Tag Archives: US Navy

Members' Roundup

September Member Round-Up Part One

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 Welcome to Part One of the September 2015 Member Round-up, covering the first two weeks of the month. CIMSEC members examined several international maritime security issues, including Russian blue water operations, European maritime security threats, the PLA-N maritime strategy in the Asia-Pacific and aspects of the U.S. military defense procurement program.

The first part of the September Round-up begins with Alex Calvo for The Jamestown Foundation, where he discuses Russia’s naval presence in Spain’s African exclave of Ceuta. Mr. Calvo describes the strategic importance of Ceuta as a launching point for Russian surface fleet operations throughout the Mediterranean Sea region. Additionally, a geopolitical assessment is provided regarding the unique relationship between Spain and Russia in a period of high tensions between Russia and NATO over Ukraine.

Continuing on European maritime security issues, Chuck Hill, for his Coast Guard Blog, discusses the development of Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV) in France and in the Netherlands. Mr. Hill identifies the development of OPVs in France as a response to the government attempting to increase their enforcement capabilities of EEZ territory. Regarding the Netherlands, Mr. Hill describes the specifications of future OPVs with emphasis on the deployment of ‘hull vane’ technologies to increase OPV mobility, stability and range.

Entering the Asia-Pacific region, Ankit Panda, for The Diplomat, analyzes aspects of innocent passage and the movement of U.S. warships near the newly constructed Chinese islands in the South China Sea. With tensions increasing in the region, Mr. Panda explains that continued cooperation between India and Vietnam could enhance the strategic security relationship between the two countries allowing for a more effective approach to confronting China.

In a separate article, Mr. Panda explains that Vietnam has independently begun to increase its maritime capabilities by approving Coast Guard vessels to deploy major weapon systems. This will allow the Vietnamese CG to be more active in the nation’s maritime security objectives and will significantly increase the effectiveness of EEZ enforcement. Mr. Panda also provided a description of three major Chinese missile systems that pose significant regional and global threats to military adversaries. The Df-16 SRBM, the YJ-18 anti-ship cruise missile and the DF-41 ICBM are components of China’s missile force that greatly contribute to the country’s access denial strategy and global military influence.

Harry Kazianis, for The National Interest, shares an analysis on the U.S. Navy’s plan to modernize the Aegis Combat System’s hardware and software. The technological improvements being added will provide increased effectiveness for the Aegis system to conduct its integrated air and missile defense operations. Also for The National Interest, Mr. Kazianis discusses China’s new DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile as well as the characteristics of a conflict between China and the U.S. in the South China Sea.

Bryan McGrath for The War on the Rocks, concludes the Round-up with discussing aspects of the U.S. Navy’s procurement strategy. He provides a detailed examination on the number of ships required by the U.S. Navy to meet the current security threats facing the United States as well as to sustain the requirements of the maritime objectives of the navy itself. Mr. McGrath explains that the current and projected size of the U.S. Naval fleet, 273 and 308 respectively, is too small to remain effective in multiple regions. He references the U.S. Navy’s 346-ship fleet from the Clinton-era as an appropriate number for managing the current maritime environment and providing sufficient influence in all U.S. theatres of operation.    

Members of CIMSEC were also active elsewhere so far in September:

At CIMSEC we encourage members to continue writing, either here on the NextWar blog or through other means. You can assist us by emailing your works to me, the Director of Member Publicity, at dmp@cimsec.org to make sure we include them in our next round-up.

Capability Analysis

The Evolution of the Modern Carrier Air Wing

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CIMSEC is excited to share that the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower will release on 8 October on Capitol Hill a report on the future of the aircraft carrier. Titled “Sharpening the Spear: The Carrier, the Joint Force, and High-End Conflict,” it systematically analyzes Carrier Strike Group vulnerabilities and offers a number of innovative recommendations in terms of concepts, capabilities, and capacities. This article is inspired by the forthcoming report.

By Timothy A. Walton

In the period following World War II, the U.S. Navy sought to leverage its relatively uncontested sea control to develop the capability to conduct nuclear strike missions from carriers. Until the removal of carriers from the Single Integrated Operational Plan in 1976, the nuclear strike mission led to the development of heavy attack aircraft that could conduct long-range missions against Communist targets. Carrier aviation also played a crucial role in providing fighter, attack, and electronic warfare aircraft for employment in conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) aircraft carriers were decommissioned in 1975, thus concentrating airborne ASW capability in the now multi-mission large deck carriers.

During the 1980s, a carrier air wing normally consisted of nine squadrons of various aircraft: two F-14 fighter squadrons, one E-2C AEW squadron, one EA-6B electronic warfare squadron, one S-3 ASW squadron, one A-6 medium-attack squadron, two A-7 light-attack squadrons, and one helicopter squadron, for a total of approximately 90 aircraft.[1] In the 1980s, the Navy decided to introduce the F-18 in order to replace the A-7. Trading range for speed in order to increase aircraft survivability, the F-18’s 370 NM combat radius paled in comparison with the A-7’s 608 NM combat radius, drawing significant criticism.[2] Test pilots decried: “Replacing the A-7 with the F-18 will constitute a reduction in battle group standoff range from the enemy and/or a reduction in ordnance delivered per aircraft on the target with no measurable increase in accuracy. […] Our current ability to engage the Soviet fleet at ranges well beyond that of their newest surface-to-surface weapons will markedly diminish, and the vulnerability of our battle groups in war at sea will increase concomitantly.”[3] The F-18 (and its successor Super Hornet) would replace the F-14 as well, continuing a trend of reduction of range in the air wing. Additionally, the air wing’s medium-attack aircraft, the A-6 (with a combat radius of approximately 1,000 NM) was retired in the 1990s and the A-12, its envisioned long-range, stealthy replacement, was cancelled.

By 2015, a typical carrier air wing consists of two squadrons of F-18C/D Hornets strike aircraft (10-12 aircraft per squadron), two squadrons of F-18E/F Super Hornets strike aircraft (10-12 aircraft per squadron), one squadron of EA-18G Electronic Attack aircraft (5 aircraft per squadron), one squadron of E-2C/D AEW aircraft (4 aircraft), and varying numbers of SH-60 and MH-60 helicopters, for a total of approximately 64 aircraft.[4] The C-2 Carrier Onboard Delivery detachment aircraft do not fall under the CVW construct.  The air wing eliminated S-3s that had provided organic open ocean ASW capabilities, replacing it with the short range SH-60 helicopter. Moreover, the carrier’s dedicated organic aerial refueler, the KA-6D, had been replaced first with tanking from the S-3B following elimination of its ASW role, and then solely with buddy tanking from F-18Es and F-18F’s. This significantly reduced the organic range of the air wing, made the air wing more reliant on Air Force tanking, and reduced the number of aircraft in the air wing available for combat missions.

Compared to the 1980s, the contemporary air wing is significantly smaller. In the 1980s a typical air wing had approximately 90 aircraft, 60 of which were fighter or strike aircraft; in contrast, contemporary air wings hold a mere 64 aircraft approximately, 44 of which are fighter or strike aircraft. Consequently, the fighter or attack portion of the air wing has been cut by more than a quarter and the total size of the air wing has diminished by approximately 30%. The planned introduction of the F-35C to the air wing is expected to further cut the size of squadrons by 2-4 aircraft.[5] The F-35C’s low observable features, advanced sensors and networking, and approximate 613 NM combat radius will improve carrier fighter performance compared to the 390 NM combat radius of the F-18E/F.[6]  Overall, though, the size of the air wing has been shrinking. Ironically, the Navy has gone on to procure the FORD Class carrier, capable of embarking more aircraft and conducting operations at a higher sortie rate than the NIMITZ Class.

In summary, contemporary and projected air wings display three key characteristics: they are shorter in range than Cold War predecessors, host significantly fewer aircraft, and lack dedicated fixed-wing aircraft for ASW and aerial refueling. Differences between the current and projected air wing include the addition of the F-35C and potential incorporation of a carrier-launched unmanned aircraft system. Of note, Section 220 of the FY 2001 defense authorization act stated, “It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that by 2010, one-third of the aircraft in the operational deep strike force aircraft fleet are unmanned.”[7] Clearly, the Joint Force has failed to meet Congress’ 2010 goal.

On 8 October 2015, the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower will release a report that will examine whether it is worthwhile to continue to build large, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, given their considerable cost and mounting Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) threats to sea-based operations.[8] In our report, Seth Cropsey[9], Bryan McGrath[10], and I will systematically analyze the employment of the carrier air wing as an element of a Carrier Strike Group and as a component of the Joint Force. The report will examine the role that carrier strike groups (CSGs) play in current and projected concepts of operation, especially against mature and evolving A2/AD threats such as China.

We can say that the current air wing has inadequate capability, range, numbers, and qualitative superiority to adequately counter the most challenging threats, in particular the threat posed by China. Given the growing importance of carrier aviation in Joint CONOPS, as Chinese sea control threats and threats against land-based tactical aviation rise, the Navy should address the existing and projected capability gaps in the carrier air wing. In general, this requires the Navy to increase air wing striking range, develop sea control aircraft, and develop new weapons. Lastly, the Department of Defense and Congress should critically evaluate the naval aviation portfolio, including potential portfolio trades between land-based, permissive environment aircraft and sea-based, contested environment aircraft. 

We thank CIMSEC for the opportunity to share these tidbits and look forward to sharing the more detailed study with you at its roll-out on 8 October.

Timothy A. Walton is a principal of Alios Consulting Group, a defense and business strategy consultancy. 

This article featured as a part of CIMSEC’s September 2015 topic week, The Future of Naval Aviation. You can access the topic week’s articles here. 

[1] Norman Polmar. Aircraft Carriers: A History of Carrier Aviation and its Influence on World Events, Volume II-1946-2006, Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008, 302.

[2] Richard Halloran. “Test Pilots Say Dual-Purpose F-18 Jet Is Unsuitable in Bomber Role”, The New York Times, 11 November 1982.

[3] Ibid.

[4] N.B. 4-6 of an air wing’s F-18E/F aircraft are normally used for the buddy tanking mission.

[5] Sam LaGrone. “Navy to Base F-35Cs at NAS Lenmoore”, U.S. Naval Institute, 2 October 2014,

http://news.usni.org/2014/10/02/navy-base-f-35cs-nas-lenmoore.

[6] “Selected Acquisition Report: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Aircraft (F-35)”, Department of Defense, 14, http://breakingdefense.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/04/F-35-2013-SAR.pdf#page=14.

[7] Ronald O’Rourke. “Unmanned Vehicles for U.S. Naval Forces: Background and Issues for Congress”, Congressional Research Service, RS21294, 25 October 2006, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RS21294.pdf.

[8] “Center for American Seapower”, Hudson Institute, http://www.hudson.org/policycenters/25-center-for-american-seapower

[9] “Seth Cropsey”, Hudson Institute, http://www.hudson.org/experts/530-seth-cropsey

[10] “Bryan McGrath”, Hudson Institute, http://www.hudson.org/experts/687-bryan-mc-grath

Global Analysis

Parallax and Bullseye Buoys: The Future of Naval Aviation

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By LT Jon Paris

It was Day 43 of the war everyone said would never happen: The war that assured mutual ruin and held little tangible benefit for either side. Yet, here he was, hurtling through the sky in the pitch black nothingness of the western Philippine Sea in mind-numbing turbulence and a driving rain. One wouldn’t think that silence would be possible with the rain and the wind and the two howling General Electrics back aft, but it was silent. Eerily so. Lieutenant “Slider” Wilmore pondered this reality as he checked his instruments and reflected on the air wing’s losses to date. They were not catastrophic, to be sure, but for a man on his third cruise, they were more than he had ever seen. They were also the first of his career that were credited to the enemy, rather than pilot error or malfunctions.

 In this command and control denied environment with no GPS or voice communications, the challenge of getting the force from the Boat to the beach and back was infinitely exasperated. The Navy quickly innovated, the industrial base responded swiftly, and “bullseye” became a tangible object. The Navy thus required its ship drivers and pilots to execute precise maneuvers based on pre-planned maritime trigonometry and dead-reckoning. The concept was on the fringes, it had obvious weaknesses, but it was all they had.

These thoughts – and many others – flickered through his brain like an insomniac flips through the channels of late-night TV. He snapped out of it when his newly-installed, low-tech WRN-100X waypoint tracker flashed three times, though. He sighed, looked down into the inky nothingness, took a deep breath, and hoped that his dead-reckoning had been correct. No Carrier Control Area, no GPS, no TACAN, no nothing, as far as he was concerned. All he had was another example of futuristic low-tech; a lonely, beeping ALQ-80 Self-Correcting Bullseye Buoy bobbing in the middle of nowhere, launched that day by the submarine CHICAGO. With this on his mind, he flipped down his night vision goggles, rolled his Rhino to port and pulled back hard. He was either in the Break, or he was bleeding speed over a watery grave – there was no way to be sure. His radios were silent, of course, as they had been for weeks. He slapped down his flaps, then his gear. After steadying up, he lowered his tailhook, eased off the power, and prayed that this blind-man’s waltz would guide him to the Groove. No lights were visible – anywhere. Up until recently, this type of recovery – bastardized as it was – would never have been conducted at night. The mighty enemy hackers to the west had done their number, though. They had exploited the recovery methods specifically developed for just this type of denied environment to devastating effect. Now, he and his mates were looking for the Boat in a slightly more advanced manner than Columbus had looked for the New World.

The sweat on his back made him shiver. There – another three flashes of his waypoint tracker, itself completely reliant upon the buoy’s ability to self-correct for currents and his own trigonometric skills conducted at 500 knots some 2 hours in the past. Another pull to port, cutting some more power. As he settled onto his final course, he saw nothing. His heart sank along with his altitude. Easy with it, easy with it. The mantra pulsed through his brain. Then, rising and falling with the swells, he made out the impossible – a slightly blacker spot than the surrounding abyss. He puckered tight and squinted, just as a Chem-Light was broken and hurled into the middle of the blackness. He aimed for that spot and nearly closed his eyes as he sunk lower and lower towards the endless depths. CRASH! Though the sudden deceleration was welcome and expected, it never ceased to take his breath away. He retarded the throttles, raised his hook, and followed the ghostly Yellow Shirts across the lightless deck. Lieutenant Wilmore, soaked, jittery and tired, had not killed anyone tonight, for that was not his mission. The two jet-black ALQ-X99 pods under the wings were his mission and, many thought, the U.S. Navy’s only hope.

LT Wilmore sized up his surroundings. He was in “Oz” – Flag Country. Not a Lieutenant’s favorite place to be and certain to cause any junior officer additional anxiety – something he did not need as he stood there still trembling from his mission, cold in dripping flight suit. His CO stood in front of him and gave him a reassuring nod. He knocked and they both entered the space together.

The two aviators found themselves surrounded by the Strike Group Commander, Rear Admiral Patrick Aiken and his staff. “Have a seat,” the admiral said after shaking the junior pilot’s hand. “Let us cut-to-the-chase. How did they respond to the ALQ-X99? Did they fall for it? We only lost two tonight so you must have had a pretty hairy time up there. Iron Hand… I never thought we would bring it back. Are you alright? Tell me what you saw.” The admiral spit out his comments rapid-fire as Lieutenant Wilmore sat there in a daze, thinking about his special cargo and of the terror he had felt only hours ago. He slowly blinked.

The adversary had the U.S. Navy in a corner. Their coastal defenses seemed impenetrable, extended out hundreds of miles, and appeared to have an endless inventory. They had more aircraft in theater than the Americans and were not afraid to lose a handful in pursuit of big gains. Their surface ships had been hit hard, but their submarines still roamed the seas hunting for targets.  And their surveillance was top-notch. The U.S. Navy had to do its best to remain invisible while at the same time, launching highly-technical and heavily-laden Alpha Strikes from extreme ranges to hit both coastal and inland targets. Winning the war depended on the Navy’s success. Unfortunately, this meant facing an angry swarm of fighter and attack aircraft, as well as a blinding throng of missiles reaching out like tentacles for F/A-18s, destroyers, and carriers, alike.  While the enemy’s inventory was deep and their supply lines were well-defended, no force could keep up their blistering pace of sorties and missile launches without the occasional pause for reloading, re-targeting, maintenance, and rest.

Operation Iron Hand was a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses mission-set executed by both the Navy and Air Force during Vietnam. It focused on localizing Surface-to-Air gun and missile radars ahead of the strike package and then neutralizing the threats with anti-radiation missiles before they could cause the friendly formations harm. In today’s war, localizing was less of a problem. The enemy was not being shy about using radars or their associated weapons, not to mention the fact that most of the launchers, and of course the ground-based aircraft, were mobile. The Navy quickly realized that this was no Vietnam and that there would be no sneaking in to exploit the enemy’s thirst for a kill prior to overwhelming them with a strike-force. The Hail-Mary solution had actually come from one of the most heart-pounding chapters of naval fiction ever to grace a Tom Clancy novel. “Dance of the Vampires” depicted a Soviet strike on a U.S. Carrier Battle Group. The strike was unique in that the Soviets led off with a massive launch of drones, duping the Americans into committing most of its anti-air missiles and its interceptors and leaving it nearly defenseless once the barrage of anti-ship missiles was loosed. Though modern surface-borne electronic decoys were nothing new, they were vulnerable to submarine attack, had limited capabilities, and did nothing to address a deceptive air battle – relatively useless in this scenario.

The ALQ-X99 attempted to solve this. It used extremely realistic electronic decoys – blips on the enemy radar – absorbed existing radar cross sections, and utilized a form of parallax to show a massive ghost-force that was sufficiently off-set from the aircraft carrying the pods. A number of F/A-18s now flew on the deck and carried these pods to the front, attempting to draw the enemy to a fight that did not exist while allowing strike packages to attack when the enemy was either exhausted or otherwise focused. Though the ploy was easy enough for the enemy to decipher after repeated use, they could not afford to ignore it. Thus, Naval Aviators like LT Wilmore were left to keep their critical packages intact, stay alive, and truly feel the mental exhaustion and strain of today’s Operation Iron Hand II.

His blink seemed to last a year. He snapped to. “I did what I had to do to stay alive, sir. Missiles exploded to my left and right. The bad guys were everywhere. They ate it up. The Alpha Strike got through. The ALQ-X99 works, sir, but I don’t know if I’ll ever stop shaking.”

LT Jon Paris is a Surface Warfare Officer and Department Head. He has served aboard three Aegis ships in the Western Pacific and Middle East.

This article featured as a part of CIMSEC’s September 2015 topic week, The Future of Naval Aviation. You can access the topic week’s articles here. 

Asia-Pacific, Capability Analysis, History, New Initiatives, North America

‘Indo-Asia Pacific’ Explained: An Assessment of US Maritime Strategy 2015

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In March 2015, the United States published a new maritime strategy document titled ‘A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower’ (Strategy-2015). It supersedes the one of the same title published eight years ago in October 2007 (Strategy-2007). It is the first maritime strategy to be released after the US announced its ‘Rebalance to Asia’ in 2011, and comes amidst seminal developments with far-reaching geopolitical and security ramifications. This view-point attempts to analyze Strategy-2015, including in comparison to Strategy-2007.

Jointness and Political Interface

Strategy-07 was the first-ever combined strategy of the three US Sea Services (Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard). Strategy-2015 maintains this feature, with is appropriate since the maritime environment is essentially ‘joint’’, and therefore, any strategy relating to the maritime realm cannot be a single-service articulation. Besides, due to fiscal uncertainties the US is facing today, an inter-service synergy is necessary to avoid duplication of resources and optimise investments for capability development.

Notably, unlike the 2007 document, the new strategy contains a ‘Preface’ by the Secretary of the Navy, which indicates an enhanced political interface with the Sea Services, possibly in terms of both oversight and support of the higher national leadership.

Indo-Asia-Pacific

The new strategy contains an explicit focus on the region that it calls the “Indo-Asia-Pacific.” While US officials have been increasingly using this phrase, the 2015 Strategy document is the first official articulation. The inference is two-fold:

• First, it denotes the realisation of the ‘inadequacy’ of ‘Asia-Pacific’ to address the emerging geopolitical, economic and security dynamics of the rising Asia.

• Second, while the phrase ‘Indo-Pacific’ has become more prevalent in Asia since 2007, the US preference to use “Indo-Asia-Pacific” indicates that it wishes to be part of Asia’s ‘rise’ and derive the attendant gains.

Ends, Ways and Means

The term ‘strategy’ is defined as an articulation of ‘ways’ and ‘means’ to achieve the ‘ends’. In this context, Strategy-07 was merely a ‘primer’ to strategy. It referred to ‘ends’ in very broad terms, without going into specifics of security challenges. It avoided naming countries, either as adversaries, or allies and partners. While it mentioned maritime threats like piracy, it did not contextualize these with specific areas. It was also frugal in expounding on the ‘ways’ and ‘means.’

In comparison, Strategy-15 is a detailed articulation. It echoes the spirit of the US ‘Rebalance’ policy in terms of China’s naval ascendency as both an opportunity and a challenge. It seeks to temper Beijing’s revisionist stance and dissuade its politico-military assertiveness through multifaceted engagement. It is also more forthright in defining the “military challenges”, such as the “Russian military modernization (and) aggression” and the (Chinese) “anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities that challenge our global maritime access….” Furthermore, it is more explicit on the ‘geography’ of piracy, the effects of religious radicalism and the fundamentalist groups. In terms of the ‘ways’ and ‘means’ too, Strategy-2015 reveals as much as a document in the public domain possibly can. It provides much detail on the US plans to allocate forces for the ‘Rebalance.’

Strategic and Operational Access

Since the middle of 20th century when the US rose to superpower status with the ability to influence events worldwide, unimpeded strategic access to the global commons and freedom of operational manoeuvre have been the cornerstones of its military strategy.

While Strategy-2007 did acknowledge the operational salience of dominating the realms of space, cyber and the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum – as integral to sea control, for instance – it conceived strategic access largely in the geospatial context: sea, land and air. Strategy-2015 goes beyond this to seek access and freedom of action in any domain—the sea, air, land, space, and cyberspace, as well as in the EM spectrum. In all likelihood, this is a declaration meant to counter China’s declaratory policy of A2/AD in the western Pacific, including the asymmetric challenges in the space, cyber and EM domains that Chinese military forces may impose upon their US counterparts.

Forward Presence and Partnership

Strategy-2007 had laid much emphasis on forward presence of the US Sea Services as essential for a major power like the US that seeks inter alia to shape developments in its areas of interest, be better prepared to respond to adverse contingencies, deter and dissuade potential adversaries, reassure allies and friends.

While maintaining the emphasis on forward presence, Strategy-2015 also explains how the US intends to achieve this more effectively, both operationally and fiscally. It adds that the forward naval presence would enable a quick and seamless access to the US joint military forces, if and when the occasion demands.

Given that resource limitations envisaged by the US Sea Services, ‘forward naval presence’ is closely enmeshed with the need to develop partnerships with local maritime forces. The Thousand Ship Navy (TSN) concept propounded by the US Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Mike Mullen in 2005 was rephrased as the ‘Global Maritime Partnership’ (GMP) initiative in Strategy-2007. As a set of informal arrangements, the GMP was also intended to “send powerful messages to would-be aggressors that we will act with others to ensure collective security….”

Strategy-2015 furthers the appeal for the partnership, now rephrased as a “global network of navies.” The document effectively communicates to the potential partners the rationale for such “plug and play” cooperation with the US forces sans “commitment.”

Force Design and Employment

Strategy-2015 describes “a force that balances warfighting readiness with our Nation’s current and future fiscal challenges.” This statement seems to be the mainstay of the force design and employment strategy of US Sea Services.

Strategy-2007 had laid down the intent to “tailor” maritime forces “to meet the unique and evolving requirements particular to each geographic region.” Strategy-2015, possibly driven by fiscal prudence, seems to have adopted a less ‘ambitious’ approach. It aims only to “align (existing) capability, capacity, and platforms to regional mission demands…by ensuring that our most modern and technologically advanced forces are located where their combat power is needed most.” It also seeks to enhance the effectiveness of naval forces by employing “new warfighting concepts… and…. innovation.” The innovations stipulated by the document include increasing forward-basing of forces “to reduce costly rotations…” and developing modular platforms like Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) to enable swapping mission modules in lieu of costly ship rotations.

In sum, Strategy-2015 is not only a quantum improvement over the preceding strategy document of 2007, but also sets a model for the other existing and emerging major powers to emulate in the interest of transparency in military concepts and capability development. Such transparency is essential among maritime-military forces that operate in the international medium, and particularly those belonging to the “Indo-Asia-Pacific” region that is becoming increasingly volatile, as recent developments indicate.

Captain Gurpreet S Khurana, PhD is the Executive Director, National Maritime Foundation (NMF), New Delhi. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Indian Navy, the NMF or the Government of India. He can be reached at gurpreet.bulbul@gmail.com.