The Defense Department has ordered a possible revision to its Air-Sea Battle concept with the aim of increasing military jointness, a DOD spokesman confirmed.
"In September 2014, the service chiefs approved a plan for the Air-Sea Battle Office to explore a concept revision and submit a joint prospectus in coordination with the Joint Staff," Army Lt. Col. Joe Sowers wrote in an Oct. 15 email. "As the joint prospectus navigates the Joint Staff's concept development process, the Air-Sea Battle Office, with its existing governance structure, will be retained to sponsor the writing of the prospectus and resulting concept, as well as to ensure oversight of existing service implementation efforts."
Sowers explained that the revised Air-Sea Battle concept "will have the potential to become a supporting joint concept under the Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC)."
Confirmation of the revision comes after Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's chief acquisition executive, publicly criticized the existing Air-Sea Battle concept for not driving enough interoperability into DOD's weapons programs.
"I'm a little frustrated, frankly, that we haven't made more progress on interservice interoperability in some areas," he said during an Oct. 7 test and evaluation conference in Arlington, VA.
"Air-Sea Battle was intended to be a way for the Navy and the Air Force, in particular, to fight more effectively and work better together," he continued. "But, to be candid, I'm not seeing much coming out of that in terms of aggregate changes in programs to allow that to happen. So, there's definitely more work to be done."
The Air-Sea Battle concept, which became official DOD doctrine in 2010, is aimed at overcoming an enemy employing anti-access, area-denial strategies against U.S. forces such as China or North Korea, though neither nation is specifically mentioned.
Advocates for the Army and Marine Corps, however, have publicly and privately criticized the Air-Sea Battle concept at the Pentagon, arguing that it does not place enough emphasis on ground forces and have called for an update.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno has pushed for the establishment of a Strategic Landpower office to complement Air-Sea Battle.
"Air-Sea Battle is a concept that gains access," he said during a March 13 appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "What happens when you gain access? You've got to put in some kind of ground forces potentially? These are all joint, interoperable concepts."
Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is critical of the Air-Sea Battle concept because he sees it as unnecessarily antagonistic toward China -- something he thinks could be remedied if the Army and Marine Corps were included.
"When you combine the release of this concept with the so-called rebalance to Asia, it just became more and more clear to most Chinese it was aimed primarily at them and they're largely right," he told Inside the Pentagon on Oct. 10.
"The Navy and Air Force are warfighting entities," he continued. "The Marine Corps and the Army are as well, but they also focus a lot of their work on engagement and exercises in the West Pacific. The Marines are largely stationed in the Western Pacific, the Army is based in Korea and they're trying to emphasize things like humanitarian relief."
O'Hanlon argues that looping in the Army and Marine Corps to emphasis strategic engagement in the Asia-Pacific region would be better than preparing for a large-scale war. "The real priority is to stay engaged in the region," he said.
Meanwhile, Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, where much of the analysis supporting the Air-Sea Battle concept has taken place, welcomed the news of an update.
"Making version 2.0 of the Air-Sea Battle Concept a joint product could help all of the services to improve their understanding of how cross-domain operations could create new advantages in future conflicts," he told Inside the Pentagon on Oct. 15.
"Hopefully, the joint concept will address how land forces could use cruise and ballistic missiles to help control critical maritime choke points and impose costs on future enemies," he added. "In other words, creation of the concept is an opportunity to explore new missions and capabilities for our nation's land forces that could give them a leading warfighting role in highly contested operating environments."