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October 22, 2005

Chaos in the Littorals

Wretchard's latest post at Belmont Club is The Far Line of Sand in which he tracks the development of future naval forces and deduces a possible outcome:

If form follows function the shape of the 21st century US Navy suggests that the "dark-green ... almost black" coastlines of the Third World will again become a theater of operations with this fundamental difference: areas that 19th century Europeans once sought to penetrate are now localities that need to be contained. No longer are arms being landed on those whispering coasts in hopes of conquest. The flows now go the other way. Today they must be blockaded against the outflow of weapons, armed gangs and multitudes of desperate people bent on escape from their misery. The USN by restructuring itself in response to the logical implications of terrorism, is anticipating a crisis that, to use Thomas Barnett's terminology, the "Core" governments have yet to face: how to bring freedom, prosperity and functionality to the "Non-Integrating Gap".
I think Wretchard is right on the money, but don't want inland operations to be neglected in our concept of the future. As he writes in the comments to the post:
I've often wondered whether it would be possible to write history, not from newspaper clippings, but from a time lapse analysis of the world's militaries. Like watching a silent movie and deducing the story from the action. On the principle of observing, not what men say but what men do.
Keeping that same idea in mind, we might examine what the land forces are doing too. A past post examined the American Enterprise Institute's conference, The Future of the United States Marine Corps [for some reason, the AEI website is not responding right now, but I have a printed copy of the transcript]. Here is an excerpt from a presentation about one possible conception of the future of the Marine Corps:
This would be a Marine Corps that'd be going back and working within its historical legacy of small wars, in essence, embracing what I would call the "second small wars era," which is how one could define the future environment.

I remember General Krulak, several years ago, talked about the future of warfare, you know, we'd be focusing on the stepchild, the stepchildren of Chechnya, and I would just extend that to it would be the stepchildren of Fallujah, would be the things we'd be focusing on, and that would include extensive urban combat.

We'd be prepared for the savage wars of peace that Max has written so eloquently about. The Marine Corps would not become a contributor--right now we have our little toe, you know, at SOCOM, and there's arguments for maybe sticking a leg in--but this'd be a Marine Corps that might be the major component to SOCOM or at least make a contribution of at least 30,000 Marines to that particular command.

General Mattis, in charge of writing doctrine for the Corps, has even more to say on this topic, that of small wars and our handling of them in the future:
But we've got to have people who are comfortable operating in austere, very complex environments where firepower is not the primary means to victory and you can see some of the things we're looking at there that allow us to transform the Marine Corps to make it even more relevant to what the nation needs from right now. We do see the Army, the Special Operations Forces, and the Marines as perhaps comprising a new triad. Remember the old triad to make certain we didn't go into nuclear war were strategic bombers, you know, land-based missles and submarines, of course, our at sea with the missiles on them.

We, to confront this new enemy, there may be a new triad that we need to put together.

Another member of the conference, Mike Vickers, a former Green Beret and CIA operations officer, had this to add:
Now as far as controlling terrain, which relates to this, I thik the problem that we see in Iraq, and Afghanistan, really may be an anomaly in the long-term war on terrorism, in the sense that we overthrew two governments and we're now trying to make sure those places don't go bad.

But the long-term problem is really shoring up lots of governments across a global landscape. As I mentioned, there are cells in some 55, 60 countries, there are insurgencies in 18, and so the only -- and they swim in a sea of people, remember all the Mao stuff, of 1.2 billion people, including lots of folks in Europe where the problem is getting worse.

And so the idea that you can do this by physically controlling -- with any amount of U.S. forces -- is ludicrous to me.

I mean, the idea that you -- the long-term GWOT problem will be working with locals in smaller groups, to make sure that problems don't rise to a certain level, and so the terrain we're trying to control, in a sense, is really global and the only way to do that is with an indirect approach and with this low visibility but persistent and culturally sensitive presence.

Compared with the picture of the future of the Navy that Wretchard offers, these concepts of land forces working in small groups, decentralized, in culturally and linguistically sensitive ways, are complimentary.

Two notes: first, such decentralized and small land forces could be used in two ways, either at their own initiative, or at the explicit direction of policymakers. They can be used to keep a lid on things, to keep local conditions from reaching a certain state, as Vickers suggests, or they may embark on wholesale change in the areas in which they operate. The choices they make, or are forced to make, may form much of the future of history in many parts of the world.

The second note is the difference in mentality that these operating conditions requires on the part of the soldier or Marine, whether professional or reservist. T.R. Fehrenbach wrote in his history of the Korean War, This Kind of War [via GooglePrint] about the difference between the kinds of war that soldiers thought they were to do in Korea, and what they actually did, and the effects on the populace at large.

Reservists and citizen soldiers stand ready, in every free nation, to stand to the colors and die in holocaust, the big war. Reservists and citizen-soldiers remain utterly reluctant to die in anything less. None want to serve on the far frontiers, or to maintain lonely, dangerous vigils on the periphery of Asia . . . However repugnant the idea may be to liberal societies, the man who will willingly defend the free world in the fringe areas is not the responsible citizen-soldier. The man who will go where his colors go, without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in jungle and moutain range, without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship, without complaint, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome, to sceptered Britain, to democratic America. He is the stuff of which legions are made.
That idea, first authored in 1953, was meant to warn against advocate a standing, professional, volunteer military, able to fight "wars of policy," rather than toe-to-toe Holocaust-like confrontations with Communisim. Now we find ourselves in the position of preparing that military to perform even larger and more complicated roles than that of the legions. In the concepts in this post and Wretchard's, US land forces might be the subtle soft-speakers to the Navy's big stick over the horizon.

Posted by Chester at October 22, 2005 2:57 PM

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Comments

I like Vickers idea of the indirect approach.

He has been reading his B.H.L. Hart.

Guerilla wars because of their criminal element core have very long tails. The war is won when they stop being freedom fighters and become criminals again.

Note: Saddam's releasing of criminals from prison was a strategic move, not tactical.

Also note: guerillas are defeated by security and self government.

Posted by: M. Simon at October 22, 2005 7:07 PM

very interesting.
there will always remain a paradox within the armed forces, right?

Posted by: playertwo at October 22, 2005 7:21 PM

Hi P2, big momma let you come out and play? Dat's goot.
Terrain in the small wars of the future will be the populations themselves. Mao's sea, if you will. The new triad will be Propaganda, policing and special ops. I'm lumping spys under the Propaganda, not the special ops. The best thing that America could do in the WoT is to cut back the CIA to just analyists. Let State run the agents and SOCOM do the dirty work. I think it interfers with the analysis side of the business to have the collection done by the same group the does the analysis. Then having those people act on it is just componding the error. We need checks and balances.
And I don't understand what the fuss is about the LCS. The Navy can sit off SanDiego and put weapons on Mocow. Why do we want to put ships where our enemy can reach them? It seems really stooooopid to me. Thruout Naval history the range and accuracy of a ships weapons have been the biggest factor in determining who wins. Look at the progression of naval power. The winners are ALWAYS the guys that can hit the enemy before they can hit you. So Now we want to change that? WHY? I defy anyone to name 1 advantage a ship 12 NM's offshore has over one 50 NM's off shore. And going inside that 12NM limits is an act of war. This looks to me like the MIC is looking to reach deep into the Taxpayers pockets yet again. While I'm sure that the Shipyards are drooling over the prospect of building billion dollar targets, I fail to see the advantage of turning the US Navy into an expensive copy of a third world Navy.

Posted by: Stehpinkeln at October 22, 2005 9:36 PM

Stehpinkeln,

Be sure to click thru on the links Wretchard has in his post. They show that the purpose of retrofitting SSBNs is to serve as SEAL troop-carriers. Swimming 12 NM is much easier than 50, to put it straight.

In short, all of these ship systems, whether the SSGN, the LCS, or the DD(X) are being explicitly designed with their relationship to land forces in mind.

Existing naval gunfire assets can also cover the 12 NM easily, if memory serves, whereas 50 is still a bit of science fiction -- that is, if we are talking about effects on a target that are to be adjusted by operators on the ground. Tomahawks of course can go much further, but there is no adjustment to that round.

Posted by: Chester at October 22, 2005 10:13 PM

I was just out at Pearl and took a good look around and talked to some sailor dogs about that future navy. So much of what they do is like a giant moving company. They have major challenges to face in my puny mind. One is how to keep the ships big enough to handle the moving jobs when things are good and the other how to keep them small when things are going bad.
Other than that its all about air freight, right?
The military of the future is going to have to deal with torpedoes we havent even dreamt of yet. They were talking about chinese ones that go 300 mph underwater. UAV's with lasers and worldwide range?!! you know that when they fire you really can't see the beam ,right?

I see a Navy with lotsa little super fast ships that are half sub and half ship. I see boats that fly. I see solid subs that are crewless and can go to the bottom of the ocean. what if aircraft carriers turn into big subs and the planes land in the water and then swim down to them?

Maybe youre talking about the Navy that will be around in ten years or twenty that will be the in between Navy before all that stuff comes in?

As for the Intel dissemination, good luck figuring all that out. Broken into pieces you get plurality and different takes while at the same time infighting and redundancy. Its interesting but I kinda like the idea of more than one voice. Watch for the NSA to start really calling the shots. Forget about State, theyre turned.

The Nazis had the corn rune department-lebensraum, joy divisions and all that. I really don't see us going that route, its more difficult without it but you don't end up like china or germany. Let's leave advertisement and deportation apart..

The seals,sf and delta are the needle, the Rangers and Marines are a bayonet,the 82nd is the Hammer and all the follow-on's the big boot.

Can the Navy really be anything but follow on's?
I gotta think about this some more, its a really interesting question. Are the units within the Navy that directly support the SOF's really the Navy anymore? Is the whole concept of the Navy stuck in a lapsed paradigm? Boggled.

It might help to remind oneself that the entire Armed Services all work for one thing and that dividing them up and then defending a piece is pretty dumb when it comes to maximum adaptation.
Its not 1944 and those days were awesome but I wonder if the planners even care about the differences we live in. maybe it'll all turn into BigNavy and LittleNavy. Who knows?Teh moreI think about it the more it dawns me why Chester wrote the post...


Posted by: playertwo at October 22, 2005 10:43 PM

Chester all I can say is 'airplanes'. Crewed or not, they have the range and precision that other systems lack. Plus you can adjust the targeting.
Now I think the day of the 'Super' carrier is past. A Nimitz class depends on it's enemies for survival. The first time some crazy despot that doesn't give a shit decides to nuke a Nimitz, that will be it.
P2, I would like to see the service schools changed from Army, Navy, Air Force to just Military. Have ALL the students spend their sophmore and junior years at a different acadamy. Say, you are a Freshman at the Naval Acadamey, you spend your second year at West Point and your third year at Colorado Springs, then back to Canoe U. for graduation. Get them thinking purple from the git go. Everybody is Military with specialization in Air, Land or Sea.
No money for the MIC in that idea, so it won't fly. Ike warned us all about the MIC in the late 50's. He was correct. The Military Industrial Complex has become an enormous welfare program for bloated Defense Contractors. They eventually produce some fine weapons (built by the lowest bidder) but I've never figured out if that was by accident or not. They built some real clunkers too and it seems like what ever they build has to be redesign and rebuilt within a year or so of being deployed. If any Major corporation was ran like that they would go broke quick. Why shouldn't the MIC be faced with the same standards that are used to build TV's or refrigerators?
It just makes absolutly no sense to me to give up the blue water and go play in the shallow, where a few million dollars submarine has the advantage over a billion dollar ship. It would be like sending a sniper with a 15,000$US rifle in to use it as a club against a spearman. So far nobody I have asked was able to explain this 'logic' to me.
The 'june echole' people need to stop and think about what they are doing. Military inovation to acomplish a mision is good, military inovation just to spend money is bad. I cannot see what the LCS will acomplsh that cannot be done with Air power from 50NM's out.
Please note that the Marines are re-configuring to operate 'over the horizon', So while they are doing that, the Navy is busy wasting gazillions on building a "Surfboard" Navy? WHY?

Posted by: Stehpinkeln at October 23, 2005 11:04 PM