Naval Overseas Presence in the New U.S. Defense Strategy

Richard L. Kugler

The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report (QDR Report) announced a new U.S. defense strategy that will bring important changes to the U.S. overseas presence in all key

theaters.¹ In addition to waging the war against terrorism, this new strategy shifts away from the previous preoccupation with preparing for two major theater wars (MTWs) in Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf.² Instead, it calls upon the armed services to provide flexible capabilities for a wide spectrum of purposes and contingencies, especially along the unstable southern strategic arc that stretches from the Middle East to the Asian littoral.³ In addition, it calls for U.S. forces not only to be modernized, but also to pursue transformation in order to adopt new technologies, structures, and doctrines for the long haul.

What implications does this important development pose for the future of naval overseas presence, including the structure of both naval services—the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps? This important question is the focus of this chapter. The aim is not to advocate any single response as a fixed blueprint but instead to illuminate the key issues, analyze them systematically, and suggest a strategic framework for thinking about the options ahead.

This chapter’s main thesis is that the Navy faces not only challenges in this arena, but also opportunities. The most difficult challenge lies in coping with a fluid global situation—characterized by the effects of globalization detailed throughout this volume—that promises to uproot old ways of thinking and alter the traditional rationale for stationing naval forces abroad in peacetime. But at the same time, there is an opportunity to use emerging, innovative thinking to craft a newly energetic, effective role for naval forces—one that is affordable and feasible, yet contributing uniquely and importantly to future U.S. defense strategy in peace, crisis, and war. To some, the challenges loom large (see, in particular, chapters 25 and 27), but when emerging strategic dynamics are considered, the opportunities are substantial if the Pentagon and the Navy can take advantage of them. If future naval overseas presence is well designed, it may come to play an equal or even greater role in U.S. defense strategy than is the case today.⁴

Analyzing the Shift from Europe to Asia

The QDR Report suggests that naval forces will participate in a shift of some overseas presence forces from Europe to Asia. Obviously, the shifting of highly maneuverable, self-contained naval units such as warships is different than the shifting of land-based forces. The details of the shift are to be determined, but regardless of how they unfold, an underlying point is quite important. The key to crafting a successful response to the task is not to think in terms of such traditional metrics as numbers of carriers, combatants, and marines stationed abroad, apportioned among theaters according to some fixed mathematical formula. Such metrics and formulas are merely surface manifestations of the Navy’s role in overseas presence; they can change, and should change, when new trends are encountered. Rather, the future overseas presence should first be analyzed in terms of the new strategic missions that naval forces will be called upon to perform and the fresh requirements that will flow from these missions. Only then will it be possible to decide upon force levels and apportionments abroad.

As described in chapter 2, today’s global climate of accelerating globalization and chaotic security affairs seems destined to create a future of fast-paced changes and surprising developments rather than static, predictable continuity. Overseas deployed naval forces—more commonly known in naval parlance as forward presence forces—will be called upon to contribute to the new U.S. defense strategy in political and military ways that will be different from today and will change contours as the future unfolds. Most likely, no single model of overseas naval/forward presence will endure throughout the coming decade or two. Indeed, one model may give way to another with unaccustomed frequency. What can be definitely said, however, is that the new U.S. defense strategy will need strong naval forces abroad for as far into the future as the eye can see, and it will need to employ these forces flexibly and assertively on behalf of multiple strategic purposes. This enduring strategic reality provides a starting point for considering how a future of considerable dynamism should be charted.

Legacy of the Past

The practice of stationing large naval forces abroad in peacetime has been a hardy perennial of U.S. defense strategy since World War II. For varying reasons, all U.S. presidential administrations have valued a sizable overseas/forward naval presence and have resisted arguments in favor of reducing it in big ways. Indeed, U.S. defense strategy has changed often during the past five decades, but the overseas/forward naval presence—in its core assets and main missions—has been marked by considerable continuity, not regular change, even though the Navy as a whole has mutated a great deal.⁵

At the end of World War II, the Navy presided over a huge force of 40 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, several hundred smaller surface combatants and submarines, 24,000 aircraft, and 3 million sailors supported by an additional 480,000 marines. Because defeat of Germany and Japan had eliminated these two threats to U.S. control of the seas, a smaller Navy was seen as appropriate in the postwar world. However, mounting tensions with the Soviet Union dictated that the United States could not withdraw into its old pattern of isolationism and military unpreparedness. Fortunately, the network of bases and facilities inherited from World War II in both Europe and Asia made it relatively easy for the United States to turn to a permanent overseas naval presence as a key part of its emerging strategy.⁶ The act of deploying naval forces overseas, in turn, required a sizable Navy, a portion of which could constantly be stationed abroad even as the remainder guarded the U.S. coastline and provided a pool for rotationally deployed forces in peacetime and sending reinforcements overseas in wartime.

To perform its new missions in the postwar years, Navy leaders recommended a total peacetime force of 15 carriers, 400 combatants, 550,000 sailors, and 100,000 marines. By 1948, however, pell-mell disarmament had reduced the Navy to 11 aging carriers, 289 combatants, 429,000 sailors and 86,000 marines. The other services were in similarly bad shape; indeed, General Omar Bradley said that the Army could not fight its way out of a wet paper bag. In this situation, naval forces played a big role in U.S. defense plans, which anticipated that a Soviet attack in Europe and elsewhere would result in major initial reversals, compelling a mostly naval and air effort to cling to strategic footholds in England, North Africa, and Japan, pending a World War II-style buildup and counterattack. But the problem was that the Navy would have been hard-pressed at that time to carry out this global strategic mission.

The outbreak of the Korean War led to major rearmament, including a larger Navy. When U.S. defense strategy for waging the Cold War was first formed in the early 1950s, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) integrated military command was created, naval forces were assigned the key mission of patrolling the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and Asian waters on behalf of containment, deterrence, and forward defense. During the mid-1950s, a new U.S. strategy focused on nuclear weapons and massive retaliation, bringing about big changes in U.S. and NATO forces, but sizable naval forces remained overseas, continuing to perform their traditional missions even as they prepared for nuclear war.⁷ A decade later, U.S. strategy was again switching directions, this time away from massive nuclear retaliation toward flexible response and stronger conventional forces. This development reinforced the rationale for stationing carrier battlegroups and marines aboard, for they provided valuable assets for showing the American flag in peacetime and for providing initial crisis response options in the lengthy period before reinforcements from the United States could converge on the scene.

The Vietnam War of the late 1960s resulted in several carriers being regularly stationed off the Vietnamese coast, where they played a key role in conducting bombing missions and supporting forces ashore. Withdrawal from Vietnam in the early 1970s led to another shift in overall U.S. defense strategy, with less emphasis on Southeast Asia and greater attention to the growing NATO-Warsaw Pact rivalry in Central Europe and the North Atlantic. Post-Vietnam drawdowns led to a smaller military posture, but as the Soviet Union began challenging for control of the seas, this threat underscored the need to modernize the Navy with new nuclear carriers, other ships, and warplanes. During the Carter administration, big debates erupted over the Navy’s future, with some proponents advocating smaller and fewer carriers plus greater reliance on land-based aircraft for maritime missions. When the dust settled, the Navy emerged intact, with a force of 13 carriers, 204 surface combatants, 94 attack submarines, 66 amphibious warfare ships, and 150 support ships. Its overseas presence settled into a comfortable groove of two carrier battlegroups (CVBGs) in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, one to two CVBGs in the Western Pacific, deployed amphibious ready groups (ARGs) in both regions, and a marine expeditionary force (MEF) stationed on Okinawa.

During the 1980s, the Reagan administration charted a big naval buildup to 15–16 carriers and 580–600 ships. The Navy’s overseas presence remained mostly stable during this period. But larger changes swept over the U.S. military posture in ways affecting force operations, including those of naval forces. One of the biggest changes was that the U.S. military acquired significantly better strategic mobility forces in the form of airlift, sealift, and prepositioned assets. This step enhanced the Department of Defense (DOD) capacity to swiftly project power overseas, thus lessening dependence upon overseas presence to conduct a lengthy initial defense until reinforcements could arrive. Faster reinforcement, in turn, helped broaden U.S. military options in wartime in ways that were magnified by the major modernization effort carried out then. The U.S. Air Force (USAF) acquired better aircraft, munitions, and support systems that allowed it not only to win the air battle quickly, but also to influence the ground battle. The Army acquired better tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and other weapons that permitted it to switch away from stationary linear defense to mobile operations and strong counterattacks. The combined effect was to enable both services to work together in increasingly using offensive operations, rather than passive defense, to attain their battlefield goals.

A similar trend swept over the Navy, which acquired the modern weapons and systems that permitted defensive and offensive doctrines aimed at taking the fight to the enemy in event of a global war. For example, modernization brought the Aegis air defense system, the F–14 and F–18 fighters, and cruise missiles. More than ever before, the Navy emerged as the world’s dominant sea power, and overall, the U.S. military emerged as the world’s best fighting force, capable of projecting power across the globe and of pursuing offensive strategies against enemies who lacked the power to resist them. In this setting, overseas presence, including naval forces, changed from being a stopgap measure for initial defense against aggression to become the vanguard of a U.S. superpower in pursuit of a proactive global strategic agenda. This proactive naval role was highlighted by the public release of The Maritime Strategy in 1986.⁸

Throughout the Cold War’s last decades, the Navy maintained a sizable overseas presence in support of a national defense strategy that was mostly continental in its outlook—that is, focused on defending Europe and Northeast Asia against big enemy land and air threats. Even so, the Navy role was quite important because it provided assured access to key strategic regions while helping safeguard against surprise attacks against Central Europe and the North Atlantic, and against South Korea and Japan. Key Navy missions were to maintain control of the seas, swiftly defeat enemy maritime threats, protect the passage of large ground and air reinforcements to crisis zones, and project power ashore where appropriate. As naval technology improved Navy strike capabilities, the power projection role for a potential global confrontation with the Soviet Union increased. In the late 1980s, defense of the Persian Gulf also grew in importance, thereby providing naval forces a significant mission there as well. Initial U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf focused on defending oil fields against a possible Soviet attack, but the eruption of the bitter Iran-Iraq war signaled that dealing with these two menacing powers would become a dominating theme of the coming years. The Navy soon found itself patrolling Gulf waters to secure safe passage of commercial ships and to signal U.S. determination to protect its strategic interests there.⁹ Emergence of the Persian Gulf as a key factor in U.S. defense plans helped complete the Navy’s transition into a truly global force, with sizable overseas presence assets continuously present in all three key theaters.

The end of the Cold War in 1990 and the victorious Persian Gulf War of 1991 triggered another searching review of U.S. defense strategy and forces. The Bush administration initiated the process of adjusting to the new era by crafting a regional defense strategy that abandoned the earlier premise of global war.¹⁰ With Central Europe’s security no longer directly threatened, the Clinton administration focused its new U.S. defense strategy on being prepared for two concurrent MTW conflicts in the Persian Gulf and Korea, while performing peacekeeping, enforcing no-fly zones over Iraq, and carrying out periodic crisis interventions that erupted with surprising frequency. Overall U.S. forces were reduced to about 30 percent lower than their Cold War levels, and the Navy began its steady drawdown to today’s posture while focusing increasingly on littoral operations. The total U.S. overseas presence declined from about 450,000 troops during the Cold War to today’s posture of about 235,000 troops. But these withdrawals were mostly carried out by ground and air forces, and especially in Europe, where the U.S. presence shrank from 330,000 troops to 109,000. The Navy’s overseas presence remained largely intact, for two reasons: it was seen as a valuable instrument for pursuing the political and military goals of the post-Cold War era in Europe, Asia, and the Persian Gulf; and forward presence was carried out through rotational forces (ships and deployed aircraft squadrons), rather than permanently stationed personnel. The political and military goals included not only being prepared to fight regional wars on short notice but also using overseas presence to help shape the new international security system. By the end of the 1990s, overseas-stationed/forward deployed naval forces found themselves carrying out a plethora of new missions: guarding against MTW conflicts, participating in smaller-scale contingencies (SSCs), and performing defense diplomacy for environment shaping.

Today’s Overseas Naval Presence

This historical legacy has bequeathed the naval overseas presence of today. The exact number of naval personnel deployed abroad—sailors and marines—is not a constant. Instead, it is a variable that depends upon not only permanently stationed forces but also the ebb and flow of ship deployments, including rotational duty by almost all continental U.S. (CONUS)-based ships. As a general rule, about 60,000 sailors and 25,000 marines are normally deployed abroad, counting command staffs, ships, bases, and other support facilities. This total includes about 20,000 sailors and 2,500 marines in Europe and the Mediterranean, 20,000 sailors and 20,000 marines in Asia-Pacific (not counting Hawaii), and 15,000 sailors and 3,000 marines in Southwest Asia. In peacetime, naval forces thus account for fully one-third of U.S. military personnel deployed overseas.

What matters more than manpower levels is the nature of the combat forces stationed abroad, for they are large and powerful. In terms of the entire U.S. fleet, roughly one-third is forward deployed on any given day. In the Mediterranean, the Navy’s 6th fleet typically consists of a CVBG and an ARG, including a carrier, attack submarines, surface combatants, amphibious ships, prepositioned marine equipment, and various support ships. In Asia and the Western Pacific, the 7th Fleet typically includes a CVBG and an ARG; in addition, the Marine MEF on Okinawa includes about two-thirds of a division and fighter wing. Unique to the 7th Fleet is the fact that a number of ships, including an aircraft carrier and entire ARG, are continuously homeported in the region (in Japan). In Southwest Asia, the 5th Fleet normally commands a CVBG and an ARG and can draw upon marine prepositioned equipment on Diego Garcia. These forces in all three theaters, of course, can be reinforced by the large Atlantic/2d Fleet stationed on the east coast of the United States, the Pacific/3rd Fleet stationed on the west coast and Hawaii, and the two Marine divisions based in the United States.¹¹ Recent years have seen reinforcements regularly deploy to deal with crises in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Taiwan. During such crises, the amount of naval power deployed abroad has surged well above the peacetime norm, but the norm itself is widely seen as reflecting a weighty contribution to U.S. global defense strategy.

These naval forces, of course, are embedded in a larger joint overseas presence that includes sizable ground and air forces. Worldwide, about 84,000 Army personnel and 65,000 Air Force personnel are also deployed. The result is today’s pattern of about 109,000 military personnel from all services in Europe, 100,000 in Northeast Asia, 25,000 in the Persian Gulf, and a few thousand elsewhere. In Europe, the joint combat posture of 2 Army divisions (4 brigades), 213 USAF wings, a CVBG, and an ARG is intended to fulfill U.S. military commitments to NATO. In Northeast Asia, the posture of an Army division, a MEF, 213 USAF wings, a CVBG, and an ARG helps defend Korea, reassure Japan, and perform region-wide security missions. In the Persian Gulf, the normal presence of a USAF fighter wing, a CVBG, an ARG, and small Army units provides initial defense against threats posed by Iraq and others.

Since naval forces account for about one-third of the U.S. military manpower deployed abroad, they presumably provide about one-third of the posture’s strategic performance. Such a simple metric, however, conceals many complexities in gauging the contribution of naval forces, as well as those from ground and air forces. The United States deploys a balanced joint posture abroad because each service component performs uniquely important missions, all of which are critical to an effective overseas presence. Moreover, U.S. strategy calls for the missions and activities of the service components to be blended in ways that not only produce joint teamwork but also have synergistic effects. In essence, the whole is intended to exceed the sum of its parts.

Whereas ground and air forces mostly perform missions on land, naval forces perform maritime missions while also possessing a significant capacity to contribute to joint land operations. Naval forces maintain control of the seas, operate along the littorals, and train with a large number of navies from allies and partners. Their contribution to multilateral activities is especially important in Europe and Asia, where maritime collaboration has long been a key aspect of U.S. collective defense and coalition-building endeavors. Naval forces are also invaluable because of their mobility on the seas, which provides U.S. defense strategy with significant strategic reach through power projection. Their normal peacetime missions allow them to operate along vast stretches of the world’s oceans and the Eurasian littoral, influencing strategic affairs in many places. In crises, they can converge quickly on littoral hotspots—provided, of course, that they are deployed overseas in a manner that maintains them within swift sailing range of places where U.S. interests might be threatened.

Today’s overseas naval presence not only makes many contributions to national security strategy but also plays a key role in maintaining the rationale for a sizable navy force posture.¹² The Army, Air Force, and Marines are readily able to find a requirement for their combat forces in the framework for waging two concurrent MTWs that DOD used for force-sizing from 1993 until recently. But owing to the two contingencies that are usually identified as constituting MTWs—wars against Iraq and North Korea—the requirement for 12 carriers and the rest of the navy posture of about 300 ships becomes less clear (from an MTW warfighting perspective). Sensible defense planners know that other contingencies could require larger naval forces than these two MTWs: for example, a sustained confrontation with China over control of the Asian littoral. But even so, a stressful debate over the Navy posture has been avoided because a force of this size is needed to sustain the current overseas/forward presence. In essence, rotational dynamics necessitate today’s posture in order to sustain deployment of three CVBGs, three ARGs, and other ships overseas. In a major crisis, of course, far larger navy forces could be surged by extracting CONUS-based ships from their normal cycles of preparation and recovery, replenishing them quickly, and sending them overseas.

In recent years, some observers have claimed that because the United States has become so proficient at power projection, it no longer needs to station large forces overseas on a permanent basis. Their argument is that a small overseas presence, composed of command staffs and command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) units, will suffice if it is supported by CONUS-stationed combat forces that can swiftly deploy overseas in event of an emergency. This argument, however, overlooks a compelling political reality. The constant presence of large combat forces not only is a visual manifestation of U.S. strategic power but also is needed to convince allies and adversaries that the United States can be relied upon to protect its interests and meet its security commitments in a still-dangerous world. The need to perform daily training and exercises with allies is another reason for keeping sizable forces overseas. Moreover, some forces must be present to deal with surprise attacks that could result in defeat for the United States and its allies in the days before U.S. reinforcements can arrive; Korea is an example.

Beyond this, the idea that large U.S. combat forces can deploy overseas at a moment’s notice from CONUS is an illusion. The reality of constraints is certainly the case for naval forces, which would have to sail long distances to reach remote crisis zones. Likewise, ground forces are so heavy that they mostly must deploy by sealift: a single heavy division, with its support assets, weighs 300,000 tons. While tactical combat aircraft can quickly fly overseas, each fighter wing must be accompanied by 10,000 to 20,000 tons of supplies. A force of 10 fighter wings (now organized as air expeditionary forces) can itself take 2 weeks or more to deploy even if all strategic airlift is allocated to it. DOD has endlessly studied the dynamics of rushing reinforcements overseas over the past two decades. The conclusion always has been that while relatively small forces can be sped to a distant location in a week or two, deployment of the large forces needed to win a big regional war takes far longer, often 2 to 3 months or more. In the interim, a sizable overseas presence of combat forces, including naval forces, is needed in order to provide initial defense in ways that make power projection from CONUS a viable strategy. This conclusion seems unlikely to change in fundamental ways, even though the exact mix of overseas presence and power projection will be a variable in the coming years.

Other critics argue that because USAF forces have acquired growing capabilities for a wide variety of operations, they potentially can substitute for naval forces in overseas presence missions. When strategic and military realities are examined closely, however, they rebut any wholesale acceptance of this claim. To a degree, USAF and Naval air forces can substitute for one another in limited ways and for limited periods. This complementary nature helps enhance the flexibility of overseas forces, gaining greater mileage from them. But for practical reasons, the act of employing this practice in big, permanent ways is another matter. In Europe, for example, the 2 13 USAF fighter wings are widely scattered among Britain, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. If they were assigned the added duty of patrolling the Mediterranean, they would be less able to perform their normal missions of providing high-tech fighters for NATO integrated continental air defense system, participating in NATO reaction forces for expeditionary missions, and training with allied air forces. In Northeast Asia, the 2 13 USAF fighter wings help defend South Korea and Japan, missions that totally engage their time and efforts. If they were assigned the mission of substituting for Navy carrier battlegroups, they would be required regularly to deploy elsewhere across the Asia-Pacific region and thereby would be less able to help guard against a surprise attack against South Korea or violations of Japan’s airspace. The key point is that the regular presence of Navy CVBGs in all three theaters not only provides assets for demanding maritime operations but also enables scarce USAF forces to focus intently on their normal continental missions.

Other practical realities enter the equation in constraining ways. While USAF forces can perform some maritime missions, they cannot perform the full set of such missions, and they lack the equipment and training to perform key missions for which they might otherwise be suitable. For example, they cannot conduct antisubmarine warfare, fire long-range intercept missiles, provide layered defense against air attack, fully support amphibious assault operations, clear minefields, provide constant protection of convoys, or help train allied navies. Although they can fly quickly to distant locations, they require bases and facilities in order to operate there continuously for long periods. The counterterrorist war in Afghanistan shows the value of naval forces that do not depend on immediate access to bases that might not be available owing to political constraints or the absence of prepared infrastructure.

Beyond this, a sense of perspective is needed in gauging the relative importance of USAF and Navy forces to overseas presence and in assessing options for change. Whereas today, the Air Force deploys about 4 fighter wings and 260 combat aircraft abroad, the Navy and Marines deploy an equal number of wings, with 260 combat aircraft and many other forms of air-delivered firepower, including cruise missiles. If the goal is to maintain an equal amount of overseas combat power, any reduction of naval forces presumably must be accompanied by deployment of enough additional USAF forces to make up the difference. Would one USAF fighter wing (organized into an air expeditionary unit) be an adequate substitute for one CVBG, or would two or three wings be needed? Regardless of the answer, the practical impediments must be considered. The Air Force already deploys nearly one-half of its active fighter wings overseas and nearly one-third of its total active and reserve forces. Especially with homeland defense missions gaining importance, the Air Force would be hard pressed to support additional overseas deployments and easily could be stretched to the breaking point—as indeed was the case in Kosovo operations.¹³

In theory, additional USAF wings could be fielded by retiring CVBGs and using the savings for this purpose. On the surface, such a tradeoff may look attractive because a USAF fighter wing costs less than a CVBG. But each USAF fighter wing must be accompanied by a large number of expensive support aircraft to perform such roles as command and control, search and rescue, reconnaissance, suppression of enemy defenses, and refueling. Such aircraft are an inherent part of CVBGs. If new USAF fighter wings are to perform a full set of maritime missions, they also would have to be given special equipment and training that would be costly. Moreover, additional bases and facilities would have to be developed in many places in order to provide USAF forces with the geographic reach of CVBGs. These added expenses narrow the cost advantage of substituting USAF forces for naval forces. The idea of pursuing such a substitution was examined in earlier years, and when the full set of strategic considerations and cost-effectiveness tradeoffs was considered, it always was rejected for valid reasons. Whether this calculus will change in the future remains to be seen, but until it does, CVBGs and naval forces seem likely to retain their current attractiveness as part of the joint team for overseas presence.

Costs of Naval Presence

Although today’s naval overseas presence offers many strategic advantages, it is not without downsides and impediments. The Navy and Marine Corps are required to sustain today’s overseas presence with military manpower that is about 30 percent smaller than during the Cold War. The effect is to put added strains on manpower policies for both services, strains that are magnified when crises and peacekeeping missions require commitment of more ships and personnel than is normal. Since the Navy has only 12 carriers, moreover, it is unable to keep 3 carriers deployed abroad full-time. Owing to rotational dynamics—that is, preparing for extended deployments and recovering from them—a larger force of 15–16 carriers would be needed to sustain 3 carriers abroad.¹⁴ Not surprisingly, carrier deployments in recent years have slipped below the goal of three CVBGs, averaging instead about 2.5 carriers on a month-to-month basis. The effect has been to deprive one or more regional commands of a CVBG for lengthy periods. If the overall navy posture declines from 310 ships to about 285 ships, as is widely expected, strains on overseas presence likely will grow further, perhaps resulting in fewer deployments.

If the Navy did not have to maintain any overseas presence, it would be freed to focus on keeping its forces ready for crises. As a result, it likely would be able to surge more forces in crises than currently is the case; for example, a significant portion of its forces would not be undergoing the shakedown and recovery period that normally accompanies a long overseas deployment. This is one price to be paid for having today’s overseas presence. Also, the naval overseas presence elevates spending on operations and maintenance (O&M), thus further inflating the DOD budget for O&M, which has surged upward to $125 billion annually today—50 percent higher than historical levels for per capita spending. Another expense is the cost of extensive bases and facilities overseas, especially in Europe and Asia. As a result, the Navy has fewer funds for spending on readiness, training, and modernization, accounts that have experienced shortfalls in recent years. These direct and indirect expenses do not mean that the money could be better spent elsewhere, but they do underscore the judgment that today’s overseas naval presence is not a free lunch. It consumes significant resources, and it requires careful planning to ensure that it provides maximum benefits for the manpower and money invested.

The same, of course, can be said about the total U.S. overseas military presence. Today, DOD stations nearly 20 percent of its active military manpower overseas. In addition to the troops and formations abroad, overseas presence includes many activities that are easily overlooked but are quite important: command staffs, support bases and facilities, prepositioned equipment and war reserve stockpiles, training and exercises with many countries, and security assistance to a variety of nations. For all these reasons, overseas presence is quite an important instrument of U.S. national security policy; indeed, it often is the main way that the United States manifests its power and interests in key regions. While the budget costs of overseas presence are hazy, a reasonable estimate is that they total about $10–$15 billion per year: this is the incremental cost of keeping already-funded forces overseas, operating them in current ways, and pursuing associated activities. A defense effort this important and costly arguably should be treated as a separate program in the DOD planning, programming, and budgeting system process.

Even short of this step, strong management oversight is needed to ensure that vital requirements are met and resources are spent wisely. A few years ago, DOD created the Theater Engagement Plan (TEP) system to help accomplish this purpose. While the TEP system has helped identify key strategic objectives in each region, it has fallen short of providing serious analysis of the critical relationship between resource inputs and performance outputs. Something better is needed. The Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff need good analytical tools for gauging requirements and policies for overseas presence both globally and in each key region. The services need tools for gauging how overseas presence measures should be fitted into their budgets and programs. The commanders of the regional unified commands need tools for articulating the case for improvements critical to their missions. Crafting a management process that performs these functions and provides participants the necessary analytical tools should be a key goal for the coming years.¹⁵

Future Strategic and Political Purposes of Overseas Presence

Only a few years ago, U.S. national security policy portrayed world affairs as headed toward ever-growing stability and peace as a result of the onward march of democracy and economic markets. By contrast, the QDR Report portrays a world of mounting turmoil and dangers owing to terrorism and other threats. In response, it puts forth a new U.S. defense strategy that emphasizes enhanced homeland defense and assertive security policies abroad. In this new strategy, overseas military presence is to play an increasingly important role on behalf of new strategic and political purposes, as well as to help carry out new operational concepts for warfighting.

As a consequence, two important strategic changes will be occurring. First, overseas presence will be seen as an integrated global asset in DOD force planning, not as a set of disconnected regional postures with wholly separate rationales of their own. This global perspective likely will leave DOD willing to regularly shift overseas presence back and forth among the regions as the security situations dictate, rather than rely on an immutable apportionment plan. Second, overseas presence will be seen not as an instrument of local forward defense in fixed locations but as a tool of power projection that interacts with reinforcements from CONUS to provide a capacity to swiftly apply U.S. military power across a wide range of locations in all key regions. Overseas-stationed/forward naval forces, of course, have always possessed the inherent mobility to perform this mission. The change is that they will now be regularly employing this mobility more often, and in more sweeping ways, than in the past.

Beyond this, the QDR Report calls for design of regionally tailored forces in key theaters as well as transformation efforts aimed at strengthening their capabilities to deter aggression and to permit reallocation of CONUS-based forces now dedicated to reinforcement missions. In order to pursue these goals, the QDR Report makes clear that the current overseas presence will be changing in specific ways. It instructs that the U.S. global military posture will be reoriented to:

To help achieve these goals, the QDR Report announced the following specific changes to overseas presence forces:

Beyond question, these are major changes to the U.S. overseas presence, and they may be forerunners of bigger changes to come. They are being heavily driven by the DOD judgment that globalization, new-era geopolitics, and other trends are interacting to create a vast southern arc of instability stretching from the Middle East to the Asian littoral (part of which constitutes President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”) that menaces world peace in the 21st century.²² In this strategic calculus, the democratic community is becoming healthier and prosperous as the globalizing world economy gains momentum, and the old troubled zones of Europe and Northeast Asia are becoming more stable as well. But in worrisome ways, the southern arc is moving in the opposite direction. Animated by slow economic progress, troubled countries, WMD proliferation, and red-hot security affairs, it is creating a zone of chaos: a boiling primordial stew lacking orderly relationships and capable of erupting into conflict and violence at multiple places. Across this vast zone, the United States does not confront a new peer rival akin to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But it does face multiple dangerous threats: terrorists and other nonstate actors, failing states and ethnic conflict, regional rogues armed with asymmetric strategies and WMD systems, and big powers with newly assertive geopolitical agendas of their own. If these threats are left unchecked, the risk is that they will fester, grow, and interact to endanger not only U.S. interests and values overseas, but the physical safety of the United States and its people as well.

To help safeguard these interests, the QDR Report identifies four key goals to guide the new U.S. defense strategy: assuring allies and friends; dissuading future military competition; deterring threats and coercion against U.S. interests; if deterrence fails, decisively defeating any adversary.²⁴ It articulates all four goals with language underscoring the need to pursue them through assertive security policies abroad and high levels of U.S. military preparedness. Although three of these goals are written about with a sharper edge than in earlier years, they are familiar features of U.S. policy. By contrast, the goal of “dissuading future military competition” is a fresh strategic concept that reflects stressful, unfamiliar aspects of new-era geopolitical dynamics.²⁵ This goal calls for U.S. defense strategy and forces to be shaped in an explicit manner that powerfully influences potential adversaries not to compete with the United States and its allies in the military domain by making clear that they will lose any such competition. Essentially, this goal addresses the murky geopolitical arena between peaceful relations and outright military confrontation, focusing on countries that might otherwise be tempted to build military forces aimed at challenging the United States and its allies. By maintaining unquestioned U.S. military superiority, this goal aspires to end competitive efforts by adversaries before they begin.

To pursue these four goals, the QDR Report puts forth a “paradigm shift” in force planning that is aimed at sizing and shaping future U.S. forces to defend the U.S. homeland, deter coercion forward in critical regions, swiftly defeat aggression in overlapping major conflicts, and conduct a limited number of SSC operations.²⁶ The new defense strategy broadens the earlier focus on fixed threats and contingencies with an emphasis on building capabilities for multiple purposes. It does not wholly dismantle the previous two-MTW framework. Indeed, it says that DOD should retain a strong capability to wage two such concurrent conflicts if necessary. But it articulates a new approach to force allocations for them. The QDR Report instructs that DOD should allocate sufficient forces to win one MTW in overwhelming ways (to include occupation of enemy territory), assign sufficient forces to conduct a stalwart defense in the other MTW, and make available significant forces for SSC commitments.²⁷ It thus asserts that the act of staying ready for two MTWs should not be carried to the point of so consuming the entire defense posture that forces cannot be freed for dealing with the SSC contingencies that erupt frequently.

Beyond this, the QDR Report makes clear that the central thrust of defense planning will be to create capabilities for handling a wide spectrum of military conflicts: not only MTWs against regional rogues, but conflicts at the lower end of the spectrum—including peacekeeping and small crisis interventions—and those at the higher end, including wars against WMD-armed opponents and big powers. The clarion call of the new strategy is for highly capable forces that are flexible, versatile, agile, and adaptable. Indeed, the QDR Report states that DOD will not be able to predict where and when wars will erupt and often will be caught by surprise. Accordingly, it calls for a flexible portfolio of military assets that can quickly be combined and recombined to deal with the conflicts at hand in each case and with an ever-shifting set of military challenges as the future unfolds.²⁸ Compared to the earlier DOD focus on highly predictable MTWs in northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf, this new approach, with its emphasis on generic capabilities and flexible response options, is decidedly new and different. If taken seriously, it promises to move U.S. defense planning into a new realm in which being capable of multiple warfighting efforts will be more important than being optimized for a small number of them.

The QDR Report identifies a set of strategic tenets to accompany this new emphasis on flexible capabilities. Of them, three are especially important for the future overseas presence. One tenet states that while defending the U.S. homeland must receive considerable emphasis, possessing the capability swiftly to project strong forces abroad will be key to disrupting and destroying threats at long distances.²⁹ The second tenet states that U.S forces must train and operate with the forces of allies and friends in order to build strengthened alliances and partnerships capable of performing new-era security operations.³⁰ The third tenet states that U.S. forces must play a central role in maintaining favorable regional force balances, so that allies are protected, adversaries are dissuaded and deterred, and a foundation of peaceful stability is established.³¹ As the QDR Report acknowledges, these tenets underscore the strategic need for the future U.S. overseas presence to be strong, energetic, and highly capable—indeed, more capable than now.

What implications does this new strategic framework pose for the future strategic and political purposes of overseas naval presence? It creates not only challenges for the Navy, but for several reasons, important opportunities as well. The emergence of the southern arc of instability as a key worry means that U.S. defense strategy will be switching away from its old focus on continental Europe. Instead, it will be addressing a vast zone whose turbulent security dynamics will be greatly influenced by littoral and maritime affairs, by control of nearby seas, and by the projection of naval power ashore. This new geography alone elevates the importance of overseas naval presence in the strategic calculus. Equally important, the strategic goals and tenets articulated by the new U.S. defense strategy clearly mandate the systematic application of overseas naval power as part of the joint team. Along the southern arc from the Middle East to the Asian littoral, a strong overseas naval presence will be needed to pursue the four goals of assurance, dissuasion, deterrence, and defeat of aggression—in the face of difficult security conditions that make attainment of these goals difficult. Likewise, strong naval forces will be needed to provide readily available and flexible military capabilities, to build strengthened multilateral alliances and partnerships, and to maintain favorable force balances. Perhaps it is an exaggeration to say that the southern arc is tailor-made for naval forces; air and ground forces will have important roles to play as well. But naval forces do seem destined often to play a front-and-center role in U.S. strategy and joint operations there because their inherent characteristics are well suited to the new-era requirements facing the armed services.

Regional Effects of Overseas Naval Presence

While these general principles apply across the southern arc and elsewhere, the specific opportunities for overseas naval presence to contribute to the new U.S. defense strategy differ greatly from one region to the next. In Europe, the prevailing sentiment is to shift some U.S. forces from there to other endangered regions where they will be more needed. Even so, U.S. naval forces still will be expected to contribute importantly to stabilizing the Mediterranean region, which is the northern flank of the southern arc. If events in the Middle East make the Mediterranean a growing hot spot, U.S. naval forces—whose assets are stronger than those of NATO allies there—will need to help defend the sea lanes, to help protect such NATO members as Italy, Greece, and Turkey, and to provide forces for crisis interventions along the littorals, including the Balkans and North Africa. Equally important, U.S. naval forces can be used to help energize sluggish NATO efforts to develop better European expeditionary forces for power projection operations along Europe’s periphery and beyond. Apart from Britain, the European allies currently lack the mobility and logistics support assets needed to swiftly deploy large ground and air forces outside their borders. But many of their naval forces are better suited to expeditionary and power-projection missions while being interoperable with U.S. forces and providing valuable niche capabilities in such areas as mine-clearing, sea lane protection, and patrol of littoral areas. Potentially, U.S. naval forces could work closely with allied forces to create enhanced multilateral cooperation in ways that provide a foundation for progress on ground and air forces as well. If NATO becomes a reformed alliance whose power projection assets are led by U.S. and European naval forces and supplemented by appropriate land and air forces, it will be able to play a stronger role in global security affairs than it does today.

Surface appearances suggest that the big landmass stretching from the Middle East to South Asia is mostly the province of U.S. air and ground forces. The problem with this formulation, however, is that the prevailing political climate in these regions seems likely to prevent the permanent stationing of such forces there. Indeed, the small U.S. air and ground forces now temporarily based in Saudi Arabia and neighboring Gulf sheikdoms have increasingly become lightning rods for Islamic protests against alleged U.S. hegemony and cultural domination. Whether the United States will succeed in clinging to its current foothold in the Persian Gulf is to be seen. But it is hard to envisage larger U.S. forces being welcomed there, or major U.S. air and ground forces being stationed in India, Pakistan, and other South Asian countries.³² Naval forces deployed offshore, however, are less politically contentious and are capable of reaching most littoral regions through their air and missile assets, as well as performing daily patrolling and periodic base visits. As a result, naval forces, coupled with maritime prepositioning of equipment sets and greater temporary access to bases and infrastructure of friendly nations, likely will remain the main military instrument by which the United States asserts its interests in these regions. Indeed, turbulent security affairs there could compel the United States to deploy larger naval forces than currently is the case. This especially will be the case for as long as the war against terrorists and their sponsors is being fought—a conflict that could take years.

The Asian littoral indisputably is a fluid geostrategic zone well suited to maritime strategic concepts and force operations. There, the principal danger is that China’s growing power will result in it posing a maritime threat to several countries there and to U.S. access to the vital sea lines of communication stretching from the Malacca Straits along the great Asian crescent to Taiwan and Japan. The emerging strategic situation calls for U.S. defense strategy to broaden its focus beyond northeast Asia, to work with Japan and South Korea in projecting stability along the Asian littoral, and to pursue enhanced collaboration with such countries as Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and others. Clearly, U.S. air forces can help pursue this geopolitical and military agenda, but their numbers will be limited in relation to the requirements ahead. Especially because most countries of East Asia and the Western Pacific think in terms of naval power and maritime security relationships, the future role to be played by the Navy in this murky region will be critical to achieving U.S. security goals. The decision by the QDR Report to call for larger U.S. naval deployments along the Asian littoral, and for better access to bases and facilities there, may be a forerunner of things to come.

The future U.S. overseas presence in Asia will depend heavily upon geopolitical trends. For as long as North Korea poses a serious military threat, large U.S. forces will remain in South Korea, supported by reinforcements in Japan, to enforce deterrence and defense on the Korean Peninsula. In the event this threat fades and Korea unifies, a partial drawdown of U.S. ground and air forces may be possible, perhaps including the marines on Okinawa. Yet sizable forces likely will remain as part of U.S. strategy to maintain a stable balance of power in Asia and to perform power-projection missions across East Asia and along the Asian littoral. China’s growing power seems likely to reinforce the DOD call for large Navy ship deployments in Asia and a widening geographic scope of peacetime operations. The Navy currently has adequate bases in Northeast Asia, but it likely will be seeking better bases and facilities in the Philippines, Singapore, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia—not necessarily to deploy ships and marines there in a permanent arrangement, but instead to gain access for temporary deployments and surge missions.

The bottom line is that the new U.S. defense strategy faces powerful incentives to retain a strong overseas naval presence and even to increase it in critical regions where threats and requirements are growing. Yet the Navy’s resources for this mission—measured in terms of carriers, other ships, and marines—are already limited and may shrink somewhat in the coming years. For this reason, the proper response is not to continue deploying naval forces, as well as ground and air forces, according to the same mechanical logic of force apportionments that has applied in the past. Instead, a tailored response should be designed for each region. The need to employ scarce assets with maximum effectiveness mandates careful analyses aimed at determining, as precisely as possible, the exact relationship between overseas presence and the attainment of U.S. security objectives—which is the genesis of studies such as that described in chapter 6. Such analyses will need to assess not only technical military issues, but also the political influence of naval forces and other overseas presence assets on the proclivities and policies of many nations, including friends and adversaries.

Both globally and for each key region, the strategic goal should be to design the kind of overseas presence in size and force mix that does the best job of achieving U.S. political-military goals. Some regions may demand more naval overseas presence than others, with the optimal mix among them fluctuating as strategic conditions evolve. In some cases, overseas naval presence may be more effective, or more necessary, than is commonly believed. In other cases, it may be less effective, or less critical, than imagined. In some situations, the proper response may be naval forces; in other situations, it may be air or ground forces, or such other measures as C4ISR assets, bases and infrastructure, prepositioned equipment, or security assistance. If such differences in requirements and performance arise, they need to be discovered and acted upon wisely, for they may be critical to determining whether the future U.S. overseas presence actually achieves the strategic and political purposes for which it is designed.

Warfighting and Operational Requirements for Naval Presence

Future directions in the U.S. overseas naval presence also will be influenced by requirements for waging wars and carrying out new operational concepts that U.S. forces will adopt as transformation gains momentum. Here, too, the Navy faces challenges as well as opportunities. For example, U.S. naval forces likely will acquire key assets for the new network of theater missile defenses that will be erected to help protect U.S. forces and allied countries against WMD proliferation in the coming years. Equally important, overseas naval forces will help provide the vanguard of initial defenses that will be needed to gain early control of conflicts in ways that permit reinforcements from CONUS to deploy swiftly and effectively. During the past decade, naval forces have primarily been focused on providing initial defense for the two MTWs in the Persian Gulf and Korea. In the coming years, they will be facing a widening spectrum of conflict, including different types of wars in new and unfamiliar places. If the conflicts in Kosovo and Afghanistan are prologue, future operations may be neither big nor small, but instead will require medium-sized strike packages: for example, one to three CVBGs, four to six USAF expeditionary air units (fighter wings), and one to three Army and Marine divisions. If this proves the case, overseas forces may provide a lion’s share of the total forces committed and thus will be more than a mere vanguard for a much larger buildup.

Nobody can pretend to know what the future holds, but if current trends are an indicator, U.S. forces may be called upon to wage war frequently in the years ahead—not necessarily big and calamitous conflicts, but instead a lengthy sequence of small- to medium-sized conflicts in shifting places, in unique ways tailored to the occasion, and against a varying cast of enemies. Operations in Afghanistan may be a forerunner—but this example is on the lower end of this scale in terms of forces committed. The new U.S. defense strategy’s call for flexible military capabilities is not only a wise response to this prospect, but it also means that the future naval posture probably will not have to find its sizing rationale in overseas presence. The need for flexible capabilities for a spectrum of wars will provide ample rationale for a large and diverse naval posture. Equally important, the overseas naval presence will need to be adjusted and equipped so that it fits effectively into this new doctrine for warfighting.

Emerging operational concepts will play a large role in determining how the overseas naval presence should be prepared for this purpose. A number of such concepts already are provided by Joint Vision 2020, which calls for full-spectrum dominance, and by such associated concepts as network centric warfare, rapid decisive operations, and effects-based operations.³³ In addition, the QDR Report identifies the following operational goals as critical to guiding force transformation:

To develop an improved capacity to carry out new operational doctrines for using naval overseas presence in warfighting, there will be a premium on understanding future military threats and the best ways to counter them. The past decade has seen an unusually high degree of U.S. military superiority in virtually all areas, such that today U.S. ground, air, and naval forces operate virtually free from serious worry about having large casualties inflicted upon them. While U.S. forces will remain superior over future opponents, this degree of total dominance likely will erode as enemies acquire asymmetric strategies, information-age weapons and systems, long-range strike assets, WMD systems, and other enhanced capabilities of their own. As a result, U.S. forces, including naval forces, likely will again confront competitive environments in which they will need to operate with new technologies, weapons, information systems, and doctrines in order to minimize heavy casualties and to achieve their warfighting goals. Reacting wisely to this challenge will be a key imperative ahead.

As the naval overseas presence is adjusted to deal with growing military threats across a widening spectrum of conflicts and geographic zones, it will be essential for DOD and the Navy to get the strategic basics right. This especially is the case in dealing with future antiaccess/area denial threats. As will be discussed in chapter 25, some analysts are so apprehensive of such threats that they judge U.S. forces should switch away from their traditional emphasis on forward defense of endangered friends and allies, and instead should resort to a new military strategy of standoff operations from distant rearward areas that lie over the horizon. This strategy mainly would be characterized by long-distance bombardment of enemy targets in a war. Two reasons account for this stance. The first reason is concern that in many places, allied and friendly governments will be too cowed by nearby adversaries to allow U.S. forces access to their bases and facilities. The second reason is fear that adversaries will develop the missiles and other offensive assets needed to sink U.S. naval warships and to destroy ground and air forces if they draw within striking range of crisis zones. The implication is that U.S. military strategy should resort to strategic bombers, long-range cruise missiles, and space assets in order to wage war outside the envelope of such threats.

As U.S. forces become better at long-range strikes, clearly they should include standoff operations as part of their armory; there may be situations in which such operations are either the only recourse or can help complement forward operations by suppressing enemy defenses before large forces arrive on the scene. But wholly embracing standoff operations to the point of abandoning heavy reliance on forward operations is another matter. Today, U.S. strategic bombers, cruise missiles, and other standoff strike assets provide only about 25 percent of the U.S. military’s capacity for air-delivered firepower. Even if they are upgraded significantly, they likely will not possess the firepower, maneuverability, and agility needed to win future wars on their own. For most conflicts, a hefty infusion of shorter-range airpower and ground maneuver forces will also be needed. This is a practical reason for not relying too exclusively on standoff assets: they normally will not be able to get the job done alone, and especially so if more than one contingency occurs at a time.

Moreover, U.S. defense strategy has long portrayed forward deployments, with forces based on the soil or in nearby waters of allies and friends, as a key element in signaling its political resolve and credibility. Any wholesale resort to standoff operations inevitably would be seen as a serious weakening of the U.S. commitment to their security. How would such long-standing friends and allies as Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan react if U.S. forces are no longer on the soil or closely offshore, available to help directly defend their borders and airspace? The reaction likely would be negative in ways that could have serious, ripple-effect damages on larger U.S. policies and interests in these regions. The idea that such countries will be so cowed by new-era adversaries to insist that U.S. forces keep distant seems a stretch. During the Cold War, most of these countries eagerly sought U.S. forward commitments even though the consequence was to risk Soviet nuclear weapons being targeted on them. Having withstood such a threat then, they are unlikely to be cowed by the new-era threats facing them now. Indeed, their reaction to these threats likely will be one of seeking stronger U.S. forward commitments, not weaker relationships.

In addition, future antiaccess/area-denial threats should be kept in perspective. As argued in chapter 26, U.S. forces will be less vulnerable to them than surface appearances suggest. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. Navy faced, and surmounted, a major antiaccess/area-denial threat posed by the Soviet Union. The Soviets built a huge naval force of long-range bombers, cruise missiles, nuclear warheads, and attack submarines aimed not only at denying the U.S. Navy access to northern waters but also at interdicting NATO reinforcing convoys sailing to Central Europe. In order to ward off these threats and suppress them, the Navy greatly increased its defensive capabilities with such systems as F–14 fighters with Phoenix missiles, Aegis, and point-defense assets for air defense, and with P–3 aircraft, lethal attack submarines, and modern destroyers and frigates for antisubmarine warfare. By the end of the Cold War, the Navy had become relatively immune to these threats, to the point of judging that it could sail close to northern Soviet ports and strike them without suffering major losses in return.

A similar trend occurred on the European continent. Here too, the Soviet Union assembled a huge threat of several hundred bombers, 4,000 tactical combat aircraft, and hundreds of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles for suppressing NATO airbases, ports, supply dumps, and road and rail networks, all aimed at preventing NATO from mounting a forward defense of Germany’s borders. The United States and NATO counteracted by erecting a formidable defense screen of airborne warning and control systems, modern fighters, the Patriot air defense system, point defenses, and hardened facilities. By the end of the Cold War, the Soviet air threat was fading, and the NATO capacity to reinforce and mount a formidable forward defense was not in doubt. The central lesson is that on sea, land, and air, the U.S. military confronted a serious antiaccess/area denial threat, chose to confront it rather than retreat from forward defense, and won the contest going away—against a rival with big military forces and modern technology.

In this arena, the past seems likely to be prologue if U.S. forces merely take the necessary precautionary steps, for the new threats are likely to be smaller and less well-armed than those posed by the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Owing to its existing formidable defensive systems, a U.S. CVBG is enormously hard to damage significantly, much less sink entirely. Because it moves constantly on the high seas, the act of locating it with enough precision to target it effectively is itself quite difficult, even for countries that may gradually gain access to space-based assets and other modern reconnaissance systems. To be sure, enemy cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, diesel submarines, and mines pose new-era threats to the Navy’s survivability. But these threats can be countered by acquiring the modernized information systems, defense assets, and offensive strike capabilities needed to ensure that naval forces remain survivable even when they approach littoral hot spots. The same applies to the act of sending ground and air forces ashore in the face of enemy efforts to destroy them. Measures to modernize their defense systems, disperse them, and harden ports, facilities, and bases—while upgrading allied forces for initial defense—can accomplish a great deal to ensure that as these U.S. forces converge on a crisis, they will be able to enter the fray safely and operate effectively. The bottom line is that while new-era antiaccess/area-denial threats should be taken seriously, the proper response is to counteract them, not to be driven into weak defense strategy that might be unable to win future wars.

If strategic retreat in the face of antiaccess/area-denial threats is not necessary, what new operational concepts should be employed to help guide the wartime use of overseas naval presence? A good candidate may be the concept of “joint response forces for early and forcible entry” that surfaced, with considerable fanfare, during the recent DOD defense strategy review and is highlighted as a wave of the future by the QDR Report.³⁵ This concept calls for creation of standing joint task forces in key commands that would be equipped to carry out the swift deployment of small or medium-sized spearhead forces to a crisis zone. These joint response forces would be composed of naval, air, and ground units. Heavily transformed with new-era technologies, they would be ultra-sophisticated, equipped with modern C4ISR systems, information networks, modern munitions, and weapons capable of lethal strike operations, especially from the air. They would be given the high readiness and strong mobility assets needed for them to deploy within a week or two of a decision to send them. Their mission would not be to win the war on their own, but instead to gain sufficient control of the battle to pave the way for the prompt arrival of larger reinforcements, which mostly would be modernized legacy forces. In essence, they would be high-tech “tip of the spear” forces, capable of being fitted atop multiple different shafts of bigger forces for fighting a wide spectrum of wars to successful completion.

The concept of joint response forces for early entry is not the only new operational concept under consideration, nor is it a cure-all for all future wars. But it seems likely to take hold in ways that will influence not only future U.S. defense strategy but transformation as well. It provides a conceptual tool for focusing transformation in limited ways that have high leverage and battlefield potency, without prematurely calling for the overhaul of the entire U.S. defense posture. As a new approach to warfighting, this concept provides an attractive, natural mission for naval overseas presence. Owing to their deployment patterns, emphasis on network centric operations, and high-technology strike assets, overseas naval forces should be well endowed for participation in joint response forces and missions. Indeed, for missions that have a strong littoral and maritime dimension, overseas naval forces may often serve not only as a cutting edge for early and forcible entry, but also as a central organizer and choreographer of the entire operation. That is, naval forces would provide a firm foundation upon which swift interventions by other service components would be built.

The future in this arena will depend upon many considerations. Most likely, other requirements will dictate that overseas presence naval forces should not be optimized solely for the “joint response force” concept. But if future overseas naval forces can acquire significant capabilities for contributing to this key concept and become a leading-edge participant in the Navy’s transformation efforts, they will gain a role of enduring importance in the new U.S. defense strategy—not only because of their political influence abroad and overall versatility, but also because of their ability to fight the high-tech wars of the future.

Conclusion: Toward a Future of Flexibility

The days are gone in which the Navy could rely on continuously deploying a CVBG and an ARG in each key region: Europe and the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and Asia. Significant shifts away from this longstanding pattern are already under way and may lie ahead. Irrespective of how redeployments are carried out in the near term, no single new model of regional apportionments is likely to rule throughout the coming decade or two. In the coming period during which the war on terrorism will be carried out, larger-than-normal forces may be concentrated in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Afterward, forces may be concentrated in Asia. Yet it also is possible that major deployments might again be needed in the Mediterranean, at least temporarily, if events there heat up, perhaps as a byproduct of WMD proliferation, tensions with Islam, or ethnic wars in the Balkans and Caucasus. The key judgment is that flexibility and adaptability likely will need to be the watchwords for the future. The Navy likely will need to be able regularly to shift Navy and Marine forces among the key regions in order to deal with the long period of great fluidity and surprising changes that apparently lies ahead.

The exact numbers of naval forces deployed abroad—manpower, combat units, and support assets for the Navy and Marines—should be determined by future missions and requirements, not the other way around. However, there is a distinct relationship between the amount of forces that can be forward deployed and the overall size of the Navy and Marine Corps. If we are to maintain approximately the same amount of forces on overseas/forward deployment—even if they are sent to changing locations—cuts in naval force structure cannot be justified. Another important influence will be the course of transformation. The QDR Report 2001 implies that transformation will not be pursued at a breakneck pace, but it will be carried out in meaningful ways that are purposeful and measured. Most likely the Navy and Marines will retain many of their legacy platforms and forces, while modernizing and recapitalizing them. But depending upon the outcome of joint experiments and ongoing research and development activities, new systems and platforms likely will begin appearing in the coming years and gradually will become more significant as the distant future unfolds. To what extent will the future Navy be marked by smaller carriers, surface combatants with far smaller crews than now, submarines that fire many cruise missiles, unmanned combat aircraft, smaller craft and patrol boats, mobile offshore bases, light ground combat vehicles, bigger and faster cargo ships, and other new platforms beloved by some proponents of transformation? The answer remains to be seen, but it will play a significant role in shaping the naval overseas presence of the future.

Notes

¹ Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, September 2001), 20, 25–28. BACK

² Ibid., 17. BACK

³ In the 2001 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush referred to three dictatorial regimes within this strategic arc—Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—as part of an “axis of evil” dedicated to destabilizing their neighbors and the world order. BACK

⁴ This is the prime thesis of Sam J. Tangredi, “The Fall and Rise of Naval Forward Presence,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 126, no. 5 (May 2000), 28–32, which also illuminates many of the challenges. A reply to this article by Philip A. Dur appears in Proceedings 126, no. 7 (July 2000), 22–23. BACK

⁵ A recent conference, “U.S. Navy Forward Presence Bicentennial Symposium—Forward...From the Start,” sponsored by the CNA Corporations, the Naval Historical Foundation, and the Naval Historical Center on June 21,2001, lauded the fact that the conceptual roots of naval overseas/forward presence can be traced back—relatively unchanged—to July 1, 1801. BACK

⁶ By providing the overseas base infrastructure that allowed for permanent stationing (as opposed to only rotational deployment)of ships in foreign ports, closer to the Soviet Union. This infrastructure also allowed for longer stationing times and better supply for those ships on rotational deployment from U.S. ports. The actual degree of dependency of the rotational forces on overseas bases is a matter of considerable, often parochial, debate. BACK

⁷ A fascinating recent study of naval preparations for nuclear war during that era can be found in Jerry Miller, Nuclear Weapons and Aircraft Carriers (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001). Vice Admiral Miller was a direct participant in many of these preparations. BACK

⁸ Public version released as “The Maritime Strategy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (January 1986 supplement). An excellent analysis is Norman Friedman, The U.S. Maritime Strategy (New York: Jane’s Publishing Company, 1988). BACK

⁹ An excellent source on the naval role in the pre-Desert Storm Arabian Gulf is Michael A. Palmer, On Course to Desert Storm: The U.S. Navy and the Persian Gulf, Contributions to Naval History Series no. 5 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1992). BACK

¹⁰ A comprehensive analysis of the Bush administration’s “reconstitution strategy” that was unfortunately released only shortly before the election of President Clinton is Reconstituting America’s Defense: The New U.S. National Security Strategy, ed. James J. Tritten and Paul N. Stockton (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1992). See also James J. Tritten, Our New National Security Strategy: America Promises to Come Back (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1992). BACK

¹¹ The Atlantic and Pacific Fleets are the administrative organizations (for training, maintenance, repair, etc.) of ships; the 2nd and 3rd Fleets are the operational organizations. BACK

¹² See discussion in Tangredi, “The Fall and Rise of Naval Forward Presence,” 28–29. BACK

¹³ See, for example, statements of Air Force leaders in “Can’t Get There From Here,” Armed Forces Journal International (September 2000), 4–5. BACK

¹⁴ A good discussion of rotational dynamics is Gregory V. Cox, Keeping Carriers Forward Deployed: Harder Than It Seems (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 2000). BACK

¹⁵ A key issue raised in Roger Cliff, Sam J. Tangredi, and Christine E. Wormuth, “The Future of U.S. Overseas Presence,” in QDR 2001: Strategy-Driven Choices for America’s Security, ed. Michéle Flournoy (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2001), 235–262. BACK

¹⁶ QDR Report, 26. BACK

¹⁷ Ibid., 27. BACK

¹⁸ Ibid. BACK

¹⁹ Ibid. BACK

²⁰ Ibid. BACK

²¹ Ibid., 35. BACK

²² On “arc of strategic instability,” see Stephen J. Flanagan, Ellen L. Frost, and Richard L. Kugler, Challenges of the Global Century: Report of the Project on Globalization and National Security (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2001), 16–17. BACK

²³QDR Report, 2. BACK

²⁴ Ibid., 11. BACK

²⁵ Ibid., 12. BACK

²⁶ Ibid., 17. BACK

²⁷ Ibid., 21. BACK

²⁸ Ibid., 13–14. BACK

²⁹ Ibid., 14. BACK

³⁰ Ibid., 14–15. BACK

³¹