Page 49 - Maritime Services and the Kill Web

The Maritime Services, the Allies and Shaping the Kill Web

In Afghanistan and Iraq we have not had prohibitive interference in our air operations.

With double digit SAMS as part of threat areas we are likely to go, the F-35 allows us to operate in such areas.
Without the presence of the F35, it would be a mission that we wouldn’t be capable of executing.

The SA of the airplane is a game changer for us.

Rather than getting input from the Senior Watch Officer on the ground with regard to our broader combat SA,
we now have that in our F-35. This allows us to share SA from the pilot flying the airplane and interacting with his
sensors. He can share that information, that situational awareness, with everybody from other airborne platforms
to the ground force commander in ways that are going to increase our ops tempo and allow us to do things that
historically we wouldn’t have been able to do.

The ability of the F35 to be able to recognize and identify the types of prohibitive threats that would prevent us
from putting in assault support platforms and ground forces is crucial to the way ahead.
The F-35 can not only identify those threats, but also kill them.

And that is now and not some future iteration.

Evolving the capability of the insertion forces rather than simply relying on putting “Walmarts” ashore and
conducting combat support from Forward Operating Bases and airbases in contested territory, the sea base
provides its own integrated support and operational integrated capabilities.
This force and support integration offshore provides capability for not only force protection but also surprise
against enemies who wish to use agility to their advantage. It is not airpower versus boots on the ground. It is
about changing the nature of the ground forces used and how air-ground integration to kill the enemy is
conducted.
It is not about putting bases on the ground that ISIS can strike as they can.

Forces can be moved around the point of attack to enhance unpredictability while reducing the vulnerability
of needed ground forces by relying on insertion forces, leveraging the sea base.

As Ed Timperlake and I wrote in 2014, “the new capabilities which the amphibious task forces coupled with large
deck carriers provides a variable attack force which can insert ground forces against areas of interest and then
withdraw back to the sea base.

ISIS is a rapidly moving target and needs a response that is not measured in the months and years of a return of
the US Army to Iraq to re-start training an Iraqi Army which the Obama Administration has already clearly
recognized as part of the problem not the solution. The total collapse of the Iraq Army after a decade of US
investment is a testimony to failure, regardless of who is at fault in US planning and execution of Iraq Nation
Building.

For defenders of COIN, it would have to be explained why time and continued effort would overcome what are
clearly deeply rooted fissures within the political texture of Iraq: namely the Sunni-Shite cleavage, the role of Iran
and the use of the military by Prime Minister Malki for his own political purposes?

In effect, Maliki has used his Shia-dominated military in ways similar to how Saddam Hussein used his Sunni-
dominated military, namely to prop himself up in power and to shape domestic political outcomes to his benefit.
Simply changing the name of the leader is not likely to change power realities.

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