Marines, Navy Reach Out To Army, Air Force For Expeditionary Warfare

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http://breakingdefense.com/2013/10/marines-navy-reach-out-to-army-air-force-for-expeditionary-warfare/



Marines, Navy Reach Out To Army, Air Force For Expeditionary Warfare
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on October 30, 2013 at 11:05 AM

PORTSMOUTH, VA: This is a Navy town, just minutes from the massive Atlantic Fleet base at Norfolk. But when Navy and Marine Corps leaders convened here yesterday for their annual conference on expeditionary warfare, traditionally a Navy-Marine affair, they reached out to the other services in unprecedented ways. Message No. 1: After 12 years of inland warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, all the armed services, not just the Navy and Marines, need to refocus on rapid response to crises around the world. Message No. 2: No single service, nor even the tight-knit Navy-Marine Corps team, can handle the expeditionary warfare challenge on its own.

So yesterday, on the first day of the National Defense Industrial Association‘s 18th Annual Expeditionary Warfare Conference, the Navy and Marine Corps speakers were actually outnumbered by the other services: There were two Navy admirals and one Marine general, but two Army generals, a one-star from the Air Force, and a three-star admiral from the US Coast Guard spoke as well. (The Coasties, except in time of war, are not even part of the Department of Defense.) That line-up was more joint than it has been in years, and that was not an accident. At a time when tightening budgets are pushing the services to compete, NDIA very consciously chose to emphasize cooperation and outright interdependence.

When the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division says it can get paratroopers on the ground in 24 hours anywhere in the world, for example, obviously they’re counting on the Air Force to get them there, just as the Marines depend on Navy ships. ”This is an inherently joint business for us,” said the 82nd’s commander, Maj. Gen. John Nicholson. “Our expeditionary capability has to be a joint capability or frankly it is an exhibition,” not an expedition. Pointing to a slide of the Airborne’s major training events, he noted, “every exercise you see here is a joint exercise.”

But interservice interdependence goes far beyond that. It’s long-range Air Force bombers that can show up first to any fight at any range from the United States. It’s the Air Force – using land-based aircraft — and the Navy — using both aircraft launched from carriers and missiles launched from destroyers and submarines — that crack open anti-ship and anti-aircraft defenses so the paratroops’ transports and the Marines’ amphibious assault ships can get through. (This is particularly important against China‘s and Iran‘s increasingly sophisticated layered defenses, known as anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems). In the major Airborne-Air Force exercises, Nicholson said, the Air Force practices breaking through air defenses, not just dumping soldiers out of planes.