NAVAL TRANSFORMATION, GROUND 

FORCES, AND THE EXPEDITIONARY IMPULSE:

THE SEA-BASING DEBATE

Geoffrey Till

December 2006

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iii

FOREWORD

In an expeditionary age where the modern emphasis 

is upon joint operations, it is easy to forget the extent 

of the contribution that naval forces may make, and 

indeed need to make, to the successful conclusion of 

operations ashore. This Letort Paper focuses on the 

modern concept of sea-basing but argues that in an era 

of naval transformation, it is important to remember 

that the maritime effect on land operations is far greater 

than that. 

The author, Dr. Geoffrey Till, demonstrates that 

point by making extensive use of allied, and particularly 

British, experience to set alongside American views 

and uses his subject to investigate the whole concept 

of naval transformation in the early 21st century. His 

conclusion is that, while there certainly are novel 

aspects to sea-basing, the concept, if not the words, 

would have been familiar to the navies of the past.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 
iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

GEOFFREY TILL is the Professor of Maritime Studies 

at the Joint Services Command and Staff College and 

a member of the Defence Studies Department, part 

of the War Studies Group of King’s College, London. 

In addition to many articles and chapters on various 

aspects of defense, he is the author of a number of 

books including Air Power and the Royal Navy (1979); 

Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age (2nd ed., London: 

Macmillan, 1984), Modern Sea Power (London: Brassey’s, 

1987), and, with Bryan Ranft, The Sea in Soviet Strategy

(2nd ed., London: Macmillan, 1989). More recently 

he has edited Coastal Forces (London: Brassey’s 

1994), Sea Power: Theory and Practice (London: Frank 

Cass, 1994), and Seapower at the Millennium (Stroud: 

Suttons Publishing, 2001). The Challenges of High 

Command: The British Experience with Gary Sheffield 

followed, and, with the aid of a research grant from 

the British Academy, he has completed a major study, 

Seapower: A Guide for the 21st Century (London: Frank 

Cass, 2004). The Development of British Naval Thinking

(London: Routledge, 2006) followed. Forthcoming are 

On Naval Transformation (London: Praeger, 2008) and 

a major study of the impact of globalization on naval 

development. His works have been translated into nine 

languages, and he regularly lectures at staff colleges 

and conferences around the world.
v

SUMMARY

The end of the Cold War has ushered in a period 

in which Western military forces have engaged 

primarily in expeditionary operations. These have 

turned out to be much more complex politically than 

first thought and have required naval planners to 

focus on delivering effects from the sea rather than at 

sea. Accordingly, navies around the world are going 

through a time of transition and transformation in 

which questions are being asked about their priorities, 

the relative importance of their contributions to joint 

and combined campaigns, and how these best might 

be provided. 

Because of the understandably widespread fixation 

on the warfighting phase of the expeditionary operation, current conceptions of the naval contribution, 

even in the United States, do not pay sufficient regard 

to the less obvious aspects of the naval contribution to 

campaigns which mostly are by their nature maritime. 

It is easy, for example, to neglect the importance of 

the diplomatic activity which acts as a kind of beforeand-after-sales service to the main warfighting event. 

Naval diplomacy, of course, may reduce the necessity 

for high-intensity expeditionary operations in the first 

place. But even when it does not, a naval diplomatic 

campaign to win friends and influence people and 

to deter potential malefactors should be designed to 

create the optimum political context within which the 

expeditionary campaign may be fought. The same can 

be said for the naval effort to assure maritime security 

by maintaining good order at sea against those that 

threaten it (such as waterborne terrorists, pirates, 

smugglers, arms suppliers, and the like). Even navies 
vi

with their institutional and budgetary priorities for 

the requirements of high-intensity capabilities have 

a tendency to neglect these less visible low-intensity 

tasks that often are crucial to the winning and, as 

important, the sustaining of victory in the land 

campaign.

While the U.S. Navy may be taking the lead 

in developing capabilities of direct value to the 

prosecution of expeditionary operations, many other 

navies are doing so as well, if on a smaller and less 

ambitious scale, although this widespread effort may 

be predicated on assumptions about “an expeditionary 

future” which, in the end, may not be obtained. There 

are three maritime requirements of expeditionary 

warfare. First is the capacity to maintain sea control on 

the open ocean and in the littorals to protect the force 

and enable it to engage in missions against the land. 

Second is the projection of power ashore, and third 

is the provision of sea-based logistical support for 

maritime forces at sea and land forces ashore. These 

are interrelated in complex ways and should not be 

considered as separate and discrete.

The maintenance of sea control raises issues about 

the difference and relative priority between operations 

in the littoral and on the open ocean, and provides a 

set of significant technological challenges to today’s 

naval planners and force developers. The effectiveness 

of the response of these planners to these sometimes 

novel challenges will have significant implications for 

those involved in the land campaign because of their 

military and political reliance on high degrees of sea 

control. Political constraints of the sort revealed in the 

Iraq war of 2003 also have emphasized the advantages 

of maritime power projection.

The apparently newest aspect of the maritime 

contribution to the joint expeditionary campaign, 
vii

however, has been the emergence of the concept of 

sea-basing, which generally is regarded as the most 

“transformational” aspect of the issue. Its advocates 

consider it a sea change in the extent to which maritime 

forces can support land and air forces ashore, emphasize the extent to which recent operational experience 

has high-lighted its political and military advantages, 

and consider it a thoroughly “joint” asset. But, since 

future performance will be determined by the extent 

to which many of these anticipated capabilities can be 

delivered technologically, definitions and expectations 

remain ambiguous.

A brief review of the military experience of the 

20th century shows that the notion that navies can 

base military power at sea and can support forces 

ashore directly is by no means new, and a close study 

of the realities of the Normandy campaign of 1944, 

in particular, will reveal its historical strengths and 

weaknesses. Since that time, however, the demands of 

expeditionary operations have both grown and become 

more complex. Military conditions have become more 

difficult because of the increased distance from the 

home base, the unfamiliar and difficult terrain in which 

such operations may need to be conducted, and because 

of the growing sophistication of the adversary. On top 

of that, the political necessities of rebuilding the peace 

in fractured societies have placed an additional set of 

logistical burdens on any sea-based system intended 

to support the process.

Navies around the world, therefore, are busily 

reviewing their sea-basing policies in order to cope 

with these increasing demands. Solutions will depend 

on industry’s capacity to provide technical solutions to 

the many detailed requirements that are being identified and on the political and military establishment’s 
viii

ability to resolve key procedural difficulties. The first 

is largely a military-technical matter of producing 

the requisite platforms and capacities; the second, 

though, depends absolutely on service agreement, on 

a holistic approach to the entire sea-basing issue, and 

on government’s willingness to give sea-basing the 

financial and political support that it needs. 

For the time being, the expeditionary impulse will 

continue, and a quiet naval revolution is taking place 

in order to support it. But the extent to which these 

developments really will prove “transformational,” 

and whether practice confirms theory, remain to be 

seen. Much will depend on the political consequence 

of current events and on how well thought-out the 

project proves to be.
1

NAVAL TRANSFORMATION, GROUND 

FORCES, AND THE EXPEDITIONARY IMPULSE:

THE SEA-BASING DEBATE

INTRODUCTION

Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and 

Iraq have brought an increasing focus on the requirements of intervention, stabilization, and the subsequent transformation of fractured societies around the 

world. Experience shows that military victory on its 

own is not enough. For this to be translated into strategic 

success, the forces of intervention have to transform 

themselves from straightforward battle-winners into 

reconstruction forces. Such forces must be capable of 

providing and maintaining sufficient internal security, 

while helping provide all the services necessary to a 

settled society. “To conquer,” said Napoleon, “is easy; 

to rule is difficult.”

Recent experience suggests that the lessons learned 

with such difficulty by the allies when they confronted 

the chaos ensuing from the sudden collapse of Nazi 

Germany in 1945 were major casualties of the Cold 

War.1 In Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States and 

its allies are being reminded painfully that stabilization 

and reconstruction require larger numbers of troops 

on the ground for much longer than preintervention 

planners might have thought necessary, and that the 

soldiers in question need much more than “mere” 

warfighting skills. To relearn these lessons will likely 

require a shift in the organizational cultures of the 

armed services.2

Navies and air forces around the world have 

drawn from this experience the obvious conclusion 
2

that future defense priorities in countries with similar 

interventionist aspirations are likely to reflect a growing relative emphasis on the provision of intelligently 

trained and responsive “boots on the ground.” With 

resources being finite, defense expenditure on those 

aspects of air and naval forces whose function seems 

less than wholly related to this central aim seem likely 

to be limited.3

Accordingly, naval planners are changing their 

emphasis from power at sea to power from the sea. 

The traditional demands of bluewater sea control 

which have dominated naval spending for centuries 

have dropped way down the priority list. The Royal 

Netherlands Navy, for example, has emphasized,

The increasing importance of supporting land operations 

from the sea, the increase in tasks at the lower end of 

the spectrum of force, and the reduced scale of the 

traditional sea control and sea denial tasks. . . . Although 

these tasks, and the maritime supremacy of the West, 

continue to be important, they require fewer resources 

than was the case during the Cold War.4

Accordingly, the Dutch Navy currently is engaged 

in a major rebalancing of its capabilities, including a 

reduction in the number of bluewater M class frigates, 

the acquisition of additional smaller patrol vessels 

optimized for littoral operations, improved capacity 

for countering diesel submarines and mine warfare, 

development of an enhanced support vessel, the 

expansion and modernization of the Marine Corps, 

equipping their air defense and command frigates 

with tactical Tomahawks, and a theater ballistic missile 

defense upgrade.5

This policy reflects a great deal of original and 

innovative thinking about what the Dutch Navy needs 
3

to deliver in an expeditionary age—helping “resolve 

security problems within and outside Europe, even 

those that are at a considerable distance away.”6

These ambitions are entertained among navies 

all around the world, to a greater or lesser extent. 

The question arises: Does this amount to a real 

transformation in the roles of navies and the support 

they can offer ground forces engaged in expeditionary 

operations? 

SO WHAT CAN AND SHOULD NAVIES DELIVER?

A Before and After Sales Service.

The potential contribution of navies to expeditionary operations is summarized inadequately by the 

U.S. Navy’s mantra of “sea Shield, Sea Strike, and Seabase,” since much of its content and all of its tone seem 

to relate mainly to the “easy” conventional warfighting 

phase of the operation.7 However, navies have a great 

deal to offer before and after this central event.

In the first place, naval forces deployed in 

troublesome regions have considerable value in 

massaging the strategic environment, most especially in 

the crucial littoral areas. Such forces increase readiness; 

contribute to the capacity to signal strategic interest; 

provide a safe, effective, and controllable means of 

monitoring the situation ashore, and enable constructive relationships with other like-minded countries. The 

importance of the coalition-building aspect of naval 

diplomacy deserves emphasis, for political agreement 

on how international maritime forces are to be used, 

and what for, is the essential precursor for effective 

multinational collaboration. Accordingly, the recent 

exercise in the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa of a 
4

multinational mine-countermeasures squadron of the 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Response 

Force strengthens a useful military capability and also 

facilitates the kind of cooperative political thinking 

necessary for its actual use, should the requirement 

arise.8

For all its military power, even the United States 

needs allies to enhance legitimacy and to share 

the burdens in increasingly complex operations. 

This requires attracting more allied support before 

the conventional phase of the operation starts, not 

afterwards when the post-conflict phase is falling 

apart. In the analogy of one commentator, “bringing 

the allies in before the take-off may make for a more 

complicated flight, but a smoother landing.” Thus, 

“our vision is and ought to be to extend the peace 

through an interconnected community of maritime 

nations working together. The enemy goes global. So 

should we.”9

The more familiar, traditional, coercive aspects of 

naval diplomacy, once known as “gunboat diplomacy,” 

are aimed at putative adversaries rather than allies. 

They can deter those potential adversaries from 

doing things they might otherwise be tempted to do, 

or compel that them to do things they do not want to 

do.10 Coercive success here depends on convincing the 

adversary of the combat credibility of the naval forces 

in question and the political determination of the 

political authorities to use them if necessary. It works 

best when the aims are realistic, when the adversary 

can deliver what is expected of him, and when one’s 

naval forces are already on the scene, influencing the 

flow of events and not merely responding to them 

afterwards.

Naval presence also is crucial in managing threats 

to the international sea-based trading system, ranging 
5

from international crime (drugs and various forms of 

smuggling, for example) at one end of the spectrum 

to international terrorism at the other. These activities 

frequently are interconnected and geographically 

indivisible, since the sea covers about 71 percent of 

the earth’s surface. Therefore, a holistic response is 

required that unites navies and coast guard forces from 

different countries in common cause. 

To illustrate these points, the U.S., British, Australian, Singaporean, and other navies in the Persian Gulf 

have intercepted hundreds of small oil-smuggling 

craft, guarded oil rigs and merchant shipping from 

terrorist attack, and trained the Iraqi River Patrol and 

Iraqi Coastal Defense Force. These activities merge 

imperceptibly into the wider Operation ENDURING 

FREEDOM mission. Under this arrangement, set up in 

the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001 (9/11), 

a large number of the world’s navies is involved in a 

cooperative campaign against international terrorism 

by monitoring and intercepting all suspicious shipping, 

and trying to stamp out the smuggling activity used to 

finance it. In the Mediterranean, allied ships participate 

in NATO’s Operation ACTIVE ENDEAVOR. In 

addition to contributing directly to the world’s fight 

against international terrorism, this large-scale 

maritime monitoring exercise builds the cooperation 

between regional powers that indirectly supports the 

campaign.11

Similarly, through the Proliferation Security 

Initiative,12 allied navies seek to control the passage 

of materiel that could contribute to the acquisition of 

weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by disreputable 

regimes and organizations. Finally, the great majority 

of the world’s navies help protect the world trading 

system from terrorist attack by monitoring the 
6

implementation of the Container, Shipping, and Port 

Facility Security codes.

Activity of this sort is justified by the widespread 

expectation that it will help make expeditionary 

operations unnecessary, in many cases by nipping 

troubles and instabilities in the bud. But in the case 

of Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, 

and Iraq, such naval activities provide a kind of aftersales service as well, helping to consolidate military 

victories won ashore, thus translating them into longterm strategic success. Maritime operations in the Gulf 

and Arabian sea therefore have an important role in 

supporting stabilization operations in Iraq, not least 

because of the need to protect that country’s legitimate 

oil exports, to intercept the passage of terrorists and 

their materials, to gather intelligence, and to fight 

organized crime in the area. Task Force 150, which 

operates in the Arabian Sea, is described as being “at 

the cutting edge of maritime security operations in a 

region that is rightly described as the ‘laboratory’ for 

those operations.” The fact that the Pakistan Navy 

recently has been entrusted with command of Task 

Force 150 is strong evidence of its significance for 

“theater security cooperation” and coalition-building. 

These are intended to have a significant effect on the 

strategic environment in which the new Iraq will need 

to operate.13

However, the priority of high-intensity operations 

means that these low-intensity precursor or follow-up 

operations fail to attract the funding their importance 

would seem to demand. In the American case, the 

long neglect of the U.S. Coast Guard and the virtually 

complete absence of discussion of such issues in Sea 

Power 21 exemplifies this indifference. The problem 

generally is less acute in most of the world’s other 
7

navies, where low-intensity operations are generally 

the accustomed mode, but it exists nonetheless. This 

being the case, it is hardly surprising that the other 

services, different agencies of government, and the 

news media fail to understand the importance of these 

kinds of activities.

The events of 9/11 and the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq have inspired the beginnings of a 

transformation within navies in their attitudes towards 

these naval activities, however. Although under 

continuing bugetary pressure, the Deepwater program 

will rectify many of the systemic weaknesses of the U.S. 

Coast Guard, and the issuance by the White House of 

a Presidential directive on Maritime Security14 argues 

strongly for a coherent and holistic approach across the 

whole threat spectrum, thereby helping to correct the 

Navy’s historical and understandable preoccupation 

with decisive battle. The current effort in the United 

States to revive the stalled National Fleet concept of 

integrating the activities of the U.S. Navy and the 

Coast Guard more successfully is further evidence of 

the determination to take general maritime security 

more seriously.15

We see this determination particularly in the current 

surge of interest in stabilization operations and in the 

comprehensive effects-based approach to the maritime 

sphere. Admiral Michael Mullen’s recent advocacy of 

a “Thousand Ship Navy” also demonstrates, perhaps 

belatedly, acceptance of a more rounded and catholic 

approach to the need for, and the requirements of, 

maritime security. Similar developments may be seen 

elsewhere in the world, although in most cases, a less 

fundamental transformation in outlook is required.

Nonetheless, quite clearly, such low-intensity 

precursor operations sometimes are not enough in 

themselves. Even at their most robust, the crisis may 
8

happen or degenerate anyway. At that stage, full-force 

navies themselves need to move into the territory 

described in Seapower 21 if they are to make a substantial 

contribution to the conduct of the expeditionary 

operations ashore.

THE EXPEDITIONARY IMPULSE

Contemporary interest in littoral maneuver began 

after the end of the Cold War because of the the growing 

relative importance of the coastal zone in terms of 

population agglomerations, economic activity, and 

the strategic problems those developments entailed. It 

began to seem that the Coastal Zone was the locus of all 

the important events. The coastal zone itself has grown 

as the range of sensors and weaponry expands the area 

in which naval activity can have a direct and immediate 

impact on events ashore, and vice versa. During the 

Afghanistan operation, for example, coalition forces 

projected troops 400 miles inland when 600 U.S. 

Marines helicoptered into Bibi Tera airfield in only 4 

hours, almost certainly the longest, fastest operational 

deployment in U.S. Marine Corps history.16

Accordingly, the maritime emphasis has shifted 

from power at sea to power from the sea. Naval 

thinking around the world has come to conceive of the 

sea not just as a strategic medium of transportation, 

but as the world’s greatest maneuver space, the means 

by which military power might quickly and effectively 

be brought to bear on the world’s trouble spots. 

This has resulted in a remarkable growth of joint 

interest in the conduct of expeditionary operations 

as exemplified in the shifting defense policies of an 

increasing number of countries around the world. 

Planners focussed on the various requirements 

associated with littoral maneuver at all levels from 
9

humanitarian interventions to all-out conventional 

war. 

While the United States may be taking the lead, the 

phenomenon is universal, as other countries respond 

to the same challenges. The United Kingdom (UK), 

Australia, Japan, Singapore, France, the Netherlands, 

Germany, Italy, Spain, and other European countries 

also share an increasing sense that the new international 

context increasingly will require combined national 

action. These countries see themselves as having to 

become security providers in defense of national and, 

often more importantly, systemic interests that derive 

from universal dependence on globalized sea-based 

trade. This system, the argument goes, is faced with 

a myriad of threats ranging from the possibility of 

overt attack from hostile groups or countries on the 

one hand, to the prospect of general disorder on the 

other. The events of 9/11 only served to confirm this 

perception. 

One caveat is in order, however. The long-term 

consequence of the attacks, such as the al-Qai’da 

assault on the World Trade Towers in September 

2001, may discourage the conduct of expeditionary 

operations rather than encourage them, as generally 

is assumed now. If one of the justifications for 

expeditionary operations is to distance the homeland 

from the political instabilities abroad that threaten 

world peace and prosperity, we need to remind 

ourselves that 9/11 and its follow-ups in Madrid and 

London effectively overleapt such distancing and 

brought the crisis home.17 The reluctance of potential 

expeditionary powers to get involved in other people’s 

quarrels might be heightened if the enemy continues 

its retaliation on the homeland. Additionally, such 

outrages could well lead to a switch of effort away 
10

from expeditionary operations towards all aspects of 

homeland defense. Since financial and technological 

resources are finite, this could mean a declining 

willingness to prepare for expeditionary operations.18 It 

is plausible to argue from such points that we might at 

some future time unexpectedly find ourselves entering 

a “post-expeditionary” era19—in which many current 

assumptions will need reconsideration.

In short, defense planners of all persuasions might 

conclude that there is a need for caution in relying too 

heavily on expeditionary operations in their rationale 

for budgetary support, since such priorities may not 

last forever. For now, however, there are few signs of 

such a shift.

EXPEDITIONARY OPERATIONS—

THE MARITIME REQUIREMENTS

The ability to use the sea as maneuver space 

depends on the expeditionary powers’ capability to 

command the open ocean and the narrow seas in an 

adequate manner. Navies need to be able to project 

significant, appropriate, and sustained power ashore, 

to the extent that air and land forces ashore need 

such support. Navies require the physical capacity to 

transport military supplies and forces to the relevant 

spots, and to sustain them with everything they need 

for the duration of the subsequent operation.

These requirements have been explored in a variety 

of doctrinal formulations, especially in the U.S. Navy’s 

Sea Power 21, largely under three mission headings: 

force protection, projection of power ashore, and seabased logistics. It is important to realize, however, that 

these three missions are interdependent and mutually 

supporting; moreover, the relationship between them 
11

is not necessarily linear. Accordingly, there are 

frequent warnings against “stove-piped” thinking 

about these requirements. For this reason, presumably, 

the Joint Integrating Concept for Sea-basing lists the 

protection of joint force operations and providing 

scalable, responsive joint power projection among the 

“principles of sea-basing.”20

SEA CONTROL AND FORCE PROTECTION

The navies and air forces involved in expeditionary 

operations need to be able to protect the passage by 

sea of the forces required, both on the open ocean 

and in coastal waters. This kind of assured theater 

access, in turn, depends on naval forces securing the 

degree of sea control necessary for them to operate 

effectively and for the shipping they protect to arrive 

safely at its destination and operate there according to 

requirements. In the Falklands campaign, the initial 

working assumption was that supply and logistic 

vessels would maintain the bulk of operational stocks 

for the land campaign afloat, but the Argentine air 

threat forced ships back, increasing their need to offload 

ashore. This adjustment changed the conduct of the 

support campaign, illustrating the extent to which the 

projection of power ashore and sea-basing depend on 

sea control and force protection.21

The continuing concern for force protection against 

all manner of traditional and novel threats was reflected 

in Sea Power 21 by the emphasis given to the concept 

of “Sea Shield”—a sensitivity that, in the wake of the 

attack on the USS Cole and the more recent threat to 

allied warships passing through the Strait of Gibraltar, 

has been echoed in many other navies, too. 

Such experiences served as a warning that it would 

be dangerous to push the “power-from-the-sea” 
12

strategy too far. The old tensions between the need 

to secure and maintain sea control while at the same 

time supporting operations ashore seem alive and 

well. Moreover, in the Iraq operation, U.S., British, and 

Australian naval forces were stretched thin in providing force protection for the merchant ships and highvalue warships the operations required. Admiral 

Horatio Nelson’s heart-felt plaint some 300 years 

ago about “a want of frigates” still appears highly 

germane.

That most of these operations take place in a littoral 

environment rather than on the open ocean makes for 

substantial differences in the conduct of the various 

maritime disciplines—for example, antisubmarine 

warfare (ASW) and antiaircraft warfare (AAW). As 

a result, expeditionary forces require high-grade 

equipment and skills that are specific to their particular 

task and operational area. With its projected family of 

littoral combat ships and its admittedly halting but 

growing interest in riverine warfare,22 the U.S. Navy 

clearly is moving into this field. Given its blue water 

preoccupations of the past, this is a significant and 

arguably transformational, development.

Similar radical changes are taking place in the 

navies of western Europe, although these have 

attracted much less attention. The development 

includes the Scandinavian navies. They, too, clearly 

have recognized that they have much to offer in the 

specialized area of coastal operations, including niches 

in multilateral maritime operations by preparing to 

operate in other peoples’ waters rather than their own. 

Resource shortages, even in the U.S. Navy, make such 

offers particularly welcome.23

Even so, at least three problems remain. First, there 

may be a tendency to focus force protection too much 
13

on the sea lines of communication and not enough 

on the security of sea ports, both of embarkation and 

arrival. There also is a natural tendency to concentrate 

on the safe and timely arrival of soldiers and their 

equipment in the theater, neglecting the dangers that, 

in these asymmetrical days, may be posed to their 

collection and dispatch at home. In the Iraq operation, 

Greenpeace attempted to interfere with the loading of 

military supplies for the British forces at the military 

port of Marchwood in Southampton Water. They were 

ineffective and harmless, but nonetheless represented 

a useful reminder of the vulnerability at the supplier’s 

end of the supply chain. 

Second, many would doubt the permanence of the 

shift of naval priorities away from oceanic sea control 

and towards its coastal force-protection variant. The 

emergence of new maritime powers such as Japan 

and China, or the recovery of Russia, might lead to 

a resurgence of peer competition and old-fashioned 

maritime rivalry on the high seas. The U.S. Navy’s 

current wariness about the prospective maritime 

expansion of China later in the century may be used to 

justify investment in more conventional forms of naval 

power. 

Third, the ability of naval forces to maintain an 

operational posture against relatively unsophisticated 

shore-based opposition can be exaggerated. The 

vulnerability of ships to coastal mines, small, quiet 

diesel submarines, terrorists on jet skis, or radical 

weaponry of the kind recently demonstrated by the 

Iranians, has to be taken seriously.24

It is important to recognize that the foregoing 

concerns are not simply naval in nature. Allied 

operations against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 

and 2003 would have been profoundly different had 
14

coalition forces needed to fight for sea control; they 

would have been impossible if such control had not 

been secured. Securing sea control in the littoral 

region and the consequent capacity to protect support 

shipping from harm are major contributions to the 

success of forces ashore, however indirect.

THE MARITIME CAPACITY TO PROJECT 

POWER ASHORE 

The Afghanistan operation showed how far from the 

sea expeditionary operations might have to be staged, 

and the range of support from afar the expeditionary 

forces might require. Hence the stress on sea strike in 

Sea Power 21. 

Justification for the interest in littoral operations 

and for the defense expenditure such interest implies 

lies in the unique contribution to the land campaign 

that navies claim to be able to make. British maritime 

doctrine, for example, takes a rosy view of what it 

claims are the essential attributes of maritime power: 

access; mobility; versatility; flexibility in response; 

adaptability in roles; inherent joint and multinational 

characteristics; sustained reach; resilience; lift capacity; 

and poise.25 These claims are based partly on historical 

experience and partly on new technological capacities 

in the shape of naval missiles, enhanced naval gunfire 

support, and so forth, which, taken together, means 

that the sea can influence the land more than formerly 

was the case.26

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM showed that the 

revolution in military affairs that has taken place since 

the end of the Cold War has transformed the kinetic 

effectiveness, range, and precision of the maritime 

contribution to the conduct of military operations 
15

ashore. The ambitious Littoral Combat Ship and DD(X) 

destroyer programs suggest that such upgrades are a 

continuing development. Moreover, it is a worldwide 

phenomenon, by no means restricted to the U.S. Navy 

and Marine Corps, as attested by the widespread and 

developing naval focus on organic aviation, shiplaunched, land-attack missiles, more sophisticated 

naval gunfire support, and enhanced amphibious 

capacities.

Although the scale of the technological advances 

this represents may be new, the basic principle is not. 

Navies around the world have conducted maritime 

power projection operations of various sorts for 

centuries. Indeed, they were the main activity of the 

British and other European navies during the 19th 

century. They continued throughout the 20th century, 

overshadowed perhaps by the greater attention 

understandably paid to classic peer conflict on the 

open ocean resulting from the urgent demands of 

World Wars I and II and the Cold War. With the 

conclusion of the latter, the main attention of many 

navies has reverted merely to its traditional focus on 

expeditionary capability—even if performed in rather 

different ways.

SEA-BASING

But what is claimed to be a fundamentally novel 

and therefore far more “transformational” aspect of the 

maritime contribution to the joint campaign ashore is 

the third element featured in Sea Power 21—sea-basing. 

Once again, this is not merely an American interest, 

since the same topic is being raised around the world. 27
16

However, sceptics tend to press three closely related 

questions:

1. What does sea-basing actually mean?

2. How new is it?

3. Will it be able to deliver to the customer ashore 

what it claims?

This is such a major issue for the future conduct of 

expeditionary operations and for the wider issue of a 

putative transformation in the maritime contribution 

to the joint campaign, that all three questions deserve 

serious investigation.

Claims and Definitions. 

The enhanced requirement to sustain forces ashore 

for complex, prolonged, and demanding operational 

periods has drawn attention to the new maritime 

solution. The concept envisages the ocean not just 

as the world’s greatest maneuver space, but also the 

world’s biggest truck parking lot.

Sea-basing is claimed to be more than simply a 

refinement of previous aspirations to support and 

supply military operations ashore from the sea. The 

Kosovo, Afghanistan, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Iraq 

operations all demonstrated that a variety of physical 

and political factors may reduce the availability of 

land bases and highlighted the potential advantages of 

keeping supporting supplies and military assets at sea. 

Accordingly, the aim is to marshall logistically while 

afloat rather than ashore, and to employ a direct onestage method of supplying the end-user rather than a 

two-stage process, making use of depots ashore.
17

Sea-basing also is intended to be a truly “joint” 

technique—and one with the capacity to offer endusers a support system that can be precisely focused, 

that is, scaled and tailored to the particular current 

and future needs of the end-user in various changing 

situations. Some of its advocates think of sea-basing in 

almost philosophical terms, pointing out that it should 

remove the distinctions between land and sea. Rather 

than representing sea-basing as a means of supplying 

the “teeth” ashore from the “tail” afloat, or requiring 

a cultural adjustment in priority from the teeth to 

the tail, advocates portray it as a movement toward 

merging the two. It is viewed as a national competence, 

a frame of mind, not just a mix of platforms or a set of 

procedures. 

Sea-basing of this sort would revolutionize, and 

perhaps transform, the operations of expeditionary 

forces by improving operational access, enhancing 

their capacity for both forward defense and effective 

response across a spectrum that starts with crisis 

management and ends with forcible entry. Sea-basing 

facilitates the early implementation of joint command 

and control of the operation, and greatly increases 

flexibility by allowing the shaping of forces for 

particular operations. Unsurprisingly, sea-basing of 

this sort has been identified in the United States as a 

“critical future joint military capability.”28

The sea-base, protected by the Navy’s Sea Shield, would 

provide the capability for joint forces to enter an area, 

forcibly if necessary, and move rapidly against the main 

objective while sustaining themselves from the sea, either 

until they could establish secure ports and airfields or 

for the entire duration of the operation.29
18

The Joint Integrating Concept definition, however, is 

slightly different:

The rapid deployment, assembly, command, projection, 

reconstitution, and re-employment of joint combat 

power from the sea, while providing continuous support, 

sustainment, and force protection to select expeditionary 

joint forces without reliance on land bases within the 

Joint Operations Area.30

Debate is plagued by such differences in definition 

and nuance. To an extent, American conceptions do 

seem to focus on sea-basing as a means of exploiting 

the ocean as the world’s largest truck parking space. 

British conceptions, on the other hand, extend the 

concept to include the ocean as a base from which 

to project military power ashore. The supply side of 

sea-basing is important, but not in itself a sufficient 

definition of the concept. Former British First Sea Lord, 

Admiral Sir Alan West, stated:

There is inevitably a strong logistics flavour, but Joint 

Sea-basing is more than just logistics—it is concerned 

with projecting power in the Littoral and beyond. . . . 

In summary, Joint Sea-basing is not a new idea, but its 

current and future application stretches wider than the 

predominantly logistics-centred use of the sea in the 

past.31

The U.S. Marine Corps shares the perception that 

there is more to sea-basing than logistics. According to 

Marine Major General Gordon Nash,

Sea-basing is not an entirely new concept, particularly 

for conducting amphibious operations. It was conceived 

during World War II to support naval forces fighting in 

the Pacific Theater that were located thousands of miles 

from any established logistics infrastructure. Today’s 

evolving sea-basing concept is much more than just 
19

logistics support. It’s about using the sea as maneuver 

space, being unencumbered by reliance on air or seaports 

of debarkation. It provides an immediate and protected 

environment for forward-deployed naval forces to 

assemble and initiate the correct response, without 

operational pause, to deter or react to an evolving crisis 

that threatens the national interests of the United States. 

It provides the means to support and sustain these forces, 

both at sea and on land, while engaging the enemy. 

If the situation requires, the sea-base can expand to 

accommodate surge forces to counter an escalating crisis. 

Sea-basing is at the core of naval transformation.32

General Nash, however, stipulates that sea-basing 

occurs within the context of joint operation:

Sea-basing will reduce operational dependence upon 

fixed and vulnerable land bases, and offer future Joint 

Force Commanders increased freedom of action to 

deploy, employ, and sustain forces.33

Such ambiguities in use and interpretation are 

not mere semantics. Whether sea-basing is to be a 

mainly Navy-Marine show is an important issue. The 

ambiguity and definitional differences we have seen 

reflect the reality of a conditional concept, the exact 

and required meaning of which depends absolutely on 

the context. The U.S. Navy’s version can be thought 

of as “silent on the particulars.”34 Sea-basing, for 

example, may be relative in terms of time. Should we, 

for example, be aiming for a sea-basing capacity that 

could last indefinitely, or should we be thinking about 

a more limited version which lasts only as long as it 

takes to move the capacity to sustain ashore? What is 

its envisaged scale? What is its level of defense? By 

conceptual definition, since sea-basing is tailored for 

each event, “no two sea-bases will look the same.”35

The protean nature of the concept makes assessing 
20

the transformational potential of sea-basing quite 

difficult. 

How Transformational?

Sea-basing is certainly new in the sense that it 

is little discussed in previous doctrinal formulations except in logistical appendices to other 

formulations. It is not featured, for example, in the 

“maritime strategy” of 1986. While it is claimed as 

the only strategic technique advanced in Sea Power 21

that is new,36 its transformational character remains a 

matter of debate. Sea-basing, moreover, may be seen 

as introducing changes that are more of degree than 

of kind. It may be seen as a capability that individual 

services and countries can “buy into” to varying 

degrees. In short, its transformational nature may well 

depend on its eventual objective manifestations in the 

real world.

However, the notion that navies can base military 

power at sea is not new. Navies always have taken their 

supplies with them to the extent possible, not least in 

support of traditional sea control missions. Admiral 

Nelson’s battlefleet, for instance, pursued a policy of 

securing sea control initially through the maintenance 

of patient blockades. “Keeping the sea” for long 

periods, often measured in years, depended on his 

ability to sustain those forces for as long as necessary. 

High professional standards in all aspects of logistical 

support at sea gave the Royal Navy numerous military 

advantages over its adversaries in the age of sail. 

In the 20th century, the fleet train concept was 

developed in the Pacific campaign of 1941-45 to the 

extent that Admiral Ernest King could claim correctly, 

“complete logistic support at sea had become a fact: 
21

it was no longer theory. The endurance of the fleet at 

sea was limited only by battle damage, and human 

and mechanical endurance.”37 The subsequent arrival 

of nuclear propulsion has magnified such capability 

severalfold. The value of naval auxiliary vessels 

capable of offering to forward fighting ships supplies, 

operational maintenance and repair, waste disposal, 

fresh water, and rest and relaxation, is accordingly 

as important as ever. Sustaining the fleet’s operations 

at sea to the degree envisioned by sea-basing will 

require at least incremental improvement in fleet train 

support. This is a major implication of Britain’s Military 

Afloat Reach And Sustainability (MARS) program, for 

example. 

Sustainment from the Sea. 

The critical issue, of course, revolves around the 

fleet’s capacity to support operations ashore. As we 

have noted, this support sometimes may need to 

be sustained over quite long periods of time. In the 

Gallipoli campaign of 1915, for example, the allied 

navies found themselves required to offer direct 

support continuously from April 1915 to January 1916. 

This support was comprehensive, including movement 

of forces to and around the theater of operations, naval 

gunfire support, and provision of food, ammunition, 

water, medical supplies, etc. Logistics and sea-based 

supply played a major role in shaping, and sometimes 

even determining, the campaign’s outcome. 

The British were able to establish a rear main base 

at Alexandria in Egypt and a forward operating base 

utilizing the great harbor at Mudros, 50 miles from 

the peninsula. Supplies were provided by a huge and 

variegated armada shuttling back and forth between 
22

Britain (and, in some cases, points as far away as 

Australia and New Zealand), Alexandria, Mudros, and 

the peninsula. 

Nonetheless, the scale and challenge of this sustainment effort never were mastered sufficiently by the 

British. This was the result of bad planning and very 

limited time for preparation. The planning flaws were 

due in large measure to lack of clarity on the aim of 

the campaign at the strategic level. This high-level 

indecision cascaded all the way down, for example, 

to faulty provision for medical support and casualty 

evacuation. In consequence, the British were unable to 

extend their bridgehead inland to the distance needed 

to develop the capacities to make the landed force 

essentially self-sufficient. Tactically, their supplies 

were under daily bombardment from the Turks; 

operationally, the campaign hardly moved beyond the 

amphibious phase. The main lesson of the Gallipoli 

campaign is that a failure to be absolutely clear 

about the objective and how it is to be achieved can 

have disastrous consequences for logistics planning, 

fundamentally undermining its prospects for success.

The same neglect and inattention to expeditionary 

logistics was evident in the U.S. Navy, Marines, and 

Army operations until well into World War II. Logistics 

were so bad for American forces in Russia in 1919—

“two little slices of bread . . . one spoon of stew, and one 

cup of coffee a day”—that the Americans were forced 

to steal their supplies from their allies, the British.38 In 

World War II, however, sea-based logistics began to 

receive its rightful priority. It was clearly at the heart 

of the Allied campaign in Normandy, the key issue 

being whether the Germans or the Allies could win 

the race to build up the most forces and supplies the 

fastest. According to Russell Hart, the German “defeat 

in Normandy was fundamentally a logistics defeat.”39
23

Both sides faced an expanding task on the one hand, 

and an increasing demand for resources on the other. A 

combat infantry division required 700 tons of supplies 

a day. By early September 1944, 37 divisions would 

need 26,000 tons per day, amounting to a staggering 

780,000 tons a month.40 It was the biggest such seabased supporting task to that point in history.

Logistics had a major impact on the shape of the 

Normandy campaign at every level. Operationally, 

the perceived importance of Cherbourg and other 

channel ports for the future support of the war in 

France framed the shape of the whole operation. The 

need to capture, restore, and exploit Cherbourg had 

a major—and strategically distracting—effect on the 

whole campaign in France. Because of it, there had to 

be two axes of advance. One would not suffice.

The Mulberry portable piers were intended to offset 

the attackers’ initial disadvantages in port off-load 

capacity and help them win the buildup race with the 

Germans. Constructing them required a tremendous 

industrial effort. Mulberry A at Omaha Beach was 

expected to handle seven Liberty ships, five large coastal 

freighters, and seven medium-sized coastal freighters 

at one time. The Mulberries and over-the-beach offloading together were expected to deliver 15,000 tons 

per day by D+10. For this to work, there also had to be 

effective air cover. 

Despite its optimistic planning, however, logistics 

for the Normandy campaign went awry,41 partly 

because of the tendency to overplan, insufficient 

flexibility, and excessive concentration on meeting the 

demands of the first few days of the landing. Ironically, 

the overplanning resulted from a conscious determination not to repeat the underplanning mistakes of 

Gallipoli. There was also an “us and them” attitude 
24

between the supplier and the end-user. It was all push 

and no pull.42

The logistics problems were compounded by the 

fact that it took much longer than expected to capture 

Cherbourg. The Germans resisted stubbornly and 

demolished the dock facilities so thoroughly that even 

by mid-July, the port was handling only 2,000 tons 

a day. Unfortunately, Mulberry A was wrecked and 

Mulberry B was damaged during a storm on June 19-

22, when 800 ships were beached, with 300 of them 

incapacitated. Fortunately, the U.S. Army’s Engineer 

Special Brigades showed it was easier than expected to 

clear and utilize the beaches themselves as landing sites. 

Even so, supplies by D+15 were only 61 percent of what 

had been planned, and there were severe ammunition 

and fuel shortages. Paradoxically, the slow progress 

of the breakout resulting from the supply deficiencies 

also made things easier logistically, since the landed 

materiel had less far to go to reach the fighting units. 

However, the strategic and operational consequences 

of these deficiencies were considerable. 

At the tactical level, the higher-than-expected tide 

on June 6 so reduced the physical area of the beach 

proper that the exit roadss, for example at Sword Beach, 

quickly clogged. Here the “littoral portal” (i.e., “the 

operational area defined by space and time through 

which a range of forces, capabilities and resources can 

be projected“) was restricted in the key period to only 

10 yards of sand.43

Moreover, at Sword Beach (and other beaches too), 

there was tension between the amphibious landing 

and the exploitation phases of the operation. Halftracks were good for getting through the dunes, but 

not particularly good at negotiating the bocage, i.e., the 

thick, nearly impassable, criss-crossing hedgerows 

encountered further inland.44 Lorries, the British motor 
25

trucks, were essential for movement and exploitation, 

but tended to get stuck in the sand. 

The result of such deficiencies was that the allimportant initial assaults on German strongpoints had 

to be undertaken by disorganized light forces without 

the planned tank and artillery support. The consequent 

delay in getting past them allowed the defending 21st 

Panzer Division more time to react; consequently, the 

opportunities for a rapid advance on Caen receded. 

The German Army, and especially its Waffen SS

Panzer divisions, still was probably the best fighting 

force in the world at that time. The Allies planned to 

overwhelm the Germans by sheer weight of numbers 

and materiel, a technique often regarded as characteristic of the “American way of war”: “Our guiding policy 

is to achieve not mere adequacy, but overwhelming 

superiority of material, thereby ensuring not only 

victory, but early victory with the least possible loss of 

American lives.”45 But the severe constraint on supplies 

in this case made such an approach much more difficult and time-consuming than anticipated. 

The operational and strategic consequences of the 

early logistical difficulties were felt right to the end of 

the war and, indeed, well into the postwar era. The war 

in the West lasted much longer than it might otherwise 

have and became a significant factor in the shaping 

of postwar Europe. In sum, deficiencies in sea-based 

supply helped determine the nature of the Normandy 

campaign and everything that flowed from it. 

Many of the same lessons held true for the 

Falklands campaign some 40 years later. Strategically, 

the forward base on Ascension Island provided an 

opportunity for rebalancing the support effort and 

for last-minute diplomatic overtures. The obvious 

difficulty of maintaining a major British naval presence 

at sea during the stormy weather of the South Atlantic 
26

in winter determined the timetable for the politicomilitary resolution of the conflict. The operational and 

tactical consequences of the logistics campaign were 

equally striking. To illustrate, the British need for an 

“operational pause” to get supplies sorted out after 

the San Carlos landing afforded military targets and 

political opportunities to the Argentines that the British 

would have preferred they not have.46 At the tactical 

level, helicopters occasionally may have delivered 

shells straight from sea to artillery batteries on land, 

but generally the pattern of sea-based supply was the 

traditional one. First, materiel was sent to the depot 

ashore and then from there to the end-user, with all the 

inevitable delays this caused. Overall, the importance 

of logistics is illustrated by the huge adverse impact 

on the shape of the campaign made by the loss of the 

cargo-carrying Chinooks when the Atlantic Conveyor

was sunk with them onboard.47

Developments in the Post-Cold War World.

Little of such travails would have seemed new to 

Major General Charles Callwell, whose message was 

that the success of all military operations depends 

heavily on the success of the system by which supplies 

and equipment are provided for the forces engaged. 

He made the point that “the administration of supply” 

and the “strategy of the campaign” are interdependent 

in small wars.48 But since Callwell’s day, there have 

been substantial changes in the demands that military 

operations have made on logisticians. These certainly 

have a major impact on the prospects of sea-basing.

Some of these changes derive from the nature 

of the military forces conducting the operations. 

The dependence of modern military forces on their 

supplies, for example, has increased greatly. In 
27

Operation DESERT STORM, the UK First Armoured 

Division, in its attack preparations, needed 1,200 tons 

of ammunition, 450 tons of fuel, 350 tons of water, and 

30,000 individual rations (per day), the equivalent of 

the requirements of an entire Army Group in the 1944 

Normandy landings.49 Getting all the supplies needed 

for coalition forces in Operation DESERT STORM 

required probably the largest and swiftest movement 

of materiel to a single operating area in the history of 

warfare, with the exception of the Normandy campaign 

itself, which took 2 years to prepare for. There is no 

indication that this trend towards an increased demand 

for equipment and supplies will flatten out. There is 

always a tendency for the scale of these demands to be 

underestimated beforehand. Such logistics problems 

continued to be an issue, at least for the British, in the 

Iraq operation of 2003.

Expectations of logistic support, in any case, have 

grown. There is today an aspiration for a supply system 

that does not constrain the operational freedom of the 

end-user. This, after all, was the whole point of the 

emphasis on Focused Logistics in Joint Vision 2020.50

Hence, given the U.S. Marine Corps’ interest in shipto-objective maneuver, the precision and effectiveness 

of modern weaponry seem to offer the prospect of 

fast, distributed, and decisive campaigning. Conflicts 

are expected to be much less linear in time and space. 

The interest in dynamic Agile Mission Groups reflects 

the search for simultaneous effect and the consequent 

need for logisticians to make it all possible. This fusion 

of all stages and types of conflict in a single operational 

scenario may require, for example, the air assault to 

be synchronized with amphibious landings from over 

the horizon and, accordingly, a supply system that can 

cater to the accelerated needs of this style of 

operation. 
28

The logistic demands of expeditionary operations 

in less familiar places, at great distances from the home 

base in what is normally the developing world, impose 

particular challenges.51 There may well be strong 

contrasts between the technological sophistication of 

the equipment the expeditionary forces need and the 

possibly primitive conditions prevailing in the theater 

of operations. The transportation infrastructure in 

such theaters often will be third-rate or under attack or 

both, thereby throwing the expeditionary forces very 

much back on their own resources. Further, as Charles 

Callwell reminds us, “The difficulties increase in 

proportion to the distance the theater of war has from 

from the home arsenals, from what may be properly 

called the national base.”

Lack of familiarity with the geographic, climatic, 

and political conditions of such operational areas may 

be a problem, too. In such circumstances, the ability to 

develop and exploit an information advantage over the 

adversary is key. But, again in Callwell’s words, “It is 

a very important feature in the preparation for and the 

carrying out of small wars that the regular forces often 

are working very much in the dark from the outset.”52

Thus early acquisition of intelligence is absolutely key, 

but it has always been a major problem in Western 

interventions.53

Modern network-enabled capability notwithstanding, this fundamental disadvantage probably is 

inevitable, especially when it comes to local political 

and topographical knowledge. The adversary often 

will tend to have an initial advantage here, being thus 

able to exploit unexpected and asymmetric options. 

The force ashore, and the supply system afloat, will 

need to be able to cope with the basic unpredictability 

of the situation that confronts them. 
29

As Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated, 

“one of the fundamental challenges is the distributed 

nature of the battlefield over long tenuous distances,” 

resulting in unsafe lines of communication.54 In the fastmoving and constantly changing situations that result, 

a particular premium is put on speedy responses in 

reconfiguring forces and adapting operational plans 

to new operational environments. These requirements 

call, in turn, for agile supply.

There will be a need to anticipate supply requirements. In the Afghanistan operation, according to the 

U.S. Navy’s Admiral David C. Brewer, Commander 

of Military Sealift Command, “We found that we’ve 

had to anticipate possible changes in strategy and 

operational level focus in order to ensure that we 

were ready for changes in sealift tasking.”55 These 

difficulties for sea-based logisticians are aggravated 

by the highly politicized nature of the expeditionary 

operation. Diplomatic considerations, for example, can 

be expected to shape the campaign, imposing intrinsic 

limits on what can be done. They are likely to make it 

more difficult for expeditionary commanders to seize 

the strategic initiative and achieve early and decisive 

effect, condemning them instead to campaigns of 

attrition.56 Such considerations, incidentally, reinforce 

the point made earlier that the political line of 

development is an important one, and that maritime 

forces have something to offer in that regard.

For a good example of the adverse effects of political 

constraints, we need look no further than the political 

restraints on maritime surveillance activity north of 

the Saudi-Kuwait border, which hugely complicated 

subsequent maritime operations during Operation 

DESERT STORM in 1991.57 Such limitations may well 

conflict with the imperatives of the logistic campaign. 
30

Britain’s reluctance to be seen preparing for war in 2003, 

before diplomatic efforts to avert it finally had been 

exhausted, delayed the start of the logistic buildup. This 

contributed to the tactical supply difficulties regarding 

such items as desert boots and enhanced body armor 

that the British faced in the theater.58 At the operational 

level, the major repositioning effort required after 

Turkey’s last-minute diplomatic refusal to grant 

basing rights to the U.S. 4th Infantry division in 2003 

had a considerable effect on the logistics campaign. It 

demonstrated the need for flexibility on the one hand, 

and the considerable advantages of sea-basing on the 

other. Such examples show the need for speed and 

flexibility in the logistic campaign in order to offset the 

abbreviated warning time and other complications that 

are likely to be introduced for diplomatic reasons; they 

also point to the benefits in controllability and speed to 

be expected from basing the supply operation at sea to 

the extent possible. 

Expeditionary operations today and into the foreseeable future are likely to be intrinsically complex. The 

complicated, uncertain, ambiguous, and unpredictable 

strategic context increases the complexity of the 

logistics requirement. The requirement may be to 

counter disorder, insurgency, crime, terrorism, and/or 

a collapse in governance. Inevitably, the precise mission 

blend will have significant operational consequences 

for supply and for the sea-basing component of the 

expeditionary operations. Callwell stressed that “the 

conduct of small wars is, in fact, in certain respects an 

art by itself, diverging widely from what is adapted to 

the conditions of regular warfare.”59 These operations 

will not simply be conventional military operations on 

a smaller scale. Instead, they are likely to be broader, 

requiring much more than military responses. This in 

itself is not new, however. 
31

The nation-building element of expeditionary 

operations was explicitly emphasized in the U.S. 

Marine Corps’ 1940 Small Wars Manual which defined 

small wars as:

Operations undertaken under executive authority, 

wherein military force is combined with diplomatic 

pressure in the internal or external affairs of another 

state whose government is unstable, inadequate, or 

unsatisfactory for the preservation of life and such 

interests as are determined by the foreign policy of our 

nation.60

This definition recognized that conventional military 

operations can deliver only part of the effects required. 

Accordingly, the U.S. Marine Corps became adept at 

such public works as road-building, medical support, 

and education. Such an approach, later exemplified 

by the U.S. Marine Corps in its “Three Block Warfare” 

thinking, has now become commonplace. Thus Lieutenant General Claude Christianson here describes 

such multi-tasking: “We are constantly changing what 

we are doing. One day a unit may be building a school, 

the next day protecting infrastructure, and then training 

Iraqis to be logisticians the next.”61 In this situation, an 

effects-based approach depends on close coordination 

and cooperation between nations, government departments, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), and 

other international organizations, so that military 

force is used successfully but in conjunction with other 

means. 

Since the ultimate issue is not that of winning the 

battle, but rather of winning the peace, the supply 

system will need to be versatile to cope sufficiently 

with the entire spectrum of war and nonwar, possibly 

catering to humanitarian activity and stabilization 

operations at the same time.
32

Because such operations are concerned with 

building the peace in situations where societies often 

are fractured and governments collapsed, experience 

suggests that expeditionary intervention operations 

usually will have to last far longer than expected. 

Events in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and the Persian Gulf 

also demonstrate that expeditionary operations can 

be very demanding, both politically and militarily, 

and for that reason might well last an uncomfortably 

long time before their objectives are achieved. As the 

British discovered in Sierra Leone and the Australians 

both in the Solomons and East Timor in the spring of 

2006, a well-intentioned but early departure well may 

prove premature, necessitating an early return.62 Such 

experiences suggest that logisticians should plan for 

the long haul and not for “drive-by interventions.”

The U.S. Army’s Field Manual 3-0 states that “the 

American people expect decisive victory and abhor 

unnecessary casualties. They prefer quick resolution 

of conflicts and reserve the right to reconsider their 

support should any of these conditions not be met.”63

Such realities in Western countries make it clear that 

sustainability also needs to be measured in political 

terms. Public opinion’s limited tolerance for casualties 

makes the early and possibly decisive use of lethal 

force more difficult, increasing the need for longer, 

more deliberate, and apparently safer prosecutions of 

the campaign. The situation ashore also may require a 

force to land, operate, and withdraw, and then repeat 

the process, possibly elsewhere. This process increases 

the need to be able to reconstitute the force at sea. For 

all these reasons, supply arrangements have to provide 

sustainability for the long haul.

Despite this reality, practice often has fallen 

well short of theory, and planners seem to need 
33

constant reminders of the requirement to widen their 

horizons well beyond the confines of warfighting and 

conventional military operations “to develop policy 

and strategies for post-conflict situations.”64

The recent tsunami and Hurricane Katrina relief 

efforts demonstrate that the variety of desired effects 

requires diverse forces with diverse capabilities 

in equipment and support, greatly increasing the 

demands on sea-basing, especially when a requirement 

for supplies to support the humanitarian effort has to 

be factored in. 

Moreover, the adversary can be expected to do his 

best to make a difficult situation worse. The campaign is 

likely to be against adversaries who command respect, 

not for their aims, but for the surprising sophistication 

of their methods. They often have proved to be adept 

at adopting effective responses that were asymmetric, 

either politically or technologically. They have access 

to weapons technology that in some circumstances is 

as good as the equipment of Western expeditionary 

forces.

This potential increases concerns about the vulnerability of the supplies both in their depots and during 

their movement. Of course, bases always have been 

vulnerable to attack. The advent of nuclear weapons 

raised concerns about the growing vulnerability of 

conventional bases. In 1946, the British worried that,

Bases as we know them at present, with large depots 

and installations dependent for their operation on lowgrade troops and frequently on “coolie” labour, are 

exceptionally vulnerable to attack by atomic bombs. In 

particular an invading Army cannot in future be allowed 

to depend for its supply on two or three large ports. Our 

strategic conception as to the mounting and subsequent 

maintenance of any military campaign will require 

revision in light of these factors in the future.65
34

The conclusion was obvious: the supply system needed 

to be made as invulnerable as possible. More recent 

incidents, such as the missile strike on the docks of AlJubayl in 1991 and the attack on the USS Cole in Aden 

harbor, reinforce this view. Such threats increase the 

apparent advantages of basing the supply effort at sea. 

Furthermore, the disruption to plans for Operation 

IRAQI FREEDOM caused by the Turkish decision to 

withdraw basing rights demonstrated anew the political vulnerability of such bases, again demonstrating 

the importance of the diplomatic line of development.

All such considerations point to the fact that landbases of all sorts are now more open to threat than 

they were in Callwell’s day. The threat pertains as 

much to the task of moving supplies about as it does 

to storing them. In Iraq, the passage of convoys of 

trucks has become a major military operation that 

further erodes the distinction between teeth and tail. 

Interestingly, vulnerability to interdicted supplies may 

well encourage local commanders to carry their miniiron mountains around with them if they can, even if at 

the expense of some measure of operational mobility. 

The scale of the intervention project usually will 

require the response to be joint and combined so that 

the supply system needs to cater to all services and all 

allies, and, indeed, all the services of all the allies.

The humanitarian operation in Uum Qasr, Iraq, in 

2003 provides a good case study illustrating all these 

points.66 The coalition was well aware of the common 

wisdom of the day, here expressed in Colonel G. A. 

Furse’s formulation: “The advantage to be reaped by 

winning over the inhabitants of an invaded country 

are many: but, from some unexplained reason, a 

conciliating policy is not always followed.”67 Getting 

humanitarian supplies, especially drinking water, 
35

into the port as soon as possible therefore was seen as 

a humanitarian imperative, politically essential if the 

support of the local population and world opinion 

was to be secured. (Actually, early intelligence was 

erroneous since, as it turned out, food rather than water 

was what the inhabitants of Uum Qasr really needed.)

Preliminary mine clearance of the Tigris-Euphrates 

delta waterway and the suppression of hostile activity 

on the river banks was therefore essential. This 

specialized and very local supply effort was central 

to the operation on the Al-faw peninsula, extending 

southeast of Basra, an operation which was itself only 

a small component of a major conventional military 

campaign in the rest of Iraq, which it both influenced 

and was influenced by. This operation exemplified 

the mixed military/political and nonlinear nature of 

the conflict since military and political dimensions of 

the operation had to be addressed at the same time. 

Furthermore, the Uum Qasr operation was notably 

joint and combined in execution, since it required the 

integrated participation of Australian, British, and U.S. 

ships, aircraft, and ground forces. We may note finally 

that this operation was but a small part of a far bigger 

campaign that turned out to be much more strongly 

resisted, more complicated, and longer-lasting than 

had been anticipated.

Producing the Goods.

To summarize, expeditionary operations of this 

sort would seem to require a specialized and tailored 

logistics effort. It needs to be entirely responsive to 

each phase of the conventional campaign including all 

the second- and third-order effects. The supply plan 

has to be able to sustain the teeth regardless of their 
36

mission of the moment, and, ideally, to react rapidly 

to unplanned contingencies. It needs to be able to deal 

with humanitarian disasters such as the Indonesian 

tsunami and Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico. It 

needs to be able to satisfy the needs of the international 

and multiagency coalition that such expeditionary 

operations normally will require for their execution. 

The theoretical advantages of putting as much as 

possible of the logistics effort at sea are considerable. A 

sea-based supply system will be more mobile and liftcapable than any practical alternative, and by virtue of 

the omnipresence of the ocean, be within reach of the 

majority of likely operational areas. Sea-based assets 

will face much lower levels of threat from hostile attack 

than their land-based equivalents and, provided that 

the direct supply of forces ashore is possible, obviate 

dependence on port and shore facilities, which are 

often lacking or subpar in much of the developing 

world. Finally, sea-basing reduces political reliance on 

local allies. 

Whether an effective sea-based supply system can 

be produced, however, depends on the resolution of 

two sets of issues. The first set revolves around what is 

militarily desirable and technologically feasible on the 

tactical and operational levels. The second set relates 

to the relative strategic priority of the capability, and 

the resources that should be devoted to creating the 

capability.

TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS

At this point, it is appropriate to remind ourselves 

of just how inclusive the concept of sea-basing has 

become:
37

A sea-base is not just a ship, not just prepositioned 

materiel, not just helicopter assault—it represents a 

complex capability. One must think of a sea-base as 

a hybrid system of systems consisting of concepts 

and operations, ships, forces, offensive and defensive 

weapons, aircraft, communications, and logistics, all 

of which require careful planning, coordination, and 

exercising to operate smoothly.68

Sea-basing is thus a system of systems in which 

the efficiency of the components depends on how 

well the linkages between them can be made to 

work. This distinguishes sea-basing from the earlier 

and conceptually simpler, if technologically more 

demanding, Mobile Offshore Base Concept, which was 

not a system of systems in the same way. 

An effective sea-basing policy therefore may 

require a potentially radical systems-based and holistic 

approach that meshes all the variables in a coherent 

and perhaps novel manner. It may, for example, call 

for new balances to be struck between teeth and tail 

procurement, not least because of the anticipated cost 

of some of the linkages in the system. Many of these 

issues remain obscure, however, because planning is 

still in its infancy, even in the United States. 

The Components of the System.

The sea-based supply system is truly joint in that 

it comprises a synergistic mix of aircraft, ships, and 

land bases, the latter including the home base (likely in 

the continental United States), the area of operations, 

and any advanced mounting bases it may be possible 

to use. All the elements are linked together, forming 

a system, by information technology (IT) networking 

and a variety of ship and aircraft “connectors” (see 
38

Figure 1). The system itself is part of a wider set of 

dependencies reflecting the coalition’s ability either to 

produce the supplies needed by the forces ashore or to 

procure them reliably from appropriate sources. 

Figure 1. Sea-based Supply System.

Carriers and Other Combatants.

As the tsunami relief operation graphically 

demonstrated, all warships, great and small, carry 

surprisingly extensive and useful supplies that can 

be used to sustain operations ashore. The bigger 

they are, the more they can carry. U.S. Navy carrier 

battle groups (CVBGs) bring considerable organic 

sustainment for their maritime power projection tasks. 

U.S. Navy Amphibious Ready Groups (ARGs) carried 

10-15 day’s worth of diverse supplies to sustain initial 

operations by Marines ashore. Expeditionary Strike 

Groups (ESGs) have replaced the U.S. Navy’s 12 ARGs 

and include 36 various amphibious ships which can 

transport two Marine Expeditionary Brigades (MEBs) 

totalling 13,100 Marines. At any one moment, 15-20 

percent of these ships are undergoing refitting. 
39

The recent Uum Qasr operation provides a good 

example of the advantage of sustaining operations 

from a sea-base, as described by Alan West: 

Inclement weather conditions restricted flight operations 

in support of other forces during the early stages of the 

campaign, and the U.S. and Royal Marine elements 

projected from the sea gained a tactical advantage. 7 

Armoured Brigade was only able to move into Iraq, 

following 3 Commando Brigade and U.S. forces, in a 

timely manner, because of logistics support from the 

amphibious task group.69

Merchant Shipping.

There was, of course, no commercial shipping at 

Normandy, although this often had been a feature of 

expeditionary operations in the past, as at Gallipoli, 

for example. Nonetheless, most navies will be driven 

to expropriating or leasing commercial vessels that 

are appropriate and suitable for the task. Commercial 

sealift still will be needed to transport the great 

majority of Britain’s armored and mechanized units, 

ammunition, and other supplies. Operation IRAQI 

FREEDOM required Britain to charter 56 merchant 

ships. For many years now, there have been major 

concerns about how much longer the greatly reduced 

and increasingly specialized merchant fleets reliably 

available to the United States and Europe will allow 

this practice to continue. 

IRAQI FREEDOM also illustrated the extent to 

which the restoration of local services, the establishment 

of a secure environment, route clearance, and ordnance 

disposal are prerequisites for sealift into ports by 

conventional merchant ships. Moreover, the use of such 

ships raised many legal and force protection issues for 

the crews, especially when they were reflagged. The 
40

employment of civilians in sea-basing ships would, of 

course, raise many similar issues.70

These difficulties increase the attractiveness of 

retaining this lift capacity within the naval service, but 

such an approach is comparatively expensive. Adopting commercial practices, such as civilian manning, 

often yields significant financial savings—and may 

in fact be the only way of achieving the necessary 

objectives. Nonetheless, commercial air and sea freight 

costs money. In Britain’s case, this amounted to some 

£109 million ($192 million) during Operation TELIC/

IRAQI FREEDOM.71

Sealift and Maritime Prepositioning Forces.

Within the Military Sealift Command of 188 ships, 

the U.S. Navy operates 36 ships in three squadrons 

comprising the Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF). 

Each of the squadrons carries the equivalent of a 30-

day supply for a 6,550-man brigade force, and can be 

expanded in order to support larger operations. These 

ships are civilian-manned and can off-load only in 

properly equipped ports, which may be unavailable, 

insufficient in number, or vulnerable. The U.S. Army 

has its own shipping underpinned by a parallel Afloat 

Forward Staging Base Concept (AFSBC) which clearly 

needs to be integrated with U.S. Navy thinking.72 Forces 

of this sort are sufficient for limited regional conflicts 

but not for major theater warfare.

Other navies adopt a similar approach, if on a 

smaller scale. The UK, for example, has launched its 

MARS program. Estimated to cost some £2.5 billion 

(US$4.4), this program is intended to replace many of 

the Royal Navy’s aging Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships, 

thus significantly enhancing its capacity to support 
41

naval assets deployed both forward at sea and as 

joint forces ashore. While the assets afloat might be 

seen as the incremental modernization of a traditional 

mission force, the joint forces ashore, in the shape 

of its three planned Joint Sea-based Logistics (JSBL) 

vessels intended for delivery in 2016, 2017, and 2020, 

are regarded as a key enabler for future expeditionary 

operations. According to the project director, Ann 

Holden of the Defence Procurement Agency, these 

ships:

will operate in the littoral with a strategic offload 

capability necessary to support transfer from ship to 

shore. In addition, they will have off-flight deck spots 

to support an initial amphibious assault, and aviation 

and vehicle maintenance and repair facilities. The JSBL 

concept will reduce the logistic footprint for landed 

forces and during the withdrawal from an operation.

These JSBL ships are similar in concept to Canada’s 

Joint Support Ship (JSS) concept, although rather larger 

and more sophisticated.73

The Australians likewise are investing in two 

amphibious warfare/sealift ships that are considered 

to offer “a major advantage for regional disaster relief, 

the delivery of humanitarian aid, support for peace 

operations, and policing and military operations 

anywhere in the world.” Significantly, the Australian 

Army pushed for this procurement which will be a 

“joint buy.”74 The Dutch have their Rotterdam and 

Johann de Witt amphibious transport docks (LPDs), 

the French their two Mistral program projection and 

command ships (BPCs);75 the Italians are working on the 

acquisition of a new modular 20,000-ton multimission 

sealift ship to complement their earlier, smaller San 

Giorgio class; the Spanish also are acquiring a large 
42

general purpose amphibious assault ship with an 

internal dock (LHD), the Principe de Asturias, at 27,000 

tons, their biggest warship ever; their neighbors, the 

Portuguese, are building a smaller one at 10,215 

tons. The Danes, true to form, have come up with 

their particularly innovative Absalon class of small 

multimission combat support ships. Even the Omanis 

have recently ordered two innovative sealift vessels 

which will sometimes double as tourist transports.76

Large or small, it would seem the world’s navies are 

investing heavily in the sea-lift business.

New Ship Connectors.

Conventional merchant shipping and maritime 

sealift and prepositioning forces tend to focus on offloading ashore, as they largely did in Operation IRAQI 

FREEDOM. Moreover, they are relatively slow. The 

more radical conceptions of sea-basing, however, 

envisage the use of much faster and more versatile 

ship “connectors.” These are small high-speed feeder 

craft (e.g., hovercraft of the proposed LCAC(X) type) 

to “connect” the sea-base to the shore on one hand, 

and larger vessels to “connect” the sea-base to the 

home base or any advanced mounting bases, on the 

other. These latter are the fast MPF (Future) ships of 

various kinds.77 The U.S. Army and Navy currently 

are exploring, for example, a Rapid Strategic Lift Ship 

(RSLS) common to both, having the clear advantage of 

speeds that would allow transit of 1,000 miles a day or 

more.78

At the moment, these are no more than ideas, 

although the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) for 

2006 calls for eight of the possible 14 such ships to 

be operational by 2015 as the core of the concept.79
43

Advocates suggest they could be designed to operate 

almost entirely at sea, and capable of taking cargo 

from, and delivering it to, a variety of other vessels 

and aircraft, thereby acting at once as the main 

connector and constituent of the sea-base. To have 

such a capability, the MPF (Future) ship would 

need strengthened decks and possibly power-boost 

capabilities to assist radically new heavy-lift aircraft in 

their take-offs. They also might require sophisticated 

cargo-transfer equipment such as stabilized cranes for 

skin-to-skin transfer to-and-from ships alongside. Cost 

estimates vary wildly between $1 to $4 billion per ship, 

depending on how ambitious the ship designs turn out 

to be. Slower, smaller ships designed to interact with 

either aircraft or other ships in less demanding sea and 

weather environments obviously would require lower 

investment.

The capacity for cargo transfer at sea is clearly central to the whole sea-basing concept: “If the United 

States is to attain a true sea-base capability rather 

than a maritime prepositioning capability, significant 

improvements must be achieved with regard to 

capabilities to transfer cargo.”80 Such improvements 

absolutely depend, in turn, on the significant 

development of existing and commercially available 

enabling equipment (in the shape of ramps, mobile 

cranes, capacity for selective off-load, etc.). They will 

likely drive design of the MPF (Future) itself. Another 

challenge will be to persuade all the services and 

coalition partners to adopt the common standardized 

joint pallet and container sizes that would make cargo 

transfer at sea so much easier and efficient.

Ideas about the hull and propulsion systems of 

the MPF (Future) also vary widely, being the subject 

of considerable current experimentation. There is a 

developing interest in fast ships, including catamarans 
44

(after the success of the high-speed Australian HMAS 

Jervis Bay in the East Timor operation), the British 

partial air-supported catamaran (PASCAT), unmanned 

connectors of various sorts, and even something of 

a return to the idea of large floating mobile offshore 

basing systems. The resource attractions of building 

to commercial standards rather than military ones 

are being reflected upon. Varied though these ideas 

might be, few are likely to be either easily affordable 

or translated into reality for a decade or two. 

Versatile Airlift Connectors. 

Sea-basing clearly demands that part of the necessary supplies would be flown from the home base, and 

very possibly flown from any advanced mounting base 

as well, to the ships operating offshore. This arrangement 

thus might well require include long-range, heavy-lift, 

ship-landable aircraft capable of transporting 20 tons 

or more in a standard 20-foot container, or perhaps 

a Stryker combat vehicle. These tasks would require 

an aircraft with super-short (SSTOL) or vertical takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) features. All avenues need 

to be explored, for the engineering obstacles are truly 

formidable: 

The requirements to fly long distances with a heavy 

payload and to take off and land vertically are almost 

mutually exclusive. Long-range aircraft must be large in 

order to carry the necessary fuel, but it is difficult for large 

aircraft to hover. This is a consequence of the squarecube law, which implies that as the size of an aircraft 

increases, its weight goes up faster than its thrust.81

Experience in Iraq has shown that land-based 

supply lines may be subject to severe attack. This 

has led to the demanding aspiration for a one-stop 
45

supply system capable of delivering equipment and 

ammunition straight from the sea to the end-user 

ashore. Such a system would, in turn, demand shorterrange airborne delivery systems able to take sizeable 

loads from the sea to the customer possibly hundreds 

of miles away. But air systems can be vulnerable too. 

Iraqi civilians armed with AK 47s employing crude 

barrage fire badly damaged 27 of the armored Apache

helicopters that assaulted the Revolutionary Guard’s 

Medina Division near Karbala on March 24, 2003.82

Similarly, the biggest single loss of British life in the 

Iraqi conflict occurred with the shooting down of an 

RAF Transport Command Hercules. 

The broad conclusion to be drawn is that short- and 

long-range air connectors should be able to operate at 

night and will need to be resilient when attacked. The 

requisite number and carrying capacity will be a direct 

and mathematically-derived function of the size and 

demands of the military forces ashore.

Asset Trackers. 

After World War II, Admiral Ernest King observed, 

“War production had shifted the emphasis from 

procurement to distibution: that is, while production 

was still of high importance, a still greater problem 

was that of getting well-balanced material support to 

designated positions at certain fixed times.”83 Tracking 

distribution is a data-based activity calling for 

sophisticated means of supply chain management. But 

the problem is aggravated by the nature of the modern 

expeditionary operation. The general principles 

behind ship-to-objective maneuver and the emphasis 

on local engagement—preconditions for stabilization 

operations—will demand the supply of very small, 

highly mobile, and widely-dispersed ground force 
46

units with diverse requirements for support. In such a 

case, the customer and his changing needs have to be 

tracked constantly. In short, the “designated positions” 

and “fixed times” of the future may be harder to predict 

than they were in the past. 

Navies also are aware of the need to track the supplies 

being carried into the theater more accurately. In the 

Falklands campaign, materiel was thrown into ships 

with such abandon that items could not be off-loaded 

in the order and coherence dictated by operational 

need. It was not possible to take stock and shuffle on 

the way to Ascension Island because of the difficulty of 

accessing and moving tightly packed cargo. It took 12 

days to sort everything out at Ascension Island.84 The 

system has improved a great deal since then, but still 

in recent operations in the Adriatic Sea and the Persion 

Gulf, some £18.5 million worth of ammunition was 

“written off” through a lack of visibility and consequent 

storage in unprotected environments. Moreover, about 

£357 million worth of supplies were unaccounted for.85

According to the Commanding Officer of the British 

7th Armoured Brigade, the problem was “our inability 

to know where things were in theatre. That is because 

we do not have a robust system for tracking our logistic 

material and our equipment.”86 Recent experiences, in 

sum, demonstrate the need for a much better, more 

comprehensive system of tracking assets than employed in the Gulf in 2003—especially if “selective off-load” 

from ships at sea is to be a realistic aspiration.87

STRATEGIC REQUIREMENTS 

The technological and operational capacity to meet 

such demanding aspirations is, of course, important, 

but there are broader strategic requirements as well, 

and it is to these that this paper finally returns. 
47

Sea-basing requires a thoroughly joint approach for 

both its construction and its operation. In the United 

States, some have argued that progress has been 

bedeviled by the lack of a unified vision and sufficient 

coordination among interested parties, when it really 

has to be a joint service effort. 

At best, the U.S. Army at the moment is only 

“moving in the direction”88 of configuring its forces to 

accord with this concept, and some suspect it may see 

sea-basing as a threat to existing plans. For example, 

if field hospitals can be moved around readily under 

sea-basing, perhaps there would be an argument for 

reducing their number. However, the U.S. Army has 

been exploring the sea-basing concept actively since 

1999, and has every incentive to make it work in order 

to achieve the operational imperatives of getting a 

brigade in place within 4-7 days, a division in 10 days, 

three divisions in 20 days, and five divisions in 30 

days.89

Inevitably, each service agenda will tend to reflect 

differences in perceived interest between them. There 

may well be a sense that, in the present circumstances, 

it is only the Marines and the Army that command 

public attention in the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. 

Accordingly, it is sometimes argued that the Navy and 

Air Force believe themselves relatively more vulnerable 

in future defense budget allocations unless they can 

cut themselves a bigger slice of the action. Of course, 

providing manpower to help hard-pressed armies 

engaged in stabilization operations might be a better 

way of cutting themselves in on the action, but here, 

it could be said, those volunteered naval/air elements 

simply would be acting as amateur soldiers.90

Sea-basing, on the other hand, is a distinctively 

dark- and light-blue activity which directly supports 

ground forces ashore, and so by the suspicious could 
48

be perceived as a cynical way of wriggling back into 

the budgetary and operational limelight. Clearly, 

there is a service argument in play here. If sea-basing 

is perceived cynically by either its advocates or its 

detractors, it is unlikely to prosper. 

In the United States, owing to existing service 

disunities, there is no agreed joint vision of the role of 

sea-basing, of how and with what it will operate, and 

of how it might be procured. Perhaps a Joint Sea-basing 

Planning Office of some kind, with significant buy-in 

from all three services, will be thought of as the way to 

go. The crucial role of long-range air connectors means 

that, in the United States, U.S. Air Force elements would 

need to be transferred into the sea-basing system or at 

least made available to it. This indicates the extent of 

the buy-in likely to be required. One measure for this 

might be the readiness of the three services to sign up 

to a common information system—a kind of purple 

gateway that captures data on every item of supply 

that flows into the theater, regardless of its service 

origin. While this mechanism would help resolve the 

asset tracking issue, it would require quite a change in 

service procedures to make it work.

The need for other painful choices has to be 

recognized as well. Culturally, among all military 

services, there is a preference for attaching priority to 

the teeth rather than the tail, i.e., the support arms. But 

the development of the more ambitious versions of 

sea-basing would require a shift in attitude in the areas 

of procurement, planning, and training. It implies 

a recognition not simply that the tail is getting more 

important, but that the differences between teeth and 

tail are narrowing. 

A holistic approach is called for because strategic 

sustainability for the long haul requires not just stockpiles of the necessary equipment, but assured sources 
49

from industry at home and, increasingly in this globalized world, from abroad. In the Falklands campaign, 

there was a significant underestimate of ammunition 

usage rates. The UK government needed to go into 

NATO stocks and to make special arrangements with 

industry to keep up with demand.91 A secure end-toend supply chain reaching from factory to foxhole 

requires a grand strategic policy linking supplier to 

end-user. Unless sufficient attention is paid to this 

broader view of the end-to-end supply chain, there 

might not be much to deliver to the end-user. In short, 

sea-basing aspirations need to be framed by the realities 

of industrial planning in a globalized world. 

One of the claimed advantages of sea-basing is 

that it would lessen operational dependence on air 

and sea routes and ports under the jurisdiction of 

other countries. Ironically, one perceived danger 

in this system is that a developed sea-base system 

would facilitate, even encourage, U.S. propensity 

for independent and unilateral action. The complete 

absence in the Joint Integrating Concept of any reference 

to allied participation in sea-basing, apart from a few 

disparaging references to the dangers of relying on 

host nation support, together with references to the 

“sovereignty” of the proposed system, rather confirms 

that impression.

However, the U.S. Navy in Seapower 21 at least 

refers to a more positive linkage between allies and 

sea-basing: “Sea-based platforms will also enhance 

coalition-building efforts, sharing their information 

and combat effectiveness with other nations in times 

of crisis.”92 Other countries are approaching sea-basing 

and sealift collectively. In 2001, for instance, nine 

NATO nations agreed to establish a Multinational 

Sealift Group to increase the cordination of their sealift 
50

efforts, and a specific Sealift Coordination Center has 

been set up. More countries are applying to join. This 

may be taken as evidence that sea-basing itself could 

well be regarded as an arena for broader coalitionbuilding.93

While the Iraq campaign of 2003 highlighted both 

the advantages and the disadvantages of relying on 

allies, it also demonstrated the tremendous advantages 

of relatively safe forward land bases, such as Gibraltar 

and Cyprus for the British or Diego Garcia for the 

United States. Advanced or forward mounting bases 

of this sort play an important part in most conceptions 

of sea-basing, making the problems it faces more 

manageable. 

The importance of assuring long-term access to 

these bases and fully integrating the possibilities of 

host nation support, however, reinforce the need for 

an all-round grand strategy which includes a sustained 

effort to cultivate the necessary local allies. Sea-basing 

needs to be linked with foreign policy. It is not simply 

that sea-basing is the means by which foreign policy 

objectives can be achieved. Sea-basing also may affect 

what those objectives are.

Recognizing the seemingly paradoxical connections 

between a developed sea-basing concept and the need 

to cultivate allied strategic support and operational 

integration in that concept, U.S. Navy Chief of Naval 

Operations Admiral Michael Mullen has made 

coalition-building a major plank of his policy. This 

also shows the synergies between naval diplomacy, on 

the one hand, and sea-basing on the other, reinforcing 

the point that the diplomatic activities of naval forces 

materially benefit the operations of ground forces.

Finally, the recent tsunami and Hurricane Katrina 

disasters suggest the growing vulnerability of the 

world’s littoral zones to catastrophic events which 
51

require relief for a whole variety of humanitarian, 

political, and strategic reasons. Such events reflect 

the widening of our concepts of security. Military 

forces have a great deal to offer here, especially when 

operating from a sea-base. To make the most of its 

potential contribution to this wider notion of security, 

we must design sea-basing from the start to take 

account of the requirements of such relief operations. 

Accordingly, planning for sea-basing will need to 

take the likely requirements of NGOs as well as other 

agencies of government into serious consideration. This 

prospective requirement ideally should be a design 

driver, not simply a fortuitous bonus from a supply 

system expressly intended for other purposes. 

CONCLUSIONS

For the time being, the “expeditionary impulse” 

seems likely to continue as the dominant paradigm 

of defense planners around the world. The attention 

naturally paid to the operations of ground forces in 

Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere sometimes obscures 

the actual and potential contribution made to such 

operations by naval forces. 

Arguably, a quiet revolution is taking place, relating 

first to conceptual and policy developments in those 

naval activities which indirectly enable operations 

ashore, and, second, to those which make a direct 

supporting contribution.

The enabling functions comprise the growing 

focus on diplomacy (in both its coercive and coalitionbuilding guises), on maintenance of good order at sea 

through naval presence and diplomacy, and on the 

maintenance of sea control, especially in local waters. 

The first two have a major role to play in massaging 
52

the strategic environment, either reducing the need for 

expeditionary operations or making them easier to win; 

control of blue and local waters makes it all possible. 

There is nothing new, or inherently transformational, 

about any of these concepts in principle, although 

relatively greater effort is going into all of them—and 

needs to. A major problem is to convince observers of 

their importance relative to the operations of forces 

ashore, and of their need for a higher budgetary 

priority. 

Contemporary conceptions of the role of sea control 

in an era without a first-class adversary on the high 

seas illustrate the point. To support expeditionary 

operations, navies need advanced capabilities of the 

sort equivalent to those normally associated with highintensity operations against peer adversaries. This 

need is partly because of casualty aversion and partly 

in consequence of the proliferation of serious maritime 

capabilities around the world. The forces engaged in the 

East Timor operation, for example, found themselves 

being shadowed by Indonesian Type 209 SSKs having 

much greater tactical flair than had been anticipated. 

They required complex countermeasures, illustrating 

“the importance of sophisticated force protection to a 

contemporary peace-making operation in a maritime 

littoral environment.”94 Australia’s General Peter 

Cosgrove was well aware of the importance of this 

requirement for the success of his overall mission, and 

his successors elsewhere need to be too. 

Naval functions in direct support of forces ashore 

are composed of Sea Strike, or maritime power 

projection, and sea-basing, the major focus of this 

paper. Clearly, the capacity for navies to launch 

operations against the shore has increased a great deal 

in recent years, with the increasing number of aircraft 
53

carriers being acquired by the world’s navies and 

the growth of amphibious assault and ship-to-shore 

missile and naval gunfire support capabilities. While 

these developments may appear evolutionary rather 

than revolutionary, such a characterization does not 

seem to apply to the concept of sea-basing. Its three 

basic aspirations are all transformational: (1) a onestage system of supplying the end-user ashore; (2) a 

supply system that can be fully scaled and tailored to 

meet changing and particular purposes; and (3) the 

capacity to conduct most of the buildup safely afloat.

Like most other concepts in maritime strategy, 

however, the notion of sea-basing is a relative one. 

When the British anchored RFA Fort George at the port 

city of Split to supply their forces in Bosnia for 2 years, or 

when the Australians used HMAS Kanimbla to support 

operations in East Timor in 1999 and Sumatra in 2004-

05, they were, in fact, operating sea-bases. In the same 

way, the Dutch and Canadians, in the procurement of 

their Joint Logistics support ships, are signalling the 

intention to do likewise.

The potential of sea-basing may be expressed by 

any number of metrics—how much can be provided 

and for how long the effort can be sustained being 

the most obvious. It is thus not a question of whether a 

country should “do” sea-basing, but rather how much

it should do. And here, of course, the major decider is 

how much effort and money a country or a coalition 

is prepared to spend on the concept, relative to other 

requirements. 

Whether even the United States can afford the more 

ambitious versions of sea-basing is debatable, especially 

at a time when defense spending is subject to so many 

other pressures. The global war on terrorism (GWOT), 

including certainly the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and 
54

Afghanistan, appears to be costing about $7 billion 

per month95 against the backdrop of a Defense Budget 

for 2006 of $450 billion. When the costs of Hurricanes 

Katrina and Rita are factored in, the strains on the 

federal budget are considerable. Given this background, 

a degree of scepticism about the affordability and even 

the cost-effectivness of sea-basing is not surprising. 

Sceptics point out that many of the individual projects 

within sea-basing are very expensive and critically 

depend on untried technnologies; perhaps it would 

make more sense to go for less ambitious, less costly 

near-term alternatives.96 For such reasons, many of the 

key sea-basing programs essentially remain unfunded 

at the moment. If they remain so, or are only partially 

supported, then it will be difficult, if not impossible, to 

realize sea-basing’s full potential. 

Evidently, in the United States, the jury is still out. 

The theory may be transformational, but it remains to 

be seen whether it will become so in practice, even in 

20 years’ time. The key technical and operational issue 

is the extent to which the linkages in the system can be 

made to work. These, in turn, doubtless will depend on 

how well thought-through, supported, and financed 

the whole sea-basing project eventually turns out to 

be. Paradoxically, it may be that the smaller navies of 

Europe, which are showing the most striking evidence 

of a transformational shift in their priorities towards the 

direct and indirect support of forces ashore, will be the 

ones that capitalize most on sea-basing’s considerable 

advantages. 

ENDNOTES

1. See, for example, Omar White, Conqueror’s Road: An Eyewitness 

Report of Germany 1945, Cambidge: Cambridge University Press, 

reprinted 1996, pp. 35, 104, 120, for some startling parallels with 

Iraq 2003-06. 
55

2. These arguments are summarized conveniently in Joseph 

J. Collins, “Planning Lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq,” Joint 

Forces Quarterly, No. 41, April-June 2006, pp. 10-14.

3. Discussions with senior Royal Naval personnel, Ministry of 

Defence, London, May 2, 2006.

4. Naval Study 2005 to Parliament, October 14, 2005, official 

English translation, p. 2.

5. “Tomahawk Buy Cleared by Dutch Parliament,” Jane’s 

Defence Weekly, December 7, 2005.

6. Netherlands Defence Doctine, The Hague: Ministry of Defence, 

2005, p. 36.

7. U.S. Naval thinking is summarized conveneintly in Admiral 

Vern Clark, “Seapower 21: Projecting Decisive Joint Capabilities,” 

Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, October 2002, pp. 33-41.

8. “Mine Countermeasures Forces Emerge from Splendid 

Isolation,” Jane’s International Defence Review, February 2006, pp. 

36-40.

9. Collins, p. 14; Remarks of Admiral Michael Mullen, Naval 

War College Review, August 31, 2005, available at www.navy.mil, 

and “Principles for a Free and Secure Global Maritime Network,” 

Journal of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), December 2005, 

pp. 24-26.

10. The literature on naval presence is vast. It is summarized 

conveniently in my Seapower: A Guide for the 21st Century, Portland, 

OR: Frank Cass, 2004, pp. 271-309.

11. “Russia Earns NATO Interoperability,” Jane’s Defence 

Weekly, April 12, 2006.

12. For a good introduction to this, see Mark Valencia, The 

Proliferation Security Initiative: Making Waves in Asia, Adelphi 

paper 376, London: International Institute for Strategic Studies 

(IISS), 2005.

13. Commodore Anthony Rix, Royal Navy (RN), “Maritime 

Security Operations in the Arabian Sea,” RUSI Defence Systems, 

Autumn 2005, p. 38; “Pakistan to Get Control of CTF-150 in Arabian 

Sea,” Pakistan News, April 5, 2006. For mixed Indian reactions to 

this, see Mahendra Ved, “Pakistan to Play Peacekeeper!” India 

Strategic Review, Vol. 1, April 2006, pp. 54-55. 
56

14. “The National Strategy for Maritime Security,” September 

2005.

15. “US Coastguard Outlines Deepwater Plan,” Jane’s Defence 

Weekly, July 27, 2005; U.S. National Fleet Concept to Get New 

Emphasis, Jane’s Defence Weekly, April 12, 2006.

16. Still, the HMS Suffolk probably continues to hold the record 

for the longest instance of maritime power projection in history 

with its support of a Russian navy manned armored train on 

the Trans-Siberian railway 2,500 miles from the sea during the 

Russian Civil war in 1919! 

17. The British mantra on this, derived from the Strategic Defence 

Review, 1997, was the statement: “If we don’t go to the crisis, the 

crisis will come to us.” Compare Admiral Michael Mullen: “The 

job remains the same: to take the fight to the enemy so that he 

cannot take it to us.” Cited in Nash, p. 23.

18. Martin Kettle, “The Special Relationship that Squandered a 

Noble Cause,” The Guardian, May 27, 2006.

19. I am grateful to Major General Rob Fry, Royal Marines, for 

this thought.

20. JIC on sea-basing, p. 6.

21. To illustrate the point, the SS Canberra was not able to act 

as a field dressing station for this reason. Julain Thompson, The 

Lifeblood of War: Logistics in Armed Conflict, London: Brasseys, 

1991, pp. 266, 271.

22. “Sailors Volunteer to Dive into High-Risk Mission, But 

Money, Materials Fall Short of the Mark,” Navy News, April 10, 

2006.

23. “313 Ships Plan Could Mean Doubling Shipbuilding 

Budget,” Defense Today, March 30, 2006; “More Billions for Navy 

Ships Questioned by Congress,” Chicago Tribune, April 1, 2006. 

For more detail, see “Defense Acquisitions: Challenges Associated 

with the Navy’s Long-range Shipbuilding Plan,” GAO-06-587T, 

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, March 

30, 2006.

24. “Iran Tests Flying Boat, Another Missile,” Pakistan News,

April 5, 2006. But also see “West Doubts Iran Missile Claims,” 

Jane’s Defence Weekly, April 12, 2006.

25. British Maritime Doctrine: Third Edition, BR 1806, London: 

The Stationery Office, 2004, pp. 28-34.
57

26. Interestingly, this claim was made for the old Soviet Navy 

back in the 1970s. S. Gorshkov, The Seapower of the State, London: 

Pergamon, 1979, pp. 219ff. 

27. For British discussion of the topic, see Chapter 5, “Maritime 

Logistics and Support,” BR1806, pp. 93-103; and Admiral Sir 

Alan West, “Joint Sea-basing and the Royal Navy,” RUSI Defence 

Systems, Autumn 2005, pp. 26-27. 

28. National Research Council (NRC} Report of Committee on 

Sea-basing: Sea-basing: Ensuring Joint Force Access from the Sea, 

Washington DC: National Academies Press, 2005, p. x.

29. Ibid., p. 1.

30. Sea-basing Joint Integrating Concept, Washington, DC: 

U.S. Department of Defense, 2005, p. 5.

31. West, pp. 26-27. It also will be seen that even the word is 

subect to varied interpretation—should sea-basing be one word 

or two, hyphenated or not? In general, American conventions are 

adopted in this paper. 

32. Major General Gordon C. Nash, Director, Expeditionary 

Warfare Division (OPNAV), Naval Amphibious Warfare Plan: Seabasing Speed, Access, Persistence, Washington DC, October 2005, 

p. i.

33. Ibid.

34. NRC Sea-basing Report, p. 11.

35. Jim Strock, then Director of the Sea-basing Integration 

Division at Capabilities Development Directorate at the Marine 

Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia, cited 

in Scott Truver, “Briefing: U.S. Sea-basing,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 

March 29, 2006, pp. 25-29.

36. NRC Sea-basing Report, p. 11. 

37. Admiral Ernest J. King, “Third Report to the Secretary of 

the Navy,” 1946, p. 176.

38. Lloyd Thomas O’Kelly, “Shipboard Diary,” quoted in 

Benjamin Franklin Cooling, USS Oylmpia: Herald of the Empire, 

Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000, p. 190; and cited in 

James C. Bradford, “Expeditionary Logistics: The Missing Link,” 

Naval History, February 2006, pp. 54-61.

39. Russell A. Hart, Clash of Arms: How the Allies Won in 

Normandy, Normany: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001 p. 287.
58

40. Charles Kirkwood, “The Build Up,” in D-Day: Operation 

Overlord: From its Planning to the Liberation of Paris, London: 

Salamander, 1993 p. 115.

41. Steve R. Waddell, United States Army Logistics: The Normandy 

Campaign, 1944, Westport: CT: Greenwood Press, 1994, pp. 163-

165.

42. Waddell quotes General Patton’s view that the Army, 

being like a piece of spaghetti, is something one must pull, not try 

to push. Ibid., p. 164.

43. As described in British doctrine on littoral manuever.

44. The Allies’ failure to appreciate the tactical significance 

of the bocage when U.S. forces stationed in southwest England 

were surrounded by exactly the same kind of countryside is one 

of the great mysteries of the war, illustrating the fundamental 

importance of accurate intelligence.

45. King, “Second Report to Secretary of the Navy,” 1946, p. 

146.

46. Till, p. 261.

47. Thompson, p. 278. This is a good introduction to logistics 

as a major policy driver in the Falklands campaign. 

48. Charles E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, 

London: The University of Brunswick Press, reprint, 1996, p. 65.

49. Alberto Bin, Richard Hill, and Arthur Jones, Desert Storm: A 

Forgotten War, London: Praeger, 1998, p. 71.

50. Joint Vision 2000, Washington, DC: U.S. Government 

Printing Office, 2000, pp. 29-32. 

51. Colonel G. A. Furse, Military Expeditions Beyond the Seas, 2 

vols, Vol. I, London: William Clowes, 1897, p. 97. 

52. Callwell, p. 43.

53. Furse, p. 98. 

54. Interview with Lieutenant General Claude V. Christianson, 

Military Logistics International, March/April 2006. 

55. Quoted in Scott Truver, “Military Sealift Command,” Jane’s 

Navy International, January 2002.

56. Arguably, this is what happened in Vietnam. A. F. 

Krepinevich, The Army in Vietnam, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 

University Press, 1986, pp. 164-193.
59

57. Marvin Pokrant, Desert Storm: What the Navy Really Did, 

Westpoint CT: Greenwood, 1999, p. 231.

58. Interview with Rear Admiral David Snelson, Commander, 

Royal Navy Contingent, Operation Telic, in Paul Moorcraft, et al., 

Axis of Evil: The War on Terror, Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2005, pp. 

86-93.

59. Callwell, p. 23.

60. Cited in Keith B. Bickel, “Mars Learning: The Marine 

Corps,” Development of Small Wars Doctrine 1915-1940, Oxford: 

Westview, 2001, p. 1.

61. Christianson, p. 18.

62. “Peacekeepers Arrive to Calm Mutiny Violence,” The Times, 

May 26, 2006.

63. “Fighting Future Wars,” Field Manual 3-0, Operations, 

Washington DC: HQ Department of the Army, 1993, pp. 1-3.

64. Richard H. Shultz, Jr., In the Aftermath of War: U.S. Support 

for Reconstruction and Nation-Building Following Just Cause, Maxwell 

Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1993, p. 67.

65. TWC(46) 3 (Revise) “Matters of Fact Relating to Atomic 

Energy—Note by Joint Secretaries,” January 30, 1946 (DEFE 

2/1251) TNA, Kew, London. I am grateful to Christian Liles for 

this reference.

66. For various British views on this, see interviews in 

Moorcraft, pp. 79-110.

67. Furse, p. 300.

68. Defence Science Board Task Force on Sea-basing, August 

2003, cited in JIC on Sea-basing, p. 11.

69. West, p. 27.

70. Jane G. Dalton, “Future Navies: Present Issues,” Naval War 

College Review, Winter 2006, pp. 17-39.

71. West, p. 26.

72. NRC, Sea-basing Report, p. 37.

73. Richard Scott, “MARS Mission,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 

April 5, 2006.

74. “Budget 2006-7,” Dr. Greg Gilbert presentation at the Royal 

United Services Institute, May 26, 2006, Canberra, Department of 

Defence.
60

75. Batiment de Projection et de Commandement.

76. “New Danish Combat Support Ships Offer Greater Flexibility for NATO Operations,” Jane’s International Defence Review,” 

June 2006; “Oman signs with Austal for Dual Role Vessels,” Jane’s 

Defence Weekly, May 24, 2006. Material on other navies may be 

found in the proceedings of the Defence IQ London Conference, 

May 23-24, 2006, “Future Naval Plans and Requirements 2006,” 

accessible at ftp://mienke:upld17@ftp.iqpc-files.co.uk/2670.

77. These are summarized conveniently by Jonathan Kaskin, 

Director of Strategic Mobility and Combat Logistics, Office of 

the Chief of Naval Operations, in “High Speed Strategic Sealift: 

Enabling Future Sea-base Closure and Rapid Force Deployment,” 

IID Conference on Sea-basing, October 4-6, 2005, Washington, 

DC, October 4-6, 2005, accessible at www.iirusa.com/sea-basing.

78. “U.S. Navy Explores Joint High-speed Cargo Ship,” Jane’s 

Defence Weekly, August 10, 2005.

79. Truver, p. 25; Nash has a convenient listing of all these 

ships, pp. 31-32, and Annex A. 

80. NRC, Sea-basing Report, pp. 45-47.

81. Formation flying might provide a partial solution since a 

large aircraft flying in front can increase the flying capacity of 

those in close formation behind. Skeins of geese operate on this 

hitch-hiking principle. Ibid., p. 27.

82. Ibid., p. 23.

83. King, “Third Report to Sectretary of Navy,” p. 198.

84. Thompson, pp. 263-264.

85. West, p. 26.

86. Brigadier Graham Binns interview in Moorcraft, p. 77. 

87. Interview with Lieutenantt General Claude Christianson, 

Chief of Logistics, U.S. Army, in Moorcraft, p. 115.

88. NRC, Sea-basing Report, p. 12.

89. Kaskin. 

90. The mixed nature of the crew of the British Naval Lynx

helicopter which tragically crashed in Basrah on May 6, 2006, and 

which comprised two people from the RAF, one from the Royal 

Navy, one Royal Marine, and one Army Captain, shows just how 

joint British operations can be. “Helicopter Attack Claims Life of 
61

First UK Woman to Die in Action for 22 Years,” The Guardian, May 

9, 2006. 

91. Thompson, p. 280.

92. Clark, p. 37.

93. Major General Gordon C. Nash, “Sea-basing: An International Aspect,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, March 29, 2006.

94. David Dickens, “The United Nations in East Timor: 

Intervention at the Military Operational Level,” Contemporary 

Southeast Asia, Vol. 32, No. 2, August 2001.

95. $5.9 billion per month on Iraq, $1 billion on Afghanistan. 

GWOT expenditure since 9/11 is estimated at $191 billion. These 

figures exclude reconstruction costs of $361 billion. New York 

Times, October 6, 2005.

96. See, for instance, the CSBA report described in “Before 

Buying Hugely Expensive, Untested Sea-base, Think First: 

Analyst,” Defense Today, March 24, 2006. Also, “DOD ‘must weigh 

costs of high speed transport,’” Jane’s Defence Weekly, November

23, 2005.