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If you’re getting ready to go somewhere . . From the Sea,” amphibs and carriers will deploy together more often. If today’s ‘Gators don’t step up to the challenge, someone else will—wearing Navy blue •. . or Army green.
Forget for a moment the approved planning scenarios, the major regional contingencies, and reconstitution. Consider instead the real world, non-exercise Use of naval forces that has occurred during the past couple of years. In addition to Desert Shield and Desert Storm, it is a long list: Provide Comfort, Provide Promise, Sharp Edge, Eastern Exit. Sea Angel, Fiery Vigil, Gitmo, Restore Hope, and Able Manner. All featured amphibious forces. Not all were exclusively amphibious, but amphibious forces were an irreplaceable part of each one.
It is clear that real world, non-exercise naval operations—for the near term, at any rate—will be similar to those above. It follows that our amphibious warfare capability (hardware, people, training) will be of increasingly critical importance, both to the Navy and to the nation.
*Yogi Berra is an amphibious warfare sailor. He served on an amphibious combatant during World War II, and participated in every amphibious operation conducted in the European Theater of Operations.
Yogi Berra would doubtless agree that the most important prerequisite for taking the proper fork in the road is to recognize a forking of the road in the first place. Against the backdrop just outlined, consideration of several facts of life will help to define the crossroads:
► The era of the blue-water Navy is ended. There is no credible threat to our control of the oceans of the world, nor is there likely to be—therefore the significance of our blue-water capabilities is greatly reduced.
► Naval warfare will be littoral (or expeditionary) warfare. Amphibious forces bring a unique advantage to littoral warfare—they can transition quickly and smoothly from forward-presence operations to crisis response and power projection or to humanitarian assistance and peace keeping.
► Maneuver warfare has come to stay. Amphibious warfare, featuring a rapidly maturing over-the-horizon capability, increasingly will be seen as the maritime component of a maneuver warfare campaign.
► Force levels are going down, perhaps precipitously, but amphibious forces have a wide and diverse constituency, including the various combatant commanders-in-chief and the Congress, so while the total number of amphibious ships will go down with the rest of the force, the percentage of the force that is amphibious will increase.
► We will not resolve the naval surface-fire-support dilemma. The requirement—a system (or a family of systems) that can provide very deep precision fires, long- range area fires, and close-in, high-volume fires—is sim-
termeasures front. The good news is that we are developing a capability to clear mines rapidly in support of an assault. The bad news is that development of the rapid broad area clearance capability needed to sustain a major assault, or for logistics-over-the-shore (LOTS) operations, still eludes us. In other words, in a mined littoral we could find ourselves able to land but not to stay. Current plans include early arrival of commercial ships for offload, and reliance on LOTS operations for sustainment.
ply unaffordable. Continuing development of the alternatives (all-weather close air support and improved landing-force capability) together with the changing nature of amphibious warfare, are reducing the criticality of the requirement. 1 ► There is good news and l bad news on the mine-coun-1
TEXTRON MARINE SYSTEMS
► The Army. We are all now fond of saying that future operations will be joint. This will be so in the littoral world—emphatically—for two reasons. First, the Army is committed to a large-scale afloat prepositioning program, and the Navy is committed to building very large 24-knot
ships to support it. In future Saudi Arabia- and Somalia- type operations, we can expect the Army to be there— early. Second, the Navy’s LOTS capability is eroding- Our tank landing ships (LSTs) are all scheduled to be decommissioned over the next few years. Without the an amphibious ready group (ARG) is unlikely to have causeways, warping tugs, or amphibious SeaBees. LOTS capability will reside in the afloat prepositioning forces—and the Army’s force will include a much wider and more capable variety than we find in our Navy-Marine Corps maritime prepositioning squadron (MPS) ships. And—by the way—we should remember that the largest amphibious operation in history was an Army show.
► As a consequence, the retention of amphibious-war
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fare expertise and the development of new doctrines, techniques, and practices will be absolutely critical. Amphibious warfare is devilishly complex—practitioners must not only master their own warfare arts, but also those of sister services. It is becoming more, not less,
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The likely future” described above is not inevitable— not all of it. The amphibious warfare community, with strong leadership and reasonable, executable alternatives, can produce different outcomes. For the amphibs, the future turns on two considerations: how rapidly we can broaden ourselves, and whether or not we can sustain ourselves as a community.
Amphibious warfare does not have to disappear, but if it is to endure, its practitioners must broaden themselves. Naval operations in the future will be controlled by commanders and staffs who are competent across the entire spectrum of warfare. The question for the amphibious warfare community is simply whether it will become competent in battle group operations before battle group practitioners become competent in amphibious operations.
Closely related to this question are the strength and vitality of the amphibious-warfare community. If enough of the service’s best and brightest are not injected at the division officer, department head, and command levels, the community will wither. This will become especially critical with the end of the practice of split-touring department heads. It is generally unwise to concentrate the top 25% of any organization in too narrow a slice; in this case, elimination of split-touring without any means of community balancing will begin the decline of the landing-force and mine-warfare communities, in addition to the amphibs.
These two actions—warfare-expertise broadening and warfare-community balancing—can change the future. They will ensure a continued vital, healthy amphibious- warfare capability as well.
Admiral LaPlante is the Vice-Director for Logistics, J-4, on the Joint Staff. He commanded Task Force 156/Amphibious Group Two in the Persian Gulf during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
difficult to produce people who are sufficiently broad in experience and capability to plan and conduct these operations.
The facts of life outlined above support several conclusions that together describe the sort of world in which we are likely to operate in the future: y Doctrine will be broadened to include amphibious operations other than the assaults, raids, demonstrations, and withdrawals it now governs. New doctrine will be sufficiently broad and flexible for use in operations such as humanitarian assistance, peace keeping, and noncombatant evacuation—and will provide for the Commander, Amphibious Task Force (CATF), to operate in support of the Commander, Landing Force (CLF), when the situation warrants.
► Amphibious warfare will no longer be a stand alone capability. Integration of battle groups and amphibious forces will be the norm. Whoever commands amphibious operations, as well as the supporting staff, will be required to be expert across the entire spectrum of naval warfare. Exclusive warfare-specific expertise has no place in the close and intimate world of littoral warfare; it is an extravagance we cannot afford. Integration will occur at all levels and throughout the combat forces structure.
► We will no longer deploy carrier battle groups and amphibious ready groups simultaneously. Suboptimal solutions will include:
-—Battle groups with minimum amphibious capability, e.g., a earner (CV) with two rifle companies and helicopters
—Amphibious groups with minimum strike capability, e.g., an amphibious assault ship (LHD) with a dozen AV-8B Harriers
—Composite groups, e.g., a CV plus dock landing ships (an LSD and an LPD). Whatever the mix, there are potential costs. In our zest to fill the forward-presence commitments of the 1980s with the force structure of the 1990s, we run the risk of losing the ability to operate at the high end of the spectrum as fully capable amphibious task forces.
► Surface ship-to-shore (STS) assets will largely be air- cushion landing craft (LCACs). Smaller amphibious task torces, whether sized as expeditionary units or expeditionary brigades, will have far fewer well-deck spots, and commanders will be loath to allocate them to displacement craft. This will bring a wide range of exciting assault options, but it has serious implications in sustainment.
>■ Forcible-entry assault across a defended beach is inconsistent with the principles of maneuver warfare. In ground warfare, the frontal assault has been largely displaced by maneuver, and the World War II/Korean War- style forcible-entry amphibious assaults will be eclipsed by their maneuver warfare counterparts. Mine countermeasures concentration will shift to detection (to permit amphibious force ships to avoid the threat).
>• The most likely amphibious warfare operations (other than those conducted in a benign environment) will be raids, which can be massive and of several days’ duration, and enablement operations—securing facilities for afloat prepositioning offload. The “come to stay” assault has become obsolete, for the most part, and is in any case not executable because of the mine threat and a lack of STS assets.
► More than any other system, the advanced amphibious assault vehicle (AAAV) is associated with taking neither fork in the road. It is an extremely poor vehicle for use from over the horizon, is nice but unnecessary for use in close, and can be replaced with far less expensive vehi' des for maneuver ashore. This will be recognized. y Absent any strong imperative to the contrary, amphibious warfare ships and personnel will be folded into our battle group organization. That is to say, a typical battle group would include a CV, a big-deck amphibious assault ship, and assorted cruisers, destroyers, LPDs, and LSDs. Tactical amphibious squadrons, commanders, and staff will disappear, replaced with planning cells on battle group staffs. Alternatively, amphibious staff experience may be concentrated in one place, as has been done with mine warfare at the Mine Warfare Command. Particular task force staffs would in turn be selectively and temporarily augmented with officers experienced in amphibious warfare as the need arises.
Which Fork to Take?