Air/Sea Battle is a global operational military concept reliant on coordinated operations across domains and centralized decision making to ensure the United States can project power wherever it wants, not just one particular region, the Navy and Air Force’s top uniformed officers said recently.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert discussed Air/Sea Battle recently at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Both leaders emphasized how the concept is designed to counter anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities developed by other nations. These include enhanced electronic and cyber warfare capabilities, advanced submarines, over-the-horizon surveillance and modern air defense systems. A2/AD is designed to prevent entrance to a space (anti-access) or restrict movement within a space (area denial).
Greenert said an essential component of Air/Sea Battle is improved real-time coordination and a “tightly-coordinated operation” across multiple warfare domains, ranging from air to space to cyber to land to water. He cited using electronic warfare to defeat radars to protect surface and air operations or using submarines to defeat air defenses as examples of the Air/Sea Battle concept. Or perhaps stealth global strike on anti-air warfare destroyers to enable air operations.
Greenert also said part of the Air/Sea Battle concept is more centralized decision making.
“Our cross-domain actions are going to have to be more centralized,” he said. “Should we be looking at missions, strike, cyber as something that crosses those domains in a command and control operation? Air/Sea Battle provides the means to do that.”
Not only is Air/Sea Battle a tactical warfare strategy, it also applies to acquisition and procurement, according to Schwartz. He said encouraging the use of common platforms, like the Air Force’s MQ-1B Global Hawk unmanned aerial surveillance vehicle (UAV), developed by Northrop Grumman [NOC], and the Navy’s MQ-4C Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) UAV, also developed by Northrop Grumman, is a major component of Air/Sea Battle. BAMS is a maritime version of the Global Hawk intended to perform medium to high-altitude surveillance operations.
“What we want to do is ensure we approach acquisition, procurement and system development in a systematic, collaborative way,” Schwartz said. “The bottom line is that it is institutional, operational and materiel and if we do this on a routine basis, we will be a much better joint force.
Air/Sea Battle ideas are very similar to those expressed in the Pentagon’s Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC) released in January. The JOAC describes capabilities deemed essential for the joint force to ensure it can enter and maintain access anywhere and in any domain.