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History, Middle East

A2AD Since ’73

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Wreckage of a Destroyed Israeli Plane (Wikimedia Commons)
Wreckage From a Destroyed Israeli Plane (Wikimedia Commons)

The threat posed by Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2AD) capabilities is at the core of the the U.S. Navy and Air Force’s Air Sea Battle (ASB) operational concept.  However, A2AD weapons are not new,  in particular playing an important role in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

A2AD and the ASB Concept

The ASB operational concept defines A2AD capabilities as “those which challenge and threaten the ability of U.S. and allied forces to both get to the fight and to fight effectively once there.”  One of the main capabilities that ASB has been established to counteract and mitigate against is the “new generation of cruise, ballistic, air-to-air, and surface-to-air missiles with improved range, accuracy, and lethality” that are increasingly available to states around the world.  Figuring out ways to operate in a world in which missiles are easy to acquire and operate is extremely important to the U.S. military, since A2AD weapons “make U.S. power projection increasingly risky, and in some cases prohibitive,” threatening the very foundation upon which the ability of the U.S. military’s ability to operate at will across the globe rests upon.

Missile Warfare in the Middle East

Using A2AD weapons, particularly surface-to-air missiles (SAM), surface-to-surface missiles (SSM), and anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM), to conduct a form of asymmetric warfare is not a new idea.   In particular, the use of missiles to counteract an enemy’s superiority in the air or on the ground was very much a part of Soviet doctrine by the 1960s.  To protect against the U.S. air campaign during the Vietnam War, Soviet missiles and personnel were extensively used by North Vietnam.  Perhaps the best example of A2AD in action, however, was the Soviet-enabled missile campaign waged by Egypt against the Israeli military during the 1973 Yom Kippur War (also known as the Ramadan War or October War).

The use of missiles formed an essential part of the plans of Egypt and Syria to win back the territories lost so precipitously during the 1967 Six Day War.  In his book the Arab-Israel Wars, historian and former Israeli President Chaim Herzog noted that:

“the Egyptians had meanwhile studied and absorbed the lessons of the Six Day War: with the Russians, they concluded they could answer the problem of the Israeli Air Force over the battlefield by the creation of a very dense “wall” of missiles along the canal, denser even that that used in North Vietnam.  The problem posed by Israeli armour was to be answered by the creation of a large concentration of anti-tank weapons at every level, from the RPG shoulder-operated missile at platoon level up to the Sagger missiles with a range of some 3000 yards and the BRDM armoured missile-carrying vehicles at battalion and brigade level.”

As part of Operation Caucasus, the Soviet Union “deployed an overstrength division” of air defense forces, with eighteen battalions each composed of SAM batteries, Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA), and teams equipped with Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS).  Although technically identified as instructors, the Soviet troops actually “were dressed in Egyptian uniforms and provided full crewing for the deployed SAM systems.” Using lessons learned in Vietnam, the air defense forces along the Suez Canal were capable of  “relocating frequently and setting up ambushes for Israeli aircraft using multiple mutually supporting batteries.”  Syria also procured Soviet SAM batteries to support their part of the planned surprise attack.  In Herzog’s words, the overwhelming array of SAMs and AAA “would provide an effective umbrella over the planned area of operations along the Suez Canal” and “to a very considerable degree neutralize the effects of Israeli air superiority over the immediate field of battle.”

Destroyed Israeli Tank in the Sinai (Wikimedia Commons)
Destroyed Israeli Tank in the Sinai (Wikimedia Commons)

The Egyptians pursued a similar effort in their efforts to combat Israel’s ground forces.  Per Herzog, Israel’s “armoured philosophy” emphasizing “massive, rapidly deployed, armoured counterattack” would be faced by an Egyptian Army that had crossed the Suez Canal “equipped to the saturation point in anti-tank weapons and missiles in order to wear down the Israeli armour.” The Arab leaders were not just concerned with achieving missile dominance inside the expected battlefield along the canal, however, but also that Eyptian and Syrian aircraft could not match their Israeli counterparts “outside the range of missile surface-to-air defence systems.”  Therefore, the Soviets also provided surface-to-surface FROG and SCUD missiles capable of directly striking at Israel itself, with the hope that they could deter against Israel’s ability to attack their own capitals.

Egypt and Syria’s employment of A2AD weapons had a significant tactical impact on the war.  Estimates of the losses of Israeli aircraft vary.  Herzog stated that 102 Israeli planes were shot down (50 during the first three days), with half shot down by missiles and the other half shot down by AAA.  According to other articles, “Israeli public claims are that 303 aircraft were lost in combat,” crediting SAMs with shooting down 40 and “between four and 12 to Arab fighters.”  This means that although most Israeli aircraft may have been shot down by AAA, the “missile wall” can be credited with “denying the use of high and medium altitude airspace, driving aircraft down into the envelope of high-density AAA.”

One can argue that the lessons learned from employment of A2AD in 1973 can be overstated (after all, Israel eventually won the war, at great cost).  However, Herzog’s claim that it was “a war of great historic significance” is merited, as it “was the first war in which the various types of missiles – surface-to-surface, surface-to-air, air-to-surface, and sea-to-sea – were used on a major scale,” and that “the entire science of military strategy and technique has had to be re-evaluated in the light of” its lessons.  In particular, the Egyptians in 1973 executed what the Air-Sea Battle concept identifies as an important objective of A2AD, in which “an aggressor can slow deployment of U.S. and allied forces to a theater, prevent coalition operations from desired theater locations, or force friendly forces to operate from disadvantageous longer distances.”

Evolution of Air-Land Battle and the Influence of the 73 War

If the Army’s AirLand Battle doctrine of the 1970/1980s can be seen as an intellectual precursor to Air-Sea Battle in its emphasis on “degradation of rear echelon forces before they could engage allied forces,” then the link between the 1973 Yom Kippur War and Air-Sea Battle is clear.  General William DePuy was the first commander of the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) upon its establishment in 1973.  In particular, “DePuy had taken an intense interest in the reform of tactics and training, in line with tactical lessons drawn from the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.”  During the tenure of DePuy’s successor, General Donn Starry, TRADOC formulated AirLand Battle and laid the doctrinal framework for the modernization of the U.S. Army and inter-service, joint operations.

What is the Answer?

How and why Israel won the war in 1973 entails a much longer discussion possible in this particular blog post.  The solution to A2AD that the Navy and Air Force  have proposed through Air-Sea Battle “is to develop networked, integrated forces capable of attack-in-depth to disrupt, destroy and defeat adversary forces.”  The reader can decide whether those are just buzzwords and whether the A2AD threat faced by the Israelis forty years ago was an easier challenge to  overcome than what could be faced by the U.S. military today and in the future  What is clear, however, is that the notion of A2AD is not new, and was very much an important part of Soviet-supported military operations during the Cold War.

Lieutenant Commander Mark Munson is a Naval Intelligence officer currently serving on the OPNAV staff. He has previously served at Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and onboard USS ESSEX (LHD 2).  The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the Department of Defense or the US Government.

Asia-Pacific, Global Analysis

Strategic Architectures

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A primer on concepts and their relationships

Five strategic architectures can be applied to U.S.-China confrontation. The nature of how each achieves “victory” differs, and they have unique strengths and weaknesses. 

Inside Out is Air-Sea Battle elevated to a strategy despite self-stated limitations.  It is the DoD’s current vector via the rapid victory requirement dictated in planning scenarios.  In this strategy, the United States applies technological asymmetries to enable small, tailored forces to survive intensely defended approaches and strike vital PRC targets.  This demands operations at the furthest limits of our own power projection while holding the enemy at risk in his most defensible zone.  The risk of failure in this technological arms race is difficult to calculate as both sides depend on secretive “silver bullets.” Once an Inside Out fight begins, each side is likely to locally blind the other via space and cyber attacks, radically limiting control of combat forces and increasing the risk of miscalculation, stagnation, and inadvertent escalation.  This is an unsettling prospect against a nuclear-armed superpower whose redlines are difficult to determine.

Outside In relies on a more classic “peel the onion” approach to dismantle the PRC’s “anti-access/area-denial” (A2/AD) capabilities, without exclusive dependence on penetrating forces attempting a technological coup de grâce.  This approach targets Chinese power projection capability.  As PRC forces disperse beyond their shore based A2/AD zone they diffuse and lose synergistic protection.  This flips the long distances of the Pacific battle-space from an offensive liability to strategic depth.  In addition, while the U.S. military has been exercising its global reach throughout the 20th century, the Chinese have yet to demonstrate commensurate expeditionary air and sea operations.

Hedgehog strategy builds regional allies who complicate the PRC’s hegemonic calculus.  Enhancing the “spines” on the back of nations like Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand can mitigate PRC aspirations in the South China Sea as it blunted Soviet expansion in Europe.  Success looks like multi-lateral networks of lethally equipped partners who enable a favorable balance of power in phase 0.  This checks China’s ability to intimidate Southern neighbors into its sphere of influence.  Failure to invest in strong partnerships in Southeast Asia while reassuring existing alliances in Northeast Asia risks creating the perception of a “paper pivot” that boosts PRC regional clout.

Distant Interdiction exploits China’s massive dependence on foreign commodities.  Called the “Malacca dilemma,” Pacific topography creates natural choke points beyond the reach of PRC power projection. U.S. Air, Naval and amphibious forces could selectively interdict vital commodities (especially oil) to break the PRC’s war making potential.  This strategy can be executed with both lethal and non-lethal techniques, providing unique reversibility.  Logistics interdiction is, by the Chinese own admission, one of their worst vulnerabilities.  

Picture1 

Figure 1 Massive SLOC dependence for oil/LNG – most refineries on East Coast   (credit http://noelmaurer.typepad.com/aab/2011/08/)

No-Man’s Sea exploits our own A2/AD capabilities to make Chinese home waters a mutual exclusion zone.  The U.S. can pen-up both their military and merchant ships, forcing China to expend military capabilities on break-out operations to fetch vital supplies, while their merchant fleet sees the global market reconstitute without them.  The loss of China will hurt the world market, but the loss of the world market could be catastrophic for the PRC.

NMS

 Figure 2 Simultaneous application of A2/AD keeps the U.S. out, and the Chinese in (credit http://globalbalita.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Air-Sea-Battle-map.jpg)

Inside Out appeals to our preferred ways of war, and exploits the defense industrial base’s promotion of war as a contest between hardware rather than strategies. While Inside Out is only exclusive from Outside In, the former demands so much new-tech investment that it may totally strangle resources required to orchestrate the other four. Hedgehog allows the U.S. to engage the PRC in phase 0, where they have thus far demonstrated significant strategic gains.  While Outside In, Distant Interdiction and No-Man’s Sea obviously work together in phases 1-3, they do not attempt to promise Inside Out’s rapid victory.  Instead, they forego technological tempo compression – rife with potential for unpleasant strategic surprise – and accept that any war with a superpower will be measured in months, not days. 

The combined application of these  stratagems amounts to a grand-strategic maneuver campaign, from the Sea of Japan to the Straits of Malacca.  Seeing time and distance as assets rather than liabilities can allow the U.S. to pull apart and separately engage PRC diplomatic, economic and military COGs.  Air-Sea Battle enabling technologies and operational concepts can be useful in multiple strategies, but the United States should trade force design that emphasizes an Inside Out military gambit for a force that enables a more robust gamut of strategic options.

Jeremy Renken is a Major in the U.S. Air Force. The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or U.S. Air Force.

Global Analysis

Air-Sea Battle: Lots of Heat, Little Light

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To date, the discussion of Air-Sea Battle has provided a great deal of heat but very little light. Worse, it has driven the discussion to the tactical/operational level and confused the strategic discussion. With luck, CIMSEC’s weeklong focus on the subject will add a bit more light.

One of the fundamental problems of any discussion of Air-Sea Battle is determining what the term means in a particular discussion. Even more problematic, the discussion has too often focused on inter-service competition for resources and the procurement necessary to conduct an aggressive anti-A2/AD campaign against China. This has largely blocked the discussion of much more important questions. The first is can the United States maintain the maritime and air dominance that has been the keystone of its military position in Asia since 1945? (ASB seems to be based on the unexamined assumption that we can.) If such dominance is possible, can we afford it? If so, what military strategy would make use of those capabilities to achieve our political goals in the region? Finally, if the political situation, technical developments, or sheer cost make such dominance impossible, what should the U.S. strategy be for dealing both with China’s “creeping expansionism” and a highly unlikely, but potentially devastating, major war with China?

Let’s deal first with why the discussion has created more heat than light to date. As unusual as it is for me to say this—it’s not the Pentagon’s fault. The Pentagon has been very clear about ASB. Both the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force have repeatedly stated that ASB is NOT a strategy. The ASB Office’s report from May 2013, Air-Sea Battle:  Service Collaboration to Address Anti-Access & Area Denial Challenges. states “ASB is a limited objective concept that describes what is necessary for the joint force to sufficiently shape A2/AD environments to enable concurrent or follow-on power projection operations.” (p. 4) The Joint Staff has reinforced this by declaring that ASB is a supporting concept nested under the Joint Operational Access Concept. The same paper as above also thoughtfully outlined why the Anti-Access/Area Denial systems are a threat to the United States and how the Joint Force can respond. It notes:

While ASB is not a strategy, it is an important component of DoD’s strategic mission to project power and sustain operations in the global commons during peacetime or crisis. Implementation of the ASB Concept, coordinated through the ASB office, is designed to develop the force over the long-term, and will continue to inform institutional, conceptual, and programmatic changes for the Services for years to come. The ASB Concept seeks to provide decision makers with a wide range of options to counter aggression from hostile actors. At the low end of the conflict spectrum, the Concept enables decision makers to maintain freedom of action, conduct a show of force, or conduct limited strikes. At the high end of the conflict spectrum, the Concept preserves the ability to defeat aggression and maintain escalation advantage despite the challenges posed by advanced weapons systems. (p. i) …

The ability to integrate capabilities, equipment, platforms, and units across multiple domains and to communicate, interact, and operate together presents a joint force commander with more numerous and powerful options, which in turn, offer greater probability of operational success. (p. 5)

Despite the Pentagon’s repeated efforts to clarify what it means by Air-Sea Battle, the broader discussion still focuses on the ideas expressed in the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment’s AirSea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept. CSBA’s report addresses the very real, and pressing problem of China’s growing ability to threaten U.S. power projection into Asia. Almost all observers agree this is a serious issue that needs addressing. The controversy has evolved not over the definition of the problem but CSBA’s proposed solution. The CSBA concept paper called for a two stage campaign. It is the first stage that is controversial. CSBA calls for the United States and its allies to defeat A2/AD by

  • Executing a blinding campaign against PLA battle networks;
  • Executing a suppression campaign against PLA long-range, ISR and strike systems;
  • Seizing and sustaining the initiative in the air, sea, space and cyber domains.
Marine Corps Col. (ret.) T.X. Hammes speaks to USTRANSCOM workers about the evolution of war.
Marine Corps Col. (ret.) T.X. Hammes speaks to USTRANSCOM workers about the evolution of war.

In short, CSBA calls for not only striking targets inside a thermo-nuclear armed state but actually targeting the command and control of its nuclear forces. In order to suppress China’s long-range cruise and ballistic missiles, the United States will have to strike the command and control systems of the Second Artillery Corps, which, as Thomas Christensen points out, is also responsible for China’s strategic nuclear force. Attacking a thermo-nuclear armed state’s nuclear deterrent in order to gain a limited tactical advantage seems to be enormously risky.

This illustrates a key point about operational concepts. In absence of a strategy, even successful operational concepts can lead to failure. Blitzkrieg was highly successful against France. When used against the Soviet Union, it was an unmitigated disaster. In both countries it worked at the tactical and operational levels. But in the second instance, there was a major mismatch in the ends, ways, and means calculation. German planners assumed the same concept that worked brilliantly in a relatively limited theater like France would work in the expanses of Russia. This assumption ignored history. While the French in the 19th Century stood and fought, and if defeated, surrendered, the Russians had a history of withdrawing deeper into their interior and fighting on.

Thus an operational concept cannot be judged as good or bad unless it is applied to a specific strategy. Perhaps more dangerous is the fact that an operational concept can drive procurement even in the absence of a strategy—even in the total absence of any evidence the concept will work. Prior to World War II, the Royal Air Force’s fundamental operational concept was that strategic bombing could rapidly defeat an enemy. This was based on the dogma that the bomber would always get through. The RAF maintained its faith despite the fact that numerous tests had indicated the bombers often could not find, much less hit, their targets. Tests also indicated that bombers could be intercepted by fighters and thus would face heavy losses if they attempted to fly unescorted missions deep into enemy airspace.

Despite the evidence to the contrary, the RAF continued to push the concept of strategic bombardment. It focused on procurement of heavy bombers to the detriment of fighter forces, radar, and air defense command and control. Only the intervention of civilian leaders forced the RAF to grudgingly shift resources to the air defense network. The civilian intervention proved critical in The Battle of Britain. There is no doubt that early in the war, the British Air Defense Command was much more important to Britain’s survival than Bomber Command. In fact, the concept of Strategic Bombardment never lived up to its promises. While heavy bombardment played a key role in defeating Germany, it did so at only enormous human and financial cost. Even then, it did so only after both the U.S. and Royal Air Forces significantly modified their pre-war strategic bombing concepts.

This highlights why the discussion needs to shift away from the Air-Sea Battle Concept to the higher order questions of strategy and subsequent resource allocation decisions. Guiding U.S. resource allocation may be the area where strategy has the most immediate impact. Obviously, political imperatives will continue to drive a major portion of the U.S. defense budget, but as we face significantly reduced funding over the next decade, clear strategic logic may be a key factor in helping us make hard budgetary choices. Letting an operational concept drive procurement without a strategy would result in a significant waste of resources, especially in a constrained budgetary environment.

If one assumes the strategy to deal with China must include capabilities as endorsed by the CSBA to severely degrade China’s ISR, C2, and long-range strike capabilities thorough kinetic strikes, then heavy investment in expensive, stealthy, strike systems as well as redundant and highly capable C2 and ISR systems is required. However, if one assumes that U.S. strategy can use the advantages of A2/AD to protect allies and that U.S. dominance in submarines and blue-water surface ships can cut China’s trade, then investment shifts to more submarines, smart mines, and open ocean surveillance. The latter approach not only drives investment in a very different direction but also seeks a much more affordable force structure.

We need to stop discussing the enabling concept of Air-Sea Battle and begin a deep discussion of potential military strategies for the unlikely event of a conflict with China. Besides providing guidance to our own force planners and procurement programs, a strategy is required to reassure our Asian allies and friends. In numerous conversations with Japanese, Singaporean, Australian, and Korean leaders and scholars, I have heard repeated concerns that the U.S. plans to use the CSBA concept as the basis for a conflict with China. The combination of direct attacks into China and the U.S. refusal to share the details of ASB with our allies causes trepidation both about our strategy and our reliability. They have heard the Pentagon’s statements that ASB is not a strategy and is not focused at China; but in the absence of any acknowledged strategy, they assume we continue to rely on a strategy based on ASB.

Thus any discussion of strategy must include our allies in the region—and preferably will result in a strategy we can express openly, demonstrate convincingly, and implement jointly with our allies. An integral part of this discussion must be how that strategy supports our allies in stopping the “the creeping expansionism” approach China is using today. China is pushing outward using a number of approaches: the occupation of Scarborough Shoals; the pressure on Second Thomas Shoal; the declaration of “Sansha City” on Woody Shoal; the newly declared East China Sea ADIZ; the newly published fishing regulations for the South China Sea; as well as harassment of our allies’ fishing, freedom of navigation, and energy exploration efforts. Obviously these actions will not be stopped by a purely military strategy. Just as clearly, an affordable, demonstrated, and feasible military strategy is essential to reducing the possibility that incidents like these could escalate into open conflict.

So what should that strategy be? In an effort to start the strategic discussion, I have written about a strategy for conflict with China here, here, and here. I propose a particular approach but we need to have a serious discussion about a variety of approaches. We can strive to maintain the air and sea dominance in Asia that we have enjoyed since 1945. An alternative approach is to focus on denying China use of the sea while defending our allies in the region from Chinese attacks. A bit more distant approach would see the U.S. focusing on encouraging allies to defend themselves while we focus on a distant blockade as a form of coercion. We need to evaluate a potential strategy based on its utility in deterring China, reassuring our allies and friends in the region and its feasibility and affordability. With luck, this CIMSEC discussion will broaden and deepen the strategic discussion.

Circling back to the designated topic—Air-Sea Battle, I’d like to make a final point. While I am adamantly opposed to spending heavily for capabilities to directly attack the Chinese mainland, I am not opposed to pursuing work on the technical and tactical aspects of insuring we can fight as a truly joint force. The ASB office in the Pentagon may or may not be the way to accomplish this goal. However, one adjustment the office should make is to the allocation of resources. While it is difficult to tell from the outside how we are investing our resources, the written material and briefings from the ASB office indicate it focuses too much on Anti-Access and not enough on Area Denial. The Army and Marine Corps should aggressively contest this allocation of resources. While defeating Anti-Access will be necessary in the unlikely event of a war with China and, to a much lesser degree, Iran, defeating Area Denial weapons will be an integral part of any U.S. military involvement on the ground. It is Area Denial weapons that have caused the majority of U.S. casualties for the last decade. Further, the wide dissemination of both the technology and the techniques of AD weapons means U.S. forces will face these weapons wherever they deploy. One might also note that Area Denial weapons—sea mines—are the only weapons which have actually defeated a U.S. amphibious landing—at Wonsan, Korea in 1950.

T.X. Hammes is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He served 30 years in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Tactical Concepts

Why Does Air-Sea Battle Need a Strategy?

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Some of the criticism that the Air-Sea Battle Concept receives spawns from its developers not articulating what higher-level strategy it supports. Of course they cannot, because operational concepts are not operational plans! If Air-Sea Battle could be linked to a strategy, then either it is not actually a concept or the strategy it was being linked to was a terrible and inadequate strategy.

"Hey, you got air in my sea battle." "No, you got sea in my air battle."
“Hey, you got air in my sea battle.”
“No, you got sea in my air battle.”

Creating a good strategy is hard. Strategy must be tailored to a specific situation and as the situation continues to evolve, so must the strategy. Effective strategy is based in the current geo-political situation, looks at what you want the end result to be, and determines how to utilize all elements of national power (political and diplomatic, informational and social, economic, and military) to accomplish this.

Though a strategy can be simple and elegant, like the Anaconda Plan of the American Civil War, figuring out the correct strategy can be complex and messy. Before figuring out how to fight a war you have to figure out why you are fighting it and how you want it to end. Clausewitz may have said it best that “No one starts a war – or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so – without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.” No one should fight a war without knowing the strategic aims to be gained from it. Every complex aspect of strategy is compounded by the fact that the enemy always gets a vote in every strategic assumption made.

"To make this work multiple services are going to have to work together." "No one is going to like that concept."
“To make this work multiple services are going to have to work together.”
“No one is going to like that concept.”

Air-Sea Battle, like all operational concepts, has no business trying to be “linked to a strategy.” It is simply one tool we have to confront a potential threat and nothing more. The danger does not come from what Air-Sea Battle is; the potential danger comes if we ever try to make it more than it is. If we find ourselves in a conflict with a peer or near-peer adversary employing anti-access / area denial (A2/AD) capabilities and the only tool in the toolkit that we have prepared fully to utilize is Air-Sea Battle, we are in trouble. Air-Sea Battle in its entirety or key aspects of it absolutely might be the right answer in a future war, but it also might unnecessarily escalate the conflict or we may find it too limited in scope. The challenge is that we will never know this answer until actually faced with conflict. There will never be one golden operational concept with all of the answers and is all encompassing for all needs. Our danger with Air-Sea Battle is not a lack of it being linked to a strategy. Our danger is with our whole strategy being “the war has started; time to throw Air-Sea Battle at it.”

General Eisenhower felt that “plans are nothing; planning is everything.” Similarly, a concept itself may not be that useful, but the new ideas created as a result of developing the concept can be very useful. We may never use the concept of Air-Sea Battle, but in developing and writing it we will learn much about potential A2/AD threats and possible ways to address them. That is the entire point of concepts. Operational concepts are not operational plans. They are high-level ideas on how you could operate. But the ideas within them can and should influence operational planning when it is applicable.

Some could argue that the most likely scenario would be that we never go to war with the People’s Republic of China or that if we did we would never project power inland like described in Air-Sea Battle. Though it is good to know which scenarios are the most likely, strategic thinkers and planners must never limit themselves to the most likely. The most famous colored war plan developed prior to WWII was Plan Orange because it was the one which was ultimately utilized. But what is lesser known is all of the other developed plans that were never tested in combat. For example, War Plan Red-Orange was a scenario where the United States fought against a United Kingdom-Japanese alliance. This scenario seems ridiculous in hindsight and not the most likely scenario when it was being developed, but strategists and planners do not have the luxury of just ignoring certain scenarios which seem unlikely. If it is not an impossible scenario, it should at least be thought about. We know war plan Red-Orange was never used, but its analysis revealed that the United States was not prepared to support simultaneous operations in two major theaters. And though the U.S. did not go to war with the United Kingdom, those lessons were applied to actual operations in World War II.

"Is America thinking about how it would fight us making war more likely?" "No Majesty. But it is a great compliment to be so respected militarily."
“Is America thinking about how it would fight us making war more likely?”
“No Majesty. But it is a great compliment to be so respected militarily.”

The fact that we are thinking about Air-Sea battle is good, and the fact that we are debating the merits of it is even better. Air-Sea battle cannot be a flawed plan because it is no plan. It cannot support a strategy because operational concepts do not support strategies. We are not in trouble because we are thinking about Air-Sea Battle, but we could find ourselves in trouble if it is all we think about.

LT Jason H. Chuma is a U.S. Navy submarine officer who has deployed to the U.S. 4th Fleet and U.S. 6th Fleet areas of responsibility. He is a graduate of the Citadel, holds a master’s degree from Old Dominion University, and has completed the Intermediate Command and Staff Course from the U.S. Naval War College. He can be followed on Twitter @Jason_Chuma.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.