Back
About RSIS
Introduction
Building the Foundations
Welcome Message
Board of Governors
Staff Profiles
Executive Deputy Chairman’s Office
Dean’s Office
Management
Distinguished Fellows
Faculty and Research
Associate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research Analysts
Visiting Fellows
Adjunct Fellows
Administrative Staff
Honours and Awards for RSIS Staff and Students
RSIS Endowment Fund
Endowed Professorships
Career Opportunities
Getting to RSIS
Research
Research Centres
Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)
Centre of Excellence for National Security
Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)
International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
Research Programmes
National Security Studies Programme (NSSP)
Social Cohesion Research Programme (SCRP)
Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
Other Research
Future Issues and Technology Cluster
Research@RSIS
Science and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
Graduate Education
Graduate Programmes Office
Exchange Partners and Programmes
How to Apply
Financial Assistance
Meet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other events
RSIS Alumni
Outreach
Global Networks
About Global Networks
RSIS Alumni
Executive Education
About Executive Education
SRP Executive Programme
Terrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
International Programmes
About International Programmes
Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)
Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)
International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS)
International Strategy Forum-Asia (ISF-Asia)
Publications
RSIS Publications
Annual Reviews
Books
Bulletins and Newsletters
RSIS Commentary Series
Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
Commemorative / Event Reports
Future Issues
IDSS Papers
Interreligious Relations
Monographs
NTS Insight
Policy Reports
Working Papers
External Publications
Authored Books
Journal Articles
Edited Books
Chapters in Edited Books
Policy Reports
Working Papers
Op-Eds
Glossary of Abbreviations
Policy-relevant Articles Given RSIS Award
RSIS Publications for the Year
External Publications for the Year
Media
Cohesive Societies
Sustainable Security
Other Resource Pages
News Releases
Speeches
Video/Audio Channel
External Podcasts
Events
Contact Us
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Think Tank and Graduate School Ponder The Improbable Since 1966
Nanyang Technological University Nanyang Technological University
  • About RSIS
      IntroductionBuilding the FoundationsWelcome MessageBoard of GovernorsHonours and Awards for RSIS Staff and StudentsRSIS Endowment FundEndowed ProfessorshipsCareer OpportunitiesGetting to RSIS
      Staff ProfilesExecutive Deputy Chairman’s OfficeDean’s OfficeManagementDistinguished FellowsFaculty and ResearchAssociate Research Fellows, Senior Analysts and Research AnalystsVisiting FellowsAdjunct FellowsAdministrative Staff
  • Research
      Research CentresCentre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS)Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre)Centre of Excellence for National SecurityInstitute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS)International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)
      Research ProgrammesNational Security Studies Programme (NSSP)Social Cohesion Research Programme (SCRP)Studies in Inter-Religious Relations in Plural Societies (SRP) Programme
      Other ResearchFuture Issues and Technology ClusterResearch@RSISScience and Technology Studies Programme (STSP) (2017-2020)
  • Graduate Education
      Graduate Programmes OfficeExchange Partners and ProgrammesHow to ApplyFinancial AssistanceMeet the Admissions Team: Information Sessions and other eventsRSIS Alumni
  • Outreach
      Global NetworksAbout Global NetworksRSIS Alumni
      Executive EducationAbout Executive EducationSRP Executive ProgrammeTerrorism Analyst Training Course (TATC)
      International ProgrammesAbout International ProgrammesAsia-Pacific Programme for Senior Military Officers (APPSMO)Asia-Pacific Programme for Senior National Security Officers (APPSNO)International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS)International Strategy Forum-Asia (ISF-Asia)
  • Publications
      RSIS PublicationsAnnual ReviewsBooksBulletins and NewslettersRSIS Commentary SeriesCounter Terrorist Trends and AnalysesCommemorative / Event ReportsFuture IssuesIDSS PapersInterreligious RelationsMonographsNTS InsightPolicy ReportsWorking Papers
      External PublicationsAuthored BooksJournal ArticlesEdited BooksChapters in Edited BooksPolicy ReportsWorking PapersOp-Eds
      Glossary of AbbreviationsPolicy-relevant Articles Given RSIS AwardRSIS Publications for the YearExternal Publications for the Year
  • Media
      Cohesive SocietiesSustainable SecurityOther Resource PagesNews ReleasesSpeechesVideo/Audio ChannelExternal Podcasts
  • Events
  • Contact Us
    • Connect with Us

      rsis.ntu
      rsis_ntu
      rsisntu
      rsisvideocast
      school/rsis-ntu
      rsis.sg
      rsissg
      RSIS
      RSS
      Subscribe to RSIS Publications
      Subscribe to RSIS Events

      Getting to RSIS

      Nanyang Technological University
      Block S4, Level B3,
      50 Nanyang Avenue,
      Singapore 639798

      Click here for direction to RSIS

      Get in Touch

    Connect
    Search
    • RSIS
    • Publication
    • RSIS Publications
    • CO12159 | AirSea Battle: Old Wine in New Bottles?
    • Annual Reviews
    • Books
    • Bulletins and Newsletters
    • RSIS Commentary Series
    • Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses
    • Commemorative / Event Reports
    • Future Issues
    • IDSS Papers
    • Interreligious Relations
    • Monographs
    • NTS Insight
    • Policy Reports
    • Working Papers

    CO12159 | AirSea Battle: Old Wine in New Bottles?
    Richard A. Bitzinger

    23 August 2012

    download pdf

    Synopsis

    The U.S. military’s “AirSea Battle” is short on specifics, but appears to draw much from earlier concepts of the “revolution in military affairs.” This begs the question whether ASB is simply a ploy to repackage the RMA as a “new” warfighting concept.

    Commentary

    The U.S. military, which has never been at a loss for buzzwords to describe its warfighting strategies or operational objectives, has come up with a new nomenclature, AirSea Battle (ASB). It is a supposedly novel approach to warfare intended to counter 21st century threat, particularly from emerging nation-state competitors such as China and Iran.

    During the 1990s, the prevailing concept inside the Pentagon was the “revolution in military affairs” (RMA). In the 2000s, this mutated into “network-centric warfare” and “force transformation.” Today, while the perils may be “new,” the tools to fight this battle are anything but AirSea Battle is just the RMA in another guise.

    ASB and Anti-Access/Area Denial

    Central to the ASB concept is overcoming the “anti-access/area denial challenge.” According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Affairs (CSBA), “anti-access (A2) strategies aim to prevent U.S. forces from operating from fixed land bases in a theater of operations,” while “area-denial (AD) operations aim to prevent the freedom of action of maritime forces operating in the theater.” CSBA defines the A2/AD threat as strikes by ballistic and cruise missiles (both land-attack and antiship), artillery and rocket barrages, submarine operations, and long- range air strikes. Cyber-attacks, anti-satellite warfare, and even coastal mines are also usually characteristic of A2/AD.

    If the A2/AD threat seems overly broad, AirSea Battle is equally ambitious. While ASB is short on specifics, it is based on the idea of carrying out massive counterstrikes against an enemy’s home territory. Cruise missiles, launched from submarines or ships, along with smart bombs dropped from stealth aircraft, would blind and incapacitate the adversary by taking out its military surveillance and communications systems. Other attacks would target the enemy’s missile bases, airfields, and naval facilities.

    ASB = RMA?

    Leaving aside this scary scenario of escalating clashes and counterattacks (how, for instance, might China, or a nuclear-armed Iran, react to an attack on its national territory?), however, AirSea Battle, as a warfighting concept, is depressingly familiar, and instantly recognizable, to anyone who has studied the RMA.

    While details are sketchy, ASB seems to revolve around two major ideas: jointness and networking. In January 2012, the U.S. Department of Defence (DoD) released its vision for a “Joint Operational Access Concept” (JOAC). According to the DoD, JOAC is explicitly intended to deal with “opposed operational access in an advanced anti-access/area-denial environment.”

    Central to JOAC, according to this document, is a “future joint forces [that] will leverage cross-domain synergy [i.e., air, sea, land, and cyberspace] to establish superiority in some combinations of domains that will provide the freedom of action required by the mission.” JOAC “envisions a seamless application of combat power between the domains, with greater integration at dramatically lower echelons that joint forces currently achieve.”

    And how do we achieve JOAC? By networking. According to a recent article in The American Interest by two U.S. flag officers, ASB would use “networked, integrated attack-in-depth” in order to “disrupt, destroy, and defeat” enemy forces. U.S. Representative J. Randy Forbes, in a March 2012 article in the online magazine, The Diplomat, also emphasized networking in ASB: “More specifically, the joint force (integrated air, ground, and naval forces) armed with resilient communications (networked) aims to strike at multiple nodes of an enemy’s system (attack-in-depth) along three lines of effort.”

    If all this sounds familiar it’s because the RMA of the 1990s and 2000s was all about networking, jointness, precision-strike, and the like. “Integrated joint operations” was a watchword of network-centric warfare (NCW) and force transformation. In defining NCW the now-defunct U.S. DoD Office of Force Transformation argued nearly a decade ago that it generated “increased combat power by networking sensors, decision makers, and shooters to achieve shared awareness, increased speed of command, high tempo of operations, greater lethality, increased survivability, and a degree of self-synchronization.”

    Above all, the RMA entailed the “linking of people, platforms, weapons, sensors, and decision aids into a single network,” resulting in “networked forces that operate with increased speed and synchronization and are capable of achieving massed effects.”

    Everything Old is New Again

    AirSea Battle, therefore, is basically the RMA rebranded. This begs the question: Is it a sincere effort by the U.S. military to apply lessons learned about the RMA and force transformation to a new global threat environment? Or is it a cynical attempt to save expensive new weapons programs, preserve existing force structures, and prop up military expenditures by magnifying threats and by promoting ambitious warfighting concepts? Either way, the DoD needs to do a much better job of explaining ASB’s purpose and function than trotting out the same old clichés of the RMA.

    About the Author

    Richard A. Bitzinger is Senior Fellow with the Military Transformations Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. Formerly with the RAND Corp. and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, he has been writing on aerospace and defence issues for more than 20 years. 

    Categories: RSIS Commentary Series / International Politics and Security / Maritime Security / Global

    Synopsis

    The U.S. military’s “AirSea Battle” is short on specifics, but appears to draw much from earlier concepts of the “revolution in military affairs.” This begs the question whether ASB is simply a ploy to repackage the RMA as a “new” warfighting concept.

    Commentary

    The U.S. military, which has never been at a loss for buzzwords to describe its warfighting strategies or operational objectives, has come up with a new nomenclature, AirSea Battle (ASB). It is a supposedly novel approach to warfare intended to counter 21st century threat, particularly from emerging nation-state competitors such as China and Iran.

    During the 1990s, the prevailing concept inside the Pentagon was the “revolution in military affairs” (RMA). In the 2000s, this mutated into “network-centric warfare” and “force transformation.” Today, while the perils may be “new,” the tools to fight this battle are anything but AirSea Battle is just the RMA in another guise.

    ASB and Anti-Access/Area Denial

    Central to the ASB concept is overcoming the “anti-access/area denial challenge.” According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Affairs (CSBA), “anti-access (A2) strategies aim to prevent U.S. forces from operating from fixed land bases in a theater of operations,” while “area-denial (AD) operations aim to prevent the freedom of action of maritime forces operating in the theater.” CSBA defines the A2/AD threat as strikes by ballistic and cruise missiles (both land-attack and antiship), artillery and rocket barrages, submarine operations, and long- range air strikes. Cyber-attacks, anti-satellite warfare, and even coastal mines are also usually characteristic of A2/AD.

    If the A2/AD threat seems overly broad, AirSea Battle is equally ambitious. While ASB is short on specifics, it is based on the idea of carrying out massive counterstrikes against an enemy’s home territory. Cruise missiles, launched from submarines or ships, along with smart bombs dropped from stealth aircraft, would blind and incapacitate the adversary by taking out its military surveillance and communications systems. Other attacks would target the enemy’s missile bases, airfields, and naval facilities.

    ASB = RMA?

    Leaving aside this scary scenario of escalating clashes and counterattacks (how, for instance, might China, or a nuclear-armed Iran, react to an attack on its national territory?), however, AirSea Battle, as a warfighting concept, is depressingly familiar, and instantly recognizable, to anyone who has studied the RMA.

    While details are sketchy, ASB seems to revolve around two major ideas: jointness and networking. In January 2012, the U.S. Department of Defence (DoD) released its vision for a “Joint Operational Access Concept” (JOAC). According to the DoD, JOAC is explicitly intended to deal with “opposed operational access in an advanced anti-access/area-denial environment.”

    Central to JOAC, according to this document, is a “future joint forces [that] will leverage cross-domain synergy [i.e., air, sea, land, and cyberspace] to establish superiority in some combinations of domains that will provide the freedom of action required by the mission.” JOAC “envisions a seamless application of combat power between the domains, with greater integration at dramatically lower echelons that joint forces currently achieve.”

    And how do we achieve JOAC? By networking. According to a recent article in The American Interest by two U.S. flag officers, ASB would use “networked, integrated attack-in-depth” in order to “disrupt, destroy, and defeat” enemy forces. U.S. Representative J. Randy Forbes, in a March 2012 article in the online magazine, The Diplomat, also emphasized networking in ASB: “More specifically, the joint force (integrated air, ground, and naval forces) armed with resilient communications (networked) aims to strike at multiple nodes of an enemy’s system (attack-in-depth) along three lines of effort.”

    If all this sounds familiar it’s because the RMA of the 1990s and 2000s was all about networking, jointness, precision-strike, and the like. “Integrated joint operations” was a watchword of network-centric warfare (NCW) and force transformation. In defining NCW the now-defunct U.S. DoD Office of Force Transformation argued nearly a decade ago that it generated “increased combat power by networking sensors, decision makers, and shooters to achieve shared awareness, increased speed of command, high tempo of operations, greater lethality, increased survivability, and a degree of self-synchronization.”

    Above all, the RMA entailed the “linking of people, platforms, weapons, sensors, and decision aids into a single network,” resulting in “networked forces that operate with increased speed and synchronization and are capable of achieving massed effects.”

    Everything Old is New Again

    AirSea Battle, therefore, is basically the RMA rebranded. This begs the question: Is it a sincere effort by the U.S. military to apply lessons learned about the RMA and force transformation to a new global threat environment? Or is it a cynical attempt to save expensive new weapons programs, preserve existing force structures, and prop up military expenditures by magnifying threats and by promoting ambitious warfighting concepts? Either way, the DoD needs to do a much better job of explaining ASB’s purpose and function than trotting out the same old clichés of the RMA.

    About the Author

    Richard A. Bitzinger is Senior Fellow with the Military Transformations Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. Formerly with the RAND Corp. and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, he has been writing on aerospace and defence issues for more than 20 years. 

    Categories: RSIS Commentary Series / International Politics and Security / Maritime Security

    Popular Links

    About RSISResearch ProgrammesGraduate EducationPublicationsEventsAdmissionsCareersVideo/Audio ChannelRSIS Intranet

    Connect with Us

    rsis.ntu
    rsis_ntu
    rsisntu
    rsisvideocast
    school/rsis-ntu
    rsis.sg
    rsissg
    RSIS
    RSS
    Subscribe to RSIS Publications
    Subscribe to RSIS Events

    Getting to RSIS

    Nanyang Technological University
    Block S4, Level B3,
    50 Nanyang Avenue,
    Singapore 639798

    Click here for direction to RSIS

    Get in Touch

      Copyright © S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. All rights reserved.
      Privacy Statement / Terms of Use
      Help us improve

        Rate your experience with this website
        123456
        Not satisfiedVery satisfied
        What did you like?
        0/255 characters
        What can be improved?
        0/255 characters
        Your email
        Please enter a valid email.
        Thank you for your feedback.
        This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. By continuing, you are agreeing to the use of cookies on your device as described in our privacy policy. Learn more
        OK
        Latest Book
        more info