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New program could redefine AF-Navy joint ops

A small group of officers at the Pentagon is in the early stages of work on a new concept to combine the capabilities of the Air Force and Navy, offset their vulnerabilities and better use their assets to deter or defeat future enemies.

The idea has the potential, some observers think, to revolutionize the way the Air Force and Navy work with each other.

“This is the next big thing,” one veteran analyst said.

“It’s about putting missions on the table and cutting the pie a different way,” an industry analyst added.

Called the Air-Sea Battle Concept, the work is being done at the behest of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, based on ideas espoused by Pentagon strategist Andrew Marshall.

With the blessing of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead — who signed a classified memorandum of agreement in late September to kick off the effort — the work is in its earliest stages but is seeking to gain a global perspective.

“We’re trying to present forces that are forces for stability and deterrence in the face of rapid militarization and advancing threats to U.S. power projection that could be destabilizing for everybody,” said Tom Ehrhard, a strategist who is a special assistant to Schwartz. “This is really more of an issue of trying to maintain global and regional crisis stability and deterrence.”

The effort will be driven by a group of officers ranking no higher than an Air Force colonel or Navy captain, four from each service.

“We’re keeping it to a relatively small group right now to make it manageable,” said Rear Adm. Robert Thomas, director of the Navy’s Strategy and Policy Division (N51). The group is embarking on a worldwide “listening tour” of theater commanders, asking them to look out “at threats over the next 10, 20 years, and see what’s developing, especially in the high-end of warfare.”

Their core question, Thomas said, will be “how do we integrate Air Force and Navy capabilities to meet your needs?”

Ultimately, the work will go after “not only those capabilities able to be integrated to give us better fighting power, better endurance, better mobility, [but] we’re also trying to identify gaps in capabilities, see where the Air Force or Navy capabilities can fill those gaps such that we are optimized as a joint force,” he said.

“There will be, I suspect, some gaps where the Navy and Air Force may not have an optimal capability right now and it needs to be developed over time in an integrated fashion.”

The joint agreement did not set a specific number of objectives.

“The MoA was very broad-brush,” Thomas said. “It basically set out the timelines and level of effort we want to put to this and what our overall objective is.”

Each service chief mentioned items that concerned him.

“This is a win-win,” Schwartz said. “It’s a recognition that we as the Air Force and the Navy have far more in common than what separates us given the nature of the threats, challenges and the budget pressures we both face.”

Among the issues that have to be resolved, Schwartz added, is how the two services will better integrate their operations centers. The Air Force’s air operations centers are critical to how the service functions. But the Navy’s new maritime operations centers use different information-sharing protocols, and those likely will need to be resolved.

“It’s a great start, but we’ve got some work to do,” Roughead said. “Clearly there’s room for cooperation. The Air Force operates Global Hawks, and we’re going to operate them as well. We’re both interested in [unmanned aircraft], and there are other areas where we can work together. The challenge is working out the details.”

One veteran analyst applauded the move.

“In an environment where the administration and the Pentagon are looking at ways of using what we have and not buying new stuff, this is very attractive. It’s about ways you can get new efficiencies out of things we already have in the Air Force and Navy,” the analyst said. “We have to get command and control of our command and control.”

Cold war roots

The idea for the effort derives to the Cold War Air-Land Battle concept of the early 1980s. That work strove to identify how the Army and Air Force handled overlapping missions such as air-ground support and worked to integrate supporting capabilities, such as Air Force ground-attack aircraft and Army attack helicopters and artillery.

“We see that Air-Land Battle synergy still working with the Air Force and Army,” said Ehrhard. “We need that emphasis on cooperation between the Air Force and Navy.”