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Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power

December 2020

Advantage at Sea

The United States is a maritime nation. Our security and prosperity depend on the seas.

The Naval Service—forward deployed and capable of both rapid response and sustained operations globally—remains America’s most persistent and versatile instrument of military influence.

Integrated All-Domain Naval Power, leveraging the complementary authorities and capabilities of the U.S. Navy,

Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, advances the prosperity, security, and promise of a free and open, rules-based order.

PREFACE

To the American People,

It’s been 75 years since our combined Sea Services achieved victory in World War II. It took the valor and strength of every Sailor, Marine and Coastguardsman to achieve dominance on the waves, undersea, and in the skies, projecting strength overseas while protecting our shores at home. It also took innovation and cooperation within the Naval Service, across the Joint Force, and throughout the industrial base on an unprecedented scale. We won the war then, and have served side by side ever since, protecting the peace to the great benefit of our Nation, our allies, and the world.

As detailed in the following pages, the rules-based international order is once again under assault. We must prepare as a unified Naval Service to ensure that we are equal to the challenge. The men and women who wear our uniforms are ready, determined, and dedicated to serve with honor, courage and commitment. As leaders, it is our responsibility to ensure they are prepared, equipped, and trained to prevail in long-term strategic competition, win any potential fight, and preserve the future peace.

This strategy details the direction our Service Chiefs have designed together. It is a strong signal of support for our personnel, our allies, and our partners—and a cautionary warning for any would-be adversaries. We are and will always be one force—Semper Fortis, Semper Fidelis, Semper Paratus—always strong, always faithful, and always ready to protect and defend the United States of America, around the clock and around the world.

Very Respectfully,

Kenneth J. Braithwaite Secretary of the Navy

FOREWORD Our actions in this decade will shape the maritime balance of power for the rest of this century.

The security environment has dramatically changed since we last published A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower in 2015. Several nations are contesting the balance of power in key regions and seeking to undermine the existing world order. Significant technological developments and aggressive military modernization by our rivals are eroding our military advantages. The proliferation of long-range precision missiles means the United States can no longer presume unfettered access to the world’s oceans in times of conflict.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, our three Sea Services have watched with alarm the growing naval power of the People’s Republic of China and the increasingly aggressive behavior of the Russian Federation. Our globally deployed naval forces interact with Chinese and Russian warships and aircraft daily. We witness firsthand their increasing sophistication and growing aggressiveness. Optimism that China and Russia might become responsible leaders contributing to global security has given way to recognition that they are determined rivals. The People’s Republic of China represents the most pressing, long-term strategic threat.

In the midst of fighting two wars, our three Services have worked to meet these global challenges. The Navy has prioritized controlling the seas, increased its forward deployed forces in Asia and Europe, and realigned its warfighting organizations. Today, roughly 60 percent of Navy forces are in the Indo- Pacific region. Sweeping transformation of the Marine Corps is generating greater expeditionary combat power with enhanced capabilities for sea control and sea denial. The Coast Guard is expanding its global engagements and capacity-building efforts in key vulnerable regions. Together, we are developing new operational concepts and redesigning our forces to provide the capability and capacity to execute them. However, we are not yet where we need to be. Getting there will require predictable budgets and on-time funding.

America’s Naval Service defends our Nation by preserving freedom of the seas, deterring aggression, and winning wars. For generations, we have underwritten security and prosperity and preserved the values our Nation holds dear. However, China’s behavior and accelerated military growth place it on a trajectory that will challenge our ability to continue to do so. We are at an inflection point. Our integrated Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard must maintain clear-eyed resolve to compete with, deter, and, if necessary, defeat our adversaries while we accelerate development of a modernized, integrated all-domain naval force for the future. Our actions in this decade will shape the maritime balance of power for the rest of this century.

Together, we must act with urgency to integrate and modernize our forces as we prepare for the challenges ahead. The boldness of our actions must match the magnitude of our moment. The security of our Nation depends on our ability to maintain advantage at sea.

David H. Berger General, U.S. Marine Corps

Commandant of the Marine Corps

Michael M. Gilday Admiral, U.S. Navy

Chief of Naval Operations

Karl L. Schultz Admiral, U.S. Coast Guard

Commandant of the Coast Guard

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

I. The Security Environment

A Global Competition for Influence

Problem Statement

Implications for the Naval Service

II. Integrated All-Domain Naval Power

III. Employing Naval Forces

Prevailing in Long-Term Strategic Competition

Operating Across the Competition Continuum

In Day-to-Day Competition

In Crisis

In Conflict

IV. Developing Naval Forces

Delivering Integrated All-Domain Naval Forces

Integrating the Naval Service

Conclusion

Annex: Naval Service Investments

Glossary

1

3

3

5

6

7

9

9

10

10

12

13

15

15

17

21

22

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1Advantage at Sea

INTRODUCTION

The United States is a maritime nation. Our security and prosperity depend on the seas. Since the end of World War II, the United States has built, led, and advanced a rules-

based international system through shared commitments with our allies and partners. Forward deployed forces of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard—collectively known as the Naval Service—have guaranteed the security of this system. Free and open access to the world’s oceans has fostered an extraordinary era of wealth and peace for many nations. That system is now at risk.

Advantage at Sea is a Tri-Service Maritime Strategy that focuses on China and Russia, the two most significant threats to this era of global peace and prosperity. We prioritize competition with China due to its growing economic and military strength, increasing aggressiveness, and demonstrated intent to dominate its regional waters and remake the international order in its favor. Until China chooses to act as a responsible stakeholder rather than brandish its power to further its authoritarian interests, it represents the most comprehensive threat to the United States, our allies, and all nations supporting a free and open system.

Other rivals, including Iran, North Korea, violent extremist organizations, and transnational criminal organizations, also continue to subvert the international rules-based order. We will address these challengers in a coordinated, multinational manner with forces developed to address more significant military threats.

The stakes of this competition are high. China’s aggressive actions are undermining the international rules-based order, while its growing military capacity and capabilities are eroding U.S. military advantages at an alarming rate. The Naval Service must act with urgency, clarity, and vision to take the bold steps required to reverse these trends.

Advantage at Sea provides guidance to the Naval Service for the next decade to prevail across a continuum of competition—composed of interactions with other nations from cooperation to conflict. This strategy emphasizes the following five themes. We must fully

Ten nations, 22 ships, one submarine, and more than 5,300 personnel participate in Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2020. The biennial exercise is a unique training platform designed to enhance multinational interoperability and strategic maritime partnerships. (USN photo by MC2 Dan Bard)

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leverage the complementary authorities and capabilities of the Naval Service to generate Integrated All-Domain Naval Power. We must strengthen our alliances and partnerships— our key strategic advantage in this long-term strategic competition—and achieve unity of effort. We must operate more assertively to prevail in day-to-day competition as we uphold the rules-based order and deter our competitors from pursuing armed aggression. If our rivals escalate into conflict, becoming our adversaries, we must control the seas to deny their objectives, defeat their forces, protect our homeland, and defend our allies. And, we must boldly modernize the future naval force to maintain credible deterrence and preserve our advantage at sea.

This strategy connects the Service Chiefs’ statutory roles—developing naval forces and providing best military advice for employing naval forces. Section I outlines the security environment and the problems that we face. Section II articulates how Integrated All-Domain Naval Power addresses these problems. Section III describes how naval power can be applied across the competition continuum in day-to-day competition, crisis, and conflict to achieve national objectives. Section IV guides the development and integration of a modernized, all- domain naval force that will ensure our unfettered access to the seas and reverse our eroding military advantages.

The challenges we face require us to make hard choices. This strategy prioritizes our most pressing threats, emphasizes expanded cooperation with allies and partners, and relies on deeper Naval Service integration to mitigate strategic risk to the Nation. Additional detail regarding our priorities, capabilities, investments, divestments, and operational approaches is contained in supporting classified guidance, both existing and forthcoming. Advantage at Sea is complemented by separate Service Chief guidance, such as the Chief of Naval Operations’ Navigation Plan, the Commandant of the Marine Corps’ Planning Guidance, and the Commandant of the Coast Guard’s Strategic Plan.

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I. THE SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

The world’s oceans play a vital role in America’s national security and prosperity. The sea has always been a competitive space that has served as both a strategic buffer and a vital

connection to the world. As strategic competition continues to intensify, our rivals seek to exploit the openness of the maritime domain as they carry out campaigns of coercion and intimidation.

The oceans connect global markets, provide essential resources, and link societies together. By value, 90 percent of global trade travels by sea, facilitating $5.4 trillion of U.S. annual commerce and supporting 31 million American jobs. Undersea cables transmit 95 percent of international communications and roughly $10 trillion in financial transactions each day. For decades, the free and open international order has produced shared security and prosperity throughout the world.

A GLOBAL COMPETITION FOR INFLUENCE Today, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation (RF) employ

all instruments of their national power to undermine and remake the international system to serve their own interests. Each conduct a variety of malign activities incrementally, attempting to achieve their objectives without triggering a military response. Both nations back their revisionist activities with regionally powerful militaries and obscure their aggressive behavior by mixing military and paramilitary forces with proxies. China’s and Russia’s attempts to exert control over natural marine resources and restrict access to the oceans have negative repercussions for all nations.

China has implemented a strategy and revisionist approach that aims at the heart of the United States’ maritime power. It seeks to corrode international maritime governance, deny access to traditional logistical hubs, inhibit freedom of the seas, control use of key chokepoints, deter our engagement in regional disputes, and displace the United States as the preferred partner in countries around the world.

To enable its strategy, China deploys a multilayered fleet that includes the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the China Coast Guard, and the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia—naval auxiliaries disguised as civilian vessels—to subvert other nations’ sovereignty and enforce unlawful claims. It continues to militarize disputed features in the South China Sea and assert maritime claims inconsistent with international law. Its state-subsidized distant- water fishing fleet steals vital resources from nations unable to defend their own exclusive economic zones. To support its multilayered fleet, China is also developing the world’s largest missile force, with nuclear capabilities, which is designed to strike U.S. and allied forces in Guam and in the Far East with everything from ballistic missiles to maneuverable cruise and hypersonic missiles. Further, China has centralized its robust strategic, space, cyber, electronic, and psychological warfare capabilities.

With naval forces as the cornerstone of its efforts, China is aggressively growing and modernizing its military. Already commanding the world’s largest naval force, the PRC is building modern surface combatants, submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter jets, amphibious assault ships, ballistic nuclear missile submarines, large coast guard cutters, and polar

Figure 1: Growth of China’s maritime forces since 2000. (Source: Office of Naval Intelligence)

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icebreakers at alarming speed. China’s navy battle force has more than tripled in size in only two decades (Figure 1).

This rapid growth is enabled by a robust shipbuilding infrastructure, including multiple shipyards that exceed those in the United States in both size and throughput. In conflict, excess PRC industrial capacity, including additional commercial shipyards, could quickly be turned toward military production and repair, further increasing China’s ability to generate new military forces.

Whereas U.S. naval forces are globally dispersed, supporting U.S. interests and deterring aggression from multiple threats, China’s numerically larger forces are primarily concentrated in the Western Pacific. However, as China seeks to establish regional hegemony, it is also expanding its global reach. China’s One Belt One Road initiative is extending its overseas logistics and basing infrastructure that will enable its forces to operate farther from its shores than ever before, including the polar regions, Indian Ocean, and Atlantic Ocean. These projects often leverage predatory lending terms that China exploits to control access to key strategic maritime locations.

Modernization efforts are also underway in Russia. Its military prioritizes nuclear and advanced missile systems, attack and guided-missile submarines, bombers, missile frigates, fighter jets, air-to-air missiles, and state-of-the-art air defenses. In conflict, Russia may threaten cyber or kinetic strikes against Washington or European capitals, or attack undersea communications cables, causing severe impact to the global economy. It may also gamble that use of nuclear weapons might avert defeat in combat or preclude retaliation.

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Russia’s operations are designed to fragment the international order. Its pursuit of an expanded sphere of influence has been defined by opportunism and a willingness to violate international agreements and laws, as well as use of military force. Its campaign to restore strategic depth has motivated RF aggression in Ukraine and Georgia, as well as its intervention in Syria.

In the event of conflict, China and Russia will likely attempt to seize territory before the United States and its allies can mount an effective response—leading to a fait accompli. Each supports this approach through investments in counter-intervention networks. Each seeks to shift the burden of escalation by reinforcing annexed territory with long-range precision-strike weapons and make a military response to an invasion seem disproportionately costly.

Additional competitors, violent extremists, and criminal organizations all exploit weak governance at sea, corruption ashore, and gaps in maritime domain awareness. Piracy, drug smuggling, human trafficking, and other illicit acts leave governments vulnerable to coercion. Climate change threatens coastal nations with rising sea levels, depleted fish stocks, and more severe weather. Competition over offshore resources, including protein, energy, and minerals, is leading to tension and conflict. Receding Arctic sea ice is opening the region to growing maritime activity and increased competition. These forces and trends create vulnerabilities for adversaries to exploit, corrode the rule of law, and generate instability that can erupt into crisis in any theater.

New and converging technologies will have profound impacts on the security environment. Artificial intelligence, autonomy, additive manufacturing, quantum computing, and new communications and energy technologies could each, individually, generate enormous disruptive change. In combination, the effects of these technologies, and others, will be multiplicative and unpredictable. Militaries that effectively integrate them will undoubtedly gain significant warfighting advantages.

The United States and its allies will be challenged to build the necessary capability and capacity required to address these many threats. Increasingly sophisticated weapon systems and a shrinking defense industrial base will raise the price and extend the timelines for developing and procuring new weapons and platforms. Continuous budget pressures, including the economic impact of COVID-19, may constrain resources available for defense.

PROBLEM STATEMENT China’s and Russia’s revisionist approaches in the maritime environment threaten U.S.

interests, undermine alliances and partnerships, and degrade the free and open international order. Moreover, China’s and Russia’s aggressive naval growth and modernization are eroding U.S. military advantages. Unchecked, these trends will leave the Naval Service unprepared to ensure our advantage at sea and protect national interests within the next decade.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NAVAL SERVICE Alliances and partnerships remain our key strategic advantage. Our allies, partners,

and alliances such as NATO are an enduring asymmetric advantage over our rivals. They uphold international norms, generate naval power, and provide access to valuable strategic maritime positions. We must strengthen and expand our network of relationships to ensure our success in competition, crisis, and conflict.

Activities short of war can achieve strategic-level effects. The maritime domain is particularly vulnerable to malign behavior below the threshold of war and incremental gains from malign activities can accumulate into long-term advantages. Rivals are exploiting new avenues to advance their interests, including weaponizing social media, infiltrating global supply chains, and using space and cyber as warfighting domains. We must compete in these spaces.

Prevailing in competition is more than a conceptual challenge. Countering malign behaviors short of armed conflict requires sufficient naval capacity and integration to maintain forward presence, as well as targeted capabilities that expand our response options. To sustain deterrence and prevent competition from escalating into conflict, we must maintain our critical military advantages.

Operating forward deters coercive behavior and conventional aggression. We cannot build trust and interoperability with our maritime allies and partners from a distance. Nor can we contest malign activities without being present. Our force generation models must ensure we have sufficient combat-credible naval forces available to deter aggression, preempt a fait accompli, and win in conflict, all backed up by rapid surge capability and capacity.

Contested seas require a renewed emphasis on sea control. Denying our adversaries’ use of the seas thwarts their direct wartime objectives and disrupts their efforts to threaten our allies and the American homeland from the maritime domain. We must increase our emphasis on controlling the seas in conflict to provide joint and allied forces with the freedom of maneuver to attack adversary forces and impose costs globally.

Maintaining advantage at sea requires modernization. In persistently surveilled, contested environments, agile naval forces offer dynamic and flexible options from which to project combat power. We must maintain our advantage at sea with new platforms, new thinking, and new technologies that enhance distributed naval operations, and develop our people and culture to meet the challenges of a complex security environment.

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II. INTEGRATED ALL-DOMAIN NAVAL POWER

The Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard have a proud heritage of serving and fighting together, but today’s security environment demands deeper cooperation. Integrated All-

Domain Naval Power—synchronizing the complementary capabilities, capacities, roles, investments, and authorities of the Naval Service—multiplies the traditional influence of sea power to produce a more competitive and lethal total force. Together, we expand our ability to deliver effects across the competition continuum and in all domains: from the sea floor to space; across the world’s oceans, littorals, and coastal areas ashore; and in the information environment, cyber domain, and electromagnetic spectrum.

Integrated naval forces are uniquely suited for operations across the competition continuum. The Coast Guard’s mission profile makes it the preferred maritime security partner for many nations vulnerable to coercion. Integrating its unique authorities—law- enforcement, fisheries protection, marine safety, and maritime security—with Navy and Marine Corps capabilities expands the options we provide to joint force commanders for cooperation and competition. In conflict, Navy-Marine Corps integration expands our ability to control the seas, as we combine distributed fleet operations and mobile, expeditionary formations with sea control and sea denial capabilities. These operations are guided by Naval Service concepts—Distributed Maritime Operations, Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment, and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations—that combine the effects of sea-based and land-based fires, enabling our forces to mass combat power at times and places of our choosing. Closer integration allows our forces to distribute more broadly and increase our operational unpredictability across the competition continuum by varying our timing, location, domain, forces, and activities.

Naval forces’ unique attributes generate options and decision space for national leadership, providing credible deterrence and prompt crisis response worldwide, regardless of access to overseas bases. Every day, the Naval Service operates on the front lines of global competition, interacting with China’s and Russia’s forces in every domain. Agile, mobile, expeditionary, scalable, sustainable, versatile, networked, and lethal, we provide critical advantages over our competitors through our ability to use the vast oceans to maneuver and sustain our forces globally. Working alongside our allies and partners, our operations, exercises, and engagements must set the conditions for a future in which our rivals are deterred from malign behaviors and aggression—and, if deterrence fails, a future in which they are defeated.

Multi-mission by design, the Naval Service leaves home port outfitted for the unpredictable. We have crucial peacetime missions, including responding to disasters, preserving maritime security, safeguarding global commerce, protecting human life, and extending American influence. We underwrite the use of global waterways to achieve national security objectives through diplomacy, law enforcement, economic statecraft, and, when required, force. We embody America’s resolve, its might, and its commitment to uphold the values of a free and open order.

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The Naval Service does not compete, deter, or fight alone. We are an integral part of the Joint Force and work closely with allies, partners, and other government agencies. We are also part of America’s broader maritime enterprise, which includes commercial ships, merchant mariners, port infrastructure, and shipbuilders. All of these relationships are paramount to guarantee free use of the maritime domain, ensure our security, and protect our prosperity.

Legend-class cutter USCGC Stratton (WMSL 752) and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell (DDG 85) maneuver in the Coral Sea in 2019. (USN photo by MC2 John Harris)

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III. EMPLOYING NAVAL FORCES PREVAILING IN LONG-TERM STRATEGIC COMPETITION

American security objectives have remained broadly consistent since the end of World War II. The United States has sought to protect its territory and secure global conditions

hospitable to liberty, commerce, and peace. We have opposed rivals’ attempts to subjugate regions to their control or restrict access to the world’s oceans. Wherever these lasting interests were threatened, the United States has worked alongside like-minded nations to defend our common goals and change the behavior of nations operating outside established international norms. America’s Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard have served as powerful, visible symbols of our commitment to these enduring values.

To counter China’s and Russia’s revisionist approaches in the maritime environment and to set global maritime conditions that support National Defense Strategy objectives, the Naval Service, as part of the Joint Force, will:

• Defend the homeland from attack and protect the U.S. marine transportation system

• Preserve a stable and secure global maritime environment that is free, open, and advances prosperity through transit, trade, and lawful pursuit of natural resources

• Defend allies from aggression and enable partners to counter coercion and subversion

• Expand collaboration and interoperability with allies and partners, and reinforce favorable balances of maritime power

• Deter strategic, nuclear, conventional, and cyber aggression to protect U.S. vital interests

• In the event of conflict, deny adversaries their objectives, defeat adversary forces while managing escalation, and set the conditions for favorable conflict termination

Given the scope of our global mission and the scale of our challenges, we must set priorities and manage risk. We cannot operate everywhere, at all times, with equal effectiveness. Therefore, the Naval Service will prioritize:

Competition with the PRC over other challengers. China is the only rival with the combined economic and military potential to present a long-term, comprehensive challenge to the United States. Naval Service operations and force posture will focus on countering PRC malign behavior globally and strengthening regional deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Deny competitors strategic gains from malign behavior over minimizing tactical risk. Deterring and contesting incrementalism requires firm and persuasive operations to confront malign behavior. Ready, forward-deployed naval forces will accept calculated tactical risks and adopt a more assertive posture in our day-to-day operations.

Future warfighting readiness over near-term demand. To preserve our ability to modernize for the future i

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