Coalition operations will play an increasingly important role in maintaining international security and in the shaping of the maritime environment during the decades ahead--during what promises to be "a naval century." That was the message that Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jay L. Johnson delivered to the Naval War College's 15th International Seapower Symposium in Newport, R.I., on 8 November. Johnson, speaking to an audience that included 47 chiefs of service and more than 160 representatives from 73 nations, stated that the U.S. Navy's continued forward presence and the ongoing development of global-economic interdependence would make the 21st century "a naval century."

"Today's world economy is a global market, with 90 percent of the world's trade traveling by the seas," Johnson said. "Current predictions are that international shipping will continue to increase, with container tonnage doubling by 2010--despite the greater speed afforded by air and land transport." Johnson asserted that this sharp growth in maritime commerce will require continued and unfettered access to the seas--both on the high seas and in the littorals. "[This is] the kind of assured access that only naval forces can provide," he said.

Johnson maintained that the necessity of coalition warfare is one of the "new realities" of the coming century, and he stressed that it would be necessary for the United States to have international partners to take advantage of the intellectual strength and geographic expertise that a diverse coalition affords. "There are simply too many contingencies in this global arena for any nation to be able to adequately respond unilaterally," he said.

Johnson argued that for this continuing shift toward coalition warfare to be effective at sea, the U.S. Navy must achieve a high degree of transparency in its operations--the ability both to use networked information systems and to share information instantaneously with coalition forces over an affordable, secure maritime network. He postulated that when naval coalition forces devised operational plans, they would use modern communications to coordinate their effort across all warfare disciplines--surface, submarine, air, and amphibious.

"They will use this coordination to bring combined, powerful forces to bear at the best place, at the right moment--creating rapid and overwhelming victory."

"Sea basing" is one of several key tactical concepts supporting such network-centric operations. It recognizes the freedom and advantages of operating from the sea--what Johnson described as a borderless domain offering great freedom of action without the legal and sovereignty constraints imposed during operations on land or over land.

During the past 50 years, the conduct of effective coalition warfare has been constrained by interoperability challenges, but Johnson said that they have not been technical or operational impediments. Rather, he argued, they have been political and legal considerations. "Issues of sovereignty will be ever more important in the next century as nations seek to appear distinct, even as our world becomes more and more interconnected and interdependent," he said. For this reason, he said that it was imperative for those forces which come together in coalitions in time of crisis to be able to articulate--clearly and distinctly--the limits placed upon them by their national policies. "Such realities must be factored into the coalition's operations," he said.

The Naval War College's premiere international conference was first convened in 1969 by Vice Adm. Richard G. Colbert with the goal of capturing the varied perspectives he observed among the foreign naval officers attending the school's international programs. The symposium continues to fulfill that mission today by promoting international engagement at the highest levels of naval leadership. Johnson emphasized this point during the conclusion of his remarks.

"By building relationships of deeper trust and confidence with each other, and by increasing mutual understanding and transparency of operations, we lay the groundwork for improving future coalitions," he said. "More importantly, we better prepare ourselves to deal with both the challenges--and opportunities­that this exciting naval century will bring."

DOD Releases Kosovo After-Action Review

Calling Operation Allied Force both a watershed and an overwhelming success in NATO's 50-year history, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Henry H. Shelton presented a summary of the Department of Defense (DOD) Kosovo After-Action Review to the Senate Armed Services Committee on 14 October.

In a joint statement, the two stated that NATO had accomplished all of its strategic, operational, and tactical goals despite extremely complex challenges--including weather conditions in which there was at least 50 percent cloud cover more than 70 percent of the time. "We accomplished this by prosecuting the most precise and lowest-collateral-damage air campaign in history--with no U.S. or allied combat casualties in 78 days of around-the-clock operations and over 38,000 combat sorties," they said.

The DOD review provides a comprehensive evaluation of NATO's first major combat operation, and the complexity of its political and military elements is readily apparent. The report initially describes the prelude leading to conflict. Subsequent sections detail the conduct of the nontraditional air campaign, the role of U.S. and allied diplomacy, the factors contributing to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's ultimate acquiescence to NATO demands, and the implications of the war for both U.S. and NATO defense strategy.

While acknowledging that the reasons for Milosevic's capitulation will never be known with certainty, Cohen and Shelton attributed NATO's success to several factors, including the mounting damage being inflicted by NATO's airstrikes on strategic and tactical targets in Serbia and Kosovo, the political solidarity of the NATO alliance, diplomatic engagement with Russia, the buildup of NATO ground-combat forces in the region, the military efforts of Kosovar Albanians, and the impact of NATO's economic and political sanctions.

DOD's assessment drew a broad range of conclusions regarding what went right and what went wrong during the NATO alliance's overall conduct of coalition warfare and the deployment, employment, and sustainment of its air, sea, and land forces. Cohen and Shelton said that the alliance's command-and-control structures need to be strengthened in a number of areas, including contingency-planning processes, overarching command-and-control policy and procedures, and the alliance's political-military interfaces. The operation also highlighted disparities between U.S. capabilities and those of other allied forces in the areas of precision-strike warfare, mobility, and command, control, and communications.

In addition to providing carrier-based combat aircraft, Shelton and Cohen said that U.S. naval forces in the Adriatic Sea provided invaluable capabilities for command and control, including interfaces with civilian air-traffic-control systems.

They concluded their report to Congress by praising the overall levels of readiness and training of U.S. forces deployed during Operation Allied Force--and by emphasizing the need to retain the well-being of men and women in uniform as a top DOD priority. "Their ability to overcome the many challenges they faced through initiative and innovation is unrivaled among the world's military forces," they said.

The DOD joint statement on the Kosovo After-Action Review may be obtained online at the DOD homepage at www.defenselink.mil/specials/lessons.

Murphy: "A Tough Operation"

Vice Adm. Daniel J. Murphy Jr., commander U.S. Sixth Fleet, and the on-scene commander for U.S. and NATO naval forces participating in Operation Allied Force, told a House subcommittee on 26 October that Allied Force was a "tough operation." "We faced a determined foe with a robust, multilayered, sophisticated air defense; very rugged terrain; and terrible weather," Murphy said. It was, he asserted, an operational environment less hospitable than any encountered by U.S. forces since the Vietnam War.

Murphy gave high marks to the close integration and cooperation displayed by joint and combined forces throughout the air campaign--he co-chaired a Joint Target Coordination Board with Lt. Gen. Michael C. Short, the operation's air component commander. "Numerous joint initiatives such as digital target folders, new collateral-damage methodology, and the Flex Target Cell were developed by our interservice team, Murphy said. He also reported that joint commanders took advantage of the Navy's strength--agile, self-contained strike planning and support capabilities--to attack high-priority targets in real time.

Murphy voiced some criticism of the U.S. National Command Authority's decision to divert the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise from NATO duty in the Adriatic Sea to the Persian Gulf shortly before hostilities commenced. While not disputing the need for the carrier's presence off Iraq, Murphy said that NATO needed to show Milosevic it was "deadly serious." In his view, the redeployment sent a mixed diplomatic signal.

As it was, the USS Theodore Roosevelt battle group was diverted to the Adriatic from another planned deployment, arriving in the war zone two weeks into the conflict--denying the alliance 50 additional strike fighters at a critical time. According to press reports, Murphy later told a defense writers' group, "Time-sharing may be a fine way to rent a vacation home, but it's a poor way to run a Navy."

 Kosovo Lesson: Go for Snake's Head First

Linda D. Kozaryn
American Forces Press Service

 

If it had been solely up to U.S. military chiefs, the lights in Belgrade would have gone out a lot sooner, according to top Operation Allied Force field commanders.

"I'd have gone for the head of the snake on the first night," Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael C. Short said in a 21 October Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The air chief during NATO's air campaign against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's military, Short appeared with Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, NATO's overall operational commander, and Adm. James O. Ellis Jr., commander of NATO forces in Southern Europe.

"I'd have turned the lights out," Short said. "I'd have dropped the bridges across the Danube. I'd have hit five or six political-military headquarters in downtown Belgrade. Milosevic and his cronies would have woken up the first morning asking what the hell was going on." According to the general, a combat aviator himself, the way to stop ethnic cleansing would have been to put a dagger in the Serb leadership's heart "as rapidly and as decisively as possible."

Based on his personal experience with Milosevic, Short said, "If you hit that man hard--slapped him up side the head--he'd pay attention."

Clark echoed his air chief's hard line, but noted that political constraints affected the alliance operation. "Once the threshold is crossed and you are going to use force, that force has to be as decisive as possible in attaining your military objectives," he said. In the case of Kosovo, however, he said, the consensus of 19 nations was required to approve action, and many countries had preconceptions about how to apply force.

"Every single nation had a domestic political constituency, and every single nation had a different set of political problems," Clark explained. "In some there were government coalitions. In others there were historic relationships. Some bore the agony of defeat in a previous conflict, and the word 'war' couldn't be mentioned. Others were long-standing partners with American efforts elsewhere in the world."

Despite their political differences, Clark stressed, the allies pulled together, and their cohesion and resolution got stronger. "The fundamental lesson of the campaign is that the alliance worked," Clark said. "The procedures that were honed and developed over 50 years--the mechanism of consultation, the trust, the interoperability that we'd exercised time and again in preparation for missions--they all came together."

NATO prevailed despite bad weather, political constraints, and the advent of a humanitarian crisis as refugees poured out of Kosovo. Clark stressed that NATO's conditions were met--the cease-fire, the removal of Serb military forces, the placement of a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, and the return of refugees.

Yet, there is room for improvement, the three field commanders agreed. They highlighted the need to address the growing gap between U.S. and NATO allies' military capabilities. Clark said NATO allies clearly understand the gap and are committed to closing it. "This operation had a remarkable effect in spurring European determination and resolve to pick up a greater burden within the alliance," he said. "They really want to strengthen the European pillar of NATO."

Speaking as NATO's naval commander during Operation Allied Force, Ellis called for improved secure communications among the allies and for streamlined NATO procedures enabling timely political and military action. The admiral also stressed the need to recognize the complexities that emerged during the conflict. "As we were successfully prosecuting an aggressive air campaign, we were at the same time and in the same region working to bolster the resolve and security of critical front-line states ... while also conducting massive humanitarian-relief operations literally under the guns of our enemy," Ellis said.

Short noted that Serb air defenses proved to be far less competent than U.S. and NATO officials expected. "We expected them to come up and fight; they did not," he said. "Their MiG-29 drivers turned out to be incompetent at best. And their surface-to-air missile system operators chose to survive as opposed to fight."

All three senior leaders' opening remarks praised the professionalism of the U.S. and allied troops who conducted the 78-day operation. Allied crews delivered more than 23,000 bombs and other munitions with less than 20 incidents of collateral damage. "That's an incident rate of less than one-tenth of 1 percent," Clark said. "There's never been anything like it in the history of a military campaign, and I think it's a real tribute to the skill and proficiency of the men and women who flew and executed this campaign, to achieve that kind of precision."

Commenting on the continued impasse between the Department of Defense and representatives of Puerto Rico regarding the resumption of live-fire training at Navy facilities on the island of Vieques, President Clinton voiced hope that a political accommodation could be reached. "I believe there is an agreement which can be made ... which respects the legitimate interests both of the people of Puerto Rico, particularly those that live on Vieques, and the national-security interests of the Navy."

Clinton's remarks came in an interview with the Spanish television network Telemundo on 5 November. The president said he would give those parties discussing the future of Navy training one month to reach an accommodation.

Following the mid-October release of a presidential panel's report on military operations at Vieques, top Navy and Marine Corps officials told Congress that the continued use of weapons-training facilities on the Puerto Rican island was critical to the future readiness of forward-deployed forces. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 19 October, Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig said, "If the United States is to maintain military forces, it owes its Sailors, Marines, Soldiers, and Airmen the best possible training."

The panel, established earlier this year following a training accident at Vieques that killed a Puerto Rican civilian employee of the Navy, supported continued military use of the facility for an interim five-year period. It concluded that there is a valid requirement for the Navy to conduct combined-arms training with live-fire ordnance and that such training is vital to preparing deploying forces for possible combat. Absent such training, the risk to U.S. personnel is increased.

The presidential commission, chaired by Frank Rush, recommended that the Navy take immediate steps to cease all training activities at Vieques within five years, and identify and prepare alternative training sites and methods. At present, however, the panel noted that there are no potential sites that can meet the Navy's stated requirements for combined arms live-fire training.

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen took the panel's recommendations under advisement in October and, sensitive to the concerns expressed by Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Rossello and other Puerto Ricans, called for more dialogue on the issue before forwarding the report and his recommendations to President Clinton. The issue has assumed an extraordinarily high political profile. In July, following his establishment of the independent panel, Clinton penned a note to Samuel R. Berger, his national security advisor, opposing the Navy's continued use of the training facility. "This is wrong," Clinton wrote. "I think they don't want us there. That's the main point. The Navy can find a way to work around it."

However, the Navy and Marine Corps have not been able to find a suitable live-fire training alternative to work around the current hold on use of the weapons ranges at Vieques. Of greatest immediate concern is the preparation by aircraft carrier battle groups and amphibious readiness groups scheduled to deploy in coming months for combat operations in the Persian Gulf--where a persistent military confrontation with Iraq drags on--or for equally demanding operations in the Mediterranean.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jay L. Johnson testified that the use of Vieques is critical because the use of many weapons systems and tactics are still learned and perfected with the use of live ordnance under realistic conditions. "Carrier battle groups and the amphibious readiness group that trained at Vieques within the last year conducted combat operations over Iraq and Kosovo within days of arrival in the theater of operations," Johnson said. "They executed many of their attacks from high altitude, and their ability to do so successfully, without loss of American life, is directly related to the training they received at Vieques."

Vice Adm. Daniel J. Murphy, commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, stressed the importance of the Vieques training ranges during congressional testimony on NATO's operations in Kosovo. Murphy, appearing before the Military Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee on 26 October, stressed the need for Navy and Marine forces to train, and be ready on arrival, for multiple theaters and missions.

"For the moment," Murphy said, "I am confident our deployed naval forces are sufficiently ready. Should, however, we lose the integrated live training of the Vieques range without identification of an equivalent substitute, we will lose our ability to be ready on arrival." The Navy would always do the job, Murphy asserted, but--without the higher readiness achieved through live-fire training--it would be done at the cost of higher risk to aviators and Marines. 

O'Kane Commissioned; Lassen Christened; Mustin, Chafee Selected as DDG Names