Doing More

The Navy is developing new skills and tactical units to provide commanders with more capabilities for the global war on terrorism

By JASON SHERMAN, Special Correspondent

After watching U.S. ground forces shoulder the burden of missions in Afghanistan and Iraq during the last four years, Navy leaders are now preparing to provide regional combatant commanders a host of new units and skills tailored to support a range of new capabilities for the war on terrorism.

The sea service is reconstituting its brown-water capability by creating new small-boat units to patrol rivers after a nearly 15-year hiatus. It also is forming more units with skills to assist in post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction operations; enhancing its ranks of foreign language experts; and adopting a plan to improve the proficiency of navies and coast guards of smaller countries around the world in a bid to deny terrorists the use of the high seas and coastal waters.

“The Navy, as a result of this, will be even more expeditionary than it already is,” said a senior Navy official. “It will have more tools in its kit bag to help prosecute the global war on terrorism.”

These changes — codified in recent proposals to adjust the Navy’s 2007 budget submission now being considered by the Office of the Secretary of Defense — involve redirecting millions of dollars and assigning new responsibilities for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sailors. Indeed, service officials acknowledge that these changes to improve the Navy’s posture to respond to irregular warfare challenges can be made without any fundamental revision of force structure or budget.

Adm. Mike Mullen, while still in the wings this summer waiting to assume his new post as the Navy’s top officer, endorsed the recommendations of a 30-day task force commissioned by his predecessor — then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark — to determine what new capabilities the Navy requires to contribute to the war on terror.

“The Navy is not going to win the global war on terrorism on its own,” said Thomas Mahnken, a naval expert and visiting fellow at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, in Washington, D.C. “There are a number of ways that sea power and naval forces have already played a key role — and can also play a greater role — in this protracted war.”

Rear Adm. (Select) Michael Mahon, head of Navy’s forward-looking Deep Blue shop, led the effort to determine options for a greater sea service role in the terror war. His task force considered a wide range of guidance documents, the service’s emerging plan for dealing with the new strategic landscape and the work of the ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review. Navy officials also looked at the sorts of capabilities commanders in Iraq were requesting the Pentagon provide.

Deep Blue’s recommendations are spelled out in a two-page, July 6 memo from the director of the Navy staff, Vice Adm. Albert Church, who has since retired.

“If this is a capability this nation needs to fight the global war on terrorism and it’s in the maritime domain, the Navy should own it,” said the senior Navy official. “That was guidance we had from the chief of naval operations. That is the basic litmus test we took for these capabilities.”

Along with the aforementioned new capabilities, the Navy wants to establish new groups of sailors trained and equipped for ground combat missions and put in place new intelligence capabilities to determine the identity of surface ships on the high seas. In addition, the memo calls for the sea service to develop improved capability to exploit intelligence opportunities on ships that Navy boarding teams inspect.

But the Navy, service officials said, is doing more than just what is outlined in the memo. The service is improving its boarding team capabilities by providing new training and new equipment, said the senior Navy official. It also is acquiring new capabilities to detect weapons of mass destruction at sea and equipping boarding teams with the means to collect biometric data from individuals of interest.

“They may not come across as that big of a big deal, but they are things that we can bring forward to do right now,” said the senior Navy official.

While the Navy has won praise from many analysts for these steps, some argue they might have been made sooner.

“Look at how long it took the Navy to get to this point; 9/11 was a while ago,” said Andrew Ross, a naval strategy specialist, political science professor and director of the Office of Policy Security and Technology at the University of New Mexico. “This is a general reflection of the Navy’s interest in proper war, and not taking on non-state actors. When it comes right down to it, the Navy’s role in the global war on terror is pretty modest, probably more support than anything else.”

Earlier this year, Navy strategists floated a draft “3/1 Strategy,” now called a “construct,” for maritime power that balances the need to maintain conventional capabilities to provide a long-term deterrence against emerging naval powers such as China, with the need for new homeland defense missions as well as fighting a protracted low-intensity campaign against terrorists around the world.

A key part of that construct calls for the Navy to deny terrorists the ability to operate on waterways around the world. To support this goal, the Navy is reconstituting a riverine capability, which it dropped in the early 1990s. Earlier this year, the Marine Corps, as part of a review of its force structure, disestablished its single small-boat unit. In its place the Navy will establish three new riverine squadrons: one active-duty unit will be formed within a year and two reserve component squadrons will take shape in 2007 and 2008.

“To deal with a global war on terrorism for the next 20 to 30 years, you’re going to need a riverine capability,” the senior Navy official said. “It makes sense.”

What commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq generally require, however, is more ground forces. The Navy, accordingly, is crafting plans to assemble an expeditionary sailor battalion trained and equipped for land combat.

“The Navy is looking for ways to take some of the burden off the Army and the Marine Corps,” whose forces are stretched thin by three years of steady rotations, said the Navy official. “And there are places in the world where we could use this capability to relieve some of their burden. If we had an expeditionary ground combat battalion we could take over some of those missions.”

The Navy is also moving quickly to organize new units of sailors with skills to carry out stabilization and reconstruction tasks such as those in the Seabee naval construction forces. A provisional reserve civil affairs unit will be established in the next year, expanding during the following year into a battalion.

To facilitate cooperation with the sea services of other nations, the Navy is standing up a formal career track to support and promote sailors with expertise in foreign languages and regional expertise. The initiative to establish an “Enhanced Foreign Area Officer Community,” however, follows a directive from the Pentagon earlier this year for all of the services to sharpen foreign language skills and raise the profile of personnel with expertise in foreign cultures.

“This cluster of initiatives is really good,” said Mahnken. “The big macro questions for the Navy now is how to balance between contributing to the global war on terrorism and posturing for what really is going to be a long-term competition with China, which has a military component.”