![]() Our scientists, Sailors, and strategists are doing remarkable things to push today’s boundaries and develop new ways to maintain our edge. We are working hand-in-glove with our Marine Corps partners and sister services. We continue to up our game through training, experimentation, wargames, and new technologies. Those combine to make us a more capable and adaptive force that will outpace any adversary - especially in a world of rising complexity. Superior equipment, more agile operating concepts, and most importantly high-performing teams, will lead us to better thinking and faster learning. The Navy’s focus must remain on maintaining maritime superiority, with a deep understanding of the interplay between tactics and strategy, against specific threats, in specific locations, to achieve that end. Instead, we will talk about the specifics of our strategies and capabilities, relative to those of our potential adversaries and within the context of specifics of their geography, concepts, and technologies. Since different theaters present unique challenges, a single term will just create further confusion. So what should we say instead? I am not proposing to replace one acronym with another. So we have to resist the temptation to oversimplify this conversation with a “one-size-fits-all” approach. And while there may be some universal elements to the technologies and tactics we will use, there are just as many differences. This variety has a major impact on how naval forces will best seize and maintain the initiative. Different geographies dictate a wide variety of concepts and technologies that enemies will use to fight in those different areas. Those areas have different geographic features like choke points, islands, ocean currents, and mountains. Potential adversaries challenge us in different parts of the world. This lack of rhetorical precision has real consequences. For example, what must be done to stay ahead of our adversaries when anyplace in the world will be imaged on demand with real-time video? This world will soon be upon us. We fail to consider the question of what is the next development that will take the contest and competition to a higher level. If we fixate on A2AD, we are not looking far enough forward. And we can’t let A2AD distract us from new and unsolved problems lurking just around the corner. The examples above show that this has been done before.įinally, the A2AD problem is currently well understood - challenging, but understood. Inside-out, as well as outside-in, from above and from below - we will fight from every direction. The reality is that we can fight from within these defended areas and if needed, we will. Naval action map reality how to#It can contribute to a mindset that starts with how to operate from beyond the red arcs - an “outside-in” approach. Third and related, A2AD is inherently oriented to the defense. Those arcs represent danger, to be sure, and the Navy is going to be very thoughtful and well prepared as we address them, but the threats are not insurmountable. Achieving a successful engagement requires completion of a complex chain of events, each link of which is vulnerable and can be interrupted. The images imply that any military force that enters the red area faces certain defeat - it’s a “no-go” zone! But the reality is much more complex. Often, I get into A2AD discussions accompanied by maps with red arcs extending off the coastlines of countries like China or Iran. The second reason is that the term “denial,” as in “anti-access/area denial” is too often taken as a fait accompli, when it is, more accurately, an aspiration. Indeed, controlling the seas and projecting power - even in contested areas - is why our nation invests in and relies upon a naval force in the first place. Think Nelson at the Nile and at Copenhagen, Farragut at Mobile Bay, Nimitz and Lockwood in the Pacific… this is nothing new. But history has much to teach us about maintaining perspective on these developments and on charting the path forward to address them. It is only relatively recently in our conversation about warfighting that we have discussed these trends as something new. As technologies change, tactics change to react to and leverage them. The history of military contests is all about adversaries seeking to one-up each other by identifying their foes at longer ranges and attacking them with ever more destructive weapons. ![]()
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