Chapter 3 The Air-Sea Battle Concept as a Conventional Doctrine
2. Basic Concept of the ASB Doctrine
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its national interest and sovereignty. Secondly, by conservative decision making process and bureaucracy of the U.S. Military Forces, the ASB was devised to counter-act conventional threats of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Navy, Air Force, and other military organizations in the view of regular war/warfare concept. Lastly, with the former reasons, sense of crisis about the encountering threats induced the ASB doctrine having an offensive propensity while establishing integration between political intention and the doctrine.
2. Basic Concept of the ASB Doctrine
Through the book AirSea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept, the CSBA (Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments) is an organization of the U.S. Department of Defense officially opened the specific Air-Sea Battle concept in 2010. According to the CSBA, ‘the ASB is an operational doctrine helping to set the conditions at the military operational level to sustain, favorable conventional military balance throughout the Western Pacific region.’74
As a doctrinal basic concept, mutual relations between the ASB doctrine and the Chinese A2/AD capabilities can be described as an opposing relation between a ‘shield’ set on the seas far from the main land China and a ‘spear’ piercing the shield for forming conditions to launch military operations in the land. So-called the ‘A2/AD’ is hard to access near the Chinese littorals for U.S. military forces while guided attacks and long-range offensive/defensive abilities on the A2/AD form complicatedly defense layers in multi-domains. The cutting-edge forces of U.S. cannot execute their complete operations if not
In that respect, what the ASB doctrine means can be interpreted that it is to overwhelm the A2/AD capabilities as well as responses regarding Chinese military threats.
74 Van Tol et al., AirSea Battle, 11.
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access there, because employment of precise guided attacks stressed on by the U.S. relatively requires a close range in the littoral, not on the open sea due to its limited firing range.
If fails to access, U.S. should use some strategic weapons (for example, long ranged bombers such as B-2s, IRBMs, or ICBMs for example), but it is highly probability of missing the timing of operations due to the long range and also is difficult to avoid exposure of the strategic forces from the enemy’s eagle eye. Nevertheless, objectives and results of using those weapons would be restricted to an indirect military pressure by quantitative limitation of those weapons, political sensibility of the formidable destructive power, and costs rising.
The U.S. DoD evaluates that the multiple-layered Chinese threats consist of SAMs, fighters, naval vessels, medium-range ballistic missiles, and long-range bombers with cruise missiles and its cover range would reach from zero altitude to 100,000 feet vertically and approximately 2,000NM from Chinese coastal line horizontally while confessing the difficulty of littoral access;
“The littoral is not a fixed geographic area, but rather an increase in threat level as you near the shore and become more affected by elements operating under its wing…the nearer you come, the more diverse the enemy’s weapons and the better his targeting.”75
Therefore, basic role of the ASB doctrine in the mutual relation is to deter the multi-layered threats incoming from the long distance and to destruct the shield effects of A2/AD.
The doctrine has an objective to access the enemy’s littorals and even the enemy’s soils. To do that, it should defense the enemy’s massive salve attacks alongside eliminating the
75 Robert O. Work, “‘AirSea Battle’: Power Projection in the Mature Guided Munitions Era” (paper presented at the AIE Counter A2/AD Conference, Department of the Navy, October 26, 2010).
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enemy’s denial power simultaneously in term of two aspects, ‘defense’ and ‘offense’.
In 2012, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff announced potential operational environments that would appear within 2020 by publishing the CCJO (Capstone Concept for Joint Operations).
According to the book, future security environment can be categorized to ten typed threats and it explains that ‘project power despite A2/AD challenge’ (that is one of ten threats) will exploit U.S. vulnerabilities by rival’s technical advance and asymmetric means.76 To prepare it, the book suggests that U.S. Military Forces should exploit ‘cross-domain synergy’ with advanced high-technology and enforcement of joint operation capability.77
In the JOAC (Joint Operational Access Concept),
Then, what are threats the U.S. military is recognizing now? And, what is the cross-domain synergy?
78 the term ‘anti-access’ means ‘actions and capabilities usually long-range, designed to prevent an opposing force from entering an operational area’ and the term ‘area-denial’ means ‘actions and capabilities, usually of shorter range, designed not to keep an opposing force out, but to limit its freedom of action within the operational area.’79
76 Joint Chief of Staff, Capstone Concept for Joint Operations: Joint Force 2020 (Washington DC: Joint Chief of Staff, 2012), 1-4.
As a blockade, thus, those threats would be used by opposite sides when U.S. military has to project its forces towards the enemies via seas and/or air, so the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff stresses on ‘operational access capability’ for the purpose of overcoming that physical constraints. Definition of the ‘operational access capability’ is ‘to project military force into an operational area with sufficient freedom of action to achieve
77 Ibid., 4-15.
78 JOAC suggests operational blending of combat, security, and relief & reconstruction’ in order to develop specified solutions for future operation environments defined by the CCJO.
79 Department of Defense, Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC) version 1.0 (Washington DC:
Department of Defense, 2012), 6.
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Meanwhile, ‘cross-domain synergy creates and exploits asymmetrical advantages inherent in a joint force – air power to defeat anti-ship weapons, naval power to neutralize air defenses, ground forces to neutralize land-based threats to air and naval forces, cyber operations to defeat space systems, and so on (although by no means does this suggest that a joint fore should forgo symmetrical advantages).’
and it also implies that the military operations will be executed by using diverse domains in a particular state with global common such as international water/air, space, cyber space.
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The Air-Sea Battle concept is, thus, an operational doctrine to react the complicated operational environments and the fastidious operation requirements. Official concept of the ASB defined by U.S. Military Force is ‘to improve integration of air, land, naval, space, and cyberspace forces to provide combatant commanders the capabilities needed to deter and, if necessary, defeat an adversary employing sophisticated anti access/area-denial capabilities’
Again, it can be described to neutralize the enemy forces in a favorable friendly domain whereas to supplement friendly’s disadvantage in an unfavorable domain by joint operations between other domains. In addition, the capability requires large-scaled elements in the way that it simultaneously reflects synergy effects with multinational partnership.
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and it infers a specified doctrine to countermeasure China’s A2/AD capabilities de facto. For example, its core concept is ‘to develop networked, integrated forces capable of attack-in-depth to disrupt, destroy and defeat adversary forces (NIA/D3).’83
80 Ibid., 1, 17.
To keep cross-domain
81 Ibid., 16.
82 Ibid., 4.
83 Air-Sea Battle Office, Air-Sea Battle: Service Collaboration to Address Anti-Access & Area Denial Challenges (_: Air-Sea Battle Office, 2013), 4.
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synergy, ‘networked’ is based upon a situation awareness capacity linked with Command &
Control system, individual combatants, and weapon platforms and it also means management of centralized networks to generate real-time information over all of operation phases with improved Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) abilities.
Source: Air-Sea Battle Office, Air-Sea Battle, 5.
Figure 3.3 Core Concepts of the ASB
‘Integrated’ means the arrangement of military forces and their actions to create a force that operates networked across domain as a whole.84
84 Ibid., 6.
Initial military operations against China will require a well-ordered integration of forces in the air/space/cyber space, and on the sea.
As a result, whole echelons of the U.S. military forces have to execute missions in a same
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operational objective as an integrated force though it is burdensome to integrate disparate operation styles of each Service. Moreover, extent of line of communication established by seas will require the integration more and more, enduring limited war supplies.
‘Attack-in-depth to Disrupt, Destroy and Defeat’ is defined to seizing the initiative on the A2/AD environment by destroying the enemy’s capabilities while taking concentration and de-concentration of joint fire power in a right time and place. Again, it can be reified in detail by three lines of effort; Disrupt Adversary Command, Control Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance; Destroy adversary A2/AD facilities and weapon systems; Defeat adversary employed weapon and formations.85
According to sequence of operation phases (supporting initial entry phase-reinforcing entry phase-follow-on phase), force organization on the ASB concept will consist of four echelons; ‘supporting force’, ‘initial entry force’, ‘reinforcing entry force’, and
‘follow-on force’.
86 The supporting phase begins to shape favorable conditions for initial entry forces which are trying to access enemy territory. The supporting force includes ISR assets (for example, RC-135 Rivet Joint, RQ-4 Global Hawk, and KH-9 Satellite), tankers, airborne/maritime transportation assets, anti air defense units, and defensive counter-air forces. Also, global strike forces such as B-2 stealth bomber, TLAM cruise missile will be thrown into this phase in order to remove priority targets in advance.87
In the initial entry phase, joint missions will be concentrated on two objectives;
85 Ibid., 7.
86 These forces will be also conduct missions for the following purposes; defeat threats to the access and use of the global commons; find, control, defeat, disable, and/or dispose of specific threats such as WMDs; conduct other limited duration missions; assist populations and groups; establishing a lodgment. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Concept for Entry Operations (JCEO) (Washington DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014), 16-17.
87 In fact, the ASB concept seems to put emphasis on achievement of objectives on this phase especially and this offers the reason why the ASB doctrine would become an operation led by Air Force and Navy.
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establishment of a beachhead and securing of the operational initiative from the enemy. Thus, main forces of this phase will mainly include landing troops, airborne/maritime assault forces, airborne troops as well as SOFs infiltrating into rear area of the enemy territory. With them, supporting forces will continuously keep go on their missions for guaranteeing smooth entry missions while protecting the entry echelons from the enemy’s initial counter attacks by deploying aircraft carriers groups, fighter jets, and LCSs.
Because considerable damages are expected in the initial entry phase due to the enemy’s massive resistance, reinforcing entry phase is a necessary action for continuity of proceeding operations. With logistic transportations for entry echelons, some actions including escort missions for transportation groups will be executed for securing stable line of communications in this phase.
As a concept to expand operation area after entry operations, follow-on phase can be discussed sensitively by exemplifying stabilization operations until changes of the enemy state’s regime. Although U.S. does not make its position clear about it, it can sufficiently expect that the follow-on phase would reach to ultimate political area because when assuming that every military operation is a component of a single military campaign, the operations are conducted for an ultimate goal and those things would work until achieving a political goal.
Therefore, to secure the beachhead cannot be an end status of the ASB doctrine, so the follow-on phase will take a step towards expansion of a war, while differentiating its intensity depending on the level of goal achievement. However, the ASB doctrine would suggest regular warfare even in this phase in order to give a massive and physical press on the enemy state.
Detailed ROCs (Required Operational Capabilities) for realizing the ASB doctrine can be enumerated by six elements; enhanced survivability of U.S. forward deployed forces, long
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ranged & in depth strike capability for neutralizing A2/AD capabilities, Advanced IW (Intelligence Warfare)/EW (Electronic Warfare) capability, maintenance of the non-surface maritime combat force, development & application of leading-edge technology, and enforcement of cooperation relations for component/joint operations.88
‘Enhanced survivability of U.S. forward deployed forces’ means protection capabilities from China’s diverse attacks including preemptive attacks especially. The Chinese A2/AD capabilities are already evaluated to attack U.S. Military Forces allocated in forward deployed bases in the East Asia/western Pacific regions by their hard kill weapons like DF series ballistic missiles and by soft kill weapons like electronic-pulse bomb and hacking in the cyber space domain. To meet this ROC, U.S. government has propelled allocation of THAAD systems into the allied states since 2008 while having enforced the Missile Defense program. Besides this positive defensive tool, U.S. has pushed ahead with improvement of base protection program as well as relocation & dispersal of high valued assets into rear areas where are out of the 1st/2nd Island Chains. However, it is unclear that those efforts could cover the enemy’s salvo missile attacks effectively. Also, even the high valued assets such as an aircraft carrier relocated in the remote area might miss an operational timing due to a required time to move to littoral area of China, although ignoring the Chinese threats in the air and on the sea. Plus, although U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff designated a capability to conduct missions under degraded C4ISR situation by the enemy’s attacks onto the ROC, they expects it would be difficult to solve this requirement technologically.
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Consequentially, ‘long ranged & in depth strike capability for neutralizing A2/AD
88 These elements were summarized, according to the CCJO, JOAC, and JCEO published by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
89 Joint Chiefs of Staff, JCEO, 33.
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capabilities’ suggests that the ASB doctrine has an intention to attack not only Chinese military units dispatched into waters of the two islands chains, but also core nodes located in depth of the main-land. For example, U.S. stealth aircrafts such as F-22s, F-35s, and B-2s can actually cross the border for into the Chinese territory with precise guided bombs in order to meet this requirement. However, that capability will make Chinese regime more nervous and the Chinese communists would make an effort to take a preemptive attack on the U.S. assets.
It should not misunderstand that ‘advanced IW (Intelligence Warfare)/EW (Electronic Warfare) capability’ is a new thing even though it deals with intangible elements, because it is just an element derived from a notion of preferring a conventional war pattern. U.S. military organizations are still stressing on physical capabilities while they uses the intangible means as a means of assistance. Thus, the advanced IW would be used to generate information in the range of supporting physical attacks while the EW would be applied to additional, but indirect missions. On the other hand, Chinese PLA has prepared military capabilities since the Gulf War of 1991 and one of them is enforcement of IW and EW based on the concept
‘local war under the intelligence war’. Critical situation is that high-tech war system of U.S.
Military Forces would be a deadwood when China attacks on this system because modern war of U.S. depends on the network centric C4ISR system with NCW concept while the situation causes problems of integrity on the component operations with allied forces. Hence, this capability would develop a technical alternative centered on security verification, integration, and back up function between individual electronic nodes linked with combat systems.
‘Maintenance of the non-surface maritime combat force’ is an important requirement for making steady mission progress on the ASB doctrine, having a direct capability to neutralize the Chinese A2/AD forces. In detail, using the term ‘non-surface maritime force’ is to
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consider exposure of the U.S. surface vessels because environmental of the ASB doctrine mainly consists of the oceans. In the respect, U.S. submarines can be a strength point, compared with poor underwater forces of the China. For example, technical deficiency of acoustic surveillance systems such as sonar or SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System) will limit to search and track U.S. submarines. Moreover, geographical effects of complicated continental shelf and involved tidal currents under Chinese littorals will make the missions more difficult. Therefore, submarines can be a main weapon in this requirement as well as air powers.
Because these ROCs are eventually derived from the doctrinal inclination depends on military technologies, ‘development & application of leading-edge technology’ will receive continuous attention in the future. Lastly, U.S. Military Force will accentuate ‘enforcement of cooperation relations for component/joint operations’ in terms of following two aspects. One aspect is to integrate forces for maximizing cross-domain synergy and another is to promote combined operations with U.S. allied forces.