All posts by Walker Mills

Capability Analysis

Marines and Mercenaries: Beware the Irregular Threat in the Littoral

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By Walker D. Mills

The world is increasingly urban and littoral. This convergence between urbanization and the littoral, or littoralization, can lead to “the worst of both worlds” and may remake the littorals into hotspots of instability and conflict. At the same time, the U.S. Marine Corps is shifting its focus away from decades of counterinsurgency and irregular warfare in the Middle East. In 2017, the Marine Corps published a new operating concept focused on the littorals called Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE). LOCE emphasized “fighting for and gaining sea control, to include employing sea-based and land-based Marine Corps capabilities to support the sea control fight,” but at the same time cautioned that “major combat operations (MCO) and campaigns versus peer competitors are beyond the scope of this concept.” A more recent and still not publicly released operating concept, Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO), expanded on LOCE to cover major combat operations and campaigns against a peer competitor – most likely China.

EABO and a growing focus on great power competition promises to be the future of the Marine Corps and is the basis for the new Commandant’s Force Design 2030 effort. The Commandant of the Marine Corps has asserted that the Corps is “the preeminent littoral warfare and expeditionary warfare service.” And littorals are unquestioningly where the Marine Corps is most needed and can be the most effective. But this pivot to the littoral does not necessarily mean the Marine Corps can leave irregular warfare and lower-intensity conflicts behind. History and current trends make clear the global littorals are a haven of irregular warfare, and always have been for millennia.

In a recent interview the Marine Commandant expressed his view that a force optimized for major combat operations against a highly capable adversary can easily adapt to operate effectively across the range of military operations:

“We’re building a force that, in terms of capability, is matched up against a high-end capability. The premise is that if you do that, if you build that kind of a force, then you can use that force anywhere in the world, in any scenario; you can adapt it.”

He cautioned, “But the inverse is not true.” The Commandant is correct, a well-trained and highly capable force can adapt to new threats. But the question is how long does that take? The U.S. experience in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that adapting to a low-end fight can take years, including changes to strategy, acquiring the right equipment, and writing and training to the relevant doctrine. Clearly the Marine Corps needs to prioritize and adapt to meet the challenges posed by China, a highly capable competitor and potential adversary. However, as the Marine Corps looks beyond the irregular threats of the Middle East, it cannot afford to abandon those hard-won lessons. Irregular warfare and asymmetric threats can and likely will follow the Marine Corps to the littorals. In many cases, they are already there.

Irregular Warfare in the Littorals

The threat of non-state actors and irregular warfare in the littorals is not new. Even the rebellious 13 American colonies leveraged maritime irregular warfare to support their bid for independence, employing a mix of littoral raiding forces and state-sponsored privateers to target British shipping at sea and in their home waters. Criminal and entrepreneurial activity has deep roots at sea with a long history of pirates taking vessels and raiding lucrative targets ashore. This type of amphibious raiding has taken place in nearly every global littoral region at some time or other. Some of the earliest recorded history is accounts of “the Sea Peoples” attacking the Egyptian kingdom of Ramesses II in the Bronze Age. In 793 AD, Vikings from Scandinavia raided the monastery at Lindisfarne, kicking off the Viking Age. Piracy was rampant in the colonial Caribbean, both by pirates operating independently and by privateers, which were pirates operating as proxies with the official sanction of European kingdoms to raid vessels and settlements.

Today pirates continue to operate. They concentrate their operations in the littorals and near international chokepoints such as the Gulf of Guinea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, often taking advantage of the seams between different law enforcement regimes ashore and offshore. Pirates operating from bases in Somalia became famous after they hijacked the Maersk Alabama, and where the subsequent rescue operation by the U.S. Navy SEALs was made into the blockbuster Captain Phillips.

But pirates are now more prevalent elsewhere, especially in the Asian littoral. A plurality of total piracy now occurs in the Straits of Malacca and near Singapore. The Bay of Bengal is another piracy hotspot. The threat of piracy has also fueled the rise of a dark economy of mercenaries for hire that live and work in the littorals on commercial ships and floating armories, a potential spark for even more instability.

Effective counterpiracy efforts require a naval force supplemented with the capability to conduct visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) operations as well as operations against pirate bases ashore. It requires a force comfortable operating on land, at sea, and in the spaces in between. It is exactly the type of operations that Marines need to be prepared for as they shift their focus to the littorals.

Mines

Mines have long been a critical weapon in irregular warfare, whether military-grade or improvised. Sea mines – especially when deployed in maritime straits or chokepoints – are highly effective weapons and are inexpensive. During the Korean War, mines were deployed to block the approach to Wonsan Harbor by rolling them off the back of local fishing boats. Despite this crude method of employment, they were effective in sinking multiple U.S. warships. Sea mines have also notably accounted for 14 of the 18 U.S. warships damaged or sunk by hostile action since the end of the Second World War and “over the last 125 years mines have damaged or sunk more ships than all other weapon systems combined.” They were responsible for damaging three U.S. warships during the Tanker War in the Persian Gulf despite American awareness of the mine threat.

Last year, a spate of limpet mine attacks proved that mines are not just weapons of the past. Video footage indicates these attacks were perpetrated by Iran, which has not admitted responsibility. In South America, authorities have found hidden packages of drugs attached to cargo ships or hidden in secret underwater compartments, indicating that the expertise needed to place a limpet mine is not limited to the Persian Gulf.

An image taken from video released by United States Central Command  in June 2019 shows a smaller boat near what appears to be the vessel Kokuka Courageous, in the Gulf of Oman. The military said the video shows the crew of an Iranian Gashti Class patrol boat removing an unexploded limpet mine from the tanker’s hull. (Photo Via U.S. Central Command)

Sea mines are yet another threat to the security of U.S. and allied vessels in the littorals that the Marine Corps may find itself dealing with. In his 2019 Planning Guidance, the Commandant of the Marine Corps mused whether or not it would be “prudent to absorb” some traditionally naval functions like mine countermeasures. It is even easier to imagine Marines being charged with raiding networks engaged in the manufacture and employment of sea mines, much like how they operated against insurgent bombmakers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Improvised Explosive Attacks

Improvised anti-ship weapons are also a threat to U.S. and allied naval vessels and merchant shipping. In the 1990s, the Tamil Sea Tigers, the naval arm of an insurgent group in Sri Lanka, made a staple out of vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) attacks at sea. They attacked dozens of international vessels in the waters around Sri Lanka with a range of tactics. Not even warships are immune to this type of attack. In 2000, Al-Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in a suicide attack with a speedboat packed with explosives, killing 17 sailors. Captain Wayne Hughes (ret.) had also argued that ships in port are increasingly vulnerable to attack.

Ships and maritime infrastructure itself can even be repurposed as a weapon. While there is no evidence that the recent explosion in Beirut was intentional, it revealed a critical vulnerability in port security. In his 2006 novel, The Afghan, Frederick Forsyth imagined a crew of terrorists seizing a liquid natural gas (LNG) tanker to use as a massive suicide bomb. Used in such a way, a hijacked LNG tanker would have explosive power similar to a small nuclear warhead. But an oil tanker or even a stationary drilling platform could still unleash an environmental and economic catastrophe if it was damaged or sunk. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill released nearly 11 million barrels of oil and ultimately affected over a thousand miles of coastline. The disaster cost Exxon nearly $7 billion. Recent reports of dozens of full and stationary oil tankers anchored off the U.S. coast present a significant economic and environmental vulnerability to any group willing to take advantage of it. Today, a crippled tanker full of crude rides at anchor off the coast of rebel-controlled Yemen where it is a potential target and ecological disaster waiting to happen.

Marines have already helped to protect U.S. warships from VBIEDs by strapping light-armored vehicles with 25 millimeter cannons to the deck of the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship. This innovative yet extremely inefficient point defense solution may foreshadow how Marines may be forced to apply high-end capabilities like light armored reconnaissance assets to address irregular maritime threats. Marines may soon find themselves required to habitually defend fixed installations and ships at sea against attack with makeshift solutions.

SOUTH CHINA SEA (Sept. 27, 2018) – Marines, assigned to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), fire a Light Armored Vehicle’s M242 Bushmaster 25 mm chain gun at a target during a Defense of the Amphibious Task Force (DATF) drill aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Sean Galbreath)

Maritime Infiltration

The perpetrators of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed or injured several hundred people arrived by sea. The attackers traveled from Pakistan to Mumbai via container ship and a hijacked fishing trawler before infiltrating Mumbai on inflatable boats. The attackers demonstrated that the littoral zone could be used as a maneuver space to reach vulnerable targets. 

Semi-submersible vessels, often dubbed “narco submarines,”  have become a key means of transporting cocaine out of South America for drug cartels and pose a persistent problem for drug enforcement agencies. Most of the narcosubs leave from the Pacific coast of Colombia or Ecuador and are bound for Mexico, where their cargoes will often be transshipped to the U.S. overland. These vessels are often built deep in the jungle and once at sea can be incredibly difficult to locate. Analysts estimate that as much as 80 percent of Colombia’s cocaine leaves the country by sea. Fully submersible vessels have been found with dimensions up to 100-feet long and capable of carrying nine tons of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico in a single trip. Started in Colombia, the trend has now globalized and narco-submarines are now being used to infiltrate Europe. It should not be a surprise in the future if these improvised, but increasingly sophisticated and capable vessels are eventually used to smuggle terrorists, weapons, or explosives, or are employed as vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices.  

Conclusion 

It is clear the littorals will continue to provide opportunities for terrorists and non-state actors to threaten the United States and its allies. Yet the post-9/11 fight against terrorism and other security initiatives have largely ignored the maritime space. A recent report by Stable Seas found that while “Global powers have spent billions over the last few decades in the fight against [violent non-state actors]…[they] have mostly overlooked their activities in the maritime domain” and argues that an effective approach to maritime security has to integrate onshore and offshore operations – an ideal role for the U.S. Marine Corps.

Simple yet effective weapons and tactics will continue to be a threat, and these groups may also acquire more advanced weaponry like the anti-ship missiles that have been employed by the Houthis and Hezbollah. Technological innovation and proliferation will allow land-based groups to continue threatening high-value targets at sea like cruise ships, tankers, offshore platforms, and naval vessels and especially in key straits, maritime chokepoints, and ports. At the same time, low-tech and improvised threats will remain, like narco-submarines and explosive-laden speedboats. Capt. Hughes argued in Fleet Tactics: “Often the second best weapon performs better because the enemy, at great cost in offensive effectiveness, takes extraordinary measures to survive the best weapon.”

As the Navy and Marine Corps increasingly focus on the threat from high-end weapons like Chinese supersonic anti-ship missiles and the DF-26 “Carrier Killer” ballistic missile they cannot forget about the low-end threats and “second best weapons.” The Marine Corps’ own concept for using small units, distributed among key maritime terrain to hold ocean-going targets at risk, is proof that non-state actors and rogue states may be able to do the same and achieve outsized effects because of the unique vulnerabilities and tactical geography presented by the littorals.

The Marine Corps needs to be fully cognizant of not just the potential for high-end, major combat operations in the littorals, but also of the irregular threats it may be called to address at any time. The Marine Corps needs to make sure that as it shifts its focus to major combat operations against a peer or near-peer adversary it maintains the capability to counter irregular and asymmetric threats against U.S. interests and allied in the littorals.

Walker D. Mills is a Marine Corps infantry officer currently serving as an exchange instructor at the Colombian naval academy in Cartagena.

Featured Image: STRAIT OF HORMUZ (Aug. 12, 2019) An AH-1Z Viper attached to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 163 (Reinforced), 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) prepares for take-off during a strait transit aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4). (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Dalton S. Swanbeck/Released)

Ocean Governance Week

The Cod Wars and Today: Lessons from an Almost War

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Ocean Governance Topic Week

By Walker D. Mills

Introduction

Atlantic Cod vary in color from grey to greenish-brown and can grow to be as large as five feet long (though this is uncommon). The fish have long been a staple of diets across the North Atlantic and fishermen have crisscrossed those waters from the Grand Banks off Newfoundland to the North Sea to bring back cod to their home markets.

Not once, but three times in the 20th Century, cod was almost the causus belli between Iceland and the United Kingdom in a string of events referred to collectively as the “Cod Wars.”1 The Cod Wars, taken together, make clear that issues of maritime governance and access to maritime resources can spark inter-state conflict even among allied nations. Fishing rights can be core issues that maritime states will vigorously defend.

Fighting for Fish

In the spring of 1958, following the conclusion of several treaties resulting from the first United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS I), the Icelandic government announced that it would extent its territorial waters out to 12 nautical miles.2 Just a few years earlier, they had extended their territorial waters from three to four miles and caused a row with the British government, sometimes called the “Proto-Cod War.” The 1958 12-mile increase was much larger and almost singly directed at the British fishing fleet that trawled Icelandic waters for cod.

The United Kingdom, which had long supported only a three-mile territorial waters limit, was incensed. They reminded the Icelanders that they had been fishing cod in Icelandic coastal waters since at least the 15th Century.3 A large fleet of UK-based fishing trawlers regularly operated off the coast of Iceland, and well within 12 miles of the coast. This cod fleet was supported by processing plants and retailers back in the UK and was well-represented not only in the British Parliament but also well-regarded in public opinion.

In the months between the announcement and the coming enforcement of the extension it was not clear exactly what Iceland intended to do if the British trawlers did not leave voluntarily. Iceland had no navy and the Icelandic coast guard had only seven small ships with one gun each – almost all under 100 tons.4 In contrast, the Royal Navy was regarded as one of the world’s most powerful navies and the Icelandic coast was less than two days sailing away from Royal Navy bases in the United Kingdom.

The First Cod War started on September 1st, 1958. Icelandic coastguardsmen sought to arrest and impound any British trawlers within their new 12-mile limit. The Royal Navy established zones patrolled by frigates and destroyers to protect their fisherman. Their first clash came the following day on September 2nd, when Icelandic coastguardsmen from the Thor boarded the British trawler Northern Foam which had strayed out of the zone protected by British warships. But the Northern Foam was able to send a distress signal to one of the Royal Navy ships and soon a counter-boarding party from the HMS Eastbound boarded the Northern Foam as well and convinced the Icelanders to leave.5

The Icelanders, however, were not backing down. The health of their offshore cod fisheries had begun to significantly decline with as much as a 15 percent reduction in cod catch over the previous three years despite increases in the size of the fishing fleet.6 After two and-a-half years the British government backed down and acquiesced to the new 12-mile limit.

Ten years later the conflict began anew when Iceland announced that it would be extending the 12-mile limit to 50 miles effective on the first of September 1972. This “Second Cod War” was more intense and more violent, with multiple incidents of Icelandic coast guard vessels firing at or near British trawlers and many incidents of ramming by Royal Navy warships, British tugboats, and Icelandic coast guard vessels.7 The Second Cod War also saw the use of a new weapon in the anti-trawler fight by the Icelandic coast guard – a device for cutting trawler fishing nets. The coast guard vessels could fire a hook across the trawl lines of a fishing vessel and when they reeled their hook back in it would cut the net free of the trawler. Thus the fisherman would lose not only their catch but also their net.8

An Icelandic net cutter (Wikimedia Commons)

It was also during the Second Cod War that Iceland threatened to leave NATO (it was a founding member) and expel U.S. troops from Iceland, specifically their key base at Keflavik.9,10 This threat revealed the significant leverage that Iceland had in dealing with NATO despite not having a standing military. Iceland’s contribution to the alliance is its key location astride the North Atlantic, roughly halfway between Greenland and the United Kingdom. The nature of Iceland’s contribution to the alliance meant that it could not be replaced by another member or any other combination of members. Also, an Iceland out of NATO could have possibly looked toward the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact to be its new security guarantor.

In November 1975 Iceland initiated the Third Cod War when it unilaterally extended its territorial waters out to 200 miles. During the Third Cod War Iceland again threatened to withdraw from NATO and severed diplomatic relations with Britain for a time. British warships again clashed with Icelandic vessels, and collisions – both intentional and not – were common. Wire cutters were also used again to cut trawler nets. The dispute was again ended on terms favorable to Iceland in 1976, where Britain accepted the new 200-mile limit and received only limited and temporary fishing rights in return.11

Lessons for Today

If the Cod Wars are relevant today, then what are the important lessons decades after they have been settled? Three takeaways stand out. First, smaller, less powerful nations can successfully contest maritime disputes below the threshold of war. The Icelandic coast guard was successful in keeping British trawlers out of Icelandic waters – except for the three specific patrol zones established by the Royal Navy. Forcing the trawlers to operate in specific, tightly controlled zones significantly reduced their ability to fish and the size of their catch which were the ultimate goals of the extension of the territorial waters claim.

https://gfycat.com/alivethickhackee

Icelandic gunboat collides with British frigate in March 1976 (Footage via Associated Press)

Second, a critical part of the conflict was the asymmetry in will. Iceland, a much smaller nation than Britain with far fewer resources, simply had more willpower. In the words of Mark Kurlansky, author of Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, “The Icelandic government was shockingly tough.”12 They were even willing to go so far as to threaten to withdraw from NATO and kick U.S. troops out of Iceland to preserve the health of their fisheries. Britain, despite having dramatically more power overall, did not have the political will to fully employ their naval power against the Icelandic coastguard or the leverage to counter the Icelandic threat to leave NATO. The British Foreign Secretary and the Secretary for Fisheries and Food acknowledged that “NATO’s defenses in the North-Atlantic and the balance of power were more important than the interests of the Humber trawler owners and fishermen.”13

Third, issues of maritime governance and control (like fishing rights) can be seen as core issues to the nations concerned and can potentially lead to war. If this lesson comes as a surprise, it shouldn’t. Wars have been fought over what are purely maritime disputes since the Trojan War.14 Some authors have argued that because of the liberal ties between Iceland and the Britain full-scale war was simply not possible, but the possibility of armed confrontation was surely close to the minds of those involved.15

The United States, China, and their respective partners would do well to remember the Cod Wars as tensions rise in the Indo-Pacific where fishing access and maritime boundaries are central to several ongoing disputes.

Walker D. Mills is a Marine infantry officer currently serving as an exchange officer in Cartagena, Colombia. He has previously authored commentary for CIMSEC, the Marine Corps Gazette, Proceedings, West Point’s Modern War Institute and Defense News.

Endnotes

1. The name is attributed to the British journalist Llewellyn Chanter who covered the first Cod War for The Daily Telegraph. Gudmundur J. Gudmundsson, “The Cod and the Cold War,” Scandinavian Journal of History, Vol. 31, No. 2, (June 2006) 97.

2. Gudni Thorlacius Johannesson, “How ‘cod war’ came: the origins of the Anglo-Icelandic fisheries dispute, 1958–61,” Historical Research, vol. 77, no. 198 (November 2004) 557.

3. Gudmundsson, “The Cod and the Cold War,” 100.

4. Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1997) 162.

5. “Richard Nelsson, “Iceland v Britain: the cod wars begin – archive, September 1958,” The Guardian (7 September 2018) https://www.theguardian.com/business/from-the-archive-blog/2018/sep/07/first-cod-war-iceland-britain-fish-1958.

6. Kurlansky, Cod, 161.

7. Ibid, 166.

8. Sverrir Steinsson, “The Cod Wars: a re-analysis,” European Security, (March 2016) 4.

9. Steinsson, “The Cod Wars: a re-analysis,” 4.

10. John W. Young and John Kent, International Relations Since 1945: A Global History, 2nd edition (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013) 86.

11. Steinsson, “The Cod Wars: a re-analysis,” 4.

12. Kurlansky, Cod, 166.

13. Gudmundsson, “The Cod and the Cold War,” 101.

14. Trevor Bryce, “The Trojan War,” chapter in The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010) 480.

15. Sverrir Steinsson, “Do Liberal ties pacify? A study of the Cod Wars,” Cooperation and Conflict, (June 2017) 2-3.

Featured Image: HMS Scylla and Odinn collision during the Second Cod War (Wikimedia Commons)

Current Operations

Where is the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command?

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The following article originally appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette and is republished with permission. Read it in its original form here.

By Capt. Walker D. Mills, USMC

In recent years, the Marine Corps has become obsessed with naval integration, and that’s a good thing. Former Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller called for greater efforts at naval integration, calling it “Green in support of Blue.”1 In his Commandant’s Planning Guidance, Gen. David Berger echoed that call and labeled naval integration “an imperative.”2 The new Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, in his confirmation hearing, said that “there is no daylight between us,” referring to himself and Commandant Berger in response to a question about the Marines’ push for closer integration with the Navy. So, with all the calls for integration, where is the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC)? After all, the Marine Corps itself is a naval expeditionary force according to the Commandant.

You might be asking, “What is the NECC?,” precisely because it is missing from most Marine Corps commentary and thinking. If you were to Google it, you would find it below Northern Essex Community College in the search results. Despite the relative lack of renown, the NECC is and will be essential for emerging and future Marine Corps concepts like Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). NECC, established in 2006, is the type command on which the Navy puts the responsibilities to man, train, and equip most of its functions that are not performed on ships, submarines, or airplanes. It is operationally controlled in combined task forces that consolidate the Navy expeditionary combat force (NECF) under a singular command in each theater.

These forces include the Seabees: naval construction units that are similar to but distinct from the Marine Corps’ engineer community and have more capability. The Seabees are the go-to naval unit for building and maintaining runway and port infrastructure, hardening bases, and constructing expeditionary facilities.

The Navy Expeditionary Logistics Support Group is also part of the NECC. Responsible for “providing expeditionary logistics capabilities for the Navy, primarily within the maritime domain of the littorals,” it is a key part of any maritime fight that needs fuel, ordnance, or cargo sustainment.3 It is also responsible for expeditionary communications.

The NECC also contains the Coastal Riverine Force, which is responsible for port and harbor security—defending high-value assets like amphibs and aircraft carriers during strait transits and maritime security. In addition, the NECC has cognizance over explosive ordnance disposal units, which play a critical role in both mine countermeasures and dive and salvage operations. They are optimized for inshore and offshore littoral operations—operations in the very zone that the Marine Corps has identified as an essential part of its future. The NECC is rounded out by the Navy Expeditionary Intelligence Command and training and support elements. All told, it includes some 20,000 personnel, many of whom are currently deployed supporting operations around the globe.

Despite its capability, the NECC has largely been missing from commentary and discussion in and about the Marine Corps. The NECC has not been the focus of a feature article in Proceedings for years and perhaps ever in the Marine Corps Gazette. Most Marines do not know what it is or, more importantly, how it could support them. It has also been missing from published concepts and comments by senior leaders. It was defined in the appendix of “Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment” but never used, and in the 32 pages of the 2016 Marine Corps Operating Concept, it was mentioned once as part of a simple bullet without explanation: “Leverage the NECC.” Gen. Neller’s guidance was a short fragmentary order, but it also did not mention the NECC. Gen. Berger’s planning guidance, while never specifically using the terms NECC or NECF, openly asks the question of:

“whether it is prudent to absorb [some of the NECF] functions, forces, and capabilities to create a single naval expeditionary force whereby the Commandant could better ensure their readiness and resourcing.”

This question about potential contributions of the NECC to EABO should be front and center; the ignorance of what the NECC can do is a loss for the Marine Corps.

In the 2017 Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment concept, the Marine Corps identifies a list of “proposed capabilities.” Many of these capabilities are resident within the NECC, even though the command itself is not mentioned in the document, such as the abilities to:

  • “Establish expeditionary advance bases.”
  • “Conduct littoral mine detection, avoidance, and clearance.”
  • “Sustain distributed naval forces with precision munitions and sufficient fuel in high-intensity combat.”
  • “Rapidly establish mobile, clandestine expeditionary logistics bases to provide sustainment to afloat and expeditionary operating forces.”
  • “Conduct casualty and medical treatment and evacuation.

According to the Navy and Marine Corps’ new concept, EABO will involve employing “forward arming and refueling points (FARPs) and other expedient expeditionary operating sites for aircraft such as the F-35, critical munitions reloading teams for ships and submarines, or … expeditionary basing for surface screening/scouting platforms” in “austere, temporary locations.”4 In brief, that is a lot of what the NECC does. Seabees can build and repair the runways and facilities at FARPs and build expeditionary basing. Naval Expeditionary Logistics Groups transport (and are developing the internal capability to reload) munitions on planes, ships, mobile land-based launchers, and submarines. But to leverage the capabilities of the NECC, Marines first need to understand it and account for it in new plans and concepts.

There has been some progress. Marine engineers and Seabees have been working together to repair and refurbish the “Airport in the Sky” on Catalina Island as part of the DOD’s Innovative Readiness Training Program—a task not unlike what they might be expected to perform on other islands in the Pacific in wartime.5 More recently, exercise PACIFIC BLITZ, which was held across Southern California, included multiple units from the NECC and I MEF, though not necessarily integrated.6 The East Coast planning efforts for the upcoming Large-Scale Exercise 2020 features an “expeditionary syndicate” led by Expeditionary Strike Group 2, II MEF, and NECC co-leads.

During my own time in the Corps, I have spent significantly more time training with partner militaries than I have with the sailors or soldiers in our own military. I cannot remember a training event where I ever worked with sailors from the NECC. This results in myopia across the force at a time when naval integration is becoming increasingly central to our core responsibilities and future vision. Our lack of engagement with the NECC might be the worst example of this myopia, but it extends to the other services as well. Until I attended the Defense Language Institute on an Army installation, I had never met an officer in the Army or Air Force in a professional setting. Sometimes I wonder if there are Marines who think we can defend the Pacific by ourselves, ignoring that the Army alone has more than 80,000 soldiers based in the Pacific and continues to expand their roles.7 I am not arguing that Marine Corps leadership is unaware of the NECC or our sister services, but it is important that the whole force, from top to bottom, has a strong understanding of the NECC’s role and capabilities. The NECC is perhaps the organization that the Marines will work closest with when executing EABO; the NECC will help enable EABO. It is also not the only organization Marines should expect to fight beside. The Army possesses over 100 seagoing vessels that will likely be used for intratheater transport in the littorals and be key to any future Pacific campaign because the Marine Corps and the Navy do not have the same capability. New Army multi-domain task forces will also be present in theater, and the Air Force will likely deploy small units built around its “Rapid Raptor” concept. Marines need to understand these capabilities and train with them in a joint way.

In his paper, “On Littoral Warfare,” Naval War College professor Milan Vego writes that “littoral warfare requires the closest cooperation among the services, or ‘jointness.’”8 That cooperation is rooted in understanding and fostered by joint training. If Marines do not understand or discuss the NECC, it is because they have not been adequately exposed to it. The NECC, by name and definition, is, like the Marine Corps, a naval expeditionary force. The command has the capability to support EABO in everything from running decoy FARPs to maintaining and building fuel sites and repairing port facilities. In order to validate and implement future and emerging concepts, the Corps needs to seek out more opportunities to expose itself to and train with specific partner forces and units. The Marine Corps must increasingly seek joint training opportunities with the units in other services it is most likely to work with and must work to highlight that training and increase Marines’ exposure to the NECC.

Walker D. Mills is a Marine infantry officer currently serving as an exchange officer in Cartagena, Colombia. He has previously authored commentary for CIMSEC, the Marine Corps Gazette, Proceedings, West Point’s Modern War Institute and Defense News.

Notes

1. U.S. Congress, Statement of General Robert B. Neller, Commandant of the Marine Corps, before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Defense, Concerning the Posture of the United States Marine Corps on April 30, 2019, (Washington, DC: April 2019).

2. Headquarters Marine Corps, Commandant’s Planning Guidance: 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps, (Washington, DC: July 2019).

3. Naval Expeditionary Logistics Support Group, (U.S. Navy Expeditionary Combat Command), available at https://www.public.navy.mil.

4. Headquarters Marine Corps, “EABO,” available at https://www.candp.marines.mil.

5. Luis Sahagun, “Marines Invade Catalina Island to Fix Crumbling Airstrip at Airport in the Sky,” LA Times, (Los Angeles, CA: January 2019).

6. Gidget Fuentes, “Pacific Blitz Tests How Navy, Marines Could Fight the Next Island Campaign,” USNI News, (Annapolis, MD: March 2019).

7. Jen Judson, “Pacific Pathways in 2020 Lead to Oceania,” Defense News, (Washington, DC: October 2019).

8. Milan Vego, “On Littoral Warfare,” Naval War College Review, (Newport, RI: Spring 2015).

Featured Image: 180419-N-NT795-642 SAN DIEGO (April 19, 2018) Electronic Technician 3rd Class Juan Britomora, assigned to Coastal Riverine Squadron (CRS) manned the .50-caliber machine gun aboard MKVI patrol boat during unit level training conducted by Coastal Riverine Group (CRG) 1 Training and Evaluation Unit. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Boatswain’s Mate Nelson Doromal Jr/Released)

CNO's Design Week

Integrate with the Marines…And Who Else?

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CNO’s Design Week

By Walker D. Mills

“The proposition that the sea service of the United States should behave as complimentary parts of a national fleet is true to their several natures and functions. It need not provoke controversy.” –Colin  S. Gray, 2001

In December 2019, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael M. Gilday, the released his FRAGO A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority. The FRAGO harped on integration with the Marine Corps – mentioning it seven times over the course of the short, eight-page document. This is to be lauded, as General David Berger, the new Marine Commandant, has been pushing for integration as hard or more so from the green side. This naval integration is critical to the Navy and Marine Corps moving forward.

But there is still a piece missing – where is the Coast Guard? The Coast Guard has been increasingly asked to share the burden of maritime policing, presence, and security cooperation in the Pacific, and they have long supported those missions in other waters. The USCG has even contributed to U.S. FONOPS in the Strait of Taiwan. Despite this, the Coast Guard was not mentioned a single time in the document. As long as the Coast Guard continues to support Navy missions in the Pacific and elsewhere (and it should), the CNO should make it clear that the USCG is an integrated part of the nation’s maritime force structure. Not doing so only marginalizes one of America’s best tools for maritime grey zone competition and contributes to an overly narrow focus on conventional naval combat.

The most significant line of effort in the FRAGO is lethality. CNO Gilday makes it absolutely clear that lethality is the most important measure of the Navy, which is hardly disagreeable. But a single minded focus on “lethality” and “warfighting” ignores much of the reality in the Pacific. As the U.S. Navy prepares for the possibility of a conventional battle for sea control, every day a mix of commercial vessels, paramilitaries, and maritime law enforcement vessels tangle in constant competition. Admiral Gilday himself writes “We must also succeed in sustained, day-to-day competition, winning future fights before they become kinetic.” But this appears to be only an afterthought, a caveat to his focus on lethality.

The Chinese Coast Guard possesses the world’s largest law enforcement fleet, and by some counts their law enforcement fleet would be the second largest fleet in the world – after the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The U.S. Navy is meeting the simultaneous challenge of being prepared for potential conflict with the PLAN and countering day-to-day aggression by Chinese law enforcement vessels below the level of armed conflict. But it doesn’t have to go it alone – the Coast Guard can support these missions too. And perhaps better still – the U.S. Coast Guard can help U.S. allies and partners in the region strengthen and fortify their own coast guards more effectively than the Navy can alone. The Coast Guard is also integral to operations in the Arctic and the Middle East. They operate the only icebreakers owned by the federal government and maintain a permanent presence in Alaska. Cooperation and integration between the Navy and Coast Guard is essential for supporting an increased naval presence in the Arctic and protecting “increasingly vital” economic corridors like the Bering Strait. In the Middle East, the U.S. Coast Guard has maintained their largest detachment outside the United States since 2002 with 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

Some observers have raised objections to including the Coast Guard in the U.S. response to Chinese belligerence and encroachment in the South China Sea – it has repeatedly been a focus of commentary without generating a consensus. Generally, these objections are based on the small size and meager funding that the Coast Guard has and how the Coast Guard would be unprepared if a shooting conflict broke out in the region. Both of these are reasons why the CNO needs to plan for and mention the inclusion of the Coast Guard in his guidance to the force and make them a part of the larger conversation. Ignoring the Coast Guard, minimizing their potential contribution, or leaving them out of the discussion entirely would only serve to exacerbate these two issues. The Coast Guard is already supporting operations in the Southern and Western Pacific and it would be unwise to ignore this reality.

Recognizing the unique value that the Coast Guard can provide in support of national security missions is also valuable to the Navy. If the Navy believes itself to be undermanned and underfunded as its leaders have recently argued – increased integration with the Coast Guard can be a way to offload some missions and relieve a small piece of that burden. Arguments have been made for standing up a dedicated Coast Guard force for patrolling in the Pacific, which could serve as another means to reprioritize the Pacific over the Middle East where the United States has maintained a permanent USCG presence for almost two decades.

In keeping with the intent of the CNO’s FRAGO, one way the Navy can increase its focus on high-end lethality is to argue for an enhanced and interoperable Coast Guard that can absorb some of the lower-end missions. The 2015 joint Navy-Coast Guard National Fleet Plan, signed by the CNO and the Coast Guard Commandant, affirmed that “Navy and Coast Guard forces maintain a symbiotic relationship that benefits the nation as a whole. This relationship is most noticeable during ongoing operations, but it starts with conceptualization, continues through the planning cycle, and culminates during mission execution.” But unfortunately this sentiment is not captured in the FRAGO.

Conclusion

The CNO dedicated part of his FRAGO to guidance on building “alliances and partnerships” internationally – but it is just as if not more important to build partnerships and interoperability between sister services and other U.S. agencies. The CNO’s FRAGO is a far cry from the level of Coast Guard inclusion that permeated the 2015 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. While CNO Gilday obviously does not have the statutory authorities to direct his FRAGO at the Coast Guard – he can make it clear to his sailors that he views the Coast Guard as playing a critical role in the Navy-Marine Corps-Coast Guard team. That would be moving toward a truly integrated national maritime architecture and force structure. This direction will be critical for preserving U.S. primacy at sea and enforcing rule of law in the global commons.

Walker D. Mills is a Marine infantry officer currently serving as an exchange officer in Cartagena, Colombia. He has previously authored commentary for CIMSEC, the Marine Corps Gazette, Proceedings, West Point’s Modern War Institute and Defense News.

Featured Image: The US Navy (USN) Virginia Class New Attack Submarine Pre-Commissioning Unit (PCU) TEXAS (SSN 775) sails past the US Coast Guard Cutter USCGC SEA HORSE (WPB 87361) as it returns to Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard in Virginia (VA) after successfully completing Alpha sea trials. (PHAA Patrick Gearhiser, USN)