Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 88

over-complicating or endangering counter-A2/AD land warfare force survival.
Third, Army intelligence must be
tightly woven into the fabric of joint force
intelligence functions to obtain and push
vital real-time intelligence data needed
by the executing counter-A2/AD land
warfare force; intelligence needed to cue
organic defensive and offensive kinetic/
non-kinetic fires. The vitality of the land
warfare intelligence/joint intelligence
relationship is critical in A2/AD environments where networks may become
temporarily unstable or information
exchange rates may be slow. This increase
in information friction and corresponding
decrease in information flow may produce
nearly immediate disruptions to logistics
and operations initiative.

A Glimpse of Prevailing in
the Fight—A Vignette

A Conceptual Vignette
Three batteries of a shore based anti-ship
missile system threaten the approach of surface
vessels out to a range of 250 miles from sovereign coastline. The U.S. campaign requires that
with regard to follow-on joint forces, these missile
batteries be mitigated to establish a narrow lane
of approach to the coastline. Small units of light
land warfare assault forces, teaming with SOF
already ashore, will link up to deliver kinetic and
nonkinetic effects that mitigate the missile batteries. SOF will enter the objective area to provide
recon, observation. U.S. counter-network, space
offense, and SOF efforts will enable assault force
approach in all-weather aircraft for nighttime
insertion. The operation is planned for several
hours during which assault forces receive C4ISR
support via joint/coalition space assets. On-order
kinetic/nonkinetic suppression assistance is
provided with nearby low observable craft
orchestrated through resilient U.S. networks.
After several hours, the batteries and ancillary
equipment are mitigated. U.S. Air Forces return
to extract the assault and reinforce, resuppl y
SOF as needed. Other U.S. forces provide cover
for egressing forces.

Through the lens of land warfare forces
employed to conduct reconnaissance,
raids, and seizures in a counter-A2/AD
campaign, figure 2 outlines countering
A2/AD in each of those three mission
bins. These scenarios derive from three
operational priorities in any counter-A2/
AD campaign: first, keep U.S. forces
alive; second, ensure the U.S. logistics
enterprise functions as well as possible;
and third, as able and appropriate carry
the fight to targets that best unhinge the
most essential elements of the adversary’s
denial framework. The targets of figure 3 are not
rigidly categorized nor does figure 3 imply that all
potential counter-A2/AD scenarios appear here.
Indeed, the main benefit of this outline is to provide
a deliberative framework to inform experimentation
and, ultimately force redevelopment. What predominates the scenarios in figure 3 are not so much an
action but rather a rationale to first mitigate certain
systems that directly preclude or exclude joint force
access, freedom of action, and operational latitude.
To provide readers with what well-honed counterA2/AD execution looks like, the vignette of figure
5 is a notional joint force mission to mitigate a
shore-based anti-ship missile system, an example
86

Figure 5: Conceptual Vignette

of an important proliferated A2/AD capability
rapidly becoming more abundant in the world’s
littorals. The vignette is not a detailed explanation
of all the details of how redeveloped joint force
packages would mitigate a shore-based missile
system; it is only a description of a notional joint
force concept of operations and its centerpiece
in this discussion—land warfare force TTPs to
execute such a complex mission. The mission in
figure 5 requires redeveloped forces using honed
choreography with appropriate degrees of local
customization—a kind of competence impossible
to attain in a warfighting pick-up game. The scale
and sophistication of A2/AD adversaries suggest
November-December 2013

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