Future Maritime Operations Plans for the 21st-Century ...€¦ · states, using terrorism to achieve their aims. Joint Operating Environment 2010 describes militias, such as modern

www.mca-marines.org/gazette 77Marine Corps Gazette • May 2013

Picture Lagos, Nigeria, in 2035, a teeming metropolis that is home to more than 10 million people. Drawn by the promise

of jobs, income, and a better quality of life by the sea, millions of Nigerians migrated from Africa’s interior to its second-fastest growing city to escape a subsistence life. But when those people reached the Atlantic coast, instead of a brighter future, they stepped into a different sort of misery—a vast concrete jungle with seemingly endless slums and few opportunities for unskilled labor, with overwhelmed local authori-ties struggling to provide basic services and enforce the rule of law. In this place, criminals and extremists thrived, fnanc-ing themselves through the drug trade and kidnappings, training and recruiting members from the disaffected populace. LtCol Redd looked out the window of a Chinook helicopter as it swept over the megacity toward the U.S. Consulate. As far as the eye could see was a hazy gray-brown expanse that reminded him of the old classic movie Blade Runner. As a U.S. country team military liaison offcer for the past 2 years, his primary job was to serve as a conduit between the Ambassador and U.S. military personnel in the country. At times it could be hard to keep track of them all—squad-sized teams of special operations forces have been

embedded with Nigerian security forces for the past 3 years in order to advise local authorities on how to battle local thugs. Just a few days ago, a frigate-sized ship carrying a reinforced Marine infantry company arrived to conduct bilateral ex-ercises—the frigate with the Coast Guard, the Marines doing live-fre ranges ashore with the indigenous army. More than 200 miles away, “Matt,” the team leader of Operational Detachment A 3XX (ODA 3XX), winced at the rising sun as he and his Nigerian Army counter-part, Col Alabi, reviewed the operations matrix for the day: A couple of his dudes would accompany a Nigerian counterter-

rorism unit as it patrolled a swath of the Niger Delta, his medics would embed with an indigenous platoon to do a medical civil affairs program and gather atmos- pherics in a nearby village, his weapons guys would conduct crew-served weapons training, and the rest of the team would stay at the frebase to rest, reft, and syn-thesize intelligence gathered from his own patrols and from information provided by the country team in the capital. He knew what they knew, and soon practi-cally everyone else—the Ambassador, the theater special operations command, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Station Chief, the Drug Enforcement Administra-

Future Maritime Operations Plans for

the 21st-Century Operating

EnvironmentReturn to our roots—a crisis response force of choice

by Col Thomas Connally & Maj Jeff Wong, USMCR

>Col Connally is the Deputy Director, Wargaming Division, MCWL. An artillery offcer, he commanded 3d Battalion, 11th Marines, during Operation IRAQI FREE-

DOM 2.1; commanded Headquarters Battalion, 3d MarDiv; served as Director of the Strategic Vision Group; and was an analyst at the Strategic Initiatives Group. His work as a Fellow for the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group XXV (2005–06) was responsible for the foundation of FMO.

>>Maj Wong is a planner for the title 10 EXPEDITIONARY WARRIOR wargame at Wargaming Division, MCWL. A Reserve infantry offcer, he also serves as Com-pany Commander, Weapons Company, 3d Battalion, 25th Marines. He was a Pla-toon Commander, Company F, 2d Battalion, 8th Marines, in Iraq and Afghanistan (2003–04), and Executive Offcer, Company F, 2d Battalion, 24th Marines, in Iraq (2008). He worked as a prepositioning planner at HQMC, Plans, Policies, and Operations Department.

http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette

78 www.mca-marines.org/gazette Marine Corps Gazette • May 2013

Ideas & Issues (amphIbIous operatIons)

tion (DEA) guy, the Marines bobbing up and down on a ship off the coast—would get a data dump from him. He squatted down on a chair too narrow for his body and began typing on a laptop too small for his fat fngers. Aboard the USS Opicka, 12 nautical miles off the coast of Nigeria, the Marines and sailors of Special Purpose MAGTF 35 (SPMAGTF 35) readied themselves for tomorrow’s movement ashore. In his closet-sized room, Maj White read a dis-patch posted by ODA 3XX on the Nige-ria country team’s collaborative online portal: occasional violence in the slums of Lagos, criminal elements operating in the outskirts of the Delta—no surprise there. Bad guys massing up to company size to conduct raids and kidnappings on lightly defended clusters of refneries with help from across the border. Gangs? The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND)? Someone else? Training and recruiting new members further inland, not too far from where his SPMAGTF was scheduled to do a live fre with the Nigerians. White considered this for a moment and then picked up the phone to speak with the ship’s command-ing offcer. Maybe this wasn’t going to be just an exercise. At the Embassy, LtCol Redd tore off the report from ODA 3XX and briefed his cubicle neighbors, the CIA Station Chief and the DEA agent-in-residence, who in turn texted their snitches. Col Greene, Commanding Offcer of the 26th MEU, printed off hard copies of the ODA report and the dispatch from SPMAGTF 35 and gave both to CAPT Blue, his old Naval Academy classmate. Inside the darkened combat information center of the USS Nelson, fagship of the regional global feet station, they consid-ered their options to develop the situa-tion: they could launch an aerial drone to provide some real-time video footage of these villages; they could launch a section of fxed-wing to provide persistent close air support (CAS); they could put in a call to the maritime operations center for some reachback solutions for spacebased intel-ligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); and of course they could always le-verage the regional “hammer”—the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) Carrier Strike Group was not very far away. Col

Greene and CAPT Blue, children of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the long war against terror, chuckled at how far their collaboration had come since they were butter-barred lieutenant and ensign; just a couple of decades ago, this information would be stuck in some stove-pipe, waiting to be read by some parochial bureaucrat who wouldn’t share the info anyway.

Suspend your skepticism, look be-yond the future years defense program, and open your mind for a moment as we introduce a concept for future mari-time operations (FMO) that can provide the joint force with naval capabilities to responsively address a multitude of threats spanning the range of military operations (ROMO), including major combat. This article, a proposal for FMO, is comprised of three sections: first, we’ll outline our assumptions about the future operating environ-ment; second, we’ll introduce FMO’s central idea and defning characteris-tics; and fnally we’ll discuss capabilities that FMO may require, and chart a way ahead.

Future Operating Environment Current trends suggest a future operating environment of increasing complexity, especially in the littorals. Population growth in the developing

world, migration to megacities, compe-tition for natural resources, and threats from unconventional power combine to create an uncertain landscape that will stress the operating limits of the joint force. The world’s population is expected to reach 8 billion by the 2030s, and 95 percent of that increase will occur in developing countries.1 Much of this migration is driven by people escaping for better lives in megacities (those con-sisting of populations greater than 10 million), which may offer greater oppor-tunities for jobs, healthcare, and quali-ty-of-life services than rural areas, but may also overwhelm weak local govern-ments and create undergoverned regions ruled by criminals, terrorists, pirates, and shadow governments. The number of megacities is projected to increase from 26 today to 39 by 2030, including 28 located within 100 nautical miles of the sea.2 These factors, coupled with the developing world’s youth bulge, may create a future operating environment in which former Commandant Charles C. Krulak’s “three-block war”—where combat, peacekeeping, and humanitar-ian assistance happen simultaneously on three adjoining city blocks—would occur in the same urban slum by the sea.3

Competition among nation-states for fnite natural resources will also increase

The future operating environment will be more complex. (Photo by Cpl Bobby J. Gonzalez.)



as consumption outstrips production. By the 2030s, demand is estimated to be nearly 50 percent greater than to-day. Outside of a major increase in the relative reliance on alternative energy sources, oil and coal will continue to form the backbone of consumption. Fossil fuels will make up 80 percent of the energy capabilities in the 2030s, with oil and gas comprising upward of 60 percent.4

Events of the past decade also refect an increasing diffusion of power from conventional nation-states to uncon-ventional, nonstate, or trans-state ac-tors. These organizations seek to oper-ate beyond societal norms and acquire the capabilities and means to challenge states, using terrorism to achieve their aims. Joint Operating Environment 2010 describes militias, such as modern day Hezbollah, that combine state-like tech-nological and warfghting capabilities with political and social structures established within the formal state of Lebanon. Other hybrid threats cover a wide range of capabilities including Los Zetas (the Mexican drug ring), Al Shabab in Somalia, and MEND in Nigeria. Pervasive information, made possible by the Internet, social media, and other evolving technological in-novations, has also allowed individuals and small groups to plan, coordinate, and execute attacks disproportionate to their size and resources.5

For both the hybrid and conven-tional threats, the Nation needs mari-time forces with an expeditionary ethos that makes them responsive, adaptive, and effective. These forces will oper-ate seamlessly from a variety of U.S. military shipping and will possess core competencies that ensure enduring rel-evance and utility to the Nation. With more than 20 percent of the Nation’s ground combat power and a standing mission to conduct forcible entry, the Marine Corps must be ready. As noted in Joint Operating Environment 2010 :

The future cannot be predicated upon a single or preclusive vision of confict at one extreme or the other. We face an era of failed states, destabilized elements and high end asymmetric threats. We must be prepared to adapt rapidly to each specifc threat, and

not narrowly focus only on preferred modes of warfare.6

Currently, maritime forces are con-strained by limits to scale in organi-zation of forces and platforms. These constraints could preclude fexible re-sponse to address diverse yet capable threats. In order to address diverse and multiple threats, the maritime force will require greater awareness that can only be gained by dispersed forces. The na-ture of hybrid warfare will require naval forces often augmented by stakeholders in the U.S. interagency community to match the presence of local forces in order to build host-nation capacity. This is the essence of FMO.

The Central Idea

FMO is a warfghting concept that utilizes engagement to build awareness, emphasizes early action to preempt or prevent crises, and maintains agility through scale to address myriad threats of all sizes across the ROMO, to include major combat. During the steady state, small, dispersed units can engage a host-nation and set the conditions for aware-ness, capacity, and infuence. As the se-curity situation begins to deteriorate, a maritime task force can be formed to quickly change crisis response capabili-ties by aggregating in theater other for-ward deployed forces, many of which are already conducting operations elsewhere. A judicious use of force is derived from awareness and the speed with which the crisis response can be provided. If the cri-sis erupts into a full-blown confict, the maritime task force can readily leverage additional capabilities and capacity from both forward-deployed and continental United States-based (CONUS-based) forces. To address high-end ROMO threats, all U.S. national assets would be leveraged to offset persistent forward engagement—supplementing enduring presence forces with elements of cruising forces and the total global and CONUS-based feet. FMO employs maritime task forces and provides more scalable options in dealing with low- to mid-ROMO chal-lenges such as piracy, humanitarian as-sistance/disaster relief, and counterdrug and counterterrorism operations. It also identifes a requirement for greater fex-

ibility among naval ships with the ca-pacity to facilitate enhanced operational capability, information sharing, and interoperability with potential partners. The concept also calls for the “re-gionalization” of the Marine Corps Operating Forces, with each of the three MEFs focusing their planning efforts on potentially unstable regions of the world. Within the MEFs, major subordinate commands down to the regimental level focus their attention on specifc subregions where forces would be deployed on a rotational basis to support engagements ranging in scale from small-unit training of host-nation security forces to large-scale exercises. Additionally, regionalization and op-erationalizing the majority of Marine forces for forward presence will enhance coordination with regional special oper-ations forces (SOF) commands already operating in theater, supporting unity of effort and coherence of action.

SPMAGTF 35 consisted of elements drawn from units based at Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. This was Maj White’s third deploy-ment to Africa. Among his staff, most from 8th Marines, there was just one Africa rookie: the staff judge advocate. The core of the SPMAGTF was a rife company from 2d Battalion, 8th Marines; the company commander and SNCOs were all old Africa hands who had conducted exercises with Nigerian security forces during their previous deployment. The human terrain, geography, and poten-tial adversaries would not be new to the Marines. At the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, the CIA Station Chief briefed the Ambassador about the burgeoning threat. Sponsored by a powerful regional benefactor, the dis-parate groups of bandits that made up MEND were planning a large offensive into the oil-rich delta. The tactics were familiar: oil worker kidnappings, pipeline sabotage, and targeted killings of private security guards. However, the greater level of sophistication was not familiar: large-scale coordinated swarm boat tactics augmented by old antiship cruise mis-siles and global positioning system-jam-ming capabilities. In the cities, so-called confraternities, cult-like gangs that evolved




from student fraternities in the country’s neglected universities, would foment in-stability with targeted killings of police and government offcials.7 The conspiring parties were bound by only one thing—the promise of Niger Delta oil money. Aboard the USS Nelson, CAPT Blue and Col Greene listened to the brief via secure video teleconference in silence. Aboard the USS Opicka, Maj White and Matt did the same. Finally, the Ambas-sador spoke, saying, “We might need some more help on this one.”

Forces available for potential mis-sions will include embedded forces that live, train, and operate with the host-nation (in concert with the U.S. country team and SOF), enduring pres-ence forces that conduct theater security cooperation from regional global feet stations, cruising forces that are strategi-cally positioned around the world for maritime security operations or deter-rence, and the total feet, which can surge capabilities from CONUS into theater for a major combat operation or humanitarian assistance/disaster relief, if necessary.8

FMO also posits a different planning construct. Traditionally, U.S. campaign planning features sequential phases, rec-ognizing that, in practice, some portions of these phases may overlap.9 In FMO, however, maritime task forces operate across multiple lines of operation in or-der to achieve several possible “states,”

which are analogous to phases, but more fuid. The four states are steady state, aggregation, focused action, and disag-gregation.10

Steady state. Steady-state operations are largely centered on awareness and in-fuence. Awareness is an understanding of the situation and the factors contrib-uting to the evolution of that situation, providing the foundation for decisions. This understanding goes beyond infor-mation gathering. Awareness used in the FMO context includes knowledge of the physical and human terrain gained

through interacting with local cultures, understanding the population’s ideals and ambitions, and the needs of both the populace and regional leadership. Access to “word on the street” is critical. Co-ordinated information sharing between forward forces and the country team will facilitate awareness and help identify the point at which the security situation has escalated beyond local capacity, requir-ing the formation of a maritime task force. An Ambassador would initiate this request with the appropriate geographic combatant commander. Aggregation. When the decision is made to form a maritime task force for a given mission, the process of aggre-gation begins with forces integrating with the on-scene embedded forces in stride. Joint and interagency mission analysis led by the U.S. Ambassador is conducted, forces at all levels work from the same pool of information us-ing virtual collaborative tools, and the task is transitioned to the maritime task force commander. Focused action. In this state, the mari-time task force takes focused action to obtain the end state of the commander’s intent, or adapts it to respond to chang-ing conditions with the enemy or the environment. Focused action will over-lap signifcantly with aggregation, since some assets will be capable of effective

Capabilities can be deployed from CONUS into theater for major combat operations. (Photo by

Sgt Jonathan G. Wright.)

Figure 1. (Figure provided by authors.)



employment and will even be precon-ditional to maneuver or other action. Focused action is the commander’s bid to bring the situation under control in order to reduce violence, create order, or defeat the enemy. Typically the action will take place across several lines of operation, including information op-erations; support to local governance, civil authorities, and health services; security; and combat operations. Disaggregation. Under FMO, disag-gregation does not imply a complete removal of capabilities or an abandon-ment of an operating area. Instead, the maritime task force will conduct a deliberate transfer of capacity out of an area as the situation transitions to a new steady state that aligns with U.S. interests. As elements disaggregate from the maritime task force, they will ag-gregate with other task forces, redeploy to enduring presence or cruising force status, or withdraw from forward de-ployment as necessary for longer-term maintenance.

Within 24 hours, Maj White and 120 of his grunts were aboard a riverine as-sault craft in the Niger Delta, fanning out along MEND’s most likely avenues of approach to a large pipeline junction.

The area had been identifed by a local Shell Oil offcial as a critical vulnerabil-ity and was logged into the coordination and collaborative template by ODA 3XX as critical infrastructure for a rainy day. A Mormon missionary told a Nigerian patrol that newcomers were in the area. Communications were a bit iffy to anyone except the USS Opicka, but Maj

White knew his small force would soon be joined by the Nelson Global Fleet Sta-tion—its amphibs and maritime prepo-sitioning ships would provide ISR, CAS, and sustainment. Meanwhile, the tactical air control party kept several unmanned aircraft systems on-station for ISR and CAS, if needed. In a few more days, the Bush Carrier Strike Group would fol-low—a not-so-subtle signal to MEND’s powerful benefactor about potential con-sequences of crossing the border.

Inside the Nelson combat information center, CAPT Blue and Col Greene used a touch-screen tablet computer to outline the battlespace geometry, which was observed in real-time by RDML (rapid deploy-ment and maintenance language) Purple at the maritime operations center in Rota, Spain. All the pieces of the maritime task force were moving into place, so Purple didn’t say a word. He would not give in to the impulse of micromanagement—a fag-level habit on the contemporary battlefeld.

Required Capabilities and the Way Ahead A number of capabilities need to ma-ture or be developed in order to support FMO across the warfghting functions. Communications and network enablers, including tactical radios and small lap-tops, must be smaller, lightweight, and have the ability to harness persistent satellite relays to enable a real-time col-laborative information environment. Among required naval capabilities, FMO is also optimized for platforms the size of an LPD 17 or littoral combat ship that allows Marines and SOF to be embarked, provides direct-support fres, husbands helicopters for vertical envel-opment, embarks/disembarks surface connectors for amphibious operations, and can be fully networked. Nascent strategic lift platforms—including heavy-lift, long-range aircraft that can land at sea, and high-speed surface con-nectors such as the joint high-speed vessel—must be further developed for intertheater and intratheater transporta-tion and logistics. FMO is a work-in-progress at the Marine Corps Warfghting Laboratory (MCWL), where the Commanding General has acted to synchronize fu-ture wargames, exercises, experiments, modeling and simulation, and studies and analyses in order to create unity of effort for the concept’s development. Signifcantly for MCWL’s Wargam-ing Division, the Service’s annual title 10 wargame, EXPEDITIONARY WAR-

RIOR (EW), will play a central role in FMO’s maturation. The purpose of EW 2013 (EW13) will be to establish the concept’s basic principles (set in a 2035 timeframe), while EW14 will develop

Figure 2. (Figure provided by authors.)

TSC: Theater security cooperation HNSF: Host-nation security forceOPCON: Operational control GFS: Global fleet station

A number of capabili-ties need to mature or be developed in order to support FMO . . .




the force structure that would support FMO, and EW15 will operationalize the concept. Other wargames will ad-dress other potential focus areas relating to FMO; for instance, the Naval Ser-vices Game, cohosted by MCWL and the Naval War College in September 2012, explored force aggregation, while the Center for Naval Analyses hosted a wargame in August 2012 that explored the Single Naval Battle Concept.

Summary FMO’s precepts of awareness, early action, and agility through scale estab-lish the conditions to either preempt or prevent crises, or aggregate warfghting capabilities in stride to win the battle and restore stability. Years of internal assessments about the future of the Ma-rine Corps—including the Amphibi-ous Capabilities Working Group and Force Structure Review Group—have concluded that we must return to our roots at sea, remain the Nation’s crisis

response force of choice, and maintain our expeditionary ethos. FMO may be the frst step in that direction.

Notes

1. United Nations, The State of World Popula-tion 2011: People and Possibilities in a World of 7 Billion, United Nations Population Fund Agency, accessed at www.unfpa.org.

2. Ibid.

3. Krulak, Gen Charles C., “The Three-Block War: Fighting in Urban Areas,” speech to the National Press Club, Vital Speeches of the Day, 15 December 1997, pp. 139–41.

4. U.S. Joint Forces Command, Joint Operating Environment 2010, Suffolk, VA, 18 February 2010, p. 24.

5. Ibid., p. 52.

6. Ibid., p. 66.

7. Staff, “Cults of Violence: How Student Fra-ternities Turned into Powerful and Well-Armed Gangs,” Economist, London, 31 July 2008, ac-cessed at www.economist.com.

8. Organization of forces available for the mari-time task force originated from CAPT Gor-don E. Van Hook, USN, as part of SSG XXV’s Free Form Operations: Operational Agility for an Uncertain Future, Chief of Naval Operations, Washington, DC, December 2006.

9. Phases 0–V are shape, deter, seize the initia-tive, dominate, stabilize, and enable civil author-ity, per Joint Publication 5–0, Joint Operation Planning, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, DC, 11 August 2011.

10. FMO’s states originated from Martin J. Guy-otte as part of Strategic Study Group XXV’s Free Form Operations: Operational Agility for an Uncertain Future.

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Future Maritime Operations Plans for the 21st-Century ...€¦ · states, using terrorism to achieve their aims. Joint Operating Environment 2010 describes militias, such as modern