Page 38 - F-35 and Transformation

The F-35 and The Transformation of the Power Projection Forces

Those platforms which can operate in an interconnected manner are the crucial ones to build, deploy and
sustain in the period ahead, versus those which are very limited in their capability to provide synergy to joint
or coalition forces in the battlespace.

This means as well that force packages need to be examined, less in terms of themselves individually, but
rather in terms of their synergy and capabilities to shape dominant combat power in the interconnected
battlespace.

To discuss the way ahead for the sea services from the standpoint of the head of Naval Warfare, we had a
chance to discuss key elements of innovation being put in place.

Rear Admiral Manazir, then Director of Air Warfare on the Staff of the Chief of Naval Operations and now
Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems, sat down with us in November 2015, to discuss the
way ahead.

Question: As global events unfold, most dramatically the reach from the Middle East to Paris and back
again, how do the sea services contribute to the fight?

Rear Admiral Manazir: The Navy/Marine team has always been expeditionary; it was at its inception 240
years ago for both services.

We have always been expeditionary.

We design the Navy / Marine Corps expeditionary force to be able to engage against a nation state when
necessary.

That could be all the way from what people technically refer to as the high-end anti-access area denial fight
all the way to putting power ashore to engage in counterterrorism fights.

The Marine Corps has grown in capability from being naval infantry to now having the capability to come
from the sea with high-end meshed, networked, honeycombed, resilient capability, with an array of options
depending on how you integrate the force.

The sea base itself has a powerful ability strategically to wage war because you don’t need a permission slip
from a foreign power to use their bases.

The United Stated Navy and the United States Marine Corps singly in the world have retained and
modernized the sized capability that allows one to fight a nation with our force rather than just fight another
naval force.

Question: Put in other terms, a force capable of being sized to the mission?

Rear Admiral Manazir: That is right. Our modernization strategy will make us even more effective to deal with
the future mission set.

What the higher-end capabilities that are delivered with F-35B and C and then the future air wing that
includes unmanned give us is the capability to really own that battle space, and all domains of it. It can be
flexed from the higher-end war fight down to delivering combat power ashore from the sea base.

Going into a high-end battle space with F-35Bs and Cs will allow us to identify more of the players in that
battle space than we did before. With the information gathering and data fusion capability resident in the F-
35, you can empower the rest of the air wing.

Second Line of Defense

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