Last Thursday, Inside the Pentagon released an advance copy of the “Joint Operational Access Concept,” or JOAC, a directive reportedly set to be signed by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the new chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. I haven’t had time to read the document in detail, but at a glance it seems to signify a healthy shift in attitudes toward contested regions of the globe. The Soviet Union officially disbanded twenty years ago this month. With no major opponent, the U.S. armed forces grew accustomed to “commanding” the global “commons,” the seas and skies beyond the jurisdiction of any government. If the United States no longer had to fight for control of the commons, it was logical for commanders and their civilian masters to refocus their energies on “power projection” into embattled regions. Command was a virtual U.S. birth right.
In recent years, though, regional powers like China and Iran have bought or built weaponry that equips them to challenge U.S. mastery of offshore waters and airspace. Commanders can no longer assume they can gain access to forward bases in places like Japan or Bahrain, let alone project power onto foreign shores with impunity. The JOAC acknowledges the new, yet ancient, reality that external powers may encounter resistance from strong local powers that boast sizable advantages when fighting in their own backyards. Its “central idea” is that “cross-domain synergy” across the military services will be critical to piercing regional antagonists’ “anti-access” and “area-denial” measures. Equally important is that the document tries to dispel any lingering illusions about untrammeled U.S. access to disputed regions.
More likely, say the JOAC’s drafters, U.S. expeditionary forces will have to impose local, temporary superiority at critical places on the map at critical times. “Superiority in any domain,” it observes, “may not be widespread or permanent; it more often will be local and temporary.” Only full integration of land, air, and sea power can help commanders exploit “fleeting local opportunities for disrupting the enemy system.” If the United States holds command at the outset of a conflict, then, it may well lose command and have to restore it by force of arms. It may be no accident that the Joint Operational Access Concept appeared the day after the 70th anniversary of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor – the last time U.S. sea and air forces found themselves driven from the Western Pacific and had to battle their way back.
To me, the JOAC appears to mark a transition from “Mahanian” to “Corbettian” assumptions about warfare in regions like the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean region. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, the second president of the august institution I call home, exhorted naval commanders to seek out and defeat enemy battle fleets, thereby winning command of the sea. Mahan defined command as “overbearing power” that cleansed vital waters of the enemy’s flag or at most allowed that flag to appear as a “fugitive.” He seemed to assume permanent, absolute command of important expanses was possible. His contemporary, Julian Corbett, a British historian, agreed that “permanent general control” was a worthy goal, but he also insisted it might prove unattainable. The “normal position” was an “uncommanded sea,” simply because no navy was big and wide-ranging enough to be at all places at all times.
So naval commanders needed to think in terms of wresting control of key points from adversaries for finite intervals. Nor must naval campaigns proceed in linear fashion. Logic, declared Corbett in his classic treatise Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (1911), dictated that fleets overcome enemy fleets before exercising command – blockading enemy shores, landing troops, and doing the other things that victory entitles a navy to do. But war “is not conducted by logic, and the order of proceeding which logic prescribes cannot always be adhered to in practice.” The “special conditions of naval warfare” rendered it “inevitable that operations for exercising command should accompany as well as follow operations for securing command.” That is, a navy might have to exercise command before winning it – accepting the attendant dangers and hardships.
As U.S. Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force commanders ponder how to execute the Joint Operational Access Concept, they could do worse than dust off that old copy of Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.
James Holmes is an associate professor of strategy at the US Naval War College. The views voiced here are his alone.
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Yang zi
In a boxing match, a better boxer can defeat the weak opponent even if he is in a disadvantages position. A good question to ask Navy’s effectiveness in attacking land target is, if US navy want to attack US, will it survive? The answer is probably no. Using navy asset as a launching platform has been tried and true since centuries ago, but it has been based on overwhelming fire power difference over the attacked. Navy also has the advantage of picking attack picking where to attack and land.
As technology advancenment allows defenders to cover more ground with sensors and defense networks, navy as a launching pad for land attack is increasingly undoable. The new doctrines are recognizing this and trying to enlist help from air and space assets.
The keys are stealth and range, stealth is tactical, range is strategic. A defender’s range can overcome enemy’s stealth weapons. Weapons with range, stealth, speed and accuracy are the holy grill of modern weapon. The big ships are secondary assets, they are merely transport.
China’s navy color change (to blue) is a secondary effort, its main focus should be strategic weapons that can defend and attack.
Derek Weese
I agree. However, let me assert my opinion that it is not in the air or on the waters that a war is won, but rather on the ground. Sea and air assets, ultimately, exist solely to provide a protective umbrella to escort land forces to the operational area to allow the land forces to then conquer or defend on the ground.
Grant
What does “if US navy want to attack US” mean? I assume you mean China (which should be ‘us’ not ‘US’) because the alternative, the U.S navy attacking the United States, doesn’t make any sense.
Additionally they didn’t specifically state large ships when they mentioned the navy. There are a large number of smaller ships that can still pack quite a punch, especially if rail guns can be made smaller. Even without surface vessels there’s still submarines.
yang zi
I meant US navy want to attack a country with US’s capabilities.
I was trying to illustrate the weakness of Navy in comparison to other weapons. but of course, US navy is still very formidable. the 7000 missile launch cells on US navy’s smaller ships can launch a variety of missiles and even the future hyper-sonic long range missiles.
it is a race of range and avoidance of enemy fire. a ship has the advantage of mobility if it is shooting in a safe distance, let’s say all of the US launchers are equipped with 2000 mile range hypersonic weapons and rain them down on China in a hypothetical war, China wouldn’t able to defend itself unless it has a defense network of long range anti-ship missiles.
submarines has stealth, but once it fires the first shot, it exposes it self and in theory a hypersonic weapon can kill it. in reality, it is very hard though if the submarine just swim away after firing.
if you have a longer range weapon, or can avoid enemy fire while firing on enemy, you always win a war. the ultimate checkmate is the ability to attack any country on earth from your own country. this would thwart any attack from sea based assets. hypersonic weapons are technologically challenging, but they may be cheaper to make.