A respected Navy advocate welcomes the Army to the sea fight in the Pacific. But will it be a full-domain fight?
China's naval and air power are rising rapidly while China's distance to our key allies hasn't budged. The Navy needs help in the Pacific. From itself by growing and focusing on anti-ship, anti-aircraft, and anti-submarine warfare. And from the Marines, the Coast Guard, the Air Force, and allies.
And the Army's help is welcome, too:
Under the [Army] multi-domain concept, light army units will deploy as “inside forces” along Asia’s first island chain in stressful times. They will defy China’s access- and area-denial defenses, remaining within the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) weapons-engagement zone and enduring or eluding punishment while meting out heavy blows of their own. Demonstrated resilience and combat capability will give heart to allies who may doubt America’s staying power and ability to keep its security commitments to them. U.S. alliances will hold.
And Xi Jinping will weep bitter tears.
And yes, at some level the Army role is welcome and normal. The Army used to have a major coastal defense role before World War II. The Army offer is based on both need and tradition.
But while the Army's power projection role does not have the same length of tradition, it is arguably more important on the author's own terms:
For nautical sage Julian Corbett, in fact, maritime strategy chiefly means determining “the mutual relations of your army and navy in a plan of war.” Commanders choreograph the actions of naval and land forces to shape events on land—which, as Corbett points out, is where humanity lives and thus is where wars are ultimately settled. Navies—and, today, other combat arms such as air and space forces—are enablers for groundpounders.
That's fine. The Navy isn't just the means the Army goes overseas to bleed. The Army can help the Navy win control of the seas. Which the Army needs. Nobody in the Army wants to be sent overseas where it will be cut off and left to die.
Ultimately, when sea control is established, the Army must be prepared to go ashore in force--even if the threat is never carried out--to win a land campaign as part of a multi-domain war effort to defeat China. I addressed that issue three years ago in Military Review.
If you want to settle the war and not just have an armistice before round two, America and its allies will need to shape events on the land.
That will inspire Xi Jinping's bitter tears.
