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Undersea

Tumult in the Deep: The Unfolding Maritime Competition Over Undersea Infrastructure

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By Tim McGeehan

In late 2008, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) sorties flown from Balad Air Force Base in Iraq dropped from 100s of sorties per day to 10s of sorties per day.1 Most UAV flights – unable to push full-motion imagery back to Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base due to an unexpected loss of bandwidth – were grounded.2 This mission kill was not achieved by a cyberattack, electronic warfare system, or violent solar activity. A thousand miles away, dragging ship anchors in the eastern Mediterranean had damaged undersea cables, cutting off 60 percent of the combined commercial and military telecommunications capacity to the Arabian Gulf region.3 A minor undersea accident started a series of cascading consequences that rippled across cyberspace, to impact flights in the air domain, preventing them from supporting ground combat operations. This episode shows the complex non-linearity of warfare in the Information Age, where increasing interconnectedness can link seemingly isolated vulnerabilities across different domains.

With an average depth of about 4,000 meters (or about 2.5 miles), most of the ocean and seafloor are out of sight and out of mind. However, trends suggest that the deep ocean and seabed are poised to rise in importance – both physically and as a venue for Information Warfare (IW) – due to the intertwined nature of critical infrastructure, resources, and national security. Undersea infrastructure is rapidly growing and populations are becoming ever more dependent on its utility. This infrastructure growth is posing novel challenges and opportunities for competition and national security. Navies must astutely follow the development of undersea infrastructure as they may be called upon to defend, attack, or influence it.

The Booming Growth of Critical Undersea Infrastructure

Our modern way of life is dependent on critical infrastructure “considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.”4 Presidential Policy Directive 21 grouped critical infrastructure into 16 sectors, four of which have undersea components:5

  • The communications sector includes undersea telecommunications cables that carry 99 percent of international data and Internet traffic.
  • The financial sector uses undersea cables to pass extensive transaction data detailing monetary flows, including millions of daily messages traversing the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network.6
  • The defense sector operates undersea sensors and ranges, and it leases bandwidth on commercial undersea fiber.
  • The energy sector has undersea pipelines for oil and gas, as well as cables for electricity. New maritime infrastructure is being installed to harness alternative energy sources and launch mineral mining projects.

The value and dependence on undersea infrastructure is set to increase. Huge volumes of data must flow between widely distributed datacenters to support cloud services. Major technology companies (e.g., Google, Microsoft, and Facebook) have outgrown available capacity and are already installing their own transoceanic data cables for future growth. Even small improvements matter. In 2015, the London and New York financial trading centers were linked by the Hibernia Express, a new undersea cable whose $300 million cost was considered a good investment because it decreased transmission times by 2.6 milliseconds.7

With widespread adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the ability to turn volumes of data into actionable information will be paramount, making well-trained algorithms a major aspect of competitive advantage. As a key enabler for effective AI, training data will become a worldwide strategic commodity. Protection of this data – and data flows – from physical and cyberattack will become even more important to ensure confidentiality (prevent unauthorized access and exfiltration) and integrity (prevent tampering or “poisoning” that can mislead machine learning). Most of this data will traverse thousands of miles of undefended undersea cables.

The future realization and adoption of quantum computing will also impact security. Of most immediate concern is its use to break existing encryption. With intercepted messages becoming more vulnerable to being broken, traditional “over the air” military radio transmissions will be limited. Sensitive transmissions will shift to more secure means, pushing ever more traffic onto undersea cables.

Beyond data cables, future datacenters themselves may be located underwater. Through its submerged Northern Isles datacenter experiment called Project Natick, Microsoft demonstrated that undersea datacenters are reliable (submerged for two years with one eighth the failure rate of land counterparts), flexible (deployable closer to major coastal population centers), and efficient (with cooling freely provided by the surrounding ocean).8

Microsoft Project Natick team members power wash the Northern Isles datacenter after it was retrieved from the seafloor off the Orkney Islands in Scotland. (Photo by Jonathan Banks)
A server is removed from the Northern Isles datacenter. (Photo by Jonathan Banks)

Likewise, undersea pipelines will continue to provide major energy supplies across the world using increasingly ambitious engineering. The planned EastMed line would run from Israeli and Cypriot gas fields to Greece and Italy, extending 1,900 kilometers with depths approaching 3,000 meters.9 The energy sector is also expanding into alternative energy markets, installing offshore wind turbines and equipment for wave and tidal power generation, with undersea power cables to carry electricity back to shore. Offshore wind farms are more efficient than onshore counterparts, leveraging higher and more consistent wind speeds. Again, small changes matter, as a turbine can generate twice as much energy with winds of 15 miles per hour as opposed to 12 miles per hour.10 In the future, as traditional terrestrial power plants are de-emphasized and more power comes from the “blue economy,” the nation will (unknowingly) become more dependent upon seabed-based infrastructure for daily life.

A Critical Domain for Gray Zone Subversion

“Gray zone” competition features activities that challenge the rules-based international system to make gains while remaining below the level of provoking a full-scale military response. These activities take advantage of poor governance, ambiguity, and difficulty in attribution to deflect accountability and challenge policy responses. This dimension of competition will expand as undersea infrastructure grows, given how the deep ocean and seabed is a textbook gray zone. It is difficult to access, even more difficult to monitor, and most of it lies beyond the jurisdiction of any state. While at the surface, proxies like maritime militia can leverage ambiguity to enforce dubious territorial claims, the stakes are even higher with gray zone subversion in the undersea domain. One can hold a nation’s foundational infrastructure – and its population’s confidence in government – at risk.

U.S. competitors clearly see deterrent value in holding undersea critical infrastructure at risk. The intelligence community’s publicly released 2022 Annual Threat Assessment warned that “Russia is particularly focused on improving its ability to target critical infrastructure, including underwater cables and industrial control systems, in the United States as well as in allied and partner countries, because compromising such infrastructure improves and demonstrates its ability to damage infrastructure during a crisis.”11

The September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage highlights undersea ambiguity and foreshadows future challenges. While the known damage is only located at around 50 meters of depth, it is challenging to forensically determine exactly what occurred. The difficulty would be significantly magnified if it occurred at the ocean’s average depth of 4,000 meters.12 The blast was consistent with “several hundred kilos of explosives,” and one line was damaged over a 900-meter section.13 The European Commission president called the attack a “deliberate disruption of active European energy infrastructure,” placing three of the four individual lines out of service for at least several months.14 With winter approaching, Europe felt the loss acutely. Nord Stream was an important artery accounting for 18 percent of recent gas imports.15 Despite fingers pointing towards Russia, definitive attribution remains difficult. Whoever the culprit, the lesson was summarized by German ambassador Miguel Berger: “our critical infrastructure: undersea cables, pipelines, telephone networks…All of that needs additional surveillance.”16

Leaking gas emanating from the damaged Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea. (Photo via Danish Defence Command)

In addition to physical vulnerabilities, undersea infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable in another gray zone – cyberspace. A 2022 GAO report warned of “significant and increasing cybersecurity risks” to offshore oil and gas infrastructure with “potentially catastrophic” impacts.17 Expanding automation and incorporation of remote connections for control and monitoring increase the potential attack surface. Attackers could remotely open or close valves, override safety features that prevent overheating or overpressure, feather wind turbine blades to increase stresses and induce failures, and other methods. Even relatively unsophisticated attacks or temporary disruption of energy infrastructure can strongly influence public confidence. The 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack caused panic buying, shortages, and drastic price increases across the southeastern United States.18

Dual-Use Technology and Increasing Physical Access

The depths are becoming more accessible, adding urgency to expand Navy deep sea capability and capacity. Once the purview of the most advanced state actors, now non-state actors (Schmidt Ocean Foundation) and private individuals (James Cameron, Victor Vescovo) are accessing even the deepest parts of the ocean. While the U.S. Navy was the first to the bottom of the Challenger Deep (in 1960), and despite Cold War exploits like Project Azorian and the Glomar Explorer, deep ocean and seabed investments have not been a DoD priority in recent decades.

While the United States disengaged, adversaries doubled down on deep ocean capabilities. The Chinese submersible Fendouzhe reached the Challenger Deep.19 The Russian ship Yantar can host manned and unmanned deep ocean submersibles, and reportedly routinely loiters in the vicinity of seabed cable systems.20 Officially designated an oceanographic research vessel, a 2017 Russian Parliament report openly stated that Yantar “has equipment designed for deep-sea tracking, and devices that can connect to top-secret communications cables.”21 Before its 2019 fire, the Russian midget submarine Losharik also provided a nuclear-powered deep-diving capability.22

China’s deep-sea manned submersible Fendouzhe (Striver), onboard the scientific research ship Tansuo-1. (Photo via Xinhua)

The economics of global supply chains and climate change are driving increased commercial technology development and seabed activity as well. Rare Earth Elements (REE) are used in the manufacture of high-tech electronic components, with extensive civil and defense applications. There are major supply concerns, as China has a stranglehold on REE production and controls world markets.23 Climate change mitigations, such as the drive from hydrocarbon to alternative energy exacerbate the scarcity, as many green technologies (wind turbines, electric car batteries, and others) rely on REE materials.24 While DoD is investing to reinvigorate the few domestic producers of strategic REE materials (on land), the major untapped REE deposits exist on the seabed.25 Seabed leases have been applied for and it is only a matter of time before mining begins.26 In 2024, Japan is set to begin mining its newly discovered undersea REE deposit near Minami-Torishima Island, which may be large enough to offset Japan’s heavy reliance on China for these elements.27 Some capabilities used to locate and mine REE deposits at extreme depth could be repurposed to threaten undersea infrastructure.

A Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC) test excavator on the seabed. (Photo via JOGMEC)

When operating at full ocean depth, the extreme pressure takes its toll, physically deforming ceramic components of transducers and degrading hydraulic equipment joints. Untethered communications from instruments at great depths to the surface is limited by low acoustic data rates and long lags associated with acoustic travel time. The power for sensors and onboard processing of un-cabled deep ocean capabilities are limited by battery technology, as are endurance and speed of deep diving vehicles. Intelligent undersea systems to conduct independent operations do not exist, but are required to achieve these effects at depth and scale. The key to realizing these capabilities is the foundational science and technology, itself underpinned by enduring investment in long term basic and applied research. Unfortunately, in DoD this fundamental research has been under attack in recent years, with acquisition professionals incentivized to favor low-risk near-term incremental advances instead.

With a growing field of capable actors, the Navy will need to establish a persistent undersea presence to expose and attribute nefarious activities in this burgeoning gray zone.

Devising Doctrine and Policy Frameworks

Giulio Douhet’s original air power theory similarly dealt with opportunities using new technology to attack infrastructure for strategic effect. In the early days of airpower, Douhet helped conceive of its unique utility as being able to skip over the adversary’s land-based defensive lines and directly strike population centers, military and commercial infrastructure, and “shatter” civilian morale so they demand their government sue for peace before their military can mobilize.28 As such, his advice on defense is relevant – have the air force strike first, destroy the adversary’s air force before it can launch, and be ready to immediately repair damage inflicted by bombardment.29 Put into broader principles, it is advisable to have similar capabilities to hold the adversary at risk, neutralize adversary capabilities before they can be deployed, and focus on resilience.

Developing increased deep ocean and seafloor capabilities does not imply a future of large manned platforms operating at full ocean depth. Instead, it could be a highly distributed and self-organizing collection of many small, affordable, and attritable assets. In many cases, existing sensors and payloads could be repurposed but modified and encapsulated for depth. Persistent deep ocean capabilities will also support maritime domain awareness, with routine monitoring of our own seabed infrastructure to detect and mitigate attempts at physical tampering. Novel projects are underway to repurpose existing commercial communications seabed infrastructure for sensing applications. For example, the Sensor Monitoring And Reliable Telecommunications (SMART) program leverages data cable installation activities to add additional sensor packages inside their repeaters, while Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) uses the tiny stretching and compression of optical fibers inside the cables to detect seismic and acoustic signals.30

Deployment of monitoring capabilities could act as a foundational node in future counter-UUV efforts. These efforts will expand in scope and urgency as UUVs proliferate and more high-consequence variants like Russia’s nuclear-armed Kanyon put to sea.31 Data and power cables are increasingly being added to create redundancy, and mesh topologies allow traffic and power to be re-routed. Recent legislation also established a Cable Security Fleet with ships reserved for undersea cable repair, further increasing resilience.32

Following Douhet, targeting adversary deep sea capabilities before they are deployed will rely on extensive intelligence collection and warning. However, preemption could begin before adversary systems are even fielded. The Departments of State and Commerce have roles to play in controlling the export and proliferation of potential dual-use seafloor exploration and mining technology. While this will not halt the technology’s inevitable spread and military adoptions, it may slow it.

Competition over undersea infrastructure has significant applications for Information Warfare (IW), especially with respect to influencing populations and their trust in government. Without a formal DoD definition, IW has been unofficially assigned a variety of meanings over time, spanning everything from cyber operations to propaganda.33 RAND discussed the idea of “Strategic IW,” which focused on attacking critical infrastructure to either achieve strategic-level mass disruption of the economy and daily life (to include “public loss of confidence in delivery of those services”), or degrade execution of military strategy (hindering mobilization, deployment, and execution of operations).34 Similarly, the Russian IW definition includes the ability to “undermine political, economic, and social systems” and execute “campaigns against the population of a State in order to destabilize society and the government.”35

The United States is not immune to such risks, and has seen small glimpses of popular unrest following infrastructure outages. Failures of critical infrastructure following Hurricane Katrina led to a dangerous breakdown of law and order.36 The major Texas power outage (and its cascading consequences) in February 2021 led to widespread anger, leaving some openly questioning the legitimacy of the social contract between citizens and their government.37 These aspects of IW – namely the ability to hold critical infrastructure at risk and thereby target and influence the population – make the challenge of defending undersea critical infrastructure all the more urgent.

Conclusion

Developing deep ocean and seabed capabilities will be a massive undertaking. Developing these capabilities would support the integrated deterrence posture of the U.S. and expand options for operating in crisis and conflict. The capabilities to monitor and defend seabed infrastructure and related resilience initiatives support deterrence-by-denial, convincing the opponent that it is unlikely to attain its immediate objectives at reasonable cost. Expanding the Navy’s operational flexibility and capability in the deep ocean also adds more options for scalable effects and the ability to escalate both laterally and vertically. The ability to access the seabed and hold adversary infrastructure at risk also supports deterrence-by-punishment, creating a looming and credible threat of retaliation for unwanted activity. Above all, such capabilities can change an adversary’s risk calculus.

Great power competition is expanding in the deep ocean, and it is coming for seabed infrastructure. Threatening this infrastructure offers the ability to directly impact populations, their way of life, and their confidence in government, all with ambiguous attribution. With such strategic stakes, the Navy must invest in capabilities to shine a light on the deepest of gray zones.

Tim McGeehan is a retired U.S. Navy Officer who served in multiple branches of the Information Warfare community for 22 years. He has a PhD from the Naval Postgraduate School, is a graduate of the Naval War College, and was once referred to by a 4-star admiral as “a handsome and powerful man.” These views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the official views of any U.S. government department or agency.

References

[1] Michael Sechrist, “Cyberspace in Deep Water: Protecting Undersea Communication Cables,” Harvard Kennedy School, March 23, 2010, https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/PAE_final_draft_-_043010.pdf.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] “Critical Infrastructure Sectors,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security-and-resilience/critical-infrastructure-sectors.

[5] “Presidential Policy Directive — Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience,” The White House, February 12, 2013, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/presidential-policy-directive-critical-infrastructure-security-and-resil.

[6] Michael Sechrist, “New Threats, Old Technology Vulnerabilities In Undersea Communications Cable Network Management Systems,” Harvard Kennedy School, February 2012, https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/sechrist-dp-2012-03-march-5-2012-final.pdf.

[7] Mark Buchanan, “Physics in finance: Trading at the speed of light, Nature, February 11, 2015, https://www.nature.com/articles/518161a.

[8] John Roach, “Microsoft finds underwater datacenters are reliable, practical and use energy sustainably,” Microsoft, September 14, 2020, https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/project-natick-underwater-datacenter/.

[9] “Greece and Israel agree deal to build world’s longest underwater gas pipeline despite pledge to cut fossil fuels,” OilandGas360, January 5, 2020, https://www.oilandgas360.com/greece-and-israel-agree-deal-to-build-worlds-longest-underwater-gas-pipeline-despite-pledge-to-cut-fossil-fuels/#:~:text=The%20current%20longest%20undersea%20pipeline,Russian%20natural%20gas%20to%20Europe.

Penda Sall, “DNV further confirms feasibility and maturity of the EastMed pipeline,” DNV, June 13, 2022, https://www.dnv.com/news/dnv-further-confirms-feasibility-and-maturity-of-the-eastmed-pipeline-226712.

[10] Eli Kintisch, “Offshore wind farms have powerful advantage over land-based turbines, study finds,” Science, October 9, 2017, https://www.science.org/content/article/offshore-wind-farms-have-powerful-advantage-over-land-based-turbines-study-finds.

[11] “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” Office of the Director of National Intelligence, February 2022, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2022-Unclassified-Report.pdf.

[12] Chris Stokel-Walker, “Here’s how the Nord Stream gas pipelines could be fixed,” Technology Review, October 3, 2022, https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/10/03/1060558/heres-how-the-nord-stream-gas-pipelines-could-be-fixed/.

[13] Ibid ; Camille Gijs and Charlie Duxbury, “Sweden clarifies there are four leaks in Nord Stream pipelines,” Politico EU, September 29, 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-clarifies-four-leaks-in-nord-stream-pipelines/

[14] https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1574856534064041996

[15] “Quarterly report On European gas markets,” European Commission, Volume 14, Issue 4, 2021, https://energy.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-04/Quarterly%20report%20on%20European%20gas%20markets_Q4%202021.pdf.

[16] Camille Gijs and Charlie Duxbury, “Sweden clarifies there are four leaks in Nord Stream pipelines,” Politico EU, September 29, 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-clarifies-four-leaks-in-nord-stream-pipelines/

[17] “Offshore Oil And Gas: Strategy Urgently Needed to Address Cybersecurity Risks to Infrastructure,” Government Accountability Office, October 2022, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-105789.pdf.

[18] Stephanie Kelly and Jessica Resnick-ault, “One password allowed hackers to disrupt Colonial Pipeline, CEO tells senators,” Reuters, June 8, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/colonial-pipeline-ceo-tells-senate-cyber-defenses-were-compromised-ahead-hack-2021-06-08/.

[19] “ New Chinese submersible reaches Earth’s deepest ocean trench,” Phys.org, November 20, 2020, https://phys.org/news/2020-11-chinese-submersible-earth-deepest-ocean.html.

[20] Laurence Peter, “What makes Russia’s new spy ship Yantar special?,” BBC, January 3, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42543712.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Atle Staalesen, “Fire onboard nuclear-powered submarine, 14 sailors killed,” The Barents Observer, July 2, 2019, https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2019/07/fire-nuclear-powered-submarine-14-sailors-killed.

[23] “Explainer: China’s rare earth supplies could be vital bargaining chip in U.S. trade war,” Reuters, May 30, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-rareearth-explainer/explainer-chinas-rare-earth-supplies-could-be-vital-bargaining-chip-in-u-s-trade-war-idUSKCN1T00EK.

[24] “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions,” IEA, March 2022, https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/executive-summary.

[25] “DOD Announces Rare Earth Element Award to Strengthen Domestic Industrial Base,” U.S. Department of Defense, February 1, 2021, https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2488672/dod-announces-rare-earth-element-award-to-strengthen-domestic-industrial-base/.

[26] “Exploration Contracts,” International Seabed Authority, https://www.isa.org.jm/exploration-contracts/. 

[27] Scott Foster, “Japan dives into rare earth mining under the sea,” Asia Times, January 10, 2023, https://asiatimes.com/2023/01/japan-dives-into-rare-earth-mining-under-the-sea/.

[28] Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, translated by Dino Ferrari, Air University Press, 2019, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0160_DOUHET_THE_COMMAND_OF_THE_AIR.PDF.

[29] Ibid.

[30] “What Are Smart Cables?” Undersea Data Systems, https://www.subseadatasystems.com/what-are-smart-cables.

[31] Lieutenant Commander Joshua M. M. Portzer, U.S. Navy, “Kanyon’s Reach: Rethinking the Nuclear Triad in the Autonomous Age,” Proceedings, July 2020, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/july/kanyons-reach-rethinking-nuclear-triad-autonomous-age.

[32] “46 U.S. Code § 53202 – Establishment of the Cable Security Fleet,” https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/46/53202.

[33] Commander Mike Dahm, U.S. Navy (ret.), “The Reality of War Should Define Information Warfare,” Proceedings, March 2021, https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2021/march/reality-war-should-define-information-warfare.

[34] Roger C. Molander, Peter A. Wilson, B. David Mussington, Richard Mesic, “Strategic Information Rising,” RAND, 1998, https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR964.html.

[35] Timothy Thomas, “Russia’s 21st century information war: working to undermine and destabilize populations,” NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, March 1, 2016, https://stratcomcoe.org/publications/russias-21st-century-information-war-working-to-undermine-and-destabilize-populations/166.

[36] “Katina Lessons Learned, Chapter 5,” George W. Bush White House Archives, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-lessons-learned/chapter5.html.

[37] Paul J. Weber, “Anger grows over Texas outages a full day after historic snowfall,” Associated Press, February 16, 2021, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/anger-grows-over-texas-outages-a-full-day-after-historic-snowfall.

Featured Image: The release of gas emanating from a leak on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. (Swedish Coast Guard photo)

Call for Articles

Call for Articles: NPS Foundation Invites Writing on Integrated Naval Campaigning

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Submissions Due: October 25, 2023
Topic Week Dates: November 13-17, 2023
Article Length: 1,500-3,000 words
Submit To: [email protected]

By Col. Todd Lyons, USMC (Ret.)

The 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy calls for competing “across all domains and the spectrum of conflict” to gain military advantage, enhance deterrence, and address gray zone challenges. The strategy encourages an integrated approach across government organizations, activities, domains, and with allies. It also calls for U.S. competitive efforts to be structured into campaigns, with the strategy defining campaigning as “the conduct and sequencing of logically linked military initiatives aimed at advancing well-defined, strategy-aligned priorities over time.” Campaigns take the form of long-term and thoughtfully planned endeavors, as opposed to more diffuse and short-term efforts. They can enable successful competition in peacetime and set conditions for victory in wartime.

What does integrated campaigning mean for naval forces?  A starting point proposed by some at the Naval Postgraduate School is that, “An integrated naval campaign is a series of operations in, and from, the maritime domain conducted by joint, interorganizational, and allied forces to achieve national strategic and operational objectives.” What forms can an integrated naval campaign take, and how might it enhance or benefit from all elements of national power? What emerging capabilities might enhance naval integration with partners and allies? How may unmanned force structure transform naval campaigning? Concepts for naval campaigning could define how naval forces evolve and operate for years to come.

The U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Naval Warfare Studies Institute (NWSI) is exploring these questions through its FY22-23 Warfare Innovation Continuum, themed “Integrated Naval Campaigning.” NWSI is exploring these questions through workshops, course projects, wargaming, and research initiatives. The NPS Foundation is honored to support the Naval Postgraduate School and is partnering with CIMSEC to solicit articles on integrated naval campaigning.

Some questions to explore include:

  • How might emerging technologies and concepts enhance naval campaigning?
  • What force design best supports an integrated naval campaign?
  • How do the concepts of Marine Corps stand-in forces and the U.S. Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations support integrated naval campaigning?
  • How might the U.S. partner with regional organizations or countries to support an integrated naval campaign?
  • How might gray zone activities set the conditions for, or obstruct preparations for integrated naval campaigning?
  • What warfighting domains, U.S. organizations, or allies are critical for the success of an integrated naval campaign?
  • How might lessons from past integrated naval campaigning inform 21stcentury campaigns?

Authors are encouraged to consider these questions and more as the need for integrated naval campaigning becomes clearer and more urgent. Send all submissions to [email protected].

Colonel Todd Lyons retired from the Marine Corps after 30 years of service. He currently serves as the Vice President for the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation and Alumni Association. In this role, he assists in connecting industry, academia, alumni, and DoD entities to accelerate the responsiveness of NPS to the challenges arising from strategic competition and emerging technology. He also serves as a volunteer instructor for Innovation Leadership at NPS.

Featured Image: April 9, 2021 – The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group transits in formation with the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group in the South China Sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Terence Deleon Guerrero)

Concepts of Operation

Revamping Fleet Design and Maritime Strategy: An Integrated Naval Campaign for Advantage

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By Jeffrey E. Kline

The Problem: Forward Presence with a Smaller Fleet

A nation’s maritime forces are traditionally employed in war to contest sea control, secure seaborne logistic lines, deny an adversary their seaborne logistics, and to project power ashore. Common activities to achieve these goals include supporting movement of land and air forces, acquisition of advance bases, landing forces on a hostile shore, conducting blockades, and obtaining local sea control.1 As a result, naval campaigns have historically been planned and executed around these activities and objectives. The Guadalcanal and Central Pacific campaigns of WWII required all these activities, with the objectives of securing seaborne logistics and enabling power projection.

Today, U.S. naval forces also engage in the peacetime missions of diplomacy, assistance, and constabulary enforcement. Since World War II’s end, these missions are accomplished by the U.S. maritime services maintaining forward naval presence through regular deployments of carrier and expeditionary strike groups, U.S. Coast Guard cutters and forward basing a portion of these fleets. Deployments provide the peacetime benefits of forward presence, while also positioning forces to be immediately applied in the wartime objectives of establishing local sea control and denying adversaries’ seaborne logistics lines. But with the U.S. Navy struggling to increase its fleet numbers as adversaries greatly expand their navies, U.S. naval forces are increasingly challenged to provide enough competitive presence.

Under a constrained budget, how might the U.S. Navy’s future fleet design address this challenge? Can technologies associated with the robotics age of warfare make a major contribution to the day-to-day competition of forward presence? The Navy must explore the concept of an integrated naval campaign which leverages manned and unmanned systems to combine U.S. warfighting capabilities with coalition partners’ maritime security systems. The objective is to establish a persistent presence delivering enhanced surveillance and responsiveness to critical areas in peacetime, and a warfighting edge in conflict. Its purpose is to integrate with allies and partners in leveraging what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley describes as the changing character of war brought on by new unmanned system technologies.2

One desired campaign end state is envisioned as the Luzon Strait being patrolled by 50 unmanned surface sail, undersea, and aerial drones networked in a secure, burst mesh communication link with small missile ships, land-based attack drone sites, and mobile command-and-control centers. This littoral flotilla’s design, production, and employment are cooperative projects between the Philippines and U.S. to enhance maritime security. Its design parameters, however, enable quick transformation from a maritime security system to a local reconnaissance strike network capable of sea denial operations for hundreds of miles. The flotilla’s redundant design with many distributed sensors and shooters makes it resilient in a contested environment. The system is jointly crewed by Philippine and U.S. personnel, and maintained by industry from both nations. Such a system would make the U.S. and its allies much more competitive in peacetime operations and wartime clashes, while providing a more sustainable means for maintaining forward presence.

What is an Integrated Naval Campaign?

An integrated naval campaigning is a series of operations in, and from, the maritime domain conducted by joint, interorganizational, and allied forces to achieve strategic and operational objectives. The Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning adds further detail by defining an integrated campaign as efforts by the joint force and interorganizational partners to achieve and maintain policy aims by integrating and aligning military and non-military activities across multiple domains.3 From a historical perspective, World War II’s six-month Guadalcanal and Central Pacific campaigns align with these definitions of integrated campaigns. The multi-service contest for Guadalcanal aimed to preserve sea lines of communication with Australia, while the taking of the Mariana Islands brought airfields within B-29 range of Tokyo to enable a strategic bombing campaign.

A more restrictive view of an integrated naval campaign may be a series of operations conducted primarily by U.S. maritime forces – the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard – to contribute to achieving joint, operational, and strategic goals. If one focuses on combining the Navy’s concept of Distributed Maritime Operations with the Marine Corps’ Stand-in Forces concept, this more restricted definition still readily applies to current challenges.

Both views can describe an integrated naval campaign conducted by coordinating U.S. military, diplomatic, and industrial efforts to enhance coalition partners’ maritime security and peacetime competitiveness. If a transition to conflict occurs, the campaign would also serve to provide superior battlespace awareness and access for joint and allied forces. This campaign is already underway, but in piecemeal fashion. Without an overall strategy to assign means to critical locations, or fully leverage the Navy’s unique diplomatic role as a foreign policy tool, the current application of integrated naval campaigning will have room for improvement.4

The Ends

A modified vision of forward presence is warranted, one that integrates U.S. naval personnel and littoral surveillance systems with a host country’s maritime security forces. Fewer and more focused deployments of larger combatants will still occur, but not to the detriment of their wartime readiness. This proposal calls for an adjustment to U.S. maritime force design and force posture to include sufficient numbers of forward littoral forces to enhance allied maritime governance capabilities, while also increasing U.S. battlespace awareness and kinetic potential. This integrated campaign’s wartime objectives include imposing sea denial against adversaries and facilitating military access by coalition partners. A wartime adversary will face far greater challenges when confronted by a permanent network of local reconnaissance-strike complexes jointly operated by U.S. and partner forces in forward areas.

September 14, 2023 – A Ukrainian unmanned surface vessel unsuccessfully prosecutes a suicide attack on Russian Navy corvette Vasily Bykov in the Black Sea. (Video via United24)

Of interest to most coastal nations is improving maritime security to counter state and non-state actors who are intent on interfering with the internationally agreed-upon use of the sea. This is particularly true in the case of countries along crucial maritime chokepoints, straits, and trade routes. Effective maritime governance of these locations is also in the United States’ interest to maintain the benefits of international trade and freedom to move forces.5 This common interest provides a foundation for cooperative efforts in the form of bilateral agreements, tailored military sales, and exercises. However, the vision for an integrated maritime security campaign is to go beyond traditional cooperative theater security operations, and instead move toward bilateral integrated and interoperable security systems at the local level. Instead of episodic bouts of cooperation and joint efforts, these would be sustained, long-term efforts aimed at creating a permanent operational capability.

The Means

Countries have the international legal authority to enforce governance over their economic exclusion zone and into their inland waters. The ability to exercise these authorities, however, is challenged by the difficulty of maintaining awareness over the expanse of the maritime domain. Effective maritime governance is therefore accomplished through four elements: a legal regime providing authority for enforcement, knowledge of the maritime area to be governed (also known as Maritime Domain Awareness or MDA), a command-and-control entity, and platforms to provide sensing, patrolling, and response.6

A system of manned and unmanned platforms provides sensing, patrolling and response – including manned surface platforms to conduct arrest, confinement and delivery of prisoners to shore. Aside from the arrest and confinement mission, the similarity between maritime security requirements and the requirements for executing a wartime detect-to-engage kill chain is clear. It is this congruence that enables a maritime security enforcement system to also provide a wartime sensing and striking capability.

Most littoral nations cannot afford to replicate the capabilities of the U.S. Navy or Coast Guard. According to Andrzej Makowski, one solution is having their maritime forces pursue cooperation with larger navies and collaborate in procurement and maintenance.7 This is one motivation for littoral nations to engage with the U.S. in an integrated maritime security campaign. This campaign will feature the bilateral designing, building, and employing of an affordable flotilla of multi-domain, unmanned, and manned sensors and platforms. These capabilities will be designed and employed based on local geographic and political requirements.

For the United States’ investment, the system’s deployment will enhance the host country’s maritime domain awareness and ability to contribute to regional stability. With continued U.S. involvement, it will also increase U.S. littoral knowledge in critical ocean areas and its overall global maritime awareness. These allied systems’ design will allow for the quick addition of lethal capability or rapid augmentation by U.S. systems in times of conflict. This converts a local maritime security system into a local reconnaissance-strike network capable of exercising sea denial in coordination with a variety of fires and air defenses.

In one recent Naval Postgraduate School exploratory design study, a proposed maritime littoral denial system capable of contesting a 4,500 nautical square mile area west of Palawan, Philippines featured over a thousand manned and unmanned platforms. The life cycle and manning cost of this system was $1.5 billion dollars.8 The study’s design objectives did not include a transition from maritime security system to local reconnaissance strike network as it was already a wartime system, but it does give a rough approximation for total system costs and coverage.

Funding for the integrated maritime security campaign may come from host nation purchases, U.S. foreign military sales, existing exercise and engagement programs, research and development funds, and/or retiring small portions of the conventional U.S. fleet. Similar to how the system’s design will be geographically flexible, it can be tailored to resources available.

The Ways—An Integrated and Inter-Organization Effort

Developing a strategic plan between the U.S. State Department, Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps to prioritize specific partners for engagement and to resource its execution is the first step in execution. This may be best coordinated through the Chief of Naval Operations N52 staff, with rationale based on critical seaway location and current country relations. For example, considering Costa Rica for a dedicated integrated maritime security campaign due to their location near the Panama Canal and current friendly relations with the United States can serve as a first trial and learning experience for building partner capacity in more contested waters. Engagement activities and various systems can be assessed inside the Western Hemisphere and then improved and scaled before exporting to other regions.

However, for rational worldwide resource allocation, a lead maritime organization must be designated to program, budget, and schedule the three U.S. maritime services to employ these maritime security systems through coalition partners and U.S. fleet commanders. Although there are several candidates for managing the execution of a maritime security campaign, the Navy’s Expeditionary Combat Command is promising due to its experience with littoral warfare and its mandate to organize, train, and equip maritime expeditionary forces.9 Such a designation will require that the Expeditionary Combat Command’s staff be enlarged with U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Coast Guard, and naval systems commands personnel. The latter will be critical to support the systems’ design, maintenance, and employment in the campaign. The former are necessary to operationalize the system and provide continuity across a spectrum of conflict.

Regional U.S. State Department embassies are essential components of this integrated naval campaign. They will be on the leading edge to propose closer maritime security cooperation. Following initial State Department engagement, fleet-to-fleet staff talks, bilateral engineering design workshops, prototype experimentation, systems development and deployment, and bilateral exercises that include coordinated command-and-control of the system will produce the littoral system. Once established, U.S. exchange officers from the three maritime services should be assigned as liaison officers to the host country’s maritime security system to enable information exchange, resource coordination, and future exercise planning – especially for more advanced conflict scenarios.

The final step in bilateral collaboration may be the realization of Phillip Pournelle’s vision of an integrated maritime force with the host country, a force that “can assist allies and partners in regaining and maintaining governance of and sovereignty over their territorial waters and rights in their exclusive economic zones.” An integrated maritime force will be composed of a partner’s maritime security system augmented by all three U.S. maritime forces’ personnel and assets.10

Building a smaller nation’s maritime security capabilities near critical ocean geography is subject to the risk of that nation’s changing politics, such as a potential partner turning into an antagonist. This risk can be somewhat mitigated through the co-dependence of the country’s maritime security system on U.S. industry, logistics, and maintenance support. Losing the U.S. as a partner will risk degrading the country’s ability to safeguard its maritime interests. The sustained integration of U.S. and partner forces will also build relationships that lessen the likelihood of a radical turn against the U.S. by the host nation’s maritime forces.

An Integrated Naval Campaign, or Maritime Strategy?

This argument followed the “ends, ways, and means” construct of a strategy. The U.S. Navy’s growth in traditionally high-end yet potentially vulnerable multi-mission ships is constrained by real budget concerns. As mentioned, having fewer ships means fewer are deployed forward, intensifying tradeoffs on where to allocate naval power across a demanding global force posture. To address this issue, several navalists – including the author – have proposed a bi-modal fleet force design, which includes a sea denial component composed of many smaller manned and unmanned lethal systems deploying forward in high-risk areas. The sea denial forces will integrate with Marine Corps Stand-in Forces and partner maritime security systems to deny an adversary’s maritime passage. The bi-modal fleet’s sea control component will feature the fleet’s larger blue water ships, which establish sea control across contested logistic lines in coordination with more powerful allies.11 This is the fundamental wartime concept of employment for the bi-modal fleet design.

By assisting potential coalition partners in developing multi-domain, manned-unmanned flotillas to enhance their regional maritime security, the U.S. could also be building a foundation to integrate the U.S. Navy’s denial capabilities into contested regions, and enable worldwide control of critical sea routes. This frees the U.S. Navy’s larger ships to conduct more focused and fewer deployments as a result.

This maritime strategy maintains the nation’s worldwide maritime influence without the 600-ship Navy of the 1980s. Instead, it is a closer manifestation of Admiral Michael Mullen’s Global Maritime Partnership Initiative (the “1,000-ship navy”) and the Tri-Service Maritime Strategy.12 It enhances peacetime security of the maritime global commons, builds coalitions to strengthen deterrence, strengthens capacity for competing against gray zone activities, improves smaller nations’ naval capabilities, provides opportunities for U.S. industry, and maintains U.S. maritime influence with a more diversified naval force design.

For this maritime strategy to be successful however, a major national commitment in funding, personnel, and engagement must be observed and experienced by potential partners in the integrated naval campaign. Reorienting the U.S. Navy to include maritime security with expeditionary forces as a major mission area, specifically with the goal to provide kinetic warfighting advantage, may require that the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command be elevated to the level of a joint command, like Special Operations Command. In this way, Naval Expeditionary Combat Command can become its own acquisition authority, rapidly deploying new systems as the technical opportunities and political environments evolve. Such a command could ensure more capabilities fit into the integrated design for rapid employment with unified commanders’ war plans. An appropriate rotation of U.S. Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Navy commanders at this expanded Naval Expeditionary Combat Command will emphasize closer integration between the U.S. maritime services.

The robotic age of warfare enables a much closer relationship between international partners using smaller, more numerous systems for maritime security and creating a lethal warfighting advantage by increasing surveillance, targeting, and weapon capacity in critical regions.13 Leveraging this relationship is the basis for a maritime strategy to maintain integrated forces with partners forward, while retaining major elements of the traditional fleet to preserve sea control along the ocean’s logistics lines. It can become the maritime component of a maritime nation’s national strategy, executed through a well-planned and worldwide integrated naval campaign.

Jeff Kline is a retired naval officer with 26 years of service, and is currently a Professor of Practice of Military Operations Research in the Naval Postgraduate School’s Operations Research department. In addition to designing and offering applied courses in Joint Campaign Analysis, naval tactical analysis and systems analysis, he provides executive seminars in risk assessment, organization transformation and force design to flag officers, general officers, and government senior executives. His research is in fields related to maritime operations and security, naval tactical analysis, and future naval force composition studies. He has served on the CNO’s Advisory Board for Fleet Architecture, several Naval Study Board Committee studies, and the Naval War College Review Advisory Board.

References

1. Frank Uhlig, Jr., How Navies Fight: The U.S. Navy and Its Allies, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994) p 399.

2. Mark A. Milley, “Strategic Inflection and Fundamental Change in the Character of War is Happening Now…While the Future is Clouded in Mist and Uncertainty,” Joint Force Quarterly, 110, 3rd Quarter 2023 pp6-15.

3. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning, p33.

4. Jonathan Masters, “Sea Power: The U.S. Navy and Foreign Policy,” Council on Foreign Relations, August 19, 2019 https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/sea-power-us-navy-and-foreign-policy.

5. Chief of Naval Operations, Navigation Plan 2022, (Washington, D.C., OPNAV Staff, 2022), p3.

6. Jeffrey E. Kline, “Maritime Security,” Securing Freedom in the Global Commons, Ed Scott Japser. Standford: Standford University Press, 2010 pp67-82.

7. Andrzej Makowski, “Dilemmas Faced in Developing Small Navies,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Winter 2023).

8. Matthew Witte et al., SEA 32 Multi-Domain, Manned-Unmanned Littoral Denial Systems. (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2023).

9. “Mission: Sustaining Navy Expeditionary Combat Forces,” Naval Expeditionary Combat Command, 6 June 2023, https://www.necc.usff.navy.mil/About-Us/Mission/.

10. Phillip E. Pournelle, “It Will Take More Than an MLR to Fight a Maritime Insurgency,” Proceedings, Vol. 148/12/1,438 (December 2022) found at https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/december/it-will-take-more-mlr-fight-maritime-insurgency.

11. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr. (2007) “A Bimodel Force for the National Maritime Strategy,” Naval War College Review,: Vol. 60: No. 2, Article 5 available at https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol60/iss2/5.

John Harvey, Wayne Hughes, Jeffrey Kline, and Zachary Schwartz, “Sustaining American Maritime Influence,” U.S. Naval Proceedings, September, Vol 139/9 (2013).

Jeffrey Kline, James A. Russell, and James J. Wirtz, 2022, “The U.S. Navy’s Generational Challenge,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, Volume 64, Number 4, August-September 2022 found at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2022.2103264.

James Wirtz, Jeffrey Kline, and James Russell, 2022, “A Maritime Conversation with America,” Orbis, Volume 66, Issue 2, 2022 pg 166-183 found at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0030438722000060.

James Wirtz, “Unmanned Ships and the Future of Deterrence,” Proceedings, Vol 147/7 July 2021.

12. Bryan G. McGrath, “1,000-Ship Navy and Maritime Strategy,” Proceedings, Vol 133/1 January 2007.

United States Navy, Unites States Marine Corps, and United States Coast Guard, Advantage at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power, (Washington, DC, December 2020)

13. Jeffrey E. Kline, “Impacts of the Robotics Age on Naval Force Design, Effectiveness, and Acquisition,” Naval War College Review, Vol 70, no.3, Summer 2017, pp.63-78.

Featured Image: CAMP PENDLETON, CA (April 18, 2023) – U.S. Marines with 2nd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, and members of the 2nd Intai Amfibi Battalion, Indonesian Korps Marinir, post security on a beach after an amphibious insertion as part of the culminating event of a reconnaissance exercise at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Cameron Hermanet)

Podcast

Sea Control 463 – EU Maritime Security with Giovanni Cremonini

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By Alexia Bouallagui

Giovanni Cremonini joins the program to discuss the update to the EU Maritime Security Strategy. Cremonini is the Head of the Sector for Maritime Security in the Security and Defense Policy Directorate of the European Union External Action Service.

Download Sea Control 463 – EU Maritime Security with Giovanni Cremonini

Links

1. “Joint communication on the update of the EU Maritime Security Strategy and its Action Plan: An enhanced EU Maritime Security Strategy for evolving maritime threats,” by EU Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, March 10, 2023.

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

Brendan Costello edited and produced this episode.