USAF, U.S. Navy To Expand Cooperation
Air-Sea Battle Will Close Gaps, Boost Strengths
A small group of officers at the Pentagon is in the early stages of work on a new concept to combine the capabilities of the U.S. Air Force and Navy, offset their vulnerabilities and better use their assets to deter or defeat future enemies.
The idea has the potential, some observers think, to revolutionize the way the U.S. Air Force and Navy work with each other.
"This is the next big thing," one veteran analyst said.
"It's about putting missions on the table and cutting the pie a different way," an industry analyst added.
Called the Air-Sea Battle Concept, the work is being done at the behest of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, based on ideas espoused by Pentagon strategist Andrew Marshall.
With the blessing of Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations (CNO), and Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff (CSAF) - who signed a classified memorandum of agreement (MoA) in late September to kick off the effort - the work is in its earliest stages, but is seeking to gain a global perspective.
"We're trying to present forces that are forces for stability and deterrence in the face of rapid militarization and advancing threats to U.S. power projection that could be destabilizing for everybody," said Tom Ehrhard, a strategist who is a special assistant to Schwartz. "This is really more of an issue of trying to maintain global and regional crisis stability and deterrence."
The effort will be driven by a group of officers ranking no higher than an Air Force colonel or Navy captain, four from each service.
"We're keeping it to a relatively small group right now to make it manageable," said Rear Adm. Robert Thomas, director of the Navy's Strategy and Policy Division (N51). The group is embarking on a worldwide "listening tour" of theater commanders, asking them to look out "at threats over the next 10, 20 years, and see what's developing, especially in the high-end of warfare."
Their core question, Thomas said, will be "how do we integrate Air Force and Navy capabilities to meet your needs?"
Ultimately, the work will go after "not only those capabilities able to be integrated to give us better fighting power, better endurance, better mobility, [but] we're also trying to identify gaps in capabilities, see where the Air Force or Navy capabilities can fill those gaps such that we are optimized as a joint force.
"There will be, I suspect, some gaps where the Navy and Air Force may not have an optimal capability right now and it needs to be developed over time in an integrated fashion."
The joint agreement did not set a specific number of objectives.
"The MoA was very broad-brush," Thomas explained. "It basically set out the timelines and level of effort we want to put to this and what our overall objective is. We didn't set out 12 or 31 or 15 initiatives."
Although some observers are looking to the Pacific to see first fruit from the effort, Thomas noted "we are not taking a geographic bent on this.
"In fact I am going out of my way to make sure the listening tour goes to all the different combatant commanders," Thomas said. "I think it is myopic to talk about potential high-end threats and not project out to potential situations where the joint force may have to be in a sea control or air control environment that's geographically constrained."
The idea for the effort derives to the Cold War Air-Land Battle concept of the early 1980s, Thomas noted. That work strove to identify how the Army and Air Force handled overlapping missions such as air-ground support and worked to integrate supporting capabilities, such as Air Force ground-attack aircraft and Army attack helicopters and artillery.
"We see that Air-Land Battle synergy still working with the Air Force and Army," Ehrhard said. "We need that emphasis on cooperation between the Air Force and Navy."
Each service chief mentioned items that concerned him.
"This is a win-win," Schwartz said. "It's a recognition that we as the Air Force and the Navy have far more in common than what separates us given the nature of the threats, challenges and the budget pressures we both face."
Among the issues that have to be resolved, Schwartz added, is how the two services will better integrate their operations centers. The Air Force's Air Operations Centers are critical to how the service functions. But the Navy's new Maritime Operations Centers use different information-sharing protocols, and those will likely need to be resolved.
"It's a great start, but we've got some work to do," Roughead said. "Clearly there's room for cooperation. The Air Force operates Global Hawks, and we're going to operate them as well. We're both interested in [unmanned combat aircraft], and there are other areas where we can work together. The challenge is working out the details."
Ehrhard noted the initiatives range from information sharing about future programs to operational exercises done in conjunction with the combatant commander staffs.
"The Air Force and the Navy are already cooperating on a broad number of issues," he said. "This is a catalyst for even greater cooperation, to drive out the seams between us."
One veteran analyst applauded the move.
"In an environment where the administration and the Pentagon are looking at ways of using what we have and not buying new stuff, this is very attractive. It's about ways you can get new efficiencies out of things we already have in the Air Force and Navy."
"We have to get command and control of our command and control," the veteran analyst said.
Another possibility for Air Force-Navy cooperation, the veteran analyst said, might be in maritime surveillance. Navy P-3 Orion anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and reconnaissance aircraft are used over Afghanistan to pinpoint enemy activities, but their traditional over-water mission is unfulfilled.
Perhaps, he noted, an ASW or maritime surveillance package could be developed for Air Force B-52 bombers, which have extremely long range but are underemployed in dropping ordnance.
A capability gap might exist in the Western Pacific, the veteran analyst noted.
"The Air Force bases in the Western Pacific are in the crosshairs of gobs and gobs of Chinese missiles. The Air Force sees they can't just flush air power forward and achieve air superiority - they can't do that if their bases are getting zapped every five minutes. "
Ehrhard, however, said the Air-Sea effort isn't directed at any single entity, but at a variety of adversaries. One aviation analyst was skeptical of the effort.
"What I can't figure out is whether it's a drill to develop briefing charts, or a drill to bring together overlapping technologies or money," he said. "The only way it matters is if you promote the programs to bring this stuff together. "
"Whichever path they choose," the veteran analyst added, "will be revolutionary, not evolutionary, and change the way U.S. forces work in the future." ■
Vago Muradian contributed to this report.
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