Influence Squadrons
With a hat tip to Galrahn at Information Dissemination – Buy Ford, Not Ferrari by Commander Henry J. Hendrix, U.S. Navy at Proceedings.
… A key tenet of post-9/11 strategic thought is that extremist religious terrorism is avoidable. Societies with infrastructural resources such as electricity, clean water, public education, and some modicum of medical care do not generally incubate extremist groups in their midst. Naval forces that have basic abilities to police the sea lines of communication while also seizing port call opportunities to build the basic communal building blocks of productive life ought to be an important component of the future Navy.
The next step on the Navy’s path to a new future should be the creation of “Influence Squadrons” composed of an amphibious mother ship (an LPD-17 or a cheaper commercial ship with similar capabilities), a destroyer to provide air, surface, and subsurface defensive capabilties, a Littoral Combat Ship to extend a squadron’s reach into the green-water environment and provide some mine warfare capabilities, a Joint High Speed Vessel to increase lift, a Coastal Patrol ship to operate close in, and an M80 Stiletto to provide speed and versatility.
The Influence Squadron should also heavily employ unmanned technologies to further expand the squadron’s reach. Unmanned air, surface, and subsurface platforms could be deployed and monitored by the various vessels, extending American awareness, if not American presence.
These forces, operating every day around the world, would represent the preponderance of visible U.S. naval power. Their understated capabilities would epitomize America’s peaceful, non-aggressive intent, and would carry out the new maritime strategy’s stated purpose of providing positive influence forward. However, the Influence Squadron, carrying credible firepower across a broad area of operations, could also serve to either dissuade or destroy pirate networks that might seek to prey upon increasingly vulnerable commercial sea lines of communication…
Much more at Proceedings.
And more at Information Dissemination – Influence Squadrons – The Next Evolution
… The “Influence Squadron” should sound very familiar to readers here, because it is essentially the strategic concept forwarded on this blog of what I have previously called Littoral Strike Groups. Essentially, it is a call for an organizational framework of ships to operate IN the littorals instead of conducting operations in the littoral from over the horizon. I particularly like the idea because it leverages coastal patrol vessels (PCs) and small fast boats (M-80s), supported by a combination of a Marine Company (LPD-17), credible firepower (DDG-51), unmanned systems (LCS), and NECC capabilities (JHSV) with credible littoral centric capabilities. I don’t really care about the debate regarding the specific platforms, it doesn’t matter and is parochial to the discussion, the specific platform should be derived from requirements planning anyway. What is important is the layered blue-green-brown water approach which I believe is strategically solid as a driving requirement for a littoral organizational squadron, and a tactical necessity for any legitimate littoral influence.
My only point would be this. On the coastal patrol vessels and the small, fast boats the payload is manpower, not missiles. Armed with guns, built for endurance and to be sustainable, capable of having crews rotated at sea while equipment can be repaired at sea; this type of sustained organizational task group can establish regional maritime domain awareness by distributing sensors, leverage helicopters and armed UAVs to engage in combat when the task is required, and be the physical presence to uncover opposition forces operating with stealth in the complex human terrain of the littorals. In this type of organization, the Littoral Combat Ships can be C2 nodes for multiple coastal patrol vessels and small, fast boats operating as ink spots on regional seas.
This type of organizational task group becomes the perfect match for all of our desired cooperative partnerships. We know the LPD and JHSV are the desired platforms for our Global Partnership Stations. We have seen the good results with both of those platforms. We also know our littoral forces need the sensors and capabilities the LCS delivers, and we need the warfighter capabilities of our AEGIS ships to protect our organized task forces, so both of those platforms make sense. What we also need though are the low end, small platforms that can work with partners at the level they are comfortable with, the PC and small, fast boat level…
Much more at Information Dissemination – Note: also see the comment section below the blog entry.
Also see Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century by Henry Hendrix.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval Diplomacy examines President Roosevelt’s use of U.S. naval seapower to advance his diplomatic efforts to facilitate the emergence of the United States as a great power at the dawn of the twentieth century. Based on extensive research, the author introduces a wealth of new material to document the development of Roosevelt’s philosophy with regard to naval power and his implementation of this strategy. The book relates Roosevelt’s use of the Navy and Marine Corps to advance American interests during the historically controversial Venezuelan Crisis (1902 03), Panama’s independence movement (1903), the Morocco-Perciaris Incident (1904), and the choice of a navy yard as the site for the negotiations that ended the Russo-Japanese War. The voyage of the Great White Fleet and Roosevelt’s initiatives to technologically transform the American Navy are also covered. In the end, the book details how Roosevelt’s actions combined to thrust the United States forward onto the world s stage as a major player and cemented his place in American history as a great president despite the fact that he did not serve during a time of war or major domestic disturbance.This history provides new information that finally puts to rest the controversy of whether Roosevelt did or did not issue an ultimatum to the German and British governments in December 1902, bringing the United States to the brink of war with two of the world s great powers. It also reveals a secret war plan developed during Panama s independence movement that envisioned the U.S. Marine Corps invading Colombia to defend the sovereignty of the new Panamanian republic. Theodore Roosevelt s Naval Diplomacy brings new understanding to how the U.S. Navy was used to usher in the American century.
Cdr. Henry J. Hendrix, USN, is a career naval officer currently assigned to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. In his twenty years of active service he has made six operational deployments and earned advanced degrees from the Naval Postgraduate School and Harvard University, as well as a PhD from King s College, London. A Naval Historical Center Samuel Eliot Morison Scholar and the 2006 recipient of the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement, he is the author of numerous articles in professional journals. He lives in northern Virginia.
