The Army and Sea Control
Reconsidering Maritime Strategy in the Twenty-first Century
Nathan A. Jennings, PhD
https://doi.org/10.21140/mcuj.20221302010 Abstract: This article argues that the U.S. Army, rather than the traditional maritime Services, has an emergent opportunity to increase relevancy by exercising sea control to guarantee American access to global markets in competitive spaces in the twenty-first century. In a strategic environment where adversaries are developing sophisticated defenses in-depth to negate American power projection, the institution has a unique capability to create forward positions of advantage with reimagined operational fires commands at scale—as the nucleus of Joint, interagency, and multinational teams—to protect economic prosperity and preserve coalition unity in Central Europe and Southeast Asia in particular, and across the world in general. Advocating for a shift in operational approach that subordinates tactical maneuver in support of operational fires, this article differs from previous scholarship by asserting that the Army should fully embrace sea control, rather than merely providing support to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, to better enable the Joint execution of American and coalition strategies in contested regions.
Keywords: maritime domain, seapower, sea control, Army, Navy, Marines, Alfred T. Mahan, Pacific War, trade, market access, strategy, operational fires command, fires, Joint operations, multidomain operations, combined arms, China, Russia
The U.S. Army faces a daunting task in the emerging strategic environment. As it looks forward to how it will compete in a future global arena that portends a rising China and revanchist Russia, the land power institution must argue for credible relevancy, and therefore sufficient funding at a time when other U.S. military Services and agencies are competing for a finite share of national resources. As in any era, this requires the Army to provide a compelling argument that balances requirements for both readiness and modernization. This means that it must present to policy makers in the Department of Defense, the U.S. Congress, and the White House a convincing rationale that justifies support for a purpose-built ground force capable of deterring, and if need be, defeating both peer adversaries and a complex array of rogue state, nonstate, and terror organizations in a variety of expeditionary settings.
https://www.usmcu.edu/Outreach/Marine-Corps-University-Press/MCU-Journal/JAMS-vol-13-no-2/The-Army-and-Sea-Control/
