Power and
Access ... From the Sea
The Conceptual Foundation of Naval Transformation
By EDWARD HANLON Jr. and
DENNIS V. McGINN
Lt. Gen. Edward Hanlon Jr. is the commanding general, Marine Corps
Combat Development Command. Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn served as deputy
chief of naval operations for warfare requirements and programs until
his retirement this month.
Naval forces make a unique contribution to the nation's defense. Versatile
naval expeditionary forces are almost always the nation's first responders
in times of crisis--and, as such, are relied upon to influence the course
of events, control the early phases of hostilities, and set the conditions
for decisive resolution. America's ability to protect its homeland, assure
its friends and allies, and deter potential adversaries depends on maritime
supremacy and the credible projection of combat power. Today's changing
world, however, requires reconsideration not only of the warfighting capabilities
the Navy-Marine Corps team provides the nation, but also of the processes
by which the Navy and Marine Corps develop those capabilities. It requires,
in short, a naval transformation.
The naval services have a long and rich history of transformation in
their operational concepts and weapons systems. Aircraft carriers, amphibious
doctrine, nuclear-powered surface ships and submarines, vertical envelopment,
sea-based nuclear deterrence, maritime prepositioning, Tomahawk strike
missiles, and the Aegis weapon system--each was considered, at the time
of its introduction, a transformational change that led to greatly enhanced
or fundamentally new naval capabilities. These capabilities have put the
U.S. Navy-Marine Corps team at the pinnacle of global naval power and
given the United States an asymmetric maritime advantage over its potential
adversaries.
To retain our position of preeminence, however, it is imperative that
we look ahead with a renewed spirit of innovation to the changes necessary
to meet tomorrow's challenges. The transformation of naval forces is dedicated
to greatly expanding the sovereign options available worldwide to the
president across the full spectrum of warfare. Inherent in every aspect
of transformation is that naval forces will be, first and foremost, committed
to and built upon the principles of jointness. Naval transformation will
support joint transformation by delivering new military capabilities that
will greatly expand the options available to joint-force commanders to
project power, assure access, and protect and advance U.S. interests worldwide
in the face of emergent threat technologies and strategies. The result
of our transformation will be a Navy-Marine Corps team capable of providing
sustainable and immediately employable combat power, ready to meet any
challenge.
A landmark Naval Transformation Roadmap--recently approved by the secretary
of the Navy, the chief of naval operations, and the commandant of the
Marine Corps--describes how naval forces will achieve nine transformational
warfighting capabilities that must be either created or vastly improved
by the Navy-Marine Corps team in the years ahead. The Naval Transformation
Roadmap organizes these transformational capabilities as a family of mutually
supporting concepts that optimize and maximize advantages that are uniquely
naval.
The Navy-Marine Corps Team
A broad spectrum of technological advances and innovations has set the
stage for unprecedented increases in the precision, operational reach,
connectivity, and speed of decision of 21st-century sea-based forces and
weapons. This expansion of effectiveness makes possible the fullest integration
of the Navy-Marine Corps team into the joint force. These enhanced naval
capabilities--as developed through the interdependent and synergistic
operational concepts of Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing--will produce
and exploit a dispersed battlespace within which sovereign and sustainable
naval, air, ground, and space elements can form a unified force not only
able to project offensive power but also possessing unprecedented defensive
capabilities.
These concepts will come alive in the hands of state-of-the-art 21st-century
warriors enabled by FORCEnet, an envisioned architecture of sensors, networks,
decision aids, weapons, and supporting systems integrated into a single
comprehensive maritime network. When combined with the capabilities of
the nation's other armed services, these concepts will result in an integrated,
multidimensional operational maneuver space within which the joint-force
commander will project power and protect joint forces from the most independent,
exploitable, and secure operational venue of the joint battlespace--the
sea.
Sea Strike
Capitalizing on the strategic agility, operational maneuverability, precise
weapons employment, and indefinite sustainment of naval forces, Sea Strike
is a broadened naval concept for projecting dominant and decisive offensive
power from the sea in support of joint objectives, with reduced dependence
on tactical land bases. Sea Strike will incorporate and integrate multidimensional
capabilities for power projection with new combinations of forces and
platforms, exploiting their positional advantage to project dominant offensive
power from the sea. Sea Strike also will provide fully integrated naval
aviation force options that include both Marine squadrons embarked on
carriers and amphibious ships and Navy squadrons operating from expeditionary
shore bases. By providing full connectivity to--and the early in-theater
backbone for--a powerful grid of national, joint, and sea-based sensors,
the immediately employable naval elements of the joint force will strike
with speed measured in minutes, precision measured in meters, and volume
measured in literally hundreds of fixed and/or mobile aimpoints struck
per day.
There are four transformational capabilities being pursued within the
overall Sea Strike concept: (1) persistent intelligence, surveillance,
and reconnaissance (ISR); (2) time-sensitive strike; (3) information operations;
and (4) ship-to-objective maneuver.
Persistent ISR provides, in conjunction with networked joint and national
capabilities, prompt and precise battlespace awareness at any time and
in any weather. Transformational improvements in persistent ISR will be
created by connecting forward elements with timely intelligence collected
by national, joint, and naval sources, and will significantly increase
the capabilities of those naval sources. This awareness will give commanders
a significant competitive advantage in the application of both lethal
fires and decisive maneuver. Most critically, persistent ISR will enable
naval expeditionary forces to outmaneuver adversaries in the "fourth
dimension" of combat: time.
This improved battlespace awareness will in turn reduce the time needed
to strike time-sensitive targets by linking precision weapons with precise
targeting information. Time-sensitive strike will be further transformed
by a dramatic increase in the precision and volume of sovereign firepower
available to the joint-force commander. Time-sensitive strike will bring
precise, lethal effects to bear in decisive quantity on operationally
significant targets first within minutes, and ultimately within seconds
of target detection.
Included in the array of transformational offensive capabilities is the
ability to conduct maritime effects-based information operations. In coordination
and synchronization with other effects-based joint activities, information
operations will give forward-deployed maritime forces an asymmetric advantage
to shape the battlespace by employing such innovative capabilities as
electronic warfare, computer network defense and attack, psychological
operations, military deception, and operational security.
Finally, the transformation of ship-to-objective maneuver will allow
future Marine air-ground task forces (MAGTFs) to greatly increase operational
tempo and flexibility by giving them the ability to maneuver directly
against objectives deep inland without first having to establish a beachhead
or support bases ashore. Ship-to-objective maneuver is a transformational
application of enduring concepts for operational maneuver from the sea
that will allow future Marine forces to maneuver in tactical array from
the moment they depart the enhanced sea base until they reach their key
objectives.
Sea Shield
Sea Shield exploits network-centric control of the seas and forward-deployed
defensive capabilities to defeat area-denial strategies, enabling joint
forces to project and sustain power. Sea Shield extends precise and persistent
naval defensive capabilities deep overland to protect joint forces and
allies ashore. It also is key to protecting the U.S. homeland. The ability
to extend a protective umbrella far forward will generate operational
freedom of action by assuring access, reassuring allies, and protecting
the U.S. homeland while dissuading and deterring potential adversaries.
Among the key Sea Shield transformational capabilities now being pursued
are theater air and missile defense; littoral sea control; and homeland
defense.
Over the next decade, theater air and missile defense will develop, refine,
and employ transformational technologies and concepts leading to the creation
of new naval capabilities--embodied network-centric Navy and Marine sensors
and shooters at sea and ashore--to provide networked mobile protection
of joint forces, friends and allies, and critical infrastructure ashore
from aircraft as well as from cruise and ballistic missiles.
Littoral sea control will assure prompt access and freedom of maneuver
to joint forces from the sea base. Transformation will be focused on defeating
anti-access capabilities--possessed by small, fast enemy surface combatants,
quiet diesel submarines, and sea mines--both through the development of
netted, distributed sensors and by improving the command and control of
these missions, primarily through linking sensors, decision aids, and
displays with attack forces. Littoral sea control will be substantially
addressed by building a common undersea picture--created by networking
widely distributed sensors, command elements, platforms, and weapons to
share information and collaborate in near-real-time mission planning and
decision making.
Effective homeland defense will deter potential aggressors, detect threats,
and defend the U.S. homeland against asymmetric attacks. But to achieve
it requires effective forward presence to buy time and space for the detection,
tracking, and interdiction of threats to the U.S. homeland. Among the
transformational naval capabilities supporting homeland defense are: (a)
today's seamless antiterrorism collaboration with other military and civil
law-enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Coast Guard; and, (b) in
the future, a sea-based ballistic-missile defense system.
Sea Basing
Sea Basing is a transformational concept that will revolutionize the
projection, protection, and sustainment of U.S. sovereign warfighting
capabilities around the world. The inherent mobility, security, and flexibility
of naval forces provide an effective counter to emerging military and
political limitations on overseas access. Sea Basing also is efficient--it
reduces the need to build up logistic stockpiles ashore that can burden
or endanger U.S. allies overseas and require force-protection measures,
while at the same time lessening early demands on the nation's lift capability.
Sea Basing will provide the capability of maintaining the sustained and
persistent global projection of U.S. military power from the high seas
at the operational level of war, allowing the United States and its allies
to most effectively utilize the international domain of the sea as maneuver
space.
Sea Basing transformational capabilities will include the accelerated
deployment and employment times of naval power-projection capabilities
and the enhanced sea-borne positioning of joint assets.
Accelerated deployment and employment times will permit the projection
of ground combat power within days rather than weeks or months, and without
reliance on tactical ports or airfields ashore. Integrated combatant and
auxiliary naval forces--including the Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future),
or MPF(F)--will become a single fully netted force to greatly enhance
the speed and effectiveness of expeditionary warfare from the sea. New-generation,
higher-capacity combat logistics ships will sustain a secure, sovereign
at-sea resupply pipeline--from land depots and ports outside the area
of operations to the sea-based forces within that area--and also provide
improved forward munitions-reload capabilities for the fleet through continued
research into innovative reload systems and technologies. Accelerated
deployment and employment times will be enabled by developments in high-speed
vessels and high-speed lighterage as well as by improved vertical-lift
assets, landing craft, and advanced amphibious assault vehicles. Collectively,
these transformational new assets will give naval forces the ability to
provide combat commanders with the phased at-sea arrival and assembly,
selective offload, and reconstitution capabilities of a MEB-sized force--all
from the seaspace.
Sea Basing also will give the joint-force commander the ability to expand
the battlespace beyond enemy reach, moving critical command and control
(C2), fire support, logistics, and other assets to the most mobile and
most secure operational environment available: the sea. Capabilities protected
at sea by enhanced sea-borne positioning of joint assets include robust,
survivable, and flexible joint C2 systems with global connectivity; highly
responsive, precise, and far-ranging fires from guns, missiles and aircraft;
vital logistical support--including supplies, medical, and repair capabilities;
and afloat forward staging for special operations forces (SOF).
FORCEnet
FORCEnet is the architecture of warriors, weapons, sensors, networks,
decision aids, and supporting systems integrated into a highly adaptive,
human-centric, comprehensive maritime system that operates from seabed
to space, from sea to land. By exploiting existing and emerging technologies,
FORCEnet--which is focused on accelerating the speed and accuracy of assessment,
decision, and action at every level of command--will support well-informed,
geographically dispersed forces in their execution of missions across
the entire range of military operations. By leveraging profoundly improved
situational awareness and understanding of the adversary, we will shape
and control the information environment to dissuade, deter, or decisively
defeat any enemy. FORCEnet represents the future implementation of Network
Centric Warfare in the naval services.
As an adaptable, mission-tailorable naval system that delivers timely
information to decision makers in any environment, FORCEnet will provide
the means for an exponential increase in naval combat power. It will be
built to conform to joint architectural frameworks, linking current and
future sensors, command-and-control elements, and weapons systems in a
robust, secure, and scalable way. Information will be converted to actionable
knowledge and disseminated to a dispersed naval combat force, enabling
the rapid concentration of the full power of the Sea Strike, Sea Shield,
and Sea Basing concepts with far less concentration of forces.
Naval Transformation Processes
Transformation of any type is a process that depends on a culture in
which innovation is encouraged, nurtured, and rewarded. In today's U.S.
naval/military environment, true transformation is about seizing opportunities
to create transformational capabilities by radically changing organizational
relationships, implementing different concepts of warfighting, and inserting
new technology to carry out operations in ways that profoundly improve
current capabilities and develop desired future capabilities.
At its core, transformation is based on a willingness to constantly challenge
old thinking and introduce new concepts. That means continuing to place
people first and encouraging and rewarding them for innovative thinking
and action. Because they are agile and adaptive by nature, the Navy and
Marine Corps will both foster the cultures of innovation needed to develop
transformational concepts and capabilities to cope with a dangerous and
uncertain today and tomorrow.
U.S. Navy Transformation Process
While the transformational capabilities of Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and
Sea Basing--supported by FORCEnet--comprise the focus of naval transformation,
developing the culture of innovation requires putting processes in place
that ensure continuous innovation. For the U.S. Navy, a supporting triad
represents those processes: Sea Warrior, Sea Trial, and Sea Enterprise.
The Navy Sea Warrior process bridges this future where fewer Sailors,
each of whom needs to be more capable and better trained, will need to
perform more tasks and operate in more complex environments. Sea Warrior
places the Navy professional--active duty, reserve, and civilian--at the
center of human resources. It relies on human systems integration to enhance
productivity and effectiveness by equipping the man and not just manning
the equipment. It focuses on Sailors' aptitudes, skills, and knowledge--and
couples those capabilities with their preferences, interests, and personalities
to enable today's all-volunteer force to realize its full potential. It
will develop naval professionals, including new naval space and information
operations professionals, who are highly skilled, powerfully motivated,
and optimally employed for mission success.
Sea Enterprise is the name of an initiative designed to improve organizational
alignment, refine requirements, harvest efficiencies, and reinvest savings
in targeted areas to enhance warfighting effectiveness. By doing so, it
will reinforce the Department of Defense's goal of instituting better
business practices as part of the transformational process.
Sea Trial is the Navy process of integrating emergent concepts and technologies,
leading to continuous improvements in warfighting effectiveness and a
sustained commitment to innovation. It is based on the mutually reinforcing
mechanisms of technology push, concept pull, and spiral development, integrated
into an enduring process for transformation. It puts the fleet at the
heart of innovation and provides a mechanism to more readily capture the
fruits of operational excellence and experimentation; it will be closely
integrated with the development of advanced combat capabilities by the
Marine Corps.
U.S. Marine Corps Transformation Process
Today, the total-force Marine Corps remains true to its warrior culture
and continues the long tradition of anticipatory change. Drawing on a
history of innovation, Marine Corps transformation can be viewed as founded
on four broad and interdependent pillars. First, opportunity can be created
and exploited best by agile organizations ready and willing to adopt institutional
changes to maximize the potential of both Marines and their units. Second,
operational changes, first expressed as concepts, will alter the means
by which the Corps' operating forces project power and influence. Third,
leap-ahead technology will create new opportunities for the warriors of
tomorrow. Finally, the Marine Corps will promote changes in business and
acquisition processes, enabling the more rapid development of effective
capabilities while ensuring the most efficient investment of the nation's
resources.
These changes will take place within the framework established by the
Marine Corps' capstone expeditionary-maneuver warfare (EMW) concept. EMW
represents a union of the Marine Corps' core competencies, maneuver-warfare
philosophy, expeditionary heritage, and concepts for organizing, deploying,
and employing forces. The single process by which the Marine Corps develops,
evaluates, and captures change to support EMW is the Expeditionary Force
Development System (EFDS).
Although the focus of this Roadmap is the development of new capabilities,
the fundamental Marine ethos will not change. Ultimately, it is people,
not machines, who determine success in both peace and war. Therefore,
every development will be evaluated from the perspective of its ability
to maximize the potential of the Corps' most powerful resources: United
States Marines.
Tomorrow and Beyond
Naval transformation is and must be a continuous process, tailored by
each naval service to its particular missions and culture, culminating
in a set of complementary total-force capabilities in support of joint
forces. In addition to seizing the opportunity to achieve transformational
capabilities today, the processes required to establish and maintain a
culture of innovation must be encouraged, nurtured, and rewarded.
The naval services are embarked today on a wide range of initiatives
to radically change organizational arrangements, adopt fundamentally different
concepts for military operations, and alter existing operational concepts
through the incorporation of advanced technologies to achieve profound
increases in military capabilities. Agile and adaptive by nature, the
Navy-Marine Corps team is fostering the culture of innovation required
to achieve transformational operational concepts and capabilities *
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