symposium two years ago.

 

“The American people expect -- demand -- that we as a Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard remain strong,” the admiral said. “They also expect our services to defend their territory and to be able to protect our citizens.”

 

This is the traditional mission of a maritime strategy, but the American people also expect U.S. naval forces to cooperate with maritime forces of other nations. U.S. security and prosperity “is completely linked to security and prosperity of other nations around the world,” Roughead said.

 

The new maritime strategy calls on the Navy to develop certain strategic imperatives. “We believe we must be a global force, a globally positioned force,” Roughead said.

 

U.S. maritime forces must have credible combat power “that can limit various regional issues, that can deter conflict, and that can fight and win when called upon to do so.” The Navy must be able to work with others, but also must be able to fight and win without allies, if needed, he said.

 

U.S. naval forces will be globally distributed but will be concentrated in two general areas: the western Pacific and the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean region. Those forces must be able to be moved, brought together, shaped and structured so the U.S. Navy can conduct operations around the world, Roughead said. They also need to be able to work with long-standing allies and new partners.

 

Maritime forces must be able to conduct sea-control operations, and they must be able to project power. “When access is denied, we must have the capability to project power and to maintain those capabilities as enduring capabilities,” the admiral said.

 

But in addition to maritime security, the strategy calls for an expanded core capability: disaster response and humanitarian assistance. The Indonesian tsunami that ravaged the Indian Ocean basin in 2004 is a case in point for the need for this capability. Maritime forces of many nations converged upon the area and saved countless lives.

 

But there has to be a basis for those forces to come together. “We develop the relationships; we develop the procedures; we develop the methods that allow us to be more effective should something like that happen,” Roughead said. And this is not just an international issue, as the military and maritime response following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 proves, he said.

 

The key to the maritime strategy is trust, Roughead said. “We believe that trust cannot be surged. Trust is not something that has a switch and you can turn on and off,” he said. “Trust is something that must be built over time. Trust is built through discussions, operations, activities and exercises and through initiatives that each of us may undertake and bring others into. It is built on seeking opportunities to work more closely together.”

 

The admiral said he especially wants young naval officers and sailors to participate in military-to-military exchanges. Relationships with members of other navies must be developed so that when the maritime forces serve together it is not the first time the sailors have met.

 

Conway said the Marine Corps absolutely agrees with the new strategy. But, given the pressure of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it may be some time before his service can embrace it fully, he added. “We are closer to the United States Army than we have been for a long, long time,” Conway said. “We have been operating alongside them -- intertwined with them really -- over the last four, five years.”

 

The Marine Corps is an expeditionary force by nature, and having 26,000 Marines in a land battle in Anbar province takes some of that capability from the corps. “We go down to the sea in ships,” he said. “But right now, we are very much taking on the profile of a second land army.

 

“We have to go through an expeditionary filter when we get out of there to get back to a lighter, faster, more hard-hitting capability that is deployable aboard our nation’s ships.”

 

Allen said the U.S. Coast Guard completely subscribes to the strategy. “It reinforces the time-honored missions we carried out in this country since 1790,” he said. “It reinforces the Coast Guard maritime strategy of safety, security and stewardship, and it reflects not only the global reach of our maritime services but the need to integrate and synchronize and act with our coalition and international partners to not only win wars … but to prevent wars.”

 

Allen called the new strategy a “convergence of ideas and leadership” and said it represents a step “forward in a very uncertain future and an era of persistent, irregular conflict.”

 

Roughead said the global system in place today requires this maritime strategy. The global system changes every day as changes occur among people, nations, economies, law and knowledge. “Change is a good thing, because change gives us the opportunities to make adjustments to pursue new initiatives, and that’s what the strategy is about,” he said.

Click here to go to the Maritime Strategy home page (with text, video, photo files), on the US Navy website.

From Defense Aerospace

 

Op-Ed: New Maritime Strategy: Three Cheers, and Three Complaints

(Source: The Lexington Institute; issued Oct 23, 2007)

By Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.

 

On October 17, the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard unveiled a new maritime strategy. This is the first time that all three sea services have labored to produce a common strategic vision, and it is thoroughly convincing.

 

The strategy argues that the global order is being transformed by new technology, new trading patterns, and new threats. The shared task of the sea services must be to use their mastery of the seas to protect global peace and prosperity through the effective execution of six missions: forward presence, conflict deterrence, sea control, power projection, maritime security and humanitarian assistance.

 

Whether you believe that the nation is in a long peace or a long war, the new maritime strategy is sensible and appealing.

 

First, there is an emphasis on cooperation and sharing in the pursuit of global security; this ethos extends not just to the three U.S. sea services, but to their overseas counterparts whose assistance is necessary in policing the world's oceans, coastlines and inland waterways.

 

Second, there is a recognition of the need for interoperability among domestic and foreign sea services to assure they can mesh effectively; all participating forces must have the training and technology to participate in the networked and distributed operations of the future.

 

Third, there is an understanding of the requirement for improved "maritime domain awareness" in monitoring emerging threats; the strategy stresses the need for better surveillance capabilities and better cultural/linguistic skills in dealing with maritime and littoral adversaries.

 

It is hard to argue with such a reasonable approach to global security. However, there are three issues that mar the credibility of the new maritime strategy.

 

First of all, while cooperation and shared purpose are fine values, they often don't seem to be driving the way the three sea services deal with each other today. The harshness with which they attack each other's motives and programs when talking to third parties make the Army and Air Force sound like Mary Kate and Ashley (the Olsen twins). It would be a useful test of how committed the sea services really are to future cooperation to see whether the Marine Corps can stop criticizing the Navy's carrier-based Super Hornet, the Navy can stop criticizing the Marine variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, and the Coast Guard can stay in its lane on overseas missions.

 

Second, the new maritime strategy makes it sound like the three sea services can achieve overseas military objectives by themselves without depending on other components of the joint force. The reality is a little different.

 

Most of the global connectivity, reconnaissance, navigation and weather information the sea services depend on is provided via satellites managed by the Air Force. Sea-based aircraft can't get very far inland in Southwest Asia or the Western Pacific without aerial refueling from Air Force tankers. Nothing in the current sea-service arsenal remotely approaches the overland persistence of a Global Hawk surveillance drone or the survivability of a B-2 bomber. And we all know what would have happened to the Marines if they were sent to secure Iraq without the Army. So perhaps the net of cooperation needs to be cast a bit more broadly to capture all the key contributors to future military success.

 

Finally, no amount of cooperation can compensate for the corrosive consequences of a naval shipbuilding program that is dead in the water. You can't sustain global maritime supremacy by buying one submarine a year and one aircraft carrier every five years. And you can't fix a fouled-up shipbuilding sector by launching a political jihad against the handful of shipyards that have survived a generation of Navy mismanagement.

 

The Navy needs to settle now on what warships it wants for the future and start building them at a much faster rate, otherwise it will lack the tools to carry out all its high-minded strategic concepts.