1980s Maritime Strategy Series

By Dmitry Filipoff

CIMSEC discussed the 1980s Maritime Strategy with Capt. Robby Harris (ret.), who helped draft the 1986 unclassified version of the strategy that published in Proceedings. In this discussion, Harris discusses how the unclassified version was initiated, how steady state competition and crisis response figured into the strategy, and how bold leadership at the highest levels of Navy leadership elevated the importance of maritime strategy.

What was your personal role and relationship with the Maritime Strategy?

In September 1982 as a brand-new Navy commander I reported for duty to the Navy’s Long Range Planning staff (OP-00X) under then-Rear Admiral Chuck Larson (later CINCPACFLT and CINCPAC). I already had higher education credentials and experience in the strategy and policy world, like many of my peers who worked on the strategy at that time. OP-00X was personal staff to CNO Admiral James Watkins. Soon after I reported for duty Admiral Larson was transferred and the OP-00X staff was combined with the staff of the CNO Executive Panel (OP-00K). OP-00K also was personal staff to the CNO responsible for providing staff support to the civilian members of the CNO Executive Panel (CEP). OP-00K provided strategic advice directly to the CNO with zero intermediaries, i.e., we did not report via the Vice CNO. The CNO Executive Panel (CEP) was a Federal Advisory Committee and the CNO was the only service chief with his own Federal Advisory Committee. Members of the CEP included some of the Cold War’s most noted strategists, including Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, James Woolsey, Helmut (Hal) Sonnenfeldt, Henry (Harry) Rowen, Andrew Marshall, and others.

Because of the prominence of the CEP membership, CNO Watkins directed that the Maritime Strategy be briefed and discussed with the CEP several times. As a CEP staff officer, I sat in the room and observed the briefings and discussions on numerous occasions. By late 1983 I had heard the strategy briefed and discussed many times at a very high level. By early 1984 after listening to the strategy so many times it occurred to me that the strategy should be declassified and printed in USNI Proceedings. Because of my position on the CNO’s personal staff I was able to make the recommendation to CNO Watkins. CNO Watkins approved my recommendation and I was sent off to Annapolis to meet with Fred Rainbow, the editor-in-chief of Proceedings, to deliver the CNO’s decision. In late 1985 before I detached from the OP-00K staff Captain Linton Brooks and I wrote the first draft of the CNO’s Proceedings article. There were many more drafts after that initial one. The rest is history.

I should point out that I felt that the Maritime Strategy as often briefed in DC in the early 1980s over-emphasized the role of the U.S. Navy in a conflict with the Soviets and did not sufficiently emphasize the day-to-day operations of the U. S. Navy in fostering the country’s economic standing and the post-WWII order (we didn’t call it the Liberal Order then!). My colleague Captain Peter Swartz informed me that I was not alone in my belief. Peter reported that “RADM Ron Kurth felt strongly about this as well, and pushed back at me hard in front of a room full of more senior flags that I was briefing. ‘Peter, we’re never going to fight the Russians! We’re going to continue to put out fires and deploy all over the world in lesser contingencies. That’s what the strategy should be about, because that’s what it is about, in the real world.’” Peter explains further that the strategy’s emphasis on fighting the Soviets was necessary to gain leverage with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Joint Staff. Nevertheless, I thought that the strategy should place greater emphasis on the Navy’s role in ensuring conventional deterrence, crisis management, and tamping down localized conflicts and crises. 

Although I certainly am not solely responsible, the final version of CNO Watkins’ Proceedings article reflects several of my recommendations and areas of emphasis. Examples include:

“…our Navy devotes much of its effort to maintaining this stability. Potential crises and the aftermath of crises have increasingly defined the location and character of our forward deployments.” 

“Since 1948, the Third World has been the most common arena for United States-Soviet competition, and this pattern will continue.” 

“Among the greatest services we can provide the nation is to operate in peacetime and in crises in a way that deter War.”

“Figure 3 which illustrates the spectrum of conflict draws attention to the importance of the lower levels of violence where Navies are most often the key actors…”

“By its peacetime presence throughout the world, the Navy enhances deterrence daily.”

 “The heart of our evolving Maritime Strategy is crisis response…our ability to contain and control crises is an important factor in our ability to prevent global conflict.” 

“Crisis response has long been the business of the Navy and Marine Corps.”

“…our peacetime strategy must support U. S. alliances and friendships. We accomplish this through a variety of peacetime operations including ships visits to foreign ports and training exercises with foreign naval forces.”

“Although deterrence is most often associated with strategic nuclear warfare, it is a much broader concept…we must deter threats ranging from terrorism to nuclear war.”

“Through early, worldwide decisive use of sea power we—along with sister services and allies as appropriate—would seek to win the crisis, to control escalation, and by the global nature of our operations, to make clear our intention to cede no area to the Soviets…”

“Through worldwide peacetime operation and the ability to react in crisis, maritime forces play a major role in binding together alliances in preventing escalation.”

What was the impact of that Proceedings article on the debate surrounding maritime strategy? 

The Proceedings article made it possible for the deckplate Navy to become aware of the strategy. When the article was published in Proceedings in January 1986 I was in the Navy command pipeline schools prior to taking command of a destroyer. Most of my classmates (commanders and captains) were completely unaware of the strategy before it was published in Proceedings.

How did the Maritime Strategy describe the balance between operations for steady state competition and operations for high-end warfighting contingencies? 

Although I cannot take full credit for it, the article provides a nice balance between forward presence, crisis response, conventual deterrence on the one hand and strategic deterrence and warfighting with the Soviets on the other hand. (See Figure 3 from the strategy below). The fiscal largesse begun in the final years of the Carter Administration and the Reagan largesse made it feasible to do both: rigorous day to day ops for reinforcing the liberal rules-based regime and preparations for a big fight with the Soviets. Since the end of the Cold War we have not seen sufficient resources to do both well.

Why did the Maritime Strategy “work,” if it did, and what about its strategy development process has been challenging to replicate since then? 

My colleague Dr. Steve Wills would probably say the difference between the 1980s and today is the Goldwater Nichols Act (GNA), and there is merit to such an argument. But even before GNA, primacy for strategy development lay outside the services and was invested in the regional commanders and the Secretary of Defense (per the Eisenhower reforms of 1953 and 1958 which had already transferred control to the CINC’s for strategy planning). As my colleague Captain Robert (Barney) Rubel has written, even before GNA the CNO Watkins/SECNAV Lehman team was “coloring outside the lines.” That to the aside, because SECNAV Lehman was such a strong leader and had the firm support of President Ronald Reagan the Navy was able to move forward with the strategy. That condition does not exist today.

What lessons can be taken from the Maritime Strategy for engaging in modern great power competition? 

Strong advocacy of maritime strategy at the highest levels of government is essential.

Captain Harris commanded USS Conolly (DD-979) and Destroyer Squadron 32. Ashore he served as Executive Director of the CNO Executive Panel. He was a CNO Fellow in CNO Strategic Studies Group XII.

Featured Image: May 6, 1982 – An aerial port bow view of the Aegis guided missile cruiser USS TICONDEROGA (CG-47) underway during sea trials (U.S. National Archives photo)

1980s Maritime Strategy Series

By Dmitry Filipoff

CIMSEC discussed the 1980s Maritime Strategy with Secretary John Lehman, who served as the 65th Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Administration from 1981-1987. In this discussion, Secretary Lehman looks at how the Navy tied the Maritime Strategy to force structure goals, how it built credibility with Congress, and how the Navy could offensively leverage command of the seas in a major conflict today.

How would you describe the Maritime Strategy and how was it a shift from 1970s concepts and plans?

First, the Maritime Strategy was global, not driven by NATO. It was geopolitical and based on a recognition that in the Cold War geography was a huge advantage to the U.S. and its allies. The Soviet Union was a relatively land-locked power and the U.S. and its allies were capable of easily establishing command of the seas. It was part of a three-dimensional national strategy: to maintain nuclear parity with the Soviets, to recognize that the Warsaw Pact had clear superiority in land forces, but to neutralize that advantage with overwhelming naval supremacy. President Reagan believed that the West could win the Cold War without armed conflict and that it was time to move from containment and détente to a forward strategy to demonstrate that if the East attacked NATO they would be defeated. An offensive U.S. Navy could not only protect the sea lanes, but could surround Soviet power, sink the Soviet fleet, and use the seas to blockade, mine, and strike deep into the Soviet heartland.

Navy concepts and plans in the 1970s were driven by post-Vietnam naval deterioration, exhaustion, and underfunding compounded by the almost desperate search for détente by Presidents Ford and Carter. Under Carter, the national strategy focused almost entirely on the central front in Europe, assigning only a supportive and defensive role to the Navy, with budgets reduced accordingly.

To many of us veterans of the Kissinger National Security Council and the realist academic world, this “swing strategy” was absurd. Dick Allen, Sam Huntington, Bing West, Fred Ikle, myself, and others began to meet irregularly for lunch and dinner to discuss strategy, often with active duty sailors like Jim Holloway, Ace Lyons, and Peter Swartz, who were then engaged in the mortal combat of PRM 10. It was in those informal gatherings that the Maritime Strategy first began to take shape.

In your book Command of the Seas, you said “Many retired admirals believe that the secretary of the navy should stick to administration…and leave strategy and requirements to the admirals. It never occurred to me as secretary that strategy was none of my business. In fact, it had to be my business.” How did you wield the office of the Secretary of the Navy with respect to developing and advocating for the Maritime Strategy? How should Navy Secretaries view their role on crafting strategy?

Under Title X, the SECNAV is responsible for the personnel, equipping, training, and readiness of the Navy and Marine Corps to carry out the missions assigned to them by the national strategy. Effective naval strategy is what integrates and determines the kinds of personnel policies, ships, aircraft, weapons, and training that are needed for the naval services. Hence ensuring that naval strategy is sound should be seen as the first priority of the SECNAV.

This was especially true when I was sworn in on February 5, 1981, because the new president inaugurated two weeks earlier had changed national strategy and the role that naval strategy must play, a shift in effect from a defensive to offensive posture. I had been selected because my education and experience was in geopolitics, strategy, and military affairs. I therefore had to take the lead in changing the strategy and its doctrine, concepts, and plans. My handpicked SECNAV staff included proven strategic thinkers and operators with experience in walking the walk as well as talking the talk. My immediate successors’ role in strategy was not to be a change agent but to understand the strategy and to see that it was being carried out. When the Cold War ended in victory some years later however it was time again for a new strategy.

My task as SECNAV was made easier because the CNO, Admiral Tom Hayward, was a natural strategist and had already implemented a forward strategy in the Pacific when he was Commander of the Pacific Fleet before becoming CNO.

In the future, SECNAVs must always understand naval strategy and its concepts, implementation, and its role in procurement and training.

How did the Maritime Strategy manifest in real-world fleet operations and exercises? What was the significance of these exercises?

The Maritime Strategy led immediately to dramatic changes in Navy pronouncements in Congressional testimony, beginning with my strategy testimony at the Senate Armed Services Committee the day after I was sworn in, and in public speeches, articles, and press and TV appearances by senior flag officers and civilians. A full-scale effort was immediately begun to change training syllabi, doctrine, concepts and plans, and wargames. Exercises took a little longer to modify, with the first being Ocean Venture ’81, in the North Atlantic, Norwegian, and Barents Seas. RIMPAC and other exercises in the Pacific and Mediterranean soon followed. In each, offensive mirror-image strike raids were practiced along with the usual anti-air warfare, anti-submarine warfare, and other training. In addition to the traditional training the exercises now had two additional important purposes, one was to develop new tactics using the new technology coming into the fleet, while testing real world effectiveness under the beady eyes of embarked teams of Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) operations analysts. The other prime purpose was to demonstrate to Soviet tattletales and observers how good we were and how they could not beat us.

These exercises went on in all theaters and every year. After each one there was thorough analysis of what worked and what didn’t, changing and refining tactics, improving weapons and getting better. By the late 1980s both U.S. and Soviet sailors and leaders believed that we would defeat the Soviets handily. That is of course real deterrence. The proof of its success was demonstrated not only by sensitive intelligence, but also by the now famous “Akhromeyev Map” and Gorbachev’s now public complaints about being “surrounded” by the U.S. Navy.

How did the Maritime Strategy interface with the POM process? What were the budgetary and programmatic influences of the Maritime Strategy?

In some previous and current periods, naval strategy (if you could call it that) has been derived from predicted budgets. During the 1980s, the process was reversed: first strategy, then requirements, then the POM, then budget. This was possible because the president, SecDef, SecNav, CNO/CMC, and the comptroller were all aligned on policy.

Because of that alignment and the unified message, and the simple logic of the strategy and the programs derived from it, plus the strong congressional relations and public affairs campaigns, we were able to get congressional support for the whole of the program throughout the 1980s, even two two-carrier buys. Without the strategy that could not have happened.

What was the relationship between the drive toward a 600-ship fleet and the Maritime Strategy? How did you tie force structure goals to strategy?

In all intra-DoD and interagency meetings, all classified and unclassified pubs, all congressional testimony, and public affairs, there was a disciplined message: first strategy with a global map, from strategy came five theaters of vital interest, from those theaters came the Soviet threat in being, from the threat in each theater came Navy force levels, along with allies and our Air Force and Army partners, force levels which were necessary to defeat that threat. The numbers needed to prevail in each theater were tested every year in the exercises and in the wargames at Newport. From those five totals came: 15 carriers, 100 SSNs, 140 cruisers and destroyers, 100 frigates, and the rest, adding up to 600. The logic was simple and compelling, and we never wavered year to year. More importantly, we delivered what we said we would: ships and jets on time, and on and under budget; an affordable fleet.

How did the Maritime Strategy enhance the Navy’s ability to tell its story to outside audiences, such as Congress, the other services, and allies? How was it received and challenged by these outside audiences?

The easily understood simplicity and logic of the Maritime Strategy was a great advantage, as was its unchanging consistency year after year. Unlike some prior periods, there were no significant disagreeing leaks from within the Navy or Marines. Truth to be told, there were some admirals who had drunk the kool-aid in the previous administration and made it known to friends in Congress and the press that they did not like the new strategy, but they soon retired. (Stansfield Turner would always turn up on Sunday talk shows and tell people like Sam Donaldson that the Maritime Strategy was “dangerous” and that the 600-ship navy was “too expensive.”)

What lessons can be taken from the Maritime Strategy for engaging in modern great power competition?

History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. It is rhyming today. Once again we face a hostile world power, accompanied by an axis of lesser powers, including Russia, Iran, and North Korea, whose only common bond is hostility to the U.S.

We need a new Maritime Strategy. We need to think as a naval power and not as a land power. Naval powers use geography to their advantage. Land powers feel imprisoned by geography. It must start as always with a contemplation of the world map. Once again we find that geography and geopolitics favors us and our allies. Our principal competitor, China, is far more dependent on unfettered use of sea routes for trade and resources than was the Soviet Union. China is threatened by limited access to those vital routes, which are surrounded by American friends and allies, and beset by straits and chokepoints that can be easily interdicted. These are severe vulnerabilities to China’s economy.

To our strategic benefit, the continuing Chinese military buildup seems to be modeled on their study of Western Cold War victory and Alfred Thayer Mahan. The force they are building is not being optimized to deal with the strategy that will best serve U.S. and allied deterrence.

In the Cold War, Soviet strategy and posture was organized around the confrontation of huge armies massed in Central Europe. China’s strategy seems to be building toward a capability in the shorter term to deter U.S. forces from interfering with a military takeover of Taiwan, or if deterrence were to fail, to attack and defeat American forces at sea. For the longer term they seem to be building toward an unquestioned capability to command the Western Pacific and additional sea-lanes crucial to their economy. Such a strategy would include the Mahanian capability of destroying the American Pacific Fleet in a grand fleet battle. They have been turning the South and East China Seas into a maritime fortress in the expectation of an American Normandy-style invasion. They are making a great mistake.

American naval strategy should be quite different than the strategies that won WWII or the Cold War. Like the Maritime Strategy of the 1980s, it should be focused on the adversaries’ vulnerabilities, which in the case of China are completely different than those of the Soviet Union. China’s economy will always be dependent on uninterrupted sea-lanes spread all over the world.

The U.S. strategy to deter China should of course include the targeting of crucial mainland nodes through cyber and kinetic means, but it should be built primarily on the unquestionable capability to strangle China’s economy through closing chokepoints and straits, mining harbors, and sanctuaries. It is much, much easier to interdict such worldwide arteries than to protect them. The U.S. capability should be agile and unpredictable. Our combined forces should be designed and exercised to be rapidly configurable while moving between specific tasks and objectives. There are 50,000 islands in the Pacific, the majority well-suited for temporary offensive bases targeted on Chinese vulnerabilities. Horizontal escalation across the seas can roll up the center of gravity of China’s great power status: its global trade economy.

Without compromising some secret capabilities, the strategy should be advertised and exercised regularly as was done with the 1980s Maritime Strategy.

Such a strategy will require a larger fleet, with some different characteristics enhancing agility, flexibility, and rapidly evolving technologies, but not one materially larger than the 350- to 500-ship fleet already in planning.

A critical lesson from the Maritime Strategy is that the Navy must restore credibility with Congress and the public that it knows what kinds of ships, aircraft, and technologies are needed. And perhaps more importantly, it must know which platforms it will be able to procure at far lower cost than the recent examples of Ford, Zumwalt, and LCS.

To win back that credibility the Navy must find a way to escape the paralyzing shackles of the vast joint bureaucracy. The Navy’s leaders must restore their former iron grip on procurement, end the culture of change orders during production, and restore annual competition. Thanks to authorities enacted during Senator McCain’s tenure at the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Navy can reclaim the necessary authority, but it will take a strong SecNav and CNO to wield it effectively. Fortunately, the Marine Commandant is already in the lead with the right strategic vision.

The Hon. John F. Lehman Jr. is Chairman of J.F. Lehman & Company, a private equity investment firm. Dr. Lehman was formerly an investment banker with PaineWebber Inc. Prior to joining PaineWebber, he served for six years as Secretary of the Navy. He was President of Abington Corporation between 1977 and 1981. He served 25 years in the naval reserve. He has served as staff member to Dr. Henry Kissinger on the National Security Council, as delegate to the Force Reductions Negotiations in Vienna and as Deputy Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Dr. Lehman served as a member of the 9/11 Commission, and the National Defense Commission. Dr. Lehman holds a B.S. from St. Joseph’s University, a B.A. and M.A. from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently an Hon. Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University. Dr. Lehman has written numerous books, including On Seas of Glory, Command of the Seas, Making War, and Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea. He is Chairman of the Princess Grace Foundation USA and is a member of the Board of Overseers of the School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: March 12, 1986 – An F-14A Tomcat aircraft is launched from the aircraft carrier USS JOHN F. KENNEDY (CV 67) (National Archive photo by PH1 Phil Wiggins)

1980s Maritime Strategy Series

By Dmitry Filipoff

CIMSEC discussed the 1980s Maritime Strategy with Capt. Peter Swartz (ret.), who at the time served as a naval strategist on the OPNAV staff, and worked to refine and disseminate the Maritime Strategy. In this discussion, Swartz defines the contents of the strategy, its primary tenets, and how it maintained a remarkable degree of continuity across nearly a decade of naval leadership.

What did U.S. maritime strategy consist of before the 1980s strategy emerged?

The Maritime Strategy stood on the shoulders of numerous previous U.S. Navy thinkers and operators. For most of these predecessors, Navy strategic thought for years had advocated forward offensive operations against the Soviets, relegating protection of seaborne war material to forward U.S. allies and forces as a secondary concern (much to the dismay of some in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint and EUCOM staffs, and the Army and the Air Force). These operations were conceived of as being global, aggressive, flexible, joint, allied, involving all the Navy’s warfare areas, technology-enabled, relevant to peacetime, crises, and war, and relevant especially to the NATO flank regions, the Arctic, and the western Pacific. Bureaucratic tensions between the Navy and others were particularly high during the Carter Administration, with adverse effects on the Navy’s influence and budget, causing the Navy to intensify its efforts to develop and explain its thinking.

This thinking manifested itself by the end of 1982 on several tracks – all preceding and influencing – the documents now considered to be the Maritime Strategy. CNO Admiral Zumwalt’s Project SIXTY had showed the power of one central coherent planning document for the service. CNO Admiral Holloway had helped the Under Secretary of the Navy guide a Navy study on how the Navy could make a strategic difference against the Soviets. This study – SEAPLAN 2000 – gained wide distribution among the Navy staffs and spawned an initiative at the Naval War College – the annual Global War Games – in which the concepts embedded in the Maritime Strategy would be wargamed in ever-increasing depth, breadth, and complexity. In his Naval Warfare Pub (NWP) 1, Strategic Concepts for the US Navy, Admiral Holloway also showed the explanatory power of parsing Navy operations in terms of “warfare tasks:” anti-submarine warfare, anti-air warfare, anti-surface warfare, and so on, vice “platforms” or “communities,” (e.g. carrier aviation, surface warfare, submarine warfare, etc.). This was echoed in the newly introduced fleet battle group command-and-control concept of “composite warfare commanders,” and Admiral Hayward’s expanded OPNAV Directorate of Naval Warfare (OP-095).

Admiral Hayward had himself developed an offensive aggressive anti-Soviet “Sea Strike” concept when he was Commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the western Pacific, and then Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, prior to becoming CNO. He and his staff had briefed the concept widely, and when they arrived in Washington, they applied many of its principles to a series of CNO-approved documents—some highly classified and some public. As CNO, he routinely convened conferences of senior Navy flag officers to examine and discuss issues of Navy strategy. Hayward also approved the creation of OP-603 – a new branch in his Plans, Policy, and Operations Directorate (OP-06). It was staffed with officers handpicked from his existing branches by the OP-60 Division Director, Rear Admiral Bob Hilton, for their knowledge of national and Navy policy and strategy, and their skills in crafting strategic-level documents and briefings.

Concerned that U.S. Navy flag officers were not adept enough in strategic thinking, CNO Admiral Hayward enabled outgoing Under Secretary of the Navy Robert Murray to establish a small group of promising and operationally astute commanders and captains (“flag material’) in Newport to study and apply strategic and operational thought to the naval problems of the day. This became the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group (SSG). The first cohort reported to Murray at Newport in the fall of 1981 to examine operational concepts focused on winning the battles of the Norwegian and Barents Seas, and into the Arctic. Their robust travel schedule and access to senior joint and Navy commanders would give the SSG enormous influence in socializing the concepts they explored – and those of the Maritime Strategy more generally – throughout the U.S. and allied military establishments.

At the same time – the fall of 1981 – Vice Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons launched a massive series of exercises in the North Atlantic, in which he, the U.S. Second Fleet, the NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic, and complementary U.S. Air Force forces tested, demonstrated, and then widely publicized the forces and tactics – especially cover and deception – needed to implement the Maritime Strategy in the Norwegian and Barents Sea. South American, French, and Spanish navies participated as well.

Meanwhile, a transformation was taking place in the intelligence community, which for years had maintained that the immense Soviet submarine fleet posed a potentially mortal threat to trans-Atlantic shipping in the event of a NATO-Warsaw Pact war. This view had been challenged throughout the 1970s by a small group of naval analysts, mostly at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), whose analysis of Soviet open-source literature had led them to believe that the Soviets’ highest-priority mission at sea was to protect their nuclear ballistic missile submarine fleet in “bastions,” with considerably less attention paid to attacking convoys in the North Atlantic. New and highly sensitive intelligence convinced the Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence that the CNA analysts were right, and they began to proselytize among the Navy’s operational leaders, who initially were highly skeptical. The implications for Navy strategy of this new intelligence focus came under deep study, especially by the Navy’s highly classified Advance Technology Panel (ATP) and related bodies.

How did the Maritime Strategy describe the global context in terms of threats, geopolitical risks, and great power competition with the Soviet Union?

It was the final era of the Cold War. The militaries of two well-armed hostile blocs had been planning to fight each other on a global scale for a generation, and – until the last part of the decade – were planning to continue to plan for another generation at least. Losing the Vietnam War had been a big jolt to the American military, as had the “no more Vietnams” backlash from the American public, and declining defense budgets. Moreover, it seemed that the Soviets were on the march everywhere: Aiding Communist parties and peace organizations in Western Europe, squashing restiveness in occupied eastern Europe, taking advantage of revolutions in Iran and Ethiopia; wooing clients states like Libya, Iraq, India, Syria, and Vietnam; subverting governments in Central America and Africa; threatening Japan and China; egging on the North Koreans; and invading Afghanistan. The Nixon Administration was beset by scandal, the Ford Administration struggled, and the Carter Administration refocused the U.S. military on Central Europe, leaving the U.S. Navy with little to do but escort convoys across the Atlantic, and cede budget dollars to the Army and tactical Air Force.

The Reagan Administration – exuding confidence – sought to reverse these trends, in part through a massive defense buildup and in part through more aggressive pushback against Soviet initiatives, overt and covert. Republican defense expert and naval reserve A-6 B/N naval flight officer Dr. John Lehman was appointed Secretary of the Navy to spearhead this effort for the fleet. Lehman’s program was simple: Lay out a winning and doable strategy, explain why 600 ships were needed to carry out the strategy, and take tough business measures to make it affordable. The Maritime Strategy recognized all this. It touted the Navy’s capabilities, experience, and intentions regarding maintaining the peace forward throughout the world, reassuring America’s allies, responding to crises as required, and – especially – helping deter (or making a strategic difference should deterrence fail) a Soviet attack.

If some U.S. Navy concepts seemed risky, the Navy believed the risks were less than its critics believed, and/or calculated that they were worth taking in a time of war. It was well-recognized that the president would make all final wartime decisions on force employment in any case. Civilian control of the military was expected and supported. But he would rely on the Navy – admittedly only in part – for recommendations and expert advice. And debating, gaming, and exercising the Maritime Strategy for a decade gave the Navy a firm basis to give that advice.

Midway through the decade, after Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, policies began to change in that country. Some in the U.S. – and the Navy – recognized this early on; for others it took the disintegration of the USSR at the end of 1991 to convince them. As the world changed, and the Cold War ended, so too did the utility of the Maritime Strategy as the U.S. Navy’s central organizing operational concept.

What were the main tenets of the Maritime Strategy? How did it describe the contributions the U.S. Navy can make in steady state competition during relative peacetime, and the contributions it would make toward war termination against the Soviet Union?

The main tenets of The Maritime Strategy were:

• It is not a standalone strategy. It is the naval component of the national military strategy
• U.S. naval operations make the strategic difference in peacetime diplomatic initiatives, deterring aggression, deterring nuclear war, reassuring allies, and/or achieving war termination on favorable terms against the Soviet Union or any lesser powers
• The Navy in peacetime routinely uses port visits, exercises, and various exchanges and training venues as vital tools to back up U.S. diplomacy, show resolve and support, and deter unfriendly actions
• The U.S. Navy is very competent in strategy-making
• The Maritime Strategy explains what the nation gains from meeting its 600-ship naval force goal
• It explains to sailors and taxpayers alike why the Navy does what it does
• It sends a message to the Soviets that we are thinking about you, we are ready, and we are good. Today is not the day for you to attack.
• It tells the other services and allies that the U.S. Navy values your contributions, and recognizes its responsibilities to support you
• The Navy recommends global, forward, offensive, joint, and allied approaches to deterrence and warfighting
• The Navy has the capability and intention to carry out the strategy through all naval warfare areas: Strike, amphibious warfare, anti-air warfare, anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, electronic warfare and deception, mine warfare, naval special warfare, supported by effective intelligence and logistics operations.
• The strategy is technology-enabled. The Navy needs and uses the best mature technology.
• Electronic warfare and deception are robust U.S. Navy warfighting capabilities. The Soviets will not be able to find us until we are on top of them.
• The Navy has thought through the general direction of the entire global maritime campaign, notionally breaking it down into three phases: 1) Transition to war 2) Seizing the initiative, and 3) Carrying the fight to the enemy. The actual orchestration and timing of those phases, and the relative importance of each theater and naval warfare area, will be decided by the National Command Authorities and the combatant commanders as the unfolding situation demands. But the Maritime Strategy provides a foundation on which to build specific plans and operations.
• The Navy is flexible: The strategy gives a baseline of what the global warfighting problem might look like on and from the sea. U.S. naval forces can and will maneuver throughout the world ocean as circumstances dictate.
• The Navy has thought through the implications of its strategy to achieve war termination on favorable terms and understood its risks as well as advantages. It is prepared to offer the National Command Authority options as well as its preferred and recommended way ahead.
• The Navy has studied the Soviet Union and is prepared, if directed, to destroy targets that the Soviets hold most dear. It hopes thereby to deter any conflict with the Soviet Union, but it also has the will and capability to actually destroy those targets, therefore preventing the Soviets’ planned correlation of forces.
• The story that the Maritime Strategy painted is fraught with uncertainties in need of further examination: Presidential decision-making, readiness, nuclear escalation, warning/reaction time, call-up of reserves, allies not coming into the war, Soviet clients coming into the war, sister services too taxed elsewhere to help, estimates of the enemy were wrong, National Command Authority disagreement with Navy advice, civilian lift availability, and others.

What were the roles and missions of the Marine Corps in the strategy?

The Marine roles were important but flexible: To help deter Soviet attacks, and if deterrence failed, to conduct amphibious and airlanded operations forward on one or both of the NATO flanks, in the Soviet Far East, and if needed, against outlying Soviet surrogates such as North Korea, Cuba, Libya, Vietnam, or Syria. Throughout the decade of the 1980s the Marines became significantly more invested in defending Norway and Denmark in particular, with vehicles and equipment for an airlanded Marine Amphibious Brigade stored in caves in Norway. Marines became increasingly adept at winter warfare. Navy carriers practicing and demonstrating the strategy far forward – and carrying out real-world operations as well – often had Marine Corps tactical aviation squadrons assigned. And Navy surface combatants and carriers with nuclear weapons onboard had U.S. Marine Corps detachments to help secure them.

This was all laid out in each successive maritime strategy briefing and document, classified and unclassified, to which Marines assigned to Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC) made significant contributions, often as naval officers in their own right, transcending their core warfighting task of amphibious warfare. CNO Admiral Watkins and Marine Commandant General Kelley jointly signed out a more detailed classified Amphibious Warfare Strategy, dovetailed with the Maritime Strategy, in 1985. The Commandant provided a similarly-titled unclassified essay along with the CNO’s and SECNAV John Lehman’s Proceedings articles in January 1986. Marine Commandants did not co-sign the classified Navy Maritime Strategy documents, but Commandant General Al Gray intervened personally to rewrite portions of the 1989 version, just as he was re-orienting the Marine Corps more toward potential operations in the Third World, and away from increasingly unlikely conflicts in NATO theaters.

How did the Maritime Strategy feature roles for the other services and for allies?

The Maritime Strategy went out of its way to describe the contributions of the other services and allies in some detail, largely because the Navy simply could not execute the strategy on its own, and that had been true since the start of the Cold War.

U.S. naval planning had for years included chopping various U.S. Coast Guard units to the Navy in time of war with the Soviets. These plans mostly involved outfitting some cutters as anti-submarine warfare ships, and port security, and were incorporated easily into the Maritime Strategy. A new initiative – creating wartime Maritime Defense Zones placing USCG area commanders under U.S Navy fleet commanders – was also under development during the 1980s.

Naval forces relied on the U.S. Air Force for land-based tanking and AWACs command and control services, for strategic airlift, and for complementary tactical fighter squadron support from Iceland, Norway, and elsewhere, as well as B-52s capable of firing Harpoon missiles at surface targets and laying mines. Successive CNOs and Air Force Chiefs of Staff signed numerous memoranda of understanding all through the 1970s and 1980s to cement these relationships. On the other hand, the Navy took seriously its responsibility to ensure that the Army and Air Force units in Central Europe and Northeast Asia were resupplied and reinforced from the continental United States. The Navy, however, planned to do this principally through forward offensive operations, while many in the other services would have preferred sole Navy emphasis on close-in Naval Control and Protection of Shipping (NCAPS), e.g., convoy escort.

To many in the other services – especially in the Army – the Maritime Strategy was a Navy budgetary ploy to take money away from them and give it to the sea services. Navy leaders – especially Rear Admiral Bill Pendley as OP-60 – made numerous overtures to their Air Force and Army counterparts to join with them in turning the Maritime Strategy into a truely balanced multi-service document. They argued that the basic outline was sound, and all that would be needed was to plug some more Army-specific and Air Force-specific data into the text. In fact, the Navy had already done just that, at a basic but useful level. But little came of those efforts. The Army had its own warfighting concept under development – AirLand Battle (for which it was striving to obtain Air Force buy-in) – but made no significant attempt to include naval forces in it – unlike the Navy regarding its sister services in the Maritime Strategy.

The Maritime Strategy recognized the important role that allied navies would play in any war with the Soviets and incorporated them where necessary. Allied commanders and staffs were routinely briefed on the Maritime Strategy, and allied coordination in implementing it was a frequent topic throughout the 1980s at bilateral navy-to-navy staff talks, CNO-to-CNO visits, and allied naval war college presentations and curricula. At-sea exercises with allies were frequent to practice interoperability and reassure publics that the U.S. Navy really would come to their aid. Relations with specific flank countries – Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Turkey, Japan, South Korea – and their navies – were close. But issues constantly arose in discussions with them on how to provide reassurance and practice interoperability effectively without stirring up an aggressive but paranoid Soviet bear unduly. Changes in allied governments sometimes affected exercise plans. NATO had its own Concept of Maritime Operations (CONMAROPS) which dovetailed well with the Maritime Strategy, largely through the efforts of the U.S. Navy’s cadre of experienced NATO experts in OP-603 and on NAVEUR and NATO staffs.

China at the time was a friendly nation, although not a fully-fledged ally, and its importance in the military balance viz-a-viz the Soviet Union – and the reassurance provided by the U.S. Seventh Fleet – was acknowledged and discussed in the Maritime Strategy.

How did the Maritime Strategy evolve through the 1980s? Did it feature much continuity even with turnover in leadership?

It had unusual continuity, evolving steadily through the 1980s, as new CNOs and fleet commanders, flag officers, branch heads, and action officers replaced their predecessors in the Pentagon, on the fleet staffs, and at the Naval War College. It started as a set of secret briefing slides drafted by the Navy’s experts in OP-603 (now N72) and OP-605, and approved by senior Navy leadership in the fall of 1982. In 1983, successor drafters in OP-603 built on those slides and used feedback from numerous briefings to various audiences (especially flag officers and especially successive OP-06s (now N3/N5s); and on new inputs from the intelligence community; the fleets and Navy warfare communities, Unified and Navy component commanders and their staffs; and the newly-constituted CNO Strategic Studies Group (SSG) in Newport.

Navy leadership approved of the enhancements, and OP-603 then continued to brief and improve the briefing until the spring of 1984, when it was finally published as a secret OPNAV document with written text to go with each slide. Successors in OP-603 improved that document, and it was updated and approved by Navy leadership and republished in 1985. These classified versions had originally been directed to kick off the annual POM build within OPNAV, but they rapidly transcended that important internal bureaucratic role and became much more broadly used. Responding to swelling demand, an authorized unclassified version was crafted in OPNAV OP-00K, signed by top Navy Department leadership, and published in January 1986 by the U.S. Naval Institute. This version was supplemented over the next four years by three signed articles by then-CNO Admiral Trost, as well as a widely-distributed unclassified video version. The classified version was updated and distributed in 1989 for the last time, just as the Soviet threat was starting to unravel.

In all of these versions, the name, phraseology, and basic tenets remained the same: It was still global, forward, offensive, aggressive, anti-Soviet, flexible, joint, allied, involving all the Navy’s warfare areas, technology-enabled, relevant to peacetime, crises, and war, and relevant especially to the NATO flank regions, the Arctic, and the western Pacific. CNO Admiral Watkins had just served as CNO Admiral Hayward’s VCNO. He was cognizant of and built on his predecessor’s thinking, setting an example that was noted and understood by his subordinates. CNO Admiral Trost had been Director of Program Planning for four years during Admiral Watkins’s term as CNO and had been part of the annual development and approval process of the Strategy. He too let it be known that the Maritime Strategy was still the basis of Navy thought during his term. Strategy drafters and mentors in OP-603, and later in OP-00K and elsewhere, understood the power that the continuity gave to the strategy’s messages, and built upon – vice replaced or ignored – their predecessors’ efforts.

From the beginning in 1982, the Maritime Strategy presentation had been directed to kick off the Navy’s annual POM build. To better enable this, the strategy became formatted with the same array of warfare areas as the next step in the POM build – OP-095’s warfare appraisals.

In terms of content and form, what lessons does the Maritime Strategy have for engaging in great power competition today?

Some lessons include:

• The tenets of the Maritime Strategy are applicable today: Global, forward, offensive, joint, allied, flexible, involving all the Navy’s warfare areas, technology-enabled, and other tenets
• Having a maritime strategy statement can be useful to explain the Navy view to its officer corps and also to others outside the Navy. It must be presented as the maritime component of the national military strategy.
• Efforts should be made to align at all levels of classification, from UNCLAS through SECRET to levels above TOP SECRET. Ensuring consistency among these levels – as well as appropriate secrecy and security – is an important and continuing task for senior Navy leadership and those possessing special clearances.
• Peacetime, crises, and war can be a useful construct to use, as is the parsing of naval operations by warfare task.
• Admit that there are uncertainties that need more work to address. Continuously do that work.
• Get a firm handle on what the competitors’ goals will be and how they will fight. Avoid mirror-imaging or using inapplicable World War II or Cold War analogies. Include examination of open sources. Understand enemy strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, capabilities, and intentions. The Russians today aren’t the Soviets or the Germans, or Americans. The Chinese aren’t the Soviets or the Japanese, or Americans.
• Build a cadre of strategy experts, and of China and Russia experts. Most importantly, put them in the appropriate billets.
• Forward at-sea exercises are vital for deterrence, allied reassurance, and testing of tactics and hardware. Exercise results should be disseminated among all the elements of the maritime strategy enterprise.
• The SSG was very useful to develop flag officers and to conceive and disseminate useful warfighting concepts. Consider reviving it. Same for the Global War Games.
• Have strategy influence the POM. Use a presentation of the strategy to kick off the POM build. If that does not prove useful, adjust either the strategy or the POM build process. Ensure the structure of the strategy statement fits with the structure of whatever the next step is in the POM build to make it useable to the programmers.
• The Navy can’t just consider navies. U.S., allied, and competitor air forces, missile forces, and space systems all have to be addressed in a maritime strategy.
• Allied and potential partner navies and other services need to be kept informed – at the appropriate level of classifications – of the tenets of U.S. Navy thinking and what the U.S. expects of them as allies.
• Plan for war termination before and during the war.

The Maritime Strategy was what naval analyst Dr. Mark Mandeles characterizes as a multi-organizational system. It was similar in that respect to the famous and successful interwar-period multiorganizational system that helped the U.S. Navy win in World War II – the systems and players that developed carrier aviation, conceptualized War Plan Orange, wargamed at the Naval War College, and exercised at sea in the legendary Fleet Problems. All these systems and players were coordinating formally and informally with each other, and without being straight-jacketed into a rigid bureaucratic hierarchy. Creating and maintaining such a system for the Maritime Strategy – and the all-important interactions among its elements – was understood by the SECNAV and successive CNOs and VCNOs as among their primary responsibilities.

Peter Swartz is a retired U.S. Navy captain, a former CNA Research Program Director, and currently an adjunct Principal Research Scientist at CNA. Most of his Navy assignments related to strategy, policy and allied engagement, including two tours as an advisor with the South Vietnamese Navy; helping set up the Navy’s Zumwalt-era intercultural relations program; coordinating Navy staff talks with key European allied navies; helping conceptualize, draft and disseminate the Maritime Strategy of the 1980s; directing the US Mission to NATO’s operations division as the Berlin Wall was coming down; and serving as Special Assistant to CJCS General Colin Powell during the First Gulf War. At CNA he primarily focused on analyzing U.S. Navy and Marine Corps strategy and policy, including their historical roots. In 2020 a Festschrift was published in his honor (Conceptualizing Naval and Maritime Strategy) by several of his colleagues, and the Naval Historical Foundation awarded him its Commodore Dudley Knox Lifetime Achievement medal.

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: December 14, 1986 An overhead view of Battle Group Charlie underway in formation. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS CARL VINSON (CVN-70) is in the center of the group. (National Archives photo by PH2 Protz)

By Dmitry Filipoff

This week CIMSEC is running an interview series on the U.S. Navy’s 1980s Maritime Strategy. Through discussions with those helped conceive and advocate for this historic strategy, important lessons on the maritime dimension of great power competition will emerge.

The 1980’s Maritime Strategy was published in unclassified form in January 1986, and had been widely briefed and discussed by the Navy’s leadership for several years prior. The strategy marked a sea change in the Navy, including from being a force that would have been primarily committed to continental resupply and defensive convoy escort in the event of World War III, to a force that would instead pursue a global, wide-ranging offensive against the flanks of the Soviet Union. The strategy also highlighted the value of the Navy in peacetime crisis response and the importance of ready forward presence. Among the things that make the strategy historic and unique, what is notable is how broadly it aligned naval leadership to how the Navy would be employed in peacetime and in conflict, and how it explicitly and unabashedly laid out a general scheme of offensive operations for how it would fight great power war. 

There is a deeper story to the strategy that is also historic and goes beyond the unclassified publications and public pronouncements. The story of how the strategy came to be, of how the Navy’s strategist community assembled, debated, and embedded the strategy in the institution of the Navy is a story worthy of the utmost consideration.

CIMSEC interviewed select individuals to tell this story and capture valuable lessons for how the Navy can consider maritime strategy in the context of great power competition. We thank these individuals for their excellent contributions. 

Peter Swartz, on “Defining The Maritime Strategy.”

Secretary John Lehman, on “Strategic Credibility and Leveraging Command of the Seas.”

Robby Harris, on “Writing Strategy and Steady State Competition.”

John Hanley, on “Convening the Strategic Studies Group and Assessing War Plans.”

Brad Dismukes, on “The Soviet Navy and Attacking Ballistic Missile Nuclear Submarines.“

Mike McDevitt, on “The Strategic Studies Group and Connecting Strategy with Programming.”

Barry Posen, on “Risking Escalation and Scrutinizing Plans.”

Dr. Stanley Weeks, on “Briefing the Maritime Strategy and Making the Strategic Difference.”

Irv Blickstein, on “Programming the POM and Strategizing the Budget.”

Bill Owens, on “The Strategic Studies Group and Taking Strategy to Sea.”

Spencer Johnson, on “Writing and Briefing the Maritime Strategy.”

Vice Admiral Hank Mustin, on “New Warfighting Tactics and Taking the Maritime Strategy to Sea.”

Admiral Tom Hayward, on “Challenging War Plans and Revamping Strategy.”

Pat Roll, on “Pat Roll on Tactics of the Maritime Strategy and Cover and Deception Operations.”

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: February 2, 1986 – A port bow view of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-65) underway. (U.S. National Archive photo)