Page 50 - Maritime Services and the Kill Web

The Maritime Services, the Allies and Shaping the Kill Web

And when the ISIS were able to aggregate forces, the absence of an air enabled ground force, demonstrated a
fundamental fact often forgotten: it is not about airpower versus boots on the ground….

If the ISIS forces loses their maneuver ability and their crew-served weapons and armored vehicles, especially
tanks, to seize terrain and key choke points, they will be forced back into the cities or be forced hide in small units
in the countryside.

If US forces can see them outside of cities they can kill them. City fights should be left to what is remaining of the
Iraq Army.

ISIS was well on the way to fielding an Army when the US finally engaged.

Focusing upon what is needed to pulverize military capabilities of ISIS to move rapidly and lethally, can buy some
strategic maneuver space to sort out what kind of aid the Kurds might really need to protect their augmented
territory within a fragmenting Iraq.

Because the US has the option of leveraging our seabase in conjunction with whatever force capabilities might be
shaped to support the Kurds, the US is NOT forced to have agreements with a collapsing regime to influence
events. The sea-based force can function as the foundation for a force able to operate without the need for
specific territorial agreements on basing with fractious factions of Baghdad.

And when they depart, they do not have to leave their equipment behind which can become later seized by hostile
forces and used against the United States and its allies.”

http://www.sldinfo.com/prevailing-in-21st-century-conflicts-leveraging-insertion-forces/

Bottom line: what can go in from the Sea with a Navy/Marine AF team can also be withdrawn. Allies to
whom we owe a debt can be evacuated or protected from the sea.

These possibilities remain important for our current global commitments and operations. And with the 21st
century con-ops provided by the MV-22, the Harrier and then the F-35B, the Marines can engage in
providing capabilities for such situations.

Off the shores of San Diego last November a new powerful capability was worked which can augment the
insertion force and give it a whole new punch, pack and ability to insert and withdraw force.

The USS America with F-35Bs and Ospreys can provide for force insertion and provide the kind of
unpredictability in approach but success in operations, which President-elect Trump has highlighted as a key
part of the toolbox to defeat ISIS.
The USS America is the largest amphibious ship ever built by the United States.

The ship has been built at the Huntington Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi and departed mid-July
2014 for its trip to its initial home part at San Diego, California and then was commissioned in San Francisco
in mid-October 2014. It is now undergoing its final trials and preparing to enter the fleet.

The USMC is the only tiltrotar-enabled assault force in the world.
The USS America has been built to facilitate this capability and will be augmented as the F-35B is added to
the Ospreys, and helicopters already operating from the ship and as unmanned vehicles become a regular
operational element as well.

Second Line of Defense

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