By Eric Lies

The United States Navy has set a course that will see it morph into an army on the sea. The differentiating factors between the sea services and its landbound compatriots are fast eroding, diminishing the value of the fleet as its capabilities are more constrained. Traditionally, the utility and strength of the U.S. Navy revolved around the supreme maneuverability of the fleet and its ability to pass without a trace, skills the U.S. Army could only dream of. Now, however, fleets have never been more visible or more movement constrained, exposing them to the same strategic limitations an army on campaign faces. Adding to these challenges is the development of a set-piece mentality within the force over the previous decades as the U.S. Navy acted as mobile strike assets for ground wars. Redressing this army-fication, however, will be key to ensuring the continued success of the sea services and ultimately the safety of the United States.

This article will unfortunately be short on answers but long on questions and identifying the fundamental problems the Navy and Marine Corps team faces. Correctly identifying these issues now will save immense amounts of misplaced effort and, more importantly, lives should war break out. Therefore, this piece is written more as an opening statement in the discussion as opposed to a neat, simple solution, if such a thing can even exist in this instance.

Hiding in a Fishbowl

Armies are traditionally easier to track than navies. They operate in the same domain that people live in and the opportunities to observe their movements are frequent. This is the case even when their direct movements aren’t recorded by opposing forces. Civilians may watch and then talk carelessly, spreading the information. Physical evidence such as disturbed fields or damaged roads are also left behind for the keen observer. The pieces are there to pick up.

In ages past, once a fleet left harbor there was practically no way of knowing where it was operating. Barring a lucky sighting or maintaining a visual track, difficult in the best of circumstances, the surest way of locating a fleet was to correctly identify where it was going and lie in wait. The ability to disappear upon setting sail largely holds when there’s a large capability gap, such as when the combatants are the United States and minor powers or terrorist organizations. This would not be the case if the United States were to engage a peer or near peer competitor.

Much like how armies leave behind evidence when travelling, modern navies do too. The combination of long-range radar/sonar, satellite surveillance, drones, and signals intelligence gives modern commanders unprecedented ability to locate and track fleets. Permanent sensors, such as fixed array sonar systems, provide real time monitoring of vital transit lanes and vast swaths of the ocean without sending out ships or aircraft. Current radar technology routinely allows for identification and tracking of vessels hundreds of kilometers away, a range that will only increase as AI and algorithmic improvements are made. With a dense enough satellite constellation, consistent satellite imagery will also make fleet transits readily trackable via image analysis. This says nothing of accidental leaks of position by sailors using various apps or devices.

The development of autonomous systems allows for the surveillance and identification zones to be pushed out even further. With low to no risk to manned assets, forces can deploy additional sensors that loiter nearly indefinitely, turning on only when needed, acting as relays for each other, and casting a wide detection net. These technologies will only become more readily available and cheaper with time, exacerbating commander’s struggle to operate unobserved.

Highways on the Seas

This is not to say that there are no countermeasures to being observed, but competent captains and admirals must operate under the assumption that it’s not a question of if they’re found at sea, but when. While the risk of detection is relatively low while out on the high seas, the chances of detection increase exponentially the closer the fleet comes to shore.  This vastly narrows the geographic scope of operations that are readily hidden or obfuscated. Layering the various detection methods and their ranges on a map and then adding weapon engagement ranges creates a vastly different operating picture than fleets have encountered in the past.

A reading of the major military thinkers quickly impresses upon students of war the importance of geography and the field of battle. Sun Tzu’s work dedicates 30 percent entirely to the topic and is identified as a core pillar of strategy. Clausewitz, while he doesn’t examine geography or the terrain in discrete chapters, does lace it throughout his writing and thinking, identifying it as one of the key “modifiers” a strategist must consider. Corbett even identifies the difference between an army and a navy, discussing how armies must follow roads or traversable terrain while “the sea knows no roads to limit or indicate our own lines of operation.”

The maps of today, and especially tomorrow, resemble “roads” and “safe passages” around and through identification and engagement zones that fleets will have to navigate within. Leaving these bounds exposes them to swift identification and possibly an engagement with shore-based forces or unmanned vessels. These constraints on fleet movements complicate attempts at maintaining a true “fleet in being” that is at once both dispersed as well as ready to combine and pounce on weak or isolated elements of an enemy’s forces. As seen within the land domain, the massing of forces exposes attackers to extreme risk when mass and near real time surveillance are combined.

Modern technology allows a capable force to restrict where opposing fleets are likely to operate and therefore prepare the battlefield in ways unprecedented for naval warfare. This can create opportunities to more consistently develop kill boxes, ambushes, and direct the fighting to areas of strength for the forces operating near their shorelines, and thus within range of supporting missile and drone units.

The Anchored Fleet

Naval strategy revolves around the concepts of isolation and convergence. The isolated elements of a fleet can be converged upon and destroyed, leading to the ultimate destruction of the fleet and its fighting strength. At the core of this concept is the understanding that a fleet is never stationary but shifts and flows where it can best be utilized. Balancing the freedom of movement underpinning fleet operations is the fact that a fleet could simply be “removed from the board” by pulling into port under the protective watch of shore-based batteries. The force could defend itself via movement or via fortifications that forced attackers to risk their fighting force against shore troops that neutralize the advantages of mobility.

This concept faded from prominence with the close of the Cold War and the U.S. Navy’s dominance of the maritime domain. Modern navy doctrine then shifted to force projection as the ultimate raison d’etre, a natural metamorphosis in support of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Commanders began utilizing “op-boxes” and deliberately restricted maneuvering schemes to minimize risk while supporting the ground fight. The maximum ranges and on-station times of airframes began dictating where a carrier could steam and, naturally, where the escort ships must station to provide cover or support. It didn’t matter that a fleet could show up anywhere along the coast, it mattered that the fleet was as close to the specific coast that allowed safe and direct flights inland.

This prioritization, combined with forward operating bases that are now within range of shore-based fires, creates a situation akin to army forts staring across a field at the enemy lines. Complicating matters, unlike in the past, pulling a fleet into port doesn’t ensure the safety of the ships, but could unintentionally increase the risk to the force. Ports are well imaged and mapped via satellite imagery, and as such represent easily precleared and evaluated targets. There is a growing push to harden bases and to disperse forces throughout potential operational areas, thereby increasing resilience and survivability. This doesn’t change the fact that this only increases the number of potential targets, even if it does decrease the payoff for successful strikes.

Modern commanders are thus stuck with a dilemma. To effectively employ the weapons and doctrine developed over the last three and a half decades they cannot freely move their ships. In order to replenish and repair, they must return to easily targeted ports. They therefore cannot leverage the fundamental strength of a fleet: its ability to change the location of its operations, to disperse itself and to converge when enemy forces are isolated. “Stay in the op-box,” “This is our circuit for flight ops, we can’t change it.” Phrases such as these make fleet operations sound more and more analogous to ground operations where forces need to “Take the hill” or “secure this rail depot.” It is this decades-long doctrinal development that could represent the biggest risk to mitigating the increased visibility and expanded engagement zones.

Charting the Course

Resolving the current transformation of the sea services will require bold thinking and innovative synthesis of emerging technologies and revised doctrine. While not exhaustive, the following few ideas can serve as a launch point for further discussion and to begin charting the course for a renewed and revitalized fleet.

First, developing a better understanding of how peer competitors are thinking of possible engagements, such as how the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) is deployed and the doctrine they adhere to, will be vital to gleaning lessons learned and offsetting their advantages. The days where the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps could make nearly unilateral decisions about force structure, armaments, and employment is far gone. Any peer or near peer has an equal say in what kind of conflict they will engage in, and it is foolish not to study their thinking as much, if not more, than current U.S. doctrine.

Second, the Navy should consider fleet composition and organization. This has naturally occurred in tandem with developments in naval and military technology, but taking a deliberate and methodical approach that seriously evaluates how fleets are structured and operate will help mitigate unnecessary losses. Some fits and starts have been made on this front, normally under the guise of “lethality,” such as the hunter killer surface action groups or  modular lethality. The current approach of clamoring for more of the same ships and submarines fails to address the issue at hand in a viable manner, while redesigning the fleet could make a substantial difference.

Third, examining how joint operations in the littoral and just into blue water are conducted could bear fruit in the shorter term. It naturally takes some time to redesign fleets and to construct the newly required vessels. Finding avenues to better leverage current inventories of weapons and vessels across the military services can help offset the time delay that such a redesign and build out requires. The emphasis should be on novel combinations and employment of existing kit, better cross service planning and coordination, and seamless operational control that counters the strengthened position of shores-based fires.

 It is worth noting that some of the work on each of these topics has already been done. Notably, in 2016, a trio of Navy future fleet architecture reviews were conducted, and responded to, that sought to rigorously identify how the Navy should structure its forces to fight and win in 2030. Across all three reviews, the need to shift from the assumption of sea control, and even dominance, to a contested maritime domain while engaged in high intensity fighting with a peer/near peer was central. The CSBA report, for example, outlined a fleet structure organized around region/threat specific deterrent forces supported by maneuver forces, addressing elements of the first two suggestions made above. MITRE identified the need for better integration of air-based assets into missile defense structures.  The Navy team discussed distributed fleets and the use of non-kinetic offensive and defensive weaponry as being integral to modern warfare. Aspects from all three are visible in the current force, and the sea services were strengthened from their adoption. Where these reviews fell short was in their limited scope and their failure to address critical assumptions underpinning their analysis, however. The process of evaluation and adapting to new technology and adversary developments is never ending, and the gaps identified in this article must be addressed if the Navy and Marine Corps are to remain a viable fighting force.

The army is worthy of emulation in many respects, but to have the Navy and Marine Corps become nothing more than an army at sea would be an unmitigated disaster. The challenges facing the sea services are great even without factoring in the challenges within the defense industrial complex supporting them. No amount of enhanced lethality or iterative innovation can save a force sailing in the wrong direction. But there is still time to shift the rudder and steady on a course of relevance and enhanced capabilities. This piece merely begins the conversation by diagnosing the primary impediments to an effective naval force and outlining briefly a few initial steps to move in the right direction. The army-fication of the Navy can and must be reversed.

Eric Lies is a Non-Resident Fellow at The Alliance Futures Initiative and an expert in alliance systems, security strategy, and military affairs.

Featured image: Albert Bierstadt, Beached Ship, 1859. (Wikimedia Commons)