The Maritime Strategy of 1986 was published in a time when the U.S. Navy actually got to say how it would be strategically employed to meet the maritime interests of the Nation. However, with the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the ascendancy of “Joint,” that is no longer the case.
Today, the President lays out the Nation’s principal security concerns as well as providing high-level guidance on how they will be addressed in the National Security Strategy (NSS); the Secretary of Defense describes how the Defense Department will address the national security issues addressed in the NSS; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gets to weigh in on how the military will be employed; and the Combatant Commanders (CCDRs) of the Geographic Combatant Commands (GCCs) write their own strategies to describe how they will address security issues in their geographic areas of responsibility.
How naval forces – the Navy and Marine Corps – will be employed within a geographic area is the purview of the GCC CCDR with input from their Naval Component Commander (NCC). The Navy, headed by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) gets to say how the Navy will fight, through tactics and doctrine, but not how the Navy will be employed; outside of the CNO’s role as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in which they advise the President, the CNO’s focus is on – and limited to – the Title 10 “organize, train and equip” mission.
That does not mean, of course, that the Navy, like any other large organization, cannot have a strategy to guide its activities. The Navy has, indeed, published its own strategy. The strategy outlined here is not inconsistent with the Navy’s current strategy, but represents my view on how the Navy ought to pursue its missions. The joint doctrinal definition for “strategy” is “A prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or multinational objectives.” If there should be any criticism of the Navy’s current strategy, it is that, to paraphrase the movie Amadeus, it has “too many words.” A strategy should be clear, succinct, and above all, memorable.
A more useful definition for the term strategy, as derived from the work of the U.K. Royal College of Defence Studies and the U.S. Naval War College, would be “a course of action that integrates ends, ways and means to meet military objectives, while considering risk.” “Ends” refers to what is to be accomplished by the strategy, defined, in general, in terms of a desired end state(s). “Means” refers to the resources available, and “ways” refers to how those resources might be employed in achieving the desired “ends.” “Risk” are those risks associated with implementing the strategy, in failing to implement the strategy fully, and the possibility that the strategy may not be “fit to purpose.”
In a remarkable essay entitled “Why a Sailor Thinks Like a Sailor,” then-Captain, later Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie discussed at length how naval officers view war, and their role in defending the nation. In this examination, he outlines the two major tasks of a navy: establishment of control of the sea and exploitation of that control of the sea – echoes here, of course, of Julian Corbett’s Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. While Wylie does not dwell on it, he mentions that establishing control of the sea “…sets the scene of war closer to his (the enemy’s) territory, not ours…”. This idea – that naval warfare in defense of U.S. interests should occur “over there” – is central to this strategy.
Wylie saw the missions of the Navy to be the following, and they will be the missions for any useful naval strategy, too:
Defend the U.S. from attack across the seas.
Seek out and destroy enemy naval forces, commercial shipping, bases, and supporting activities.
Deny to the enemy the use of the seas.
Control the vital sea areas, the narrow seas, the ocean approaches, the Mediterranean, the China seas, and our own adjacent waters.
Exploit our general sea supremacy to project, protect, and sustain the combined military and civilian powers of the U.S. overseas.
Of course, Wyle was writing before the advent of sea-based strategic nuclear deterrents and missile defense which have become essential missions of navies as well.
The principle ends of this strategy is the ability of the United States to use the sea for its purposes when it needs to; denial of the sea for use by the enemy; and the ability to project and sustain forces ashore when and where required – clear, succinct, and memorable.
The means required for this strategy is the naval force structure necessary to achieve the stated ends. Complicating this question is the participation – or non-participation – of allies. Setting that aside for the moment, the “over there” requirement dictates such things as ship size, operational range and endurance, and logistic support, among others. The Navy needs to be, above all, expeditionary in nature.
The principal factor associated with how the Navy should be employed to achieve the desired ends, i.e., the ways, is the essential requirement that the effort will be expended “over there.” The U.S. Navy needs to be able to conduct its operations in distant seas against distant shores. Such a navy would also be able to conduct operations closer to home, but a guiding principle of this strategy is that the U.S. Navy will protect U.S interests overseas.
There are risks associated both with pursuing the strategy, and in not achieving it. For example, the force structure required may be found to be unaffordable, take too long to acquire, or not leave sufficient resources for pursuing other national goals. In addition, failure to implement the strategy fully, or to under-resource it, may result in operations being more costly, in lives and treasure, than they might otherwise be, or may result in defeat. Finally, it is possible that the strategy is not an effective one, not “fit to purpose” for the conflict at hand.
Nonetheless, a useful naval strategy calls for the Navy to be able to use the sea when it needs to, to deny the use of the sea to the nation’s enemies, and to project and sustain forces ashore when and where required. To accomplish these ends, the Navy will maintain a tempo of operations using the forces necessary – surface, sub-surface, air, space, cyber, manned and unmanned – wherever in the world they are required, but always with the ordering idea that naval operations will principally be conducted “over there,” far from the Nation’s borders.
Captain Anthony Cowden, U.S. Navy, retired, is the Managing Director of Stari Consulting Services. He is the author of The Naval Institute Almanac of the U.S. Navy and co-author of Fighting the Fleet: Operational Art and Modern Fleet Combat.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
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Center for Maritime Strategy
By Captain Anthony Cowden
The Maritime Strategy of 1986 was published in a time when the U.S. Navy actually got to say how it would be strategically employed to meet the maritime interests of the Nation. However, with the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the ascendancy of “Joint,” that is no longer the case.
Today, the President lays out the Nation’s principal security concerns as well as providing high-level guidance on how they will be addressed in the National Security Strategy (NSS); the Secretary of Defense describes how the Defense Department will address the national security issues addressed in the NSS; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gets to weigh in on how the military will be employed; and the Combatant Commanders (CCDRs) of the Geographic Combatant Commands (GCCs) write their own strategies to describe how they will address security issues in their geographic areas of responsibility.
How naval forces – the Navy and Marine Corps – will be employed within a geographic area is the purview of the GCC CCDR with input from their Naval Component Commander (NCC). The Navy, headed by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) gets to say how the Navy will fight, through tactics and doctrine, but not how the Navy will be employed; outside of the CNO’s role as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in which they advise the President, the CNO’s focus is on – and limited to – the Title 10 “organize, train and equip” mission.
That does not mean, of course, that the Navy, like any other large organization, cannot have a strategy to guide its activities. The Navy has, indeed, published its own strategy. The strategy outlined here is not inconsistent with the Navy’s current strategy, but represents my view on how the Navy ought to pursue its missions. The joint doctrinal definition for “strategy” is “A prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or multinational objectives.” If there should be any criticism of the Navy’s current strategy, it is that, to paraphrase the movie Amadeus, it has “too many words.” A strategy should be clear, succinct, and above all, memorable.
A more useful definition for the term strategy, as derived from the work of the U.K. Royal College of Defence Studies and the U.S. Naval War College, would be “a course of action that integrates ends, ways and means to meet military objectives, while considering risk.” “Ends” refers to what is to be accomplished by the strategy, defined, in general, in terms of a desired end state(s). “Means” refers to the resources available, and “ways” refers to how those resources might be employed in achieving the desired “ends.” “Risk” are those risks associated with implementing the strategy, in failing to implement the strategy fully, and the possibility that the strategy may not be “fit to purpose.”
In a remarkable essay entitled “Why a Sailor Thinks Like a Sailor,” then-Captain, later Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie discussed at length how naval officers view war, and their role in defending the nation. In this examination, he outlines the two major tasks of a navy: establishment of control of the sea and exploitation of that control of the sea – echoes here, of course, of Julian Corbett’s Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. While Wylie does not dwell on it, he mentions that establishing control of the sea “…sets the scene of war closer to his (the enemy’s) territory, not ours…”. This idea – that naval warfare in defense of U.S. interests should occur “over there” – is central to this strategy.
Wylie saw the missions of the Navy to be the following, and they will be the missions for any useful naval strategy, too:
Of course, Wyle was writing before the advent of sea-based strategic nuclear deterrents and missile defense which have become essential missions of navies as well.
The principle ends of this strategy is the ability of the United States to use the sea for its purposes when it needs to; denial of the sea for use by the enemy; and the ability to project and sustain forces ashore when and where required – clear, succinct, and memorable.
The means required for this strategy is the naval force structure necessary to achieve the stated ends. Complicating this question is the participation – or non-participation – of allies. Setting that aside for the moment, the “over there” requirement dictates such things as ship size, operational range and endurance, and logistic support, among others. The Navy needs to be, above all, expeditionary in nature.
The principal factor associated with how the Navy should be employed to achieve the desired ends, i.e., the ways, is the essential requirement that the effort will be expended “over there.” The U.S. Navy needs to be able to conduct its operations in distant seas against distant shores. Such a navy would also be able to conduct operations closer to home, but a guiding principle of this strategy is that the U.S. Navy will protect U.S interests overseas.
There are risks associated both with pursuing the strategy, and in not achieving it. For example, the force structure required may be found to be unaffordable, take too long to acquire, or not leave sufficient resources for pursuing other national goals. In addition, failure to implement the strategy fully, or to under-resource it, may result in operations being more costly, in lives and treasure, than they might otherwise be, or may result in defeat. Finally, it is possible that the strategy is not an effective one, not “fit to purpose” for the conflict at hand.
Nonetheless, a useful naval strategy calls for the Navy to be able to use the sea when it needs to, to deny the use of the sea to the nation’s enemies, and to project and sustain forces ashore when and where required. To accomplish these ends, the Navy will maintain a tempo of operations using the forces necessary – surface, sub-surface, air, space, cyber, manned and unmanned – wherever in the world they are required, but always with the ordering idea that naval operations will principally be conducted “over there,” far from the Nation’s borders.
Captain Anthony Cowden, U.S. Navy, retired, is the Managing Director of Stari Consulting Services. He is the author of The Naval Institute Almanac of the U.S. Navy and co-author of Fighting the Fleet: Operational Art and Modern Fleet Combat.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.