And logistics support should be abundant. Additional guided-missile cruisers and destroyers should join the group, thickening its layered defenses against air, surface and subsurface assault. Carrier air wings should be fully stocked with aircraft, equipping the battle group to win the sea and air battle as well as pummel shore targets. Reconverting strike groups to battle groups would demand simple measures-albeit measures that are hard to implement amid stringent budgets. When shaping the fleet, a battle-minded navy would prize sensors, armaments and tactics for surface and antisubmarine warfare. This is a banner under which a cultural counterrevolution can march. Strike warfare is something they do after prevailing in combat. Simply changing the name from strike group to battle group-and setting forth a convincing rationale for the change-would notify mariners that combat constitutes their immediate purpose. It takes time and leadership to undo a cultural revolution like the one instituted by.
First, there’s the audience internal to the U.S. Properly conceived, naval diplomacy addresses multiple audiences. The carrier battle group, though, acts as a messaging and branding device as much as an organizational construct.
In a contested setting, there is no strike warfare without victorious battle at sea. Only after the battle group emerges from combat the victor do commanders redirect their attention to strike missions ashore. Gimlet-eyed battle-group commanders concern themselves with events at sea, and in particular on readying their forces to vanquish prospective foes. Hence the imperative to revert to battle groups. Navy now faces serious challenges, manifest in resurgent Chinese and Russian navies. The world has changed around the American sea services since 2003. Navy surface forces for an epoch when the sea was a sanctuary-not an expanse that had to be conquered before it could be used.įormulated for tranquil times, the carrier strike group has outlived its usefulness. (Sea Battle is conspicuous in its absence.) Admiral Clark’s guidance ushered in the carrier strike group, directing the navy to transform its battle groups in keeping with the new construct.
#Navy battle group trial
Everything bears the prefix “Sea”-Sea Shield, Sea Basing, Sea Trial and, yes, Sea Strike. Why invest finite budgets, time and effort girding for contingencies your superiors proclaim will never transpire?Ĭhief of Naval Operations Vern Clark hastened and consolidated this reconfiguration in 2003, when he issued his annual CNO Guidance to the fleet. That’s when the fleet started letting hardware, weaponry and combat skills for surface warfare and antisubmarine warfare decay. There was no one to fight for control of it.
Navy and Marine Corps to reinvent themselves as a “fundamentally different naval force.” With no Soviet Navy left to fight, declared the document’s framers, the services could downplay preparations for high-end warfighting. From the Sea, their first effort at strategy making for the post–Cold War era. Sea-service chieftains set the navy on this pathway in 1992 when they issued. According to Pentagon joint doctrine, strike warfare is mainly about employing “ballistic or cruise missiles, aircraft, naval surface fires, Marines and special operations forces to attack targets ashore.” This is a land-centric vision for seagoing folk. Thus commanders fix their gaze on hostile shores, devoting effort and resources to projecting power inland from the offshore haven that is the sea. There’s no one to defeat before moving in close. A strike group’s commanders can afford to soft-pedal battle readiness because they assume the chance of battle is farfetched.
#Navy battle group free
A navy sheltered by a “ long calm lee”-an interlude free of combat against peer navies-might get away with such an austere arrangement.
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