he recent defense strategic guidance, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, highlights the growing importance of projecting power into anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) environments. To keep pace with emerging threats, the Navy–Marine Corps team is on the cusp of important advances in projecting power through the full range of amphibious and crisis-response operations. These breakthroughs are being driven by four significant, interdependent enhancements to Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF) capabilities. They include:
• Networking all elements and units in the MAGTF to joint, theater, and national assets, permitting cross-domain integration
• Expanding aviation combat-element (ACE) capabilities, most notably introduction of fifth-generation strike fighters
• Developing at-sea, in-stream offload capabilities for improved maritime prepositioning squadrons (MPSRONs), which support the rapid expansion of the MAGTF without reliance on secure ports and airfields
• Improving the operational wisdom and capabilities of individual Marines by strengthening enlistment and retention efforts, combat-seasoned ethical leadership, and world-class training and education programs.
These four improvements have positioned naval expeditionary forces to make increasingly prominent contributions to joint-force power projection in the most challenging environments.
Emerging Strategic and Operational Context
In January President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta established the Pacific and Central Command areas of responsibility as geographic priorities. This regional focus reflects shifting military, demographic, and economic realities directly affecting U.S. interests. Simply put, while the United States will continue to have global concerns, the concentration of its most vital interests and threats lies in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions. In both areas significant military modernization, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, nation-state instability, violent extremist organizations, and sources of regional conflict persist. Important for the Navy–Marine Corps team, these are also regions that have limited U.S. basing rights, a post-colonial aversion to a consistent presence of foreign forces, and numerous flashpoints requiring access from the sea to shape the environment, deter conflict, and respond to crises.
The operational environment is simultaneously becoming more demanding because of potential adversary investments in A2/AD capabilities and the continued evolution of low-tech counters to U.S. power-projection advantages. The “Joint Operational Access Concept” defines anti-access as those actions and capabilities, usually long range, designed to prevent an opposing force from entering an operational area. Area-denial refers to those actions and capabilities, usually of shorter range, designed not to keep an opposing force out, but to limit its freedom of action once inside an operational area.1 High-tech manifestations of A2/AD systems include space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems; kinetic and non-kinetic counters to U.S. critical infrastructure, communications, ISR, and position-locating systems; resilient, highly advanced air defense systems; the newest tools for electronic warfare; hardened underground facilities; large numbers of accurate ballistic and cruise missiles designed to attack surface ships and land bases; fourth- and fifth-generation strike fighters; hard-wired command-and-control systems; and advanced attack submarines. Moreover, potential adversaries are underwriting these systems with enhanced training at all command echelons to improve their ability to operate an integrated, multi-domain military.
Lower-tech manifestations of adversary A2/AD approaches incorporate many of the same elements of their more technologically sophisticated cousins but place additional emphasis on sea mines, IEDs, fast-attack boats, irregular proxy forces, sophisticated deception and camouflage techniques, and force-distribution among civilian populations. Taken together, these A2/AD challenges significantly hamper U.S. forces’ ability to project and sustain power, especially when deploying across great distances.
They also require fundamentally different concepts of operation as traditional force deployment and closure practices become untenable. In this environment, the “first fight” will likely be a battle simply to get sufficient combat power into the relevant operating area and then to protect and sustain it. Adversary A2/AD systems threatening the secure ports, airfields, and major bases we’ve relied on for the past 20 years must be countered with more sophisticated power-projection options. Amphibious capabilities will have to be redesigned to succeed in A2/AD environments, requiring a campaign of analysis, concept development, experimentation, exercises, and joint assessment.
Four MAGTF Enhancements
Forward-deployed naval expeditionary forces will have to maintain greater capabilities to shape and contain crises early, deter further escalation, and seize the initiative. Amphibious forces—true Navy–Marine Corps teams—must provide the following capabilities to combatant commanders: conduct strikes, assaults, raids, and feints from the sea to puncture and erode an adversary’s A2/AD defenses; control key terrain for limited periods of time; and enable the introduction and maneuver of other elements of the MAGTF and joint force for follow-on operations. The four enhancements described below will enable naval expeditionary forces to do this.
Networked forces, cross-domain integration, and new concepts for combined arms. For the past 25 years, the U.S. armed forces have migrated from reluctant and episodic cooperation, to coordinated planning and action, to true interdependence. This evolution was initially forced on the services with the 1986 passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, grew as the Joint Force adapted to the requirements imposed by law, and rapidly accelerated under the pressure of sustained combat operations. Today the U.S. military is more “joint” than ever.
With the proliferation of information technology, tactical formations will have to become more proficient at exploiting national and theater-level assets. Combined arms operations will routinely extend beyond naval expeditionary forces to the entire joint force, including capabilities maintained in the functional combatant commands. MAGTF staffs will have to integrate cyber, space, and advanced electronic-warfare capabilities in their operations. These will be essential for maneuver, force protection, and force closure. Because classification levels remain high for many of them, the Marine Corps should actively work with the rest of the joint force to develop techniques and organizational constructs to bring them to the tactical level.
While electronic emissions control will be increasingly important, reliable network connectivity will underpin MAGTF and joint force operations. Command and control will rely on networks that must be actively defended, requiring computer network defense capabilities. Limited bandwidth also will require improved information reduction, prioritization, and management. Force protection and application will need sensor-to-decision-maker-to-shooter data links, and “cooperative engagement” protocols will be blind to service identity in the process of engaging a threat with the correct weapon. These requirements will affect the entire capabilities development process. The Marine Corps should advocate for joint concept development, experimentation, and exercises to meet this challenge.
Expanded ACE capabilities. The continued modernization of the MAGTF’s ACE will prompt an enormous leap in the capabilities of Marine aviation, greatly alter current concepts for amphibious operations and crisis response, and radically re-shape the MAGTF’s role in joint operations. These changes will be wrought by the sophisticated capabilities of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), the significant proportion of Marine F-35s among the naval services, and the dramatically improved range, payload, and avionics of upgraded platforms across the ACE.
Fifth-generation strike fighters are characterized by stealth and on-board computer processing power that allow the aircraft to operate in a joint network of sensors and shooters. Because these aircraft will be essential to naval expeditionary forces’ survivability and eroding an adversary’s A2/AD systems during early phases of a crisis, amphibious MAGTFs will make vital contributions to the maritime and air-component commanders’ shaping and deep fights. The Marine Corps’ longstanding commitment to preserving the ACE’s assets to service these requirements will need to evolve to apply the JSF’s capabilities to the pressing need to project power against advanced adversaries, particularly early in a crisis. Marines from each component of the MAGTF should be involved in every step of this evolution.
Introducing the JSF to amphibious MAGTFs will have other far-reaching implications. For example, in operations against highly capable adversaries, large-deck amphibious ships will emerge as “light carriers,” optimized for F-35B/short-takeoff and vertical-landing operations and increasing the dispersal, survivability, and striking power of naval expeditionary forces. The capability to generate significant numbers of F-35B sorties from large-deck amphibious ships will more broadly distribute fifth-generation strike-fighter capabilities across the Fleet, complicate adversary targeting, and by extension improve the survivability of other joint assets.
The same value provided by distributing F-35Bs onto amphibious ships can also be achieved by operating them from small, improvised airfields. Transitioning these aircraft, operating initially from amphibious platforms, to close-in expeditionary airfields as adversary A2/AD defenses are reduced, will enable amphibious MAGTFs to dramatically increase sortie generation rates and overall joint striking power. To make this work, amphibious MAGTFs will need the capability to rapidly establish and operate from multiple airfields in remote locations for relatively short periods of time, and then—to avoid being targeted—move quickly to alternate sets of airfields in unpredictable locations. MAGTF engineers, logistics distribution assets (particularly bulk fuel and aviation ordnance), and aviation ground support will have to evolve to support this capability. With logistics distribution assets potentially increasing support to aviation operations, the entire MAGTF must get lighter and reduce demand in other areas by using portable water purification and renewable energy.
Expanded ACE capabilities are not limited to the F-35. Dramatic advances in range, speed, payload, and avionics provided by the MV-22 Osprey, CH-53K Super Stallion, KC-130J, AH-1Z Viper, and the UH-1Y are significantly improving the ability of amphibious MAGTFs to project power. As adversary A2/AD strike systems drive the joint force to operate initially from extended ranges, amphibious MAGTFs will have the assets to launch and sustain company and battalion-size raid forces from mobile sea bases to targets many hundreds of miles away.
Developing at-sea, in-stream offload capabilities for MPSRONs. If the adage “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics,” is true, then the most important of the four capability enhancements to amphibious MAGTFs may be the ongoing upgrades to the maritime prepositioning squadrons. Major Earl Ellis, an early prophet of amphibious warfare, once wrote that “no shifting of troops or matériel between ships on blue water is practicable,” and “task forces must be formed before leaving base or port.”2 But new platforms to the MPSRONs could overcome these constraints and will permit naval expeditionary forces to re-conceptualize how amphibious operations are executed. The Navy–Marine Corps team has been quietly nurturing important new capabilities for MPSRONs, moving force deployment, projection, and sustainment from a maneuverable and defendable sea base to within our grasp. Naval expeditionary forces will increasingly use the sea to assemble combat power within the joint operating area, exploiting the survivability of mobile sea-bases to operate in an A2/AD environment.
As ports, airfields, and logistics facilities become increasingly vulnerable to missile strikes by potential adversaries, the team must be able to deploy and sustain forces without these hubs at fixed sites. By combining the maneuverability and flexibility of amphibious ships with the at-sea interfaces organic to the MPSRONs’ large, medium-speed roll-on, roll-off ships; mobile landing platforms; and other surface and air connectors, naval expeditionary forces will soon be able to meet this requirement.
Conceptually, here’s how this could work: In an A2/AD environment, amphibious MAGTFs will likely form in four echelons. In the lead, widely distributed forces would be committed to shaping actions onshore and conducting missions in assigned areas of operation. The second echelon would comprise maneuvering amphibious forces that would concentrate for limited periods of time inside threat weapon-system ranges to conduct raids, assaults, and feints under the cover of naval and joint protective capabilities, and then rapidly disperse outside these threat rings to more survivable and defendable positions. After commitment of the assault echelons, amphibious ships in the second echelon would serve as mobile, intermediate bases for MAGTF units transitioning from secure areas into the area of operations. In the third echelon, MPSRONs would largely remain beyond range of threat weapon systems, but would be able to periodically maneuver under protective cover to deliver equipment and sustainment, most often to amphibious ships for follow-on movement ashore. In the fourth, and most distant, echelon, Marine units would stage for movement to amphibious shipping or their assigned area of operations, via air and surface connectors.
Moving forces and equipment across each echelon will be complicated and require extensive exercises and experimentation, which should begin immediately. The capability to do so on maneuverable and defendable platforms while minimizing exposure to an adversary’s weapon systems can significantly offset the risk from ballistic- and cruise-missile systems oriented toward fixed concentrations of U.S. combat power at ports, airfields, and large bases. But to fully exploit emerging MPSRON capabilities, amphibious MAGTFs must “break the tether” to fixed logistics hubs.
Breaking the tether will require more capable MPSRONs to support committed forces onshore across greater distances via improved surface and air connectors (for example, joint high-speed vessels, MV-22s, and CH-53Ks). And while these capabilities are important, the introduction and continued development of expeditionary energy and portable water purification technologies offers a game-changing to reduce the demand for bulk liquids and overall logistical requirements. Taken together, these breakthroughs will enable amphibious MAGTFs to sustain operations simultaneously in more places, across broader areas, and with less risk to the force.
Developing operational wisdom through better recruiting, retention, training, and education. While Marines and sailors have distinguished themselves during the past ten years of combat operations, the future operating environment will require even higher levels of performance, especially from smaller units. As improved sustainment and command-and-control capabilities permit more widely distributed formations, increased dispersal of these same forces will be necessary to protect against high-density, long-range weapons. This will place even greater emphasis on the operational wisdom, judgment, tactical and technical expertise, and character of our small units and their leaders. Because this distributed posture will be difficult to sustain, ingenuity and physical and mental toughness will increasingly substitute for predictable and vulnerable methods of resupply. Weapons and combat support systems will be more sophisticated, difficult to operate, and tough to maintain. Determined young Marines who use and maintain them in remote locations will need even greater levels of discipline, self-reliance, and resilience.
Marines and sailors in small units will operate in zones of even greater moral hazard, requiring vigilance, superb decision-making skills, and strong ethical character at every level of command. They will interact with and influence civilian populations and foreign militaries, make tactical judgments under extreme pressure, employ deadly force amid uncertainty and chaos, and represent the United States in an environment in which their every action may be digitally recorded, transmitted, and globally broadcast. They must be recruited, retained, trained, educated, and led in a manner that reflects these demands and the strategic consequences of their actions. The Marine Corps should continue to ruthlessly refine and adapt its recruiting and training processes. In sum, despite all the high-tech wizardry of operations in an A2/AD environment, no system will be as vital to the success of the MAGTF as the capabilities and character of the individual Marine and sailor operating as part of the larger joint force.
These four MAGTF enhancements provide an opportunity to re-imagine how we conduct amphibious operations and crisis response. Forward-deployed naval expeditionary forces will continue to shape the environment, respond to crises, and rapidly transition to combat operations when required to defeat aggression. To be sure, future amphibious MAGTFs will continue to execute many of the same missions we do today.
But by rigorously analyzing the emerging capabilities of potential adversaries, we can see that the way we execute these missions must change dramatically. The four enhancements are indeed coming—and faster than we think. We must visualize how they can be applied with other joint force capabilities and then apply them to the operational needs of our combatant commanders. It is a competitive endeavor against determined adversaries. But it is also a worthy one that will draw on our entire institution. Much work has been done, but far more remains.
1. GEN Martin Dempsey, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Joint Operational Access Concept,” January 2012, 6.
2. MAJ Earl H. Ellis, “Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia,” U.S. Marine Corps 712 Operational Plan, 1921, 81.
Colonel Bowers is the commanding officer, 6th Marine Corps Recruiting District. He is a combat engineer and recently completed an assignment on the Joint Staff, J-5, Strategic Plans and Policy.
Lieutenant Colonel Wortman is assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (policy). He is an infantry officer.