President's forum - US Navy Seapower 21

Naval War College Review, Spring, 2003

Sea Shield will have many features and interrelated capabilities, such as airborne surveillance and tracking, long-range ship-launched counter-air weapons, and the ability to engage cruise missiles well inland. Most significant will be the Navy's contribution to missile defense. It will be the early-arriving cruisers and destroyers that protect vital ports and airfields to enable our forces to enter safely theaters of operations overseas. Indeed, our entire national strategy relies on rapid airlift and heavy sealift to get our Marines, soldiers, and airmen to the fight. Our sailors will provide the initial defense to enable their comrades in arms to reach the battlefield. Sea Shield will also provide a protective umbrella over the continental United States. No task is more important, nor is any more difficult, than shielding the lives and property of American forces and the American people.

Sea Basing. A fundamental strength of naval forces has always been their ability to conduct military operations from the sea for extended periods of time. U.S. Navy ships have always been virtual "islands of sovereign territory" that operate free from the restrictions of base rights, overflight permission, or political entanglements. The universally recognized "right of free passage" through international waters provides the United States with the most independent and secure maneuver space for joint military forces. A recent article in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings made this point:

Sea Basing will be increasingly central to joint military planning because the traditional advantages enjoyed by afloat forces--such as independence, mobility, and security--are becoming ever more important to military affairs, while traditional limitations of sea-based forces--including operational reach and connectivity--have been largely overcome by new technologies and concepts of operations (Vice Admiral Charles W. Moore, Jr., USN, and Lieutenant General Edward Hanlon, Jr., USMC, "Sea Basing: Operational Independence for a New Century," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, January 2003, pp. 80-85).

The Sea Basing concept brings together the capabilities of the Navy's combatant, command and control, and support ships with the impressive array of oilers, stores ships, ammunition ships, oceangoing tugs, hospital ships, and maritime prepositioning ships operated by the Military Sealift Command. Joining this force will be Coast Guard assets and the transports and logistics support ships operated by the U.S. Army. Netted together with improved C41 (command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence) systems, combatant commanders can operate from this powerful multiship "floating base," indeed an entire overseas fleet, which can remain on station in support of combat operations for extended periods. Many components of the Sea Basing concept exist today, but future capabilities will result from investment in modern focused prepositioning ships; faster and more capable vertical-lift aircraft; high-speed surface craft, such as the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), for agile inshore transshipment; and new of fload and in-stream cargo handling techniques. Developing the right ships to support a joint force operation in harm's way ashore is key to realizing fully the benefits to our nation of basing at sea.