AirSea Battle

OPSSG

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Staff member
See this 3 June 2013 news article on "DoD Document Sheds First Clear Light On AirSea Battle: Warfare Unfettered."

The Defense Department (DoD) released an official and unclassified summary of the concept for the first time on a Navy website (only 13 pages).

1. Key concept:

NIA/D3, or​

Network, Integrated Attack-in-depth by the application of cross domain applications to Disrupt, Destroy and Defeat adversary forces. In essence, if an adversary can now reach out and touch US forces in ways and at distances they never could before, the US is going to find all sorts of ways to reach out and touch them back. The DoD could develop better technology to try to shoot down the adversary missile once it’s launched. But it’s much better to blow up the launcher before it actually launches, or to blind the radar that’s trying to find US forces, or, best of all, crash the adversary's communications network that is orchestrating the attack in the first place, whether by blowing up their headquarters, jamming their wireless datalinks, or hacking their computers. Instead of trying to shoot down an adversary satellite, bomb the ground control station to which it’s transmitting data, or better yet hack into that data stream to feed the enemy false information. This new document describes this as a “cross-domain” “attack in depth” using “both kinetic and non-kinetic means.”

2. In the hierarchy of joint force development documents, right at the top is:

2.1 the DoD's Strategic Guidance aka Sustaining Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense (DSG), a 14 page pdf document which deals with the primary missions of the US Armed Forces;

2.2 directly below the DSG is the Chiefs of Staff's joint force development vision detailed in Capstone Concept for Joint Operations: Joint Force 2020 (CCJO), a 16 page pdf document which sets out the implications and risks for joint operations, and both the DSG and CCJO, are the master documents guiding joint force developments for the US; and

2.3 below CCJO, is the Joint Operations Access Concept (JOAC), which consists of two parts:

2.3.1 AirSea Battle; and

2.3.2 Entry Operations.​

The idea behind AirSea Battle is to foster institutional change, conceptual alignment and material change in the services to develop a force that can meet the challenge of A2/AD via NIA/D3.​

3. As Spencer Ackerman calls it, Step 1 in U.S. Plan to Rule Sea and Sky: Actually Share Data. While Spencer Ackerman has over simplified the concept, it is also true that the foundation for NIA/D3 requires the ability to share information across the services, with an element of cyberwarfare inherent in the concept (see this CSIS publication). It is important to remember that the AirSea Battle is a limited operational concept; it is not a doctrine, a military strategy, or a warfighting plan against any particular country. “The ongoing confusion about the actual scope of [AirSea Battle] is exactly why it is so important for DoD to carefully articulate the limited nature of this concept,” said Rep. Forbes.
 
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OPSSG

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See Air-Sea Battle Is More About Bin Laden Than Beijing: Former CSAF Schwartzand Bryan McGrath also has an article on the FIVE MYTHS ABOUT AIRSEA BATTLE that is worthy of a read.

Myth Number 1:

AirSea Battle is little more than a budget share grab by the Navy and Air Force, two services that believe themselves to have been left out of the open bar budget party during the past twelve years of land conflict.​

Lots to unpack here. First, the Navy and the Air Force did, in fact, decrease in size while we pursued two land wars. Both the Army and the Marine Corps increased dramatically in size. Taking contingency funding into consideration, the land forces share of DoD outlays was significantly greater. This was of course, logical and rational, as we were fighting two land wars. But we have withdrawn from one of those land wars and the President is threatening to pack up and leave the second. In any event, the land forces were by any measure, due for cuts in a post-war world. This does not mean though, that the Navy and Air Force were necessarily due for increases. Were China not rising and in the process, sometimes throwing sharp elbows at its neighbors, neither service would have much of a case for anything above the status quo. But that isn’t the China we have before us. Nor is the Iran we have before us quiescent. The world we face appears to be telling us to look again at the size, capability and readiness of our seapower and air power. Our President has put forward a strategy that applies more emphasis to the Pacific, where aerial and maritime commons dominate.

Secondly, U.S. taxpayers would be gratified to know how the AirSea Battle Office spends much of its time. And that is in the pursuit of efficiencies and commonalities in how (primarily) the Navy and Air Force do their jobs in contesting adversary A2AD capability. The sense that there are a bunch of mad scientists egged on by swaggering operators is simply misplaced. What goes on in the office are careful reviews of existing capabilities at both the unclassified and classified levels in order to eliminate duplication and divergence that can both cause additional expense. Some readers would be shocked (Shocked!) that sometimes, our armed services buy a capability that one of the other services already has, or already has in a state that could be easily altered to fit the purposes of other services. Additionally, subjects as mundane as training and doctrine are reviewed in order to ensure unity of effort. I am reliably told that there are indeed highly classified programs within both the Navy and the Air Force that are designed to mitigate A2AD capability. What the ASB Office brings is an organization where those highly classified programs can be analyzed across entire effects-chains in order to ensure that the Joint Force is the beneficiary of the goodness of all service efforts.

Finally, ASB has become necessary because since at least 1996 (when China tried to manipulate elections in Taiwan and President Clinton sent two aircraft carriers to the region in order to demonstrate our interest). China has since invested heavily in capabilities designed to prevent U.S. forces from “intervention” in the region. In fact, the PLA refers to what we call its A2AD capability as “anti-intervention” capability. Land power advocates fail to consider that without investment in ways to contest China’s A2AD capabilities, our land forces will not play a meaningful role in conflict in the Pacific. Period. The plain truth is that you’ve got to get there, you’ve got to assemble there, and you have to be resupplied there. All of this is contested by China’s rising capabilities. Now of course, the most often cited land power charge is that “we’re never going to fight China, so all of this is a waste of money.” I do not feel comfortable with this assumption.

Myth Number 2:

Pursuing Air-Sea Battle makes war with China more likely.​

The logic of this myth goes like this: “China is rising as a result of its economic might, and its military improvements are designed to increase its own security. Our investments in ASB provide a destabilizing influence, one that is more likely to bring on war with China. We should be finding ways to cooperate with China on regional security in a way that does not threaten it.”

There is an internal logic to this view, but it simply doesn’t account for one significant fact: China’s buildup began long before ASB was even a gleam in the Chief of Naval Operation’s eye, and one can only view that buildup as “increasing its (China’s) own security” if one concedes that reducing U.S. power and influence in the region is a worthy concession to Chinese security. China is not interested in sharing power in the Western Pacific; it is interested in asserting it.

The obvious implication of the view that ASB makes war more likely is that if we abandoned ASB, war with China would be less likely. This is contestable and quite possibly backwards. One of the reasons ASB was so important to pursue was the growing uneasiness of friends and allies in the region, uneasiness born of increasing Chinese capabilities and the aforementioned wobbliness coming out of the Pacific Command at the end of the last decade. Longtime allies began to seriously question our staying power in the face of the growing perception that the PLA could someday contest U.S. dominance in the region. Would not failure to pursue counter A2AD capabilities (and the concomitant erosion of allied confidence in our ability to provide security) embolden the PRC in its various regional aims? Would this not create a more unstable security situation by leaving the PRC more comfortable launching a war, confident that the U.S. would not be able to intervene? Or perhaps a “Findlandization” of the region is tolerable to the anti-ASB crowd, wherein nations pay fealty to a new hegemon and quietly bear what they must?

The danger of miscalculation is the bugbear of great power relations. A strategy of retreat or downsize only increases the odds of such miscalculation. A strategy that asserts our Pacific interests and provides the means to protect them is less likely to create miscalculation. Notice please, that I did not refer to ASB as a strategy.

Myth Number 3:

AirSea Battle is a strategy.​

No amount of table-pounding by anyone authoritatively connected with AirSea Battle seems to kill this myth, but I would be remiss if I were to pass on the opportunity to state it once again. I actually sat through a panel of academics last week in which one highly regarded fellow with nary a blink attempted to compare “AirSea Battle” and “Containment”. I nearly fell out of my chair.

AirSea Battle is a concept for how operating forces might contest the ability of an opponent to deny them freedom of the commons. It is a limited application of military power for defined, limited operational ends.​

It is nothing like containment, in scope, aim, resources or ends. That an educated man would make such a statement is in part due to the miasma of misinformation floating around, in part due to DoD’s inadvisable and uncoordinated release of ASB information.

Myth Number 4:

AirSea Battle is nonsensical without a larger strategic framework.​

This one continues to baffle me, both because of its own nonsensical nature, and the fact that a good friend of mine, and a man whose intellect I respect greatly, continues to make it his primary criticism of ASB. My fellow War on the Rocks contributor, Dr. T.X. Hammes, of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, believes that without a strategy into which it can be comfortably nested (vis-à-vis China), ASB is a waste of time, energy and money. He and I have debated this issue before (see this Center for National Policy video), and we recently re-opened the discussion after another forum. Hammes has gone as far as to create his own military strategy for the conduct of war with China, something he calls “Offshore Control”. The central idea of his strategy is to bring about war termination with China through effective economic blockade and escalation control. I regard this work highly and there are a lot of important ideas within it. Truth be told, if I were the Pacific Commander charged with the unfortunate task of conducting war against the PRC, large parts of T.X’s approach would be near the top of my list in how to do so. Where he goes off the rails is in his deprecation of ASB as being without merit, simply because no authoritative military strategy for war with China has embraced it. Then again, no authoritative military strategy for war with China has embraced refueling and rearming ships at sea either, not because it isn’t wise, but because there is not a publicly available authoritative military strategy for war with China….period. This is, of course, a good thing. The PRC’s propensity to read our mail leads me to believe that if such a strategy does exist, it ought to be highly protected.

Hammes hangs his intellectual six-shooter on the peg of a challenge that he issued some 18 months ago, and that is, for someone to create a coherent (ends, ways, means) strategy for the conduct of war with China that can comfortably embrace ASB. And since no one has, ASB be must therefore be strategically unsupportable…quod erat demonstrandum.

Hammes was able to write and release his strategy using time and resources provided by his employer (the U.S. government). As of yet, no one has offered to finance my participation in such an effort. Still, the suggestion that an operational concept is without merit unless there is an accompanying strategy into which it must fit neatly is vexing. The ability to contest an opponent’s capability to deny access to the commons seems axiomatic, easily fitting into any number of potential strategies. In fact, T.X.’s approach seems designed almost exclusively to create a strategy that minimizes counter-anti-access capability. In doing so, he makes assumptions about Chinese reactions that defy understanding.

His fear of nuclear retaliation on the part of the PRC is born from suspicions that a strategy embracing ASB would require conventional military strikes on the Chinese mainland—which it would. Hammes worries that this could lead to nuclear escalation. Putting aside for the moment the wisdom of taking conventional strikes on the Chinese mainland off the table from the get-go (as he does), why anyone would consider an American strangulation campaign less worthy of a nuclear response is beyond me. Additionally, he avers that the last thing we would want is for the Chinese Communist Party to fall, leaving a huge country to plummet into civil war. Presumably, he believes mainland strikes would or could cause this. Why he believes that destroying the Chinese economy wouldn’t hasten such a demise is again, confusing, particularly since the Chinese Community Party has based its legitimacy almost solely on reliable annual economic growth.

But what most concerns me most about T.X.’s approach is the as yet uncompensated suspicion I have that there is a military strategy for the defeat of the PRC (again, the devil is in the details about what “defeat” is) that would comfortably embrace both counter-A2AD effects (read: ASB) and a distant blockade. Again, were I to be in charge of waging such a war, I would want both tools. Yet were we to pursue T.X.’s proposed path, we would only have the blockade. Standing our ground at the first island chain means creating vast internal lines across the East China Sea and the South China Sea for the PRC to own and operate during peacetime and the prelude to war. Put another way, if we embrace the “ASB-less” approach, we cannot contest China’s A2AD capabilities. If we pursue a strategy which embraces “ASB”, it does not obviate the operational value and utility of blockade.

Putting a final set of words in my friend Hammes’ mouth, he would say (among other things) that we cannot afford ASB. Which brings me to Myth Number 5.

Myth Number Five:

We cannot afford ASB.​

This is patently false. Of course we can afford ASB. The question is not whether we can afford it, but whether we choose to afford it. Let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s assume that to fully implement a mythical ASB roadmap, an additional $25 billion a year would be needed. What does that $25 billion represent?

• 4.6% of the base DoD budget for 2014. Under five percent of $534 billion.
• 1.9% of the total Federal Budget for 2014 or $1.3 trillion.
• 0.16% of our projected 2014 GDP of $16 trillion.​

If we as a nation believe that building and sustaining a quantitative and qualitative military edge over the Chinese for the foreseeable future – one that provides an effective deterrent to Chinese mischief and positions the U.S. for combat should deterrence fail – is worth resourcing, then ASB is affordable and worthwhile.
 
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CB90

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Verified Defense Pro
Friedmans book on US destroyers deals with the size issue. Going off the top of my head (I'll double check later) but for the Spruance class the price difference between minimum size for the requirements and what was produced with lots of room for upgrades was less than 10-15%.
I met Friedman in OZ a few years back when he was a guest of the ADF.

He gave us a briefing on Joint capabilities (basically he believed that the USN was the only service that understood and delivered "joint" in its entirety) and a follow on discussion on sensible platform development

He was a glowing advocate of the sprucans and made it pretty clear that as a long term investment that hull shape and form was the embodiment of cost effective through life development

an interesting bloke, but he could be like a mad cats whiskers when he got animated
...if that's true, I'm terrified to see what everyone else is doing. :D

Out of curiosity, did he expound upon that position at all?
 
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gf0012-aust

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...if that's true, I'm terrified to see what everyone else is doing. :D

Out of curiosity, did he expound upon that position at all?
It was more along the lines that as navy had organic air and had the USMC for organic land then they'd been practicing for years

He also talked about the sheer volume of exercises that the USN as a service do with other countries compared to sister services. IIRC the stats were almost 2:1 against sister services

He was quite blunt about USN knowing how to play nicely with others :)
 

Raven22

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It was more along the lines that as navy had organic air and had the USMC for organic land then they'd been practicing for years

He also talked about the sheer volume of exercises that the USN as a service do with other countries compared to sister services. IIRC the stats were almost 2:1 against sister services

He was quite blunt about USN knowing how to play nicely with others :)
One could point out that having their own 'air force' and 'army' does not make the USN joint. In fact, that's exactly the opposite of joint.
 

swerve

Super Moderator
Absolutely. The USN is the epitome of anti-jointness in its thinking. Instead of co-operation with complementary services (army, air force), it prefers to do everything itself, having its own air force & army, under its own command.

The tendency for US services to resist complementing each other is extraordinary. The rivalries & competitiveness extends even to arms of the same service. Consider air-air refuelling, for example, where the USAF switched entirely to booms despite the tactical forces preferring to stay with hoses, because booms were better for SAC & the tanker fleet was under SAC control. Tactical air had to convert to receptacles to keep its AAR capability, & the navy & USMC fought a long battle to get hose add-ons on USAF tankers. Or the sorry saga of tactical air transport, where the US army has fought a long & mostly unsuccessful battle to get the capabilities it wants: the USAF doesn't want to provide it, so the army tried to get its own aircraft. The USAF forced it to become a joint programme, then successfully lobbied to take it over entirely, then cancelled it. Brilliant politics, but IMO close to treason. And the USMC is now so independent-minded that the USN has separate naval ground troops to do many of the jobs that the USMC was set up for. Jointness? Pull the other one!
 

Raven22

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Consider air-air refuelling, for example, where the USAF switched entirely to booms despite the tactical forces preferring to stay with hoses, because booms were better for SAC & the tanker fleet was under SAC control. Tactical air had to convert to receptacles to keep its AAR capability, & the navy & USMC fought a long battle to get hose add-ons on USAF tankers.
I think that's a bit unfair to SAC. It's not like the USAF switched to booms - SAC essentially developed air to air refuelling, and they used booms because that was by far the best method for the nuclear mission of SAC. All those many hundreds of refuellers were purchased for that express purpose - supporting the nuclear mission. Why would they use anything else? You could argue that in later years, when the tankers were used more to support the tactical mission than the strategic mission, they could have been converted, but that is hardly SAC's fault.
 

swerve

Super Moderator
I think that's a bit unfair to SAC. It's not like the USAF switched to booms - SAC essentially developed air to air refuelling, and they used booms because that was by far the best method for the nuclear mission of SAC. All those many hundreds of refuellers were purchased for that express purpose - supporting the nuclear mission. Why would they use anything else? You could argue that in later years, when the tankers were used more to support the tactical mission than the strategic mission, they could have been converted, but that is hardly SAC's fault.
The USAF did switch to booms. Before that, it had hose equipped tankers, with hose & drogue & an earlier hose system. They were used for refuelling tactical aircraft during the Korean war.

Nor did SAC develop air-air refuelling. It was well-developed in the UK before WW2, & hose & drogue soon after WW2. The first USAF air-air tankers used equipment bought from the UK. SAC developed (or had developed for it) the boom.
 

Raven22

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The USAF did switch to booms. Before that, it had hose equipped tankers, with hose & drogue & an earlier hose system. They were used for refuelling tactical aircraft during the Korean war.

Nor did SAC develop air-air refuelling. It was well-developed in the UK before WW2, & hose & drogue soon after WW2. The first USAF air-air tankers used equipment bought from the UK. SAC developed (or had developed for it) the boom.
It's hardly right to say that the USAF 'switched' to booms. Before the boom came along a whole bunch of inflight refuelling methods were used, with none of them being standard. It's not like there were fleets of hose equipped tankers that were converted to booms. Rather the boom simply became the standard as that was the most efficient.

And SAC may not have been the first to develop inflight refuelling, but they were the first to turn it from a nifty party trick into an actual capability. The first round the world flight was flown by SAC. The first combat refuellings, in Korea, were flown by SAC crews. Very quickly SAC's boom equipped tankers were supporting the war in Korea.

The fact remains that every single KB-29P, KC97 and KC-135 were built for the express purpose of supporting SAC in the nuclear mission, and were equipped with booms because that was the most efficient method. It was not some sort of intra-service bickering.
 

CB90

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Verified Defense Pro
Absolutely. The USN is the epitome of anti-jointness in its thinking. Instead of co-operation with complementary services (army, air force), it prefers to do everything itself, having its own air force & army, under its own command.
Err...not really. From a budgetary perspective, maybe. At least there is, among all services, an institutional resistance to giving up capability that requires you to depend on others. Because if there is something important to you which is not a priority for them, there's a natural tendency for them to give that up when times are tough.

But from an operational perspective, that's simply not true.

Or the sorry saga of tactical air transport, where the US army has fought a long & mostly unsuccessful battle to get the capabilities it wants: the USAF doesn't want to provide it, so the army tried to get its own aircraft. The USAF forced it to become a joint programme, then successfully lobbied to take it over entirely, then cancelled it. Brilliant politics, but IMO close to treason.
Do you have any specific recent examples? Because Army currently has plenty of "tactical air transport."

And the USMC is now so independent-minded that the USN has separate naval ground troops to do many of the jobs that the USMC was set up for.
Again...no, we don't. Navy expeditionary forces only fill a few select support functions.
 

swerve

Super Moderator
Err...not really. From a budgetary perspective, maybe. At least there is, among all services, an institutional resistance to giving up capability that requires you to depend on others. Because if there is something important to you which is not a priority for them, there's a natural tendency for them to give that up when times are tough.
...
Do you have any specific recent examples? Because Army currently has plenty of "tactical air transport."

Again...no, we don't. Navy expeditionary forces only fill a few select support functions.
1). Which should be what the DoD & the JCS stops. The services should have as their priority the defence of the nation. They shouldn't have their own priorities which override that. The whole point of having a separate army, navy & air force is that they're complementary. They have different capabilities. Overlaps are wasteful & should be avoided as much as possible.

Specific recent examples? The JCA! The C-27J! How did you miss that?

Missing the point. The original roles of the marines included shipboard & port security & a lot more which is now (& in some cases has been for a long time) done by separate naval units, formed because the USMC was no longer willing to do it. There's been gradual creep, & it's still going on.

BTW, why does the US navy's army have an air force? Why does the USA have three air forces? I can understand carrier-borne aircraft (air forces usually don't get the point of them), but why the rest? Don't you see how gigantic a failure of jointness this is?
 

swerve

Super Moderator
It's hardly right to say that the USAF 'switched' to booms. Before the boom came along a whole bunch of inflight refuelling methods were used, with none of them being standard. It's not like there were fleets of hose equipped tankers that were converted to booms. Rather the boom simply became the standard as that was the most efficient.

And SAC may not have been the first to develop inflight refuelling, but they were the first to turn it from a nifty party trick into an actual capability. The first round the world flight was flown by SAC. The first combat refuellings, in Korea, were flown by SAC crews. Very quickly SAC's boom equipped tankers were supporting the war in Korea.

The fact remains that every single KB-29P, KC97 and KC-135 were built for the express purpose of supporting SAC in the nuclear mission, and were equipped with booms because that was the most efficient method. It was not some sort of intra-service bickering.
The USAF didn't employ "a whole bunch of inflight refuelling methods", except in pre-WW2 experiments. It used two methods: the hose method developed in the UK before WW2, & the superior one (hose & drogue) developed in the UK in the late 1940s. Hose & drogue started replacing the earlier method, then the decision was made to switch to booms by SAC (but not by TAC), development having been successful. It had been developed specifically for the needs of SAC. And 92 KB-29Ms & 136 KB-50J/K (operated by TAC, not SAC) is quite a significant fleet of hose tankers.

If the war against Japan hadn't been brought to an end by the atom bomb, there'd have been RAF bomber units refuelling in the air on their bombing raids on Japan. - and the famous SAC first round the world flight used British AAR equipment - hoses.

BTW, the boom is only more efficient for larger aircraft. Perfect for SAC bombers, but TAC was happy with hoses because the fuel rate constraints were irrelevant (fighters couldn't accept fuel at the higher rates booms delivered it at) & up to three fighters at a time could be refuelled. It was rather unhappy at having to switch to single-point tankers, as they were less efficient from its point of view.
 

CB90

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Verified Defense Pro
1). Which should be what the DoD & the JCS stops. The services should have as their priority the defence of the nation. They shouldn't have their own priorities which override that. The whole point of having a separate army, navy & air force is that they're complementary. They have different capabilities. Overlaps are wasteful & should be avoided as much as possible.

Specific recent examples? The JCA! The C-27J! How did you miss that?
Yeah...that just proves my point. Army gets a budget. AF gets a budget. So what R&D or procurement would you say the AF should have dropped instead to fund C-27?
If it was that important to the Army, they should be fighting to take over the program and fund it themselves, or negotiated to bear a greater burden of the costs to make it work with the AF.
In a tightening budgetary environment and a changing strategic focus, that's a pretty straightforward prioritization problem, not a jointness problem.
If Army had cried hard enough to DOD about grunts dying because C-27 isn't happening, backed by data, it'd be a totally different story.

Missing the point. The original roles of the marines included shipboard & port security & a lot more which is now (& in some cases has been for a long time) done by separate naval units, formed because the USMC was no longer willing to do it. There's been gradual creep, & it's still going on.
Yeah, of all the things the Marines are tasked to do, naval ATFP is pretty far down the list of things that are...hard.
Really, why's it matter what uniform the guy doing a pier or ship watch wears?
And there's been very little additional "creep", even with increased requirements from 2 wars.
We can keep digging here if you want, but...really, this is probably the least significant argument you've made.

BTW, why does the US navy's army have an air force? Why does the USA have three air forces? I can understand carrier-borne aircraft (air forces usually don't get the point of them), but why the rest? Don't you see how gigantic a failure of jointness this is?
That assumes "jointness" is the goal. The goal is to win wars. Jointness is merely a desired means to an end, one intended to bring about efficiency.
So explain how replacing Marine pilots with AF/Navy pilots saves the DOD money. Or how replacing aircraft designed for Marine missions with Navy airframes makes sense. Or having to navalize AF/Army airframes. That's at the very least equally stupid as the Marines having an air component.

The only way you're going to see the "efficiencies" you think are right would be if we made a MASSIVE drop in global commitments and power projection requirements. You could cut the entire Marine Corps, most of the Navy and Air Force, and the Army to a token homeland defense/National Guard if we just decided to go fully isolationist. But, right or wrong, we haven't. That's why we have all this crap.
 

swerve

Super Moderator
Lots of straw men there. You're not being serious. "Navalising AF airframes", for example. Where did that ridiculous idea come from? Not from me. Weird notion. It's hard to discuss anything if you're going to throw that sort of rubbish into the debate. Ditto with this nonsense about replacing one services pilots with another. Think! It's not about who, it's about organisation! If the USMC was abolished tomorrow & its roles divided between other services, what do you imagine would happen to the people & physical assets? Scrapped? Of course not! Think! And again, where did the "massive drop" garbage come from?

None of that is implied by anything I've written. Completely irrelevant. I have no idea why you brought it up.

As for the JCA - have you not paid any attention at all? The army was willing to do it all, but the AF fought hard, & successfully, for it to be shared. Then the AF fought hard, & successfully, to take it over completely. Then to cut the numbers, then to cancel it.

There's been years of politicking, which the AF turned out to be better at. Result is that the army lost. What planet were you on while it was happening? I wasn't particularly interested, & live on a different continent, & I noticed.

Is US budgeting really that insane, BTW? I thought that the budgets for the services were set taking into account major programmes, i.e. if the army gets approval for project X, it gets money for it, & part of the motive for wanting to control projects is to get the money that goes with them in your budget rather than someone elses. If not, what the hell are all those arguments about funding for project X, Y or Z about?
 

CB90

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Verified Defense Pro
Lots of straw men there. You're not being serious. "Navalising AF airframes", for example. Where did that ridiculous idea come from? Not from me. Weird notion. It's hard to discuss anything if you're going to throw that sort of rubbish into the debate. Ditto with this nonsense about replacing one services pilots with another. Think! It's not about who, it's about organisation! If the USMC was abolished tomorrow & its roles divided between other services, what do you imagine would happen to the people & physical assets? Scrapped? Of course not! Think!
OK. So you seem to understand the tasking stays. So say we abolish the Marine air arm.
Marine pilots turn in USMC EGAs for another service's insignia. Marine aviation gear gets transferred to "some" other service. And this accomplishes...what? I am telling you this would not be saving money, and you would not be more operationally more effective. If you disagree, feel free to explain your position in the context of the law of the land (Goldwater Nichols) and operational chain of command from NCA, JCS, COCOM down. If you can't relate desired efficiency to either the existing command structures or, I'll even let you be king for a day, and decide how it "really" should be, you're just talking in meaningless generalities.

The following statement indicates you don't understand how the command structure works today, and are basing it off of WW2 and Vietnam era histories:
The USN is the epitome of anti-jointness in its thinking. Instead of co-operation with complementary services (army, air force), it prefers to do everything itself, having its own air force & army, under its own command.
Very much true in WW2 and Nam. Nowadays, not so much.

And again, where did the "massive drop" garbage come from?
None of that is implied by anything I've written. Completely irrelevant. I have no idea why you brought it up.
It's very relevant, if you want to believe your current perceived "overlaps" are actually overlaps...which again, reflects a lack of understanding of how the US creates the plans from which the budgets for manpower or materiel are derived.

Here's a real world specific example:
Let's take the USMC, which you, and many others before in history have pointed out as basically redundant. And you're of course all correct...to an extent. So let's abolish the USMC.

But you can't get any "real" fiscal savings of cutting the USMC (defined as a net effect of total US DOD budget going down-ie none of the badge shuffling discussed above) without actually letting people and material go home or to the scrapper, respectively (short term or long term, doesn't matter...it happens). That's a fact.

But if you do let that stuff go, massive drops in commitments either happen, or you just keep lying about being able to meet it all.

As for the JCA - have you not paid any attention at all? The army was willing to do it all, but the AF fought hard, & successfully, for it to be shared. Then the AF fought hard, & successfully, to take it over completely. Then to cut the numbers, then to cancel it.

There's been years of politicking, which the AF turned out to be better at. Result is that the army lost. What planet were you on while it was happening? I wasn't particularly interested, & live on a different continent, & I noticed.
1)No I really DONT care about JCA. It's up there in importance with the Navy's new RHIB modernization plan to an Army infantry officer.
I'm not in the Army or the AF, and I was training/deployed when all that was going on (2010-2012), so I had "real" problems to worry about.

2) After just a little research, I'm glad it was canceled. V-22's would do roughly the same thing and are actually in production. What a dumb idea to begin with.
It's also to replace the C-23. The C-23. Really? Who cares. That's less of a big deal than the Navy throwing a tantrum about replacing PC's. Seriously, we have way bigger issues guys.

3) Most importantly:
U.S. Army Won't Fight if C-27J Is Canceled | Defense News | defensenews.com
USAF: We Didn’t Inflate C-27J Costs | Defense News | defensenews.com
First one's the CSA of the Army saying, nope, not important enough for me to fight for this one. Big shocker.
Second one goes to the heart of what I suspect really drove the requirement...which is who tasks what aircraft in theater. See discussion of MOU as "closeout" of the C-27 program. That's jointness. Poorly executed maybe, but they got to jointness on a "high priority item" like intra theater airlift. <Golf clap> Hardly qualifies as news.

Is US budgeting really that insane, BTW? I thought that the budgets for the services were set taking into account major programmes, i.e. if the army gets approval for project X, it gets money for it, & part of the motive for wanting to control projects is to get the money that goes with them in your budget rather than someone elses. If not, what the hell are all those arguments about funding for project X, Y or Z about?
Yeah...I don't even get "what" specifically you're trying to address. You could start with the timing of FYDP cycles and PB inputs, JCIDS, JROC, and a whole slew of other acronyms that would take all night, but the program based understanding is overly simplistic.
 

webmaster

Troll Hunter
Staff member
Everyone, I'd appreciate it if we can keep the level of respect for each other to utmost high level as possible! There is no need to have hostile, demeaning attitude towards those who may differ or may not understand your point of view.

You have even greater level of responsibility if you are a senior member, etc. and have been here for a long time!

Thanks!
 

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
And the USMC is now so independent-minded that the USN has separate naval ground troops to do many of the jobs that the USMC was set up for. Jointness? Pull the other one!
Emphasis mine, could you possibly elaborate on this? It sounds interesting.
 

CB90

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
Emphasis mine, could you possibly elaborate on this? It sounds interesting.
I suspect he was referring to the relatively recent establishment of NECC (Navy Expeditionary Combat Command). Sometimes referred to in articles as naval ground troops, but saying they perform former USMC functions would be misleading.

In reality, they're just an amalgamation of long existing Navy commands under a single functional organization for funding and training. With the exception of the Riverine Force (which was USN in Vietnam, over to USMC, then back to USN) and the Civil Affairs teams (rather new to both services) all of its components have long histories as Navy commands.
 

OPSSG

Super Moderator
Staff member
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  • #20
Dave Majumdar and Sam LaGrone have written an interesting 23 January 2014 article on datalink technologies being developed: Inside the Navy’s Next Air War. This article is worth reading because there are two concepts that have not been discussed in this thread. These emerging concepts are important to understanding changes to datalink technology being made by the US Navy:-

(i) The Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT) waveform for multifunctional information distribution system joint tactical radio system radios: the TTNT waveform allows for very high data rates and has very low latency, making it ideal for sharing vast amounts of data over long distances — the big data pipes provided by TTNT will work with smaller bandwidth connections — like the standard Link 16 data-link. With the Rockwell Collins designed TTNT waveform, an individual platform does not necessarily need to generate its own tracks.

(ii) The Naval Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA): For the purposes of NIFC-CA, the TTNT would link together the carrier strike group’s E-2Ds, EA-18Gs, the carrier itself and eventually the UCLASS. The E-2Ds would share a specific part of their data with the EA-18G Growlers, which would be linked via a TTNT network or potentially a variant of the Link-16 data-link. If the Growlers do end up using the Link-16, the EA-18G would use an advanced variant called concurrent multi-netting-4 (CMN-4), which is basically multiple Link-16s “stacked up” on top of each other. The Growlers would coordinate with each other using their data-links to precisely locate threat radar emitters on land or on the ocean surface using a technique called time distance of arrival. Moreover, the data-link coordinated Growlers could also use the same technique to eliminate hostile electronic warfare assets that might attempt to attack the NIFC-CA battle network. To eliminate the target once it is located — in the air, on land, or floating on the ocean — the Growlers or the E-2D would relay via Link-16 a “weapons quality” track to one of the Super Hornets, which would actually destroy the threat. Moreover, the F/A-18E/F would not even necessary even control the weapon that it launches—other than pulling the trigger. The E-2D, the EA-18G or even another Hornet or F-35C could guide that weapon.
 
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