Visionary Concepts & Operational Realities

Putting a Longer Reach Into Sea Power 21

By DANIEL GOURE

Dr. Daniel Goure is vice president of the Lexington Institute and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

Sea Power 21--the U.S. Navy's vision of how it will train, equip, and fight in the new century--was developed in response to the new challenges of the emerging security environment. The first challenge, notably, to borrow from the Bush administration's National Security Strategy, is the spectrum of new threats posed by the combination of political/ideological radicalism and advanced technology.

The former threatens to increase the frequency of crises, as well as the number of places they might occur, and to reduce the response time available to the Navy. The latter: (1) poses the potential to deny the United States access to critical regions of the world; and (2) increases the risk of attacks with weapons of mass destruction against allies, forward-deployed forces, and even the U.S. homeland.

The idea behind Sea Power 21 is to exploit the unique characteristics of naval forces: mobility, "sovereign" basing--at sea, in international waters--and access to the world's littorals. The revolutionary new vision paper also capitalizes on America's asymmetric strengths in technology, systems integration, and global operations to project decisive combat power rapidly and globally regardless of the threat to U.S. forces.

Sea Power 21 has three principal components: Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing. Sea Strike focuses on the delivery of precise and persistent offensive power ranging from long-range fires to covert forces to the deployment of land forces over the beach and inland. To support Sea Strike, the Navy and Marine Corps are developing the Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), a heavily up-gunned version of the traditional amphibious ready group--to which will be added cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. Sea Shield will provide a mix of global situational awareness, air and missile defenses, and deterrent power designed to protect U.S. forces abroad, allies, and even the U.S. homeland from attack. Finally, Sea Basing will provide mobile and protected logistics and operational support for joint forces projecting power into distant regions.

A Commonality of Purpose

The descriptions of each of the three component elements or concepts in Sea Power 21 have one thing in common: the projection of some form of naval power swiftly and at long ranges. In order for the vision developed in Sea Power 21 to be realized, however, the U.S. Navy will require a significant extension in the reach of its weapons and forces.

This will be particularly true for Sea Strike, which involves not only long-range precision attacks but also the deployment and support of Marine forces possibly airlifted far inland. Not only will special operations forces (SOF) and Marine ground units have to be transported inland from ships standing well out to sea, but those ships also will be required to provide both offensive and defensive support to them and to the full joint force.

In providing the means to implement the Sea Strike concept and support ESG operations, the Navy will have to solve the nagging problem of providing long-range, high-volume naval gunfire support. As the range of threats to which Navy and Marine Corps forces must respond continues to expand, the requirement for long-range, low-cost gunfire support must be expected to grow. There are many potential conflict scenarios in which large numbers of supporting aircraft may not be available and that include target sets that do not warrant the expenditure of expensive and relatively scarce missiles.

Following the decision to terminate the former DD 21 program in favor of the new DD(X) program, the Navy has been searching for ways to meet this requirement. The Navy still wants to field the Advanced Gun System originally designed for the DD 21. But, because of the schedule on which the DD(X) is expected to proceed and the need to spread precision offensive firepower more broadly throughout the fleet, the Navy will have to consider ways of extending the range of its existing 5-inch naval guns.

A Range of Possible Solutions

The focus of attention for the moment has moved from the gun to the "bullet." Improved munitions could provide an interim solution to the fire-support problem until new technologies or systems can be introduced. The Department of Defense is looking for ways to accelerate the development of long-range artillery munitions for all of the nation's armed services. The Navy recognizes that, to implement its Sea Strike concept--while at the same time taking advantage of the protection offered by both Sea Shield and Sea Basing--it will have to increase, to at least 50+ nautical miles, the range at which it can provide naval gunfire support.

Industry is working hard to reach the ranges desired by the Navy for these projectiles. Team SAIC, one of the industry groups developing a long-range naval munition, has successfully fired its Long-Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) to 27.3 nm (nautical miles). But significantly greater ranges are required.

Another munition that offers significant promise for long-range precision naval gunfire is the Autonomous Naval Support Round (ANSR) developed by a team headed by Alliant Techsystems (ATK). This round already has been fired to 54 nm.

Range is not ANSR's only distinguishing feature, though. Unlike most competitors, ANSR flies a purely ballistic trajectory that helps to simplify system design and reduces its susceptibility to countermeasures. And it uses a global positioning system and other high-tech systems to provide exceptional accuracy. ANSR is compatible with both 5-inch/54 and 5-inch/62 caliber naval guns. This means it can be deployed both on existing Navy ships--providing an immediate fire-support capability of some 150 guns--and on the new DD(X).

Lethal and Low-Cost

Precision munitions tend to be quite costly. The ANSR may have solved that problem. Its warhead--a derivative of that in the HARM anti-radar missile--weighs approximately 25 pounds, including ten pounds of explosive, and is fitted in a tungsten case that will fragment on detonation. The fragmenting warhead, coupled to a precision-guidance system, provides four times the lethality of a steel-cased warhead of equivalent size. ANSR thus would be a low-cost solution, permitting volume as well as precision fires.

The introduction of new long-range gunfire capabilities may offer the means for deploying advanced payloads other than explosives. A long-range ballistic gun capability could be used, for example, to deploy unattended ground sensors or even mini-UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles).

Long-range naval gunfire support is only one means by which the Navy will be able to project precise and persistent offensive power from the sea. The deployment of the advanced F/A-18E/F Super Hornet strike fighter also will provide the Navy with a longer-range strike capability, one that would increase sortie-generation rates and the volume of precision ordnance that can be delivered from each aircraft.

The Navy's capability for long-range precision strikes will be further enhanced when the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) enters service toward the end of the decade. The deployment of the STOVL (short takeoff/vertical landing) variant of the JSF will be particularly important to the realization of the ESG concept because the STOVLs will be able to operate from the Navy's large-deck amphibious warships.

In addition, the Navy has started to take delivery of the new Tactical Tomahawk, a more flexible variant of the versatile Tomahawk missile now deployed by the thousands aboard surface vessels and attack submarines.
There are other ways in which the Navy and Marine Corps are seeking to extend the reach of their forces in support of Sea Power 21. Sea Shield will require the deployment of advanced missile- and air-defense systems. By 2005 the Navy will deploy long-range missile-defense systems on at least three Aegis cruisers as part of the National Missile Defense program. The Navy's Theater Wide Missile Defense System will support the maintenance of a long-range missile shield for naval forces, ground forces, and friends and allies.

The Navy also is hoping to develop an Extended-Range Active Missile (ERAM) for defense against air-breathing threats, including cruise missiles. The ERAM, although cued by surface or airborne radars, will use its own active radar system to conduct the intercept.

The ERAM will be particularly effective when operating in conjunction with the enhanced E-2C Hawkeye airborne surveillance aircraft, which will provide the platform needed for over-the-horizon intercepts.

The Marine Corps' capacity to leverage Sea Basing will be significantly enhanced by the deployment of the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. The current test program has been spectacularly successful. The Marine Corps recently demonstrated, once again, the ability of the V-22 to land safely on the deck of a ship.

Along with the new AAAV (advanced amphibious assault vehicle) and LCAC (landing craft/air cushion), the V-22 will provide the Marine Corps the means to exploit Sea Basing for the purpose of rapid ship-to-objective maneuvers.
Sea Power 21 represents, in short, a significant evolution in naval doctrine and strategy. It is clearly transformational. What is equally important is that the Navy is well positioned to deploy the systems and capabilities, including the information network, needed to make Sea Power 21 an operational reality. *