By Geoff Fein

While the Navy and Marine Corps won’t begin actual sea base operations until the 2020 time frame, when they take delivery of all the required platforms, the services have been demonstrating, in real world conditions, their sea basing concept.

From the tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia to last year’s disaster relief in Bangladesh, the two services have shown the ability to deliver assistance from the sea without leaving a footprint ashore.

“Some of things we are doing today…the operations…I don’t [think] these were ever intended to go out as sea basing…to prove sea basing…but it has kind of happened that way,” Maj. Gen. Thomas Benes, director, Expeditionary Warfare, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.

In response to cyclone Sidr that tore into Bangladesh in November, killing thousands, the Marine Corps dispatched an Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) to the area.

“They set up a sea basing operation for that, going on a tsunami relief model, albeit on a smaller scale. By using the sea as a base and operating from that, they are able to have influence from shore,” Benes said. “They can help the country help people without having a footprint. Those type of operations are developing our thinking on sea basing.”

Off the coast of Somalia, using assets from the 5th Fleet and working along with fleet commanders from the Horn of Africa, the Navy has established a sea base operation focusing on anti-piracy, Benes said.

“What the Navy is able to do is remain at sea without a footprint ashore and they are able to deny sanctuaries, pass intelligence and deter some of these attacks and not always using kinetic effects either,” he said. “Using the ships they have, an LSD as a mother ship, a DDG, and a T-AKE for sustainment, [they have] a mini sea base operation that’s going on there.”

South America is another area where the Navy and Marine Corps have set up another example of sea base operations, Benes said.

“We have HSV Swift. We also sent an LHD down there for hurricane relief,” he said. “We are doing a lot of that down there.”

Three years after the devastating Indonesian tsunami, the Navy and Marine Corps continue to provide follow-on assistance, Benes added. “That’s another sea base operation.”

Pacific Command has deployed with a LHA, as a follow-on to the hospital ship USNS Mercy‘s (T-AH 19) deployment, which was a follow-on to the tsunami relief operations, to keep the persistent engagement and presence there and keep following up on the goodwill the services made in the region, he said.

The Navy and Marine Corps are also developing global fleet stations that Benes refers to as regional sea bases.

“If you look at all the pieces that are in a global fleet station, it’s a regional area on the water that’s set up to influence an area, essentially in the arc of instability, where the Navy and the COCOM (combat commanders), working under the COCOM leader…where they want to influence,” Benes said. “This can be the area we develop as a sea base, and naval forces can go in and out of there and can be supplied from there.”

The global fleet station idea came out on paper a year ago, Benes said. “Now there are three of them active, which is amazing. This was a white paper, probably well over a year ago. In actual practice, this just started. It’s going well.”

According to the Navy, the notional plan is one for the east coast of Africa–Gulf of Guinea, one off the Horn of Africa, and the third for southeast Asia–Straits of Malacca, Indonesia, Philippines.

The first global fleet station experiment was off South America and there is another scheduled for spring off of East Africa. These experiments don’t include the Mercy, which has been administering medical care throughout southeast Asia, the Navy added.

There are also joint sea basing concepts maturing, Benes said. The Joint Staff is currently consolidating all of the sea basing visions of the different services, the different entities they are working with, he added.

“What they want to do is come up with a common joint vision. There is going to be a JSAW…Joint Sea Base and Analysis War gaming event that we will participate in, in early 2008, to develop that,” Benes said. “[Joint Forces Command] is involved, the Joint Staff is running it, the services are all involved. They built on the Joint Integrating Concept and Joint Capability Analysis work that has been done. Some of that stuff is coming together. A year ago it probably was still a little bit vague, [but] now we are actually doing some of those things, so the joint world is embracing this.”

Looking ahead, Benes said he sees the need for the maritime strategy to provide much more influence in program development and the Navy/Marine Corps force structure for the future.

“Definitely the maritime strategy is going to influence the way we look at the future force in our programming and budgeting decisions here,” he said.

“So now we get down to where sea basing fits into this, and sea basing just offers unique access to the littoral regions that you would not otherwise have,” Benes added. “It allows us to achieve effects on land without a footprint ashore across the entire range of military operations. That’s probably the best definition we have developed. That’s where we are in terms of the maritime strategy and how it relates to sea basing.”

But when the maritime strategy was rolled out in October at the 18th International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College in Newport, one topic not mentioned in the document, that the Marine Corps is very much interested in, was sea basing, Commandant Gen. James Conway said at the time (Defense Daily, Oct. 18).

Benes said it wasn’t a matter of an omission, but more that the Navy and Marine Corps didn’t have their arms around what sea basing was, except for the concept.

In fact, Benes said the services took a lot of criticism from the joint world and defense analysts about what the Navy and Marine Corps were doing with sea basing. Some questioned the lack of programs, he added.

“I think within the last year we have developed that more based on operations we are doing and some lessons learned,” Benes said. “I don’t think we could see that a year ago.”

The new maritime strategy will allow the Navy and Marine Corps to further develop sea base concepts and go from there, he added.

“That was probably one of the biggest comments we had about the maritime strategy when it was rolled out, so Gen. Conway [was] obviously right on about that,” Benes said.

The way forward, and one of the tasks that Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead has asked the Marine Corps to do, Benes said, “is to further develop sea basing within the maritime strategy along with other aspects of the strategy.”