Indo-Asia-Pacific

The Porcupine in No Man’s Sea: Arming Taiwan for Sea Denial

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By Collin Fox

Precision munitions have been sinking warships for the better part of a century, but never before have they been so capable, so widely proliferated, or benefited so much from omniscient surveillance and precise targeting. These convergent factors have propelled modern sea combat in a violently stagnant direction that strongly favors the defensive. A transit through contested waters in the Western Pacific would draw effective fire like a casual stroll through no-man’s land on the Western Front, circa 1916. Now, as then, tactical forces must stay invisible or out of range to stay alive and combat effective, lurking to deploy their own withering fires against emergent targets.

After years of bemoaning the impact of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) on its own power projection paradigm, the United States military is belatedly adapting the same methods with its own forces, while overlooking the geopolitically unique contributions that certain allies and partners can bring to the fight. The factors that have made sea denial easier, sea control harder, and contested power projection a real challenge apply to virtually all potential belligerents – including China and Taiwan. The United States should not simply rely on its own conventional military forces to deter Chinese aggression in the Pacific, but should also start major military foreign assistance to Taiwan and so transform the island into a prickly fortress of sea denial.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen reviews a Republic of China Marine Corps battalion in Kaohsiung in July 2020. (Photo via Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of China)

Omnipresent Weapons, Omniscient Surveillance

A degrading security environment and the convergence of accessible technologies have democratized precision strike. The notable trends seen during 2020’s Nagorno-Karabakh conflict also apply at sea; even lesser powers like Australia, Iran, Pakistan, Serbia, Taiwan, and Turkey are now producing their own anti-ship missiles. The great powers are going a step further, with China deploying “carrier killer” ballistic missiles and the United States converting land attack cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and air defense weapons into long-range ship-killers.

The improvements in the intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting cycle are even more impactful than these growing arsenals. Satellite constellations produce optical, infrared, and radar-generated imagery of every non-polar square meter on the planet several times per day. When combined with other sources and then distilled through increasingly capable artificial intelligence algorithms, this data can pinpoint most naval surface forces. The title of a recent USNI article encapsulated the change: “From Battleship to Chess.” Hiding is ever-harder, finding is ever-easier.

The reality of tactical omniscience applies to all major surface vessels, and catalyzes long-range precision weapons to create a massive maritime no-man’s land. To be seen is to be targeted, and, more than likely, killed.

Keeping Below the Trenchline

Prevailing in this future battle hinges on keeping forces alive, supplied, connected, and tactically relevant within a thousand-mile no-man’s land. Each service’s operational concept tackles this challenge through the same basic approach of survival through networked dispersion.

Both the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Advance Base Operations and the Army’s Multi-Domain Transformation concepts would disperse missile-equipped forces on islands around China, creating unsinkable and hard-to-find fire bases that could persistently hold Chinese forces at risk. The Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept would likewise bounce platforms between airfields, “diluting the amount of firepower that [enemies] can put down on any one of those targets.” The Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations concept would leverage the inherent mobility and firepower of naval vessels to similarly frustrate enemy targeting.

Each service’s distributed concept would still incur significant risk—stationing offensive fires on foreign soil demands dangerously uncertain political assent from each host nation, while the Air Force would be hard-pressed to maintain enough persistent and timely fires within a distant and contested environment. The Navy’s existing surface platforms might bring the assured access, persistence, and mass that the other services lack, but would nevertheless remain more exposed to enemy targeting and fires. Aside from service-specific risks, each of these disaggregated concepts rests on the dangerously flawed assumption of assured communications. In sum, victory is hardly assured and defeat is possible.

The net uncertainty of American overmatch erodes conventional deterrence against China, which increases the risk of miscalculation, escalation, and conflict. The United States should zoom out to reframe the strategic problem, rather just fixating on tactical and operational solutions.

Building a Better Porcupine, or Subsidized Buck-Passing

The conventional problem framing for defending Taiwan casts the deterrent value of American forces as the essential guarantor of regional stability. As the balance of power continues to shift, this binary framing—either China can be deterred by American power, or it can’t— has produced strongly divergent policy proposals. Richard Haass and David Sacks argued that an unambiguous security guarantee for Taiwan would restore deterrence and so keep the peace; Charles Glaser advocated “letting go of Taiwan” to mitigate the decreasingly justifiable risk of a major war with China. Like other proposals, both frame the problem too tightly – through the basic paradigm of American military power. 

The Lowy Institute’s insightful study takes a more nuanced and Australian perspective on the problem. It skips the false choice between doubling down and retrenchment, advocating instead that the “United States should act as armourer, but not guarantor.” The logic is sound:

“If Taiwan acquires, over roughly the next five years, large numbers of additional anti-ship missiles, more extensive ground-based air defence capabilities, smart mines, better trained and more effective reserve forces, a significantly bolstered capacity for offensive cyber warfare, a large suite of unmanned intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike systems, and counterstrike capabilities able to hit coastal targets on the mainland, it will continually increase the price China will have to pay to win a war.”

With help, Taiwan could deny China the sea and air control it requires to take the island, while also imposing significant costs on the mainland. Thousands of anti-ship missiles and sea mines would reinforce the stopping power of water, while dispersed air defense systems would help deter or attrite Chinese airpower. The United States should help Taiwan become a better porcupine by subsidizing and directing a new arsenal of democracy.

A delegation from the American Institute in Taiwan with Republic of China naval officers in Kaohsiung, August 20, 2019. (Photo via AIT)

This approach recalls the effective grand strategy that first Britain and then the United States executed as offshore balancers through the 19th and 20th centuries. Offshore balancing is not mere isolationism, retrenchment, or simple buck-passing. When a rising power threatens the regional balance, along with the offshore balancer’s interests, a savvy offshore balancer first puts money and arms on the scale to restore balance through allies, partners, and proxies. For insular great powers like the United States, this initial option of external balancing, or subsidized buck passing, represents a far better option than joining every war on the Eurasian Rimlands. Whenever this subsidized buck passing proves insufficient, though, the offshore balancer has the option, though not the obligation, to enter the conflict with military force against a weakened enemy and so restore the balance of power.

The key to both external balancing and buck-passing against a competitor is that the ally needs to stay in the fight, at least for a while. Britain’s buck-passing to France in the late 1930s did little to help Britain after France’s rapid and calamitous defeat. Offshore balancers should subsidize and strengthen their allies and partners so they can deter, defeat, or at least bleed their mutual foes, buying time and buying down the risk of rapid defeat.

Simply “letting go of Taiwan” would be an unforced error for the United States; any grand bargain that China might offer to encourage appeasement over Taiwan would have no more credibility or durability than the breached Sino-British Joint Declaration concerning Hong Kong. Letting go of Taiwan would unilaterally cede strategic terrain and advantage to China, allowing it to sidestep the potentially ruinous and deterrent costs that a subsidized defense would impose.

Gifts Come with Strings

Taiwan has not received significant military foreign assistance since the United States shifted recognition to Beijing in 1979, and so has a long history of buying American military hardware with its own funds. This cash-and-carry arrangement has allowed it to choose prestige platforms like M-1 tanks and F-16 fighters that better support anachronistic fantasies of retaking the mainland than a realistic defense of the island.

On the other hand, security assistance and security cooperation funds come with focused caveats that seek to build specific capabilities of mutual importance. These funds include Foreign Military Finance (FMF) and International Military Education and Training (IMET) grants under Department of State authorities, and Building Partner Capacity and other authorities under the Department of Defense.

Congress could include Taiwan in one or more of these appropriations while creating structured incentives aimed at both Taiwanese and Chinese policy choices. For Taiwan, FMF appropriations above a certain base level could be contingent on Taiwan’s defense reforms and funding levels, or come in the form of matching funds for specific capabilities, such as those ideal for sea denial. Provocative Chinese actions, such as air and sea incursions over the past year, could also trigger additional FMF funding. If each Chinese incursion essentially bought another anti-ship missile for Taiwan, Beijing might not be so casual about the practice.

Republic of China sailors walk by the corvette Tuo Chiang (Photo via AFP/Sam Yeh)

For context, the United States subsidizes Israel’s defense with $3.3 billion per year, which is a bit less than the annual operating costs for two Armored Brigade Combat Teams. Funding Taiwan’s security to a similar or greater level would create a fearsome A2/AD challenge for China, while also reducing plausible American costs and risks for a Taiwan contingency scenario. It would certainly provide better warfighting value than two armored brigades in a maritime theater. This level of assistance would buy greater access, influence, and amicable leverage to pursue American strategic interests in both defense and non-defense areas, such as chip supply chains.

China would certainly protest this security funding, just as it protests existing weapons sales, but these specific investments would constrain China’s escalation options. Arming Taiwan to the teeth with A2/AD weaponry could effectively and quickly deter China through denial without the escalation and entrapment risks that would come with aggressive proposals to base American forces in Taiwan.

The Limits of Power Projection

Notable critics have argued that Taiwan is simply indefensible, asserting that a “Chinese attack would be shock and awe with Chinese characteristics, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, rocket artillery, drones, and probably thousands of aircraft. There would be decapitation, disruption of Taiwan’s air force and navy in their bases, targeting of U.S. bases in Guam and Okinawa.” To be sure, China could batter Taiwan from across the 100-mile strait, but would this “shock and awe with Chinese characteristics” compel Taiwan’s rapid capitulation or even prepare the battlespace for a successful amphibious assault?

Every comparison is fraught, but China would be hard-pressed to match the intensity of fires that American forces once directed at Okinawa – an island 1/30th the size of Taiwan and 400 miles distant, but sharing its mountainous geology. Despite a full week of hellish pre-invasion bombardment from battleships and attack aircraft, the island’s entrenched Japanese defenders not only survived this “the typhoon of steel and bombs,” but then emerged to fight another three months in the longest and bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater. “Shock and awe” only goes so far – particularly when it can be reciprocated.

Technological progress since the Battle of Okinawa has also not alleviated the fundamental difficulty of taking well-defended terrain or targeting elusive defenders. Indeed, the American military’s frustration in hunting for SCUD missiles in the Iraqi desert, for military vehicles in Kosovo, and for Taliban fighters in Afghan caves simply reflects the limits of airpower – even with functional or complete air supremacy. These limits also apply to China, which would have no less difficulty in finding, fixing, discriminating, tracking, targeting, and neutralizing the thousands of mobile anti-ship, anti-air, and strike missile launchers hiding amongst many more decoys, and all scattered through the jungles, mountains, caves, and cities of Taiwan.

Buying Time, Buying Options

Heavily reinforcing Taiwan through focused security subsidies while maintaining a policy of strategic ambiguity would maintain conventional deterrence through denial against China. This approach would also greatly reduce the risk of a fait accompli, thereby giving American political leadership time to discover the best outcome for its strategic ambiguity: to rally support at home and abroad, to pressure China through a variety of means, and to enter combat at a time, place, and manner of its own choosing – or even to forego the conflict entirely.

These investments to harden Taiwan would buy time on the order of months and so enable slower, de-escalatory strategies like offshore control while also preserving more aggressive options. On the other hand, Taiwan might only be able to hold out for weeks under a plausible status quo scenario. In such a case, the United States would either risk major escalation by immediately executing a rapid but confrontational approach like JAM-GC, or watch Taiwan collapse from the sidelines.

The United States can make wise investments to pursue its own strategic interests, frustrate Chinese hegemony, and save a threatened democracy in the process. Taiwan needs focused U.S. support to substantially grow its sea denial capabilities quickly. Congress should update legislation and appropriate funds to that end.

Commander (select) Collin Fox, U.S. Navy, is a Foreign Area Officer serving as a military advisor with the Department of State. He is a graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School and the Chilean Naval War College. The views presented are his alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Department of Defense, the Department of State, or the Department of the Navy.

Featured Image: Taiwanese sailors at Kaohsiung’s Zuoying naval base in 2018. (Photo via Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Tactical Concepts

Spectrum Warfare Integration: Information Superiority for Marine Stand-In Forces

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By Nick Brunetti-Lihach

Prelude

“We have lost the electromagnetic spectrum. That’s a huge deal when you think about fielding advanced systems that can be [countered] by a very, very cheap digital jammer.”—Allen Shaffer, Department of Defense Chief of Research and Engineering, 2014

“Success in past conflicts has relied on information superiority on the field of conflict; this information superiority has been largely dependent on widespread use of modern sensor and communications electronics hardware and software.”—Defense Science Board: 21st Century Operations in a Complex Electromagnetic Environment, 2015

The enemy maneuvered around our networks. On D-Day, their informatized system of fixed and mobile jammers swept the skies and seas with impunity, severing critical re-supply and our kill chain. We had no counter-attack. As lethal and non-lethal projectiles rained down upon us, we were clueless to the fact that we’d set the conditions for failure years earlier. Their invisible bullets penetrated each gap and seam in our command and control. Like we did to the Iraqis in the first Gulf War, the enemy exploited every mistake. Our failure to protect the electromagnetic spectrum and control our signatures cost us tempo and decision speed. 

For years we remained vulnerable in the spectrum due to legacy systems and poor training. Despite the well-publicized Strava scandal and Bellingcat MH17 investigation, we neglected fundamental field craft. Undisciplined emissions bred bad habits and steadily exposed critical vulnerabilities. There were pockets of excellence where electronic warfare and communications were integrated from the top down, but they were the exception to the rule.

The Marine Corps is not prepared for a battle of signatures. Despite being smaller and lighter than the Army, the Marines are no less vulnerable to attacks from spectrally aware adversaries. In today’s operating environment, stand-in forces in the littorals are heavily dependent upon information for sensing and cueing weapon systems. Yet soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines take the electromagnetic spectrum for granted. The communication of information presents a signature and increases vulnerability. To preserve the kill chain and increase survivability, Marines must practice spectrum warfare at the lowest tactical level. To achieve information superiority against modern threats, the Marine Corps must update training and education, modernize command and control systems, and re-organize for spectrum warfare.

The Commandant of the Marine Corps charted a bold vision in his Commandant’s Planning Guidance and followed up with renewed focus on modernization with Force Design 2030. The service has identified programs to divest itself of, reorganized units, invested in ship-killing missiles, and reinvigorated naval integration. The service is also creating “purpose-built” stand-in forces to operate in the contact layer. Yet while Force Design calls for “greater resilience in our C4 and ISR systems,” how the service plans to develop spectrum warfare capability is not clear.

There is widespread agreement the U.S. military has lost dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum. In 2015, the Defense Science Board report found that U.S. military command and control systems are “jeopardized by serious deficiencies in U.S. electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.” A 2017 Government Accountability Office report noted systems continue to contain critical vulnerabilities, despite warnings.  The Chief of Staff of the Air Force recently characterized his service as “asleep at the wheel” regarding the electromagnetic spectrum.

The Commandant has acknowledged the Marine Corps is “under-invested” in spectrum warfare-related areas, to include signature management and electronic warfare. Yet the loss of spectrum dominance is also due to legacy command and control systems which will not survive in a conflict between peers. Individual units are also not organized for spectrum warfare, and training and education does not adequately prepare for peer-level spectrum competition.

Friendly communications are routinely subject to detection, interception, and exploitation. Threats range from radio direction finding systems, electro-optical and infrared surveillance, and airborne and celestial systems. While military communications are designed with security in mind, the underlying technology in use today by the Marine Corps to secure their radio transmissions (frequency hopping, waveforms) are decades old. Worse, following the Cold War, the Marine Corps cut electronic warfare systems such as the EA-6B Prowler. As a result, electronic warfare capability in the Marines is only a shell of what it once was, and has led the Marines to adopt systems from other services.

Communications and electronic warfare communities are two sides of the same coin. Both rely on the electromagnetic spectrum to provide and protect access to friends, or deny the same to the enemy. But at the tactical level, the Marine Corps does not possess electronic warfare capabilities needed to stress its systems against formidable peer capabilities possessed by Russia and China. At the same time, Marine Corps legacy command and control systems light up the spectrum with emissions.

Marine Corps doctrine outlines a maneuver warfare philosophy to identify surfaces and gaps to avoid or exploit through planning and analysis. Against a peer adversary, the ability to maneuver in the electromagnetic spectrum is a critical capability, while secure communication networks are vital requirements.

Today, planning and coordination between communications and electronic warfare personnel is deficient. Furthermore, within combined arms Marine Air Ground Task Forces, the aviation and ground communities operate different systems to support their networks, detect threats in the spectrum, and manage information. For example, while the Link 16 tactical data network is being touted as a core element of future networks, few communicators have experience or training with the capability. Aviation units have the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System “drone killer” to detect and jam drones, but ground units do not. As a result, the ground side lacks familiarity with aviation command and control systems, and both lack unity of effort with the electronic warfare community. This results in a wide gap in skill sets, interoperability, and real-time coordination in the electromagnetic spectrum. Given the future links envisioned by the Joint All Domain Command and Control concept, this will better prepare Marines for the spectrum warfare environment.

#1 People: Train and Educate as We Expect to Fight

“People, ideas, and hardware – in that order.”—John Boyd

Materiel and organizational change cannot overcome gaps in training and education. As the Navy is re-learning spectrum warfare, which it calls electromagnetic maneuver warfare, is extraordinarily challenging. Unfamiliarity with the complexities in the electromagnetic spectrum environment is evident when Marines play wargames that envision conditions in a future operating environment. However, there is also a lack of training and education in electronic warfare, and Marines have identified gaps in electronic warfare at the The Basic School.

Pre-deployment training in 29 Palms should not be the first time a Marine is formally introduced to spectrum warfare. The Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept anticipates Marines will operate in a spectrum denied environment under persistent surveillance. Yet as Jonathan George has written, most units still lack electromagnetic spectrum training standards. To address this acknowledged challenge, the Marine Corps should introduce spectrum warfare at entry level schools. Today, other than a small cadre of technical experts, few Marines receive formal training on friendly or enemy radar systems, but are expected to plan or operate in and around active and passive sensors. Most subject matter expertise in spectrum warfare resides far from the battlefield within organizations such as Marine Corps Information Operations Center.

Second, commands can leverage wargames to teach Marines how to think about operating in a spectrum-contested environment. Wargaming is an inexpensive way to train and educate. In recent years, commercial and military wargames have added the dynamics of the spectrum environment, to include communication links and electronic warfare. For example, DARPA has developed a computer-based wargame that uses an array of communications links and jammers to stress a player’s ability to complete an assigned mission. Wargames can supplement exercises and perhaps in some cases more effectively represent the dynamic challenges of the spectrum environment.

Third, the Marine Corps should add a spectrum warfare curriculum to all officer and enlisted career-level schools. Training and education in spectrum disciplines vary across training and education units, along with standardization and properly trained instructors. Baseline curriculum should be developed within the Deputy Commandant for Information community, with input from all relevant communications and electronic warfare disciplines, anchored by observations from recent unit deployment and force-on-force training after-action-reports.

#2 Ideas: Organize Tactical Units for Information Superiority

“Proliferating systems, rapidly procured and fielded, are making for an increasingly crowded spectrum. Our freedom to operate is jeopardized. As our adversaries learn to get the most from their asymmetric strategies and close the gap with us technologically, our edge in combat will increasingly rely on our singular competencies in integration and operational excellence.” –Huber, Carlberg, Gilliard, and Marquet, Joint Forces Quarterly, 2007

Electronic warfare seeks to detect, identify, and exploit enemy signals. Conversely, communicators enable command and control. While both communities are dependent upon the electromagnetic spectrum, they often operate in parallel. In recent years, more voices have argued for greater resources and integration, but only incremental progress has been made at the tactical level.

In today’s dynamic electromagnetic spectrum environment, battalions, squadrons, and regiments must be organized to sense and fight within the spectrum. For example, per Marine Corps doctrine, a Battalion Landing Team is co-located with an Air Support Element to coordinate and de-conflict air support and fires. Yet no such coordination exists at that level for spectrum warfare. Doctrinally, Electronic Warfare Coordination Cells only exist on a Marine Air Ground Task Force staff, but subordinate maneuver units lack an organization to integrate spectrum warfare.

In contrast, the Navy centralizes this function in every tactical formation through the Information Warfare Commander. Marine Corps maneuver units require an integrated spectrum warfare role to function in a manner similar to the Navy’s Information Warfare Commander, to fuse spectrum warfare operations and assure information superiority. At the tactical level, communications and electronic warfare functions would be combined under a spectrum officer with responsibility for all electromagnetic emissions.

Ground and air units at the battalion and squadron level should have full-time planners trained to integrate friendly command and control networks with electronic attack, protection, and support activities in real-time. This requires a centralized organization with links to distributed maneuver units. The Army has experimented with multi-domain task forces since 2017, combining intelligence and information operations with space and cyber. Accordingly, every maneuver element, down to the platoon, must possess spectrum awareness capability. This gap is not exclusive to ground forces. Aviation units have also noted persistent challenges aggregating the vast quantities of data in the information environment.

#3 Hardware: Replace the Systems

“Today we generally use the EM spectrum and cyberspace as an enabler for land, sea, air, and undersea operations. We have not yet taken full advantage of the warfighting potential afforded by the merging of the EM spectrum and cyberspace, or the pervasiveness of the EM spectrum into every facet of military operations.”—Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert

If Marine (and Navy) units dispersed across the littorals are to have a fighting chance, the Marine Corps must upgrade its command and control systems for greater survivability. The U.S. Army is heavily investing in this effort, to include a new alternative system to GPS location and timing. The Army is also leaning forward in fielding new electronic warfare systems at the tactical level. While hardware upgrades are an expensive undertaking, the alternative for inaction will be grim on the modern battlefield. While the Marine Corps is experimenting with minimal command posts, currently fielded command and control systems are nowhere near adequate. This effort should include all radios and waveforms without resiliency or survivability characteristics in a contested spectrum environment, such as jam resistance, and low probability of intercept and detection.

The speed at which modern digital electronics can shift operating modes and techniques has vastly increased. Proven systems and waveforms are available today: SATURN waveform to replace HAVEQUICK, Mobile User Objective System for satellite communications on the move, hand-held Link-16 to enable ground forces to link with aviation networks, and the AN/PRC-160 to replace legacy High Frequency radios. Many other new anti-jam, anti-spoof commercial systems are available on the market capable of operating across a range of frequencies. For the cost of one F-35B, the Marine Corps can field 5,000 next generation radios, improving the survivability of hundreds of maneuver elements.

Second, Marine Corps units need tools to dynamically manage the spectrum. A commander today at the tactical level has no situational awareness in the electromagnetic spectrum. Without a common spectrum picture, communicators cannot coherently sense or map the spectrum in real-time, and information cannot provide commanders the ability to make informed decisions. Hardware and software exists to enhance network visibility into a fused display, but over the years program officers have not fielded a common system. Spectrum visualization and RF Mapping tools, such as Radio Map, can provide real-time awareness of the spectrum at the tactical level. The Army has also recently developed a quantum sensor capable of detecting the entire radio-frequency spectrum.

Spectrum warfare becomes more complicated for Marines operating from ship to shore. Shipboard systems are controlled by the Navy, and often even older than tactical Marine Corps systems operated ashore. This paradigm has to change if sailors and Marines are to fight across the Indo-Pacific and rely on “any sensor, any shooter” as the Joint All Domain Command and Control concept envisions.

Third, establish Marine Corps-wide interoperability standards, and work closely to synchronize efforts with the wider joint force. Marine Corps Program Managers routinely field distinct systems that cannot share information, and it gets worse when factoring in NAVAIR, which owns all naval aviation systems. There must be an individual coordinating authority for command and control, to include electronic warfare sensors, across the service with guidance and direct access to Navy program offices to ensure unity of effort.

The Army is investing heavily in electronic warfare, and has wisely established a suite of open architecture standards for added flexibility and interoperability between requirements for intelligence gathering, electronic warfare, and communications links. As one of the Defense Department’s leaders recently noted, the ability to integrate information is perhaps a culture problem first.

Fourth, pursue systems with the capability to send and receive data through local telecommunications networks. For example, Marines or sailors in the littorals will operate in and among high density civilian populated areas with existing cellular and wireless telecommunication infrastructure. Leveraging these networks will be akin to finding a needle in a stack of needles. This technology is currently available, and has been in use for years by organizations within the Department of Defense.

Finally, equip units ashore and afloat with passive and low-power sensors, and invest in laser and light-based transmitters, which offer significantly reduced signatures. None of these activities should be undertaken without close coordination with the Navy, and the joint force. Imagine an autonomous electronic decoy launched by a Marine unit in the littorals, prompting a kinetic strike on the decoy by an Army or Navy platform, thereby unmasking themselves and revealing their position.

Conclusion

 “So the third principle, this is the combination of guided munitions and informationalized warfare, will span all types of ground combat, a regular, hybrid, nonlinear, state proxy and high-end combined-arms warfare.  And that means, like the Israelis found out, that the foundation for ground force excellence is going to be combined-arms operational skill.”—Bob Work, former Deputy Secretary of Defense

Force Design is an opportunity for the Marine Corps to improve its ability to maneuver in the electromagnetic spectrum – on offense and defense. This requirement is a historical road block for the technologically challenged Marine Corps. As historian Allan Millett has written, “The challenge facing the Marine Corps is whether its military culture, based on human qualities… can adjust in a war dominated by microchips.” On the modern battlefield, Marines ashore and afloat must practice spectrum warfare for survivability, and to maintain information superiority. To compete in this modern paradigm, the Marine Corps must update training and education, modernize command and control systems, and re-organize functional areas for spectrum integration.

As the joint force seeks to move toward a highly dynamic and fluid “all-domain” warfare, the Marine Corps must achieve unity of effort across all functions, especially communications and electronic warfare. We must stop admiring the problem and settling for incremental change. A holistic review of the information environment at the tactical level is in order, with a focus on the people, ideas, and hardware needed for information superiority. As Commandant Berger and General Brown recently acknowledged, investment in “truly all-domain command and control” must be accelerated.

Information superiority alone does not guarantee success in war. But if long-range precision strike and distributed forces are critical requirements, then information superiority is essential. This means critical vulnerabilities – command and control systems – must be protected. Marines will be vastly more lethal and survivable – a more credible threat – with integrated spectrum organization, modern systems, and updated training and education.

Maj. Nick Brunetti-Lihach is a Marine Corps Communications Officer currently serving as Operations Officer, Marine Wing Communications Squadron 28. He has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Marine Corps or the Department of the Navy.   

Featured image: U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Jacory Calloway, a radio operator with 1st Battalion, 2d Marine Regiment, sets up a long range communication system while demonstrating expeditionary advanced basing capabilities Oct. 7 to 8, 2020, as part of Exercise Noble Fury. (U.S. Marine Corps photos by Cpl. Josue Marquez)

Podcast

Sea Control 266 – The U.S. Joint Force’s Defeat Before Conflict

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By Jon Frerichs

Former Army Captain Anjanay Kumar joins the program to discuss his Army Mad Scientist fictional intelligence article that is grounded in a rich historical foundation of Chinese history and combined with a believable twist on current events and how a crisis with China could be lost before the conflict ever begins.

Sea Control 266 – The U.S. Joint Force’s Defeat Before Conflict

Links

1. “The U.S. Joint Force’s Defeat Before Conflict”, by Anjanay Kumar, The US Army Mad Scientist Lab, April 19, 2021.

Jon Frerichs is Co-Host of the Sea Control podcast. Contact the podcast team at [email protected].

Strategy

A New U.S. Navy Planning Model for Lower-Threshold Maritime Security Operations, Part 1

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By Andrew Norris

Introduction

The new U.S. tri-service maritime strategy, Advantage at Sea, which refers to the three maritime services (Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard) collectively as the single Naval Service, largely focuses on great power competition at sea against peer or near-peer competitors.1 However, although the Naval Service has to be configured and trained to prevail in high-intensity armed conflict, unless and until such conflict occurs, this competition at sea will play itself out through interactions short of war across what the strategy refers to as the “competition continuum.” By increasingly and successfully engaging in activities short of war against maritime competitors and other malign actors, the Naval Service will accomplish a central pillar of Advantage at Sea, which is to “prevail in day-to-day competition.”

In addition to being built, equipped, manned, and trained to compete in operations short of war, the Naval Service also has to be able to plan for campaigns and major operations in this space to ensure the most effective and efficient employment of scarce resources—not only to achieve the United States’ strategic goals, but also to assist allies and partners in achieving their own goals and objectives. This ability to plan at the operational level will increasingly include operations at the lower, “constabulary” end of the competition continuum (see Figure 1), an area of far less familiarity to the U.S. Navy than to the U.S. Coast Guard. Operations at this level, which promote a rules-based international order at sea, are “increasingly being seen as a crucial enabler for global peace and security, and therefore something that should command the attention of naval planners everywhere.”2

This article asserts that the U.S. Navy will increasingly be called upon to operate in the constabulary end of activities short of war and proposes a 4-part constraints, restraints, enablers, and imperatives (C-R-E-I) analytical model for preparing the staff estimate to inform the mission analysis phase of the Navy Planning Process (NPP),3 when utilized to plan for such activities. In doing so, it builds upon the scholarship of Professors Milan Vego and Ivan Luke of the U.S. Naval War College.

Professor Vego, in his recent article “Operations Short of War and Operational Art,” discusses the precepts of operational art (which are embedded into the NPP) as they apply to operations short of war.4 While a masterful Vego product as always, the article’s focus on operations at the higher end of the spectrum of violence involving the kinetic application of military force to achieve higher end political objectives—such as Operation Allied Force in Kosovo (1999), Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan (2001-2002), and Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya (2011)—leaves unaddressed the question of how operational art, as embedded in the NPP, needs to be adapted to account for the unique aspects of maritime operations with a constabulary derivation. This article attempts to fill that void.

The other theoretical inspiration for this article is Professor Luke’s approach to understanding operations short of combat at sea, as set out in his article “Naval Operations in Peacetime: Not Just ‘Warfare Lite’.”5 His underlying thesis is that:

[t]he things the U.S. Navy and other navies of the world are doing in peacetime today are fundamentally distinct from naval warfare, and they are important enough to demand an expanded naval theory that incorporates their unique aspects. Continued reliance on naval warfare theory alone puts the [U.S.] Navy at risk of not doing its best to meet the challenges of, or not capitalizing on the opportunities present in, the maritime domain today.

In recognition of the “broad and growing array of legal regimes, treaties, and sources of authority that need to be fully appreciated, understood, and leveraged” to achieve success in operations short of armed conflict, Professor Luke proposes a theory of legitimacy as being more appropriate than the theory of naval warfare to such operations.6 This article endorses the centrality of legitimacy, grounded on underlying authority, as a unifying theoretical construct of the authority mechanism for success of operations short of armed conflict, and “operationalizes” it by providing a mechanism—constraints, restraints, enablers, and imperatives—for thoroughly accounting for the factors that collectively constitute the authority and legitimacy of an intended operation.

Before arriving at the proposed analytical model, this article will first discuss operations short of war on the competition continuum and distinguish between those with an armed force derivation and those with a constabulary derivation. It will then demonstrate how the Naval Service, and most importantly, the Navy, will increasingly be called upon to perform lower threshold constabulary missions as part of the day-to-day competition in the maritime domain. It will then examine the need to perform those missions as part of a campaign or major operation, instead of haphazardly and situationally in response to malign activities at sea.

It will conclude by reviewing the Navy Planning Process overall, by identifying mission analysis (as informed by staff estimates) as the proper place to account for the “unique aspects” of operations short of war, and by demonstrating the inadequacy of existing doctrine to guide proper mission analysis for such operations. It is in the context of this discussion that the 4-part analytical tool will be presented and discussed.

Operations Short of War Defined and Discussed

1. Maritime security operations versus operations short of war

Professor Luke uses the term “operations short of armed conflict” to denote “naval operations in peacetime;” other commentators such as Professor Vego use the term “operations short of war.” As we have seen, Advantage at Sea, by defining the competition continuum to include day-to-day competition, competition in crisis, and competition in conflict, and by using terms such as “war” and “destroying enemy forces” to illustrate what competition in conflict means, implies that operations not rising to the level of conflict are operations short of “war.” The NPP and a host of official U.S. government products use the term “maritime security” synonymously with “operations short of war.”7 While Professor Till also employs the term “maritime security,” which he equates to the term “good order at sea,” to describe such operations, he acknowledges their ambiguity, and states that such terms must be used with caution.8

The bottom line is that a hodgepodge of terms are in common use to describe maritime operations short of war. While some may dispute the equivalency, for purposes of consistency, this article will use the terms “maritime security operations (MSOs)” and “operations short of war” interchangeably to refer to all operations short of “combat operations”—which is another term used in Advantage at Sea to denote operations during conflict.

Figure 1 – Till’s Depiction of MSOs Arrayed Along a Spectrum of Violence (Click to expand)

2. Maritime security operations with a law enforcement versus an armed force derivation

In addition to settling on consistent terminology amongst a welter of options, this article also distinguishes between higher-threshold maritime security operations that have an armed force derivation and a political-military purpose, and lower-threshold9 maritime security operations that have a law enforcement derivation and typically a constabulary purpose. The former must be conducted by members of the armed forces of a state operating from a warship10 and are governed by the law of armed conflict. In the latter, the use of force is governed by rules for the use of force deriving from human rights law, and operations may be undertaken not only by “warships or military aircraft,” but also by “other ships or aircraft clearly marked and identifiable as being on government service and authorized to that effect.”11

The U.S. Navy will increasingly be expected to perform lower-threshold MSOs

According to Advantage at Sea, the Naval Service will partner, persist, and prevail across the competition continuum, employing Integrated All-Domain Naval Power through five lines of effort:

  • Advance global maritime security and governance, which means operating with allies, partners, other U.S. agencies, and multinational groups12 to maintain a free and open maritime environment, and to uphold the norms underpinning our shared security and prosperity.
  • Strengthen alliances and partnerships, with the ultimate aim of modifying bad behavior in the maritime domain.
  • Confront and expose malign behavior by rivals, with the ultimate aim of holding them accountable to the same standards by which others abide.
  • Expand information and decision advantage, which provides superiority in coordinating, distributing, and maneuvering our forces while simultaneously removing adversary leaders’ sense of control, inducing doubt and increased caution in crisis and conflict.
  • Deploy and sustain combat-credible forces, which enables all lines of effort, deters potential adversaries from escalating into conflict, and ensures that naval and joint forces will defeat adversary forces should they choose the path of war.

As can be seen, though prevailing in the event of war is and always will be a core objective of the Naval Service, the lines of effort largely and properly focus on activities at the lower end of the competition continuum as the best means for prevailing in day-to-day competition. Effective competition at this level upholds the rules-based order, denies our rivals’ use of incremental coercion, and creates the space for American diplomatic, political, economic, and technological advantages to prevail over the long term.13 In short, it helps achieve the aim of line of effort 1, which is the promotion of maritime security and good maritime governance.

Examples provided in Advantage at Sea of “activities short of war” conducted by Navy and Coast Guard ships as part of day-to-day competition include:

  • freedom of navigation operations globally to challenge excessive and illegal maritime claims;
  • Coast Guard cutters and law enforcement detachments aboard Navy and allied ships exercising unique authorities to counter terrorism, weapons proliferation, transnational crime, and piracy;
  • enforcing sanctions through maritime interdiction operations, often as part of international task forces;14
  • crucial peacetime missions, including responding to disasters, preserving maritime security, safeguarding global commerce, protecting human life, and extending American influence; and
  • underwriting the use of global waterways to achieve national security objectives through diplomacy, law enforcement, economic statecraft, and, when required, force.

Such activities support day-to-day competition in a diverse threat environment that includes potential adversaries such as Russia and China, but also additional state competitors, violent extremists, and criminal organizations, all of which exploit weak governance at sea, corruption ashore, and gaps in maritime domain awareness. Furthermore, “[p]iracy, drug smuggling, human trafficking, and other illicit acts leave governments vulnerable to coercion. Climate change threatens coastal nations with rising sea levels, depleted fish stocks, and more severe weather. Competition over offshore resources, including protein, energy, and minerals, is leading to tension and conflict. Receding Arctic sea ice is opening the region to growing maritime activity and increased competition.”15 These forces and trends create vulnerabilities for adversaries to exploit, corrode the rule of law, and generate instability that can erupt into crisis in any theater.16

If, as Advantage at Sea posits, the Naval Service will be called upon on a day-to-day basis to conduct operations short of war, the traditional functions assigned to the Coast Guard and Navy, respectively, as depicted in Figure 1, will become more integrated and homogenized.17 The Coast Guard will increasingly be called upon to conduct MSOs in the political-military realm, such as freedom of navigation operations, sanctions enforcement through maritime interdiction operations (often as part of international task forces), and providing specialized capabilities, to include Port Security Units or Advanced Interdiction Teams to augment operations in theater.18 The Navy, by contrast, will increasingly be called upon to conduct operations in the lower-threshold, “softer” constabulary realm. We know this to be so because: (1) Advantage at Sea and other strategic documents tell us so, and (2) as by far the largest seagoing service in an era of ever-shrinking platforms available to “employ All-Domain Naval Power to prevail across the competition continuum,” no other realistic alternative exists.19

For a variety of structural and other reasons, adaptation by the Navy to operate in the constabulary realm is much more challenging than the adaptation necessary by the Coast Guard to conduct higher-threshold political-military operations.20 Principal among the many challenges is the fact, as Professor Luke identifies, that legitimacy of operations short of war is the ultimate “measure” of their lawfulness. Legitimacy brings into play the vista of “legal regimes, treaties, and sources of authority that need to be fully appreciated, understood, and leveraged,” both individually and interrelatedly, to ensure the success of a contemplated lower-threshold operation. The unique nature of operations at this level, and the Navy’s capacity to adequately plan for them, is the subject of the next section in part 2 of this article.

Capt. (ret.) Andrew Norris works as a maritime legal and regulatory consultant, and has been retained to create and teach a new five-month maritime security and governance course for international officers at the U.S. Naval War College. He retired from the U.S. Coast Guard in 2016 after 22 years of service. Prior to attending law school and joining the Coast Guard, Capt. (ret.) Norris served in the U.S. Navy as a division officer aboard the USS KIDD (DDG-993) from 1985-1989. He can be reached at +1 (401) 871-7482 or [email protected].

References

[1] Tri-Service Maritime Strategy “Advantage at Sea,” 17 December 2020.

[2] Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century: Fourth Edition (New York: Routledge, 2018), 97.

[3] Navy Warfare Publication 5-01, Navy Planning (Ed. December 2013).

[4] Milan Vego, “Operations Short of War and Operational Art,” Joint Forces Quarterly 98 (3rd Quarter 2020): 38-49.

[5] Ivan Luke, “Naval Operations in Peacetime: Not Just “Warfare Lite,” Naval War College Review 66, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 10-26.

[6] See Figure 3, Appendix, in part 2 of this article.

[7] See, e.g., the mission statement of the State Department’s Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs (https://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/under-secretary-for-economic-growth-energy-and-the-environment/bureau-of-oceans-and-international-environmental-and-scientific-affairs/office-of-ocean-and-polar-affairs/); Presidential Policy Directive (PPD)-8 (Maritime Security) and the underlying National Strategy for Maritime Security; and the 2019 Maritime Security and Fisheries Enforcement Act (or Maritime SAFE Act), a component of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act.

[8] Professor Christian Bueger at the University of Copenhagen eponymously devotes an entire article to the issue of “What is Marine Security,” Marine Policy 53 (2015) 159–164.

[9] References to “threshold” and “spectrum” refer to the spectrum of violence as depicted in Figure 1, which also equates to the spectrum of activities across the competition continuum in Advantage at Sea.

[10] Article 29 of The Convention on the Law of the Sea, Dec. 10, 1982, 1833 U.N.T.S. 397 (UNCLOS) defines a “warship” as “a ship belonging to the armed forces of a State bearing the external marks distinguishing such ships of its nationality, under the command of an officer duly commissioned by the government of the State and whose name appears in the appropriate service list or its equivalent, and manned by a crew which is under regular armed forces discipline.”

[11] UNCLOS, Article 111.

[12] In general, “naval, coast guard, marine police, coastal and maritime forces are joined by ground and air elements of the joint armed forces, other departments and agencies, including oceanographic and fisheries services, the intelligence community, and international partners” to conduct maritime security operations.” James Kraska and Raul Pedrozo, International Maritime Security Law (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2013), 3.

[13] Advantage at Sea, 10.

[14] While forward-looking overall, in this respect, Advantage At Sea reflects existing realities: “Over the past decade, the Security Council has authorized the naval pursuit of rogue states, nuclear proliferators, pirates, and migrant smugglers with unparalleled frequency. From 1946 to 2007, the Security Council adopted approximately thirty-six resolutions with a direct or indirect impact in the maritime environment. In the following decade, from 2008 to 2017, the Security Council approved more than fifty such resolutions. What previously occurred about once every 1.7 years at [the United Nations] for six decades—the adoption of a resolution with a direct or indirect maritime impact—now is routine, transpiring every 2.5 months.” Brian Wilson, “The Turtle Bay Pivot: How the United Nations Security Council Is Reshaping Naval Pursuit of Nuclear Proliferators, Rogue States, and Pirates,” Emory International Law Review 33, issue 1 (2018): 1-90.

[15] Advantage at Sea, 5.

[16] Advantage at Sea, 5.

[17] For an excellent analysis of U.S. Navy versus U.S. Coast Guard functions, see Odom J.G. (2019) The United States. In: Bowers I., Koh S. (eds) Grey and White Hulls. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9242-9_11.

[18] Advantage at Sea, 13-14.

[19] Advantage at Sea implicitly recognizes this by its reference to the Coast Guard integrating its unique authorities—law enforcement, fisheries protection, marine safety, and maritime security—with Navy and Marine Corps capabilities (including the availability of assets) as a means of providing options to joint force commanders for cooperation and competition. Advantage at Sea, 7.

[20] The Coast Guard always has a focus toward higher threshold operations since, by law, it can be and has been (most recently, during World War Two) subsumed by the Navy in times of war. Thus, for example, the Coast Guard Atlantic and Pacific Area commanders continuously exist within DOD as Commander, Coast Guard Defense Force (CGDEFOR) East and West, respectively; federal law requires the Coast Guard to engage in training and planning of reserve strength and facilities as is necessary to insure an organized, manned, and equipped Coast Guard when it is required for wartime operation in the Navy; and Coast Guard doctrine recognizes the need to employ its authorities to support National Defense Strategy (NDS) objectives. See Coast Guard Strategic Plan 2018-2022.

Featured Image: May 2, 2021 – USCGC Hamilton (WMSL 753) and Georgian coast guard vessels Ochamchire (P 23) and Dioskuria (P 25) conduct underway maneuvers in the Black Sea. Hamilton is on a routine deployment in the U.S. Sixth Fleet area of operations in support of U.S. national interests and security in Europe and Africa. (Credit: U.S. Coast Guard)

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.