Ten Axioms for Campaign Planners

Ten Axioms for Campaign Planners

Today we must deter across multiple domains in local, regional, and global wars in a multipolar, proliferated nuclear world. While devoting the weight of effort to winning current fights and advancing the operational art of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns—and future complex hybrid operations—we cannot afford to neglect the important prospects of campaigns of the future that will carry greater risk and consequence. To begin reinvesting our intellectual capital in deterrence, military professionals should consider several fresh approaches.

Go to School on Deterrence and Nuclear Doctrine

The 2010 Joint Operating Environment states the following: “For the past twenty years, Americans have largely ignored issues of deterrence and nuclear warfare. We no longer have that luxury.” Illustrative of the point is Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 3-72, Nuclear Operations, the only doctrinal manual in the US Department of Defense on the conduct of campaigns involving nuclear weapons. While it provides a solid grounding in the basics, it needs to be revised to account for the new US strategy and the Nuclear Posture Review. US STRATCOM’s Deterrence Operations Joint Operating Concept provides a more expansive treatment but, as with all JOCs, it is aimed at guiding the development of future capabilities rather than the conduct of campaigns. Also, English translations of China’s military doctrine on deterrence are available in open sources. Campaign planners across the joint forces should read these documents. And, they should be taught in service schools.

Apply Deterrence in Each Phase of the Campaign

Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Operations, and the Joint Operational Planning and Execution System (JOPES) label Phase I of a joint campaign “Deter,” and in practice joint forces also have implied tasks for deterrence across each phase; they may also have specified deterrence tasks in any phase.

Phase 0: Shape. Strategic shaping occurs every time the US Air Force and the Navy conduct test launches of ICBMs from Vandenberg AFB and from Trident ballistic missile submarines. Data sharing between the United States and Russia in accordance with arms control agreements also shapes the stability of our mutual deterrence relationship.

No matter what the particular mission assigned in any theater, the US military will be building partner relationships that contribute to its capacity to deter potential adversaries, reassure allies, and maintain the stability of the central nuclear balance among the United States, Russia, and China. When the last Tomahawk land attack missile–nuclear (TLAM–N) is retired from the Navy’s arsenal, only dual-capable aircraft (nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers, F-16 and F-15 fighters, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and NATO Tornado aircraft) will be available to provide visible evidence of our capability to conduct nuclear operations. These capabilities send a message to key allies who rely on the US extended deterrence umbrella, allies who might otherwise feel compelled to seek their own nuclear capabilities. The continuous bomber presence mission in Pacific Command is a visible signal of US potential during real-world Phase 0 operations.

Phase I: Deter. In this phase, standard “flexible deterrence options” (FDO) are available to demonstrate US capability and resolve with the intent of causing the adversary to deescalate and avoid hostilities. The Joint Advanced Warfighting School of the Joint Forces Staff College teaches that FDOs are:

"pre-planned . . . actions carefully tailored to send the right signal and influence an adversary’s actions . . . developed for each instrument of national power—diplomatic, informational, military economic, and others (financial, intelligence and law enforcement DIMEFIL)—but they are most effective when used in combination with other instruments of national power . . . FDOs facilitate early strategic decision making, rapid de-escalation and crisis resolution by laying out a wide range of interrelated response paths . . . confront the adversary with unacceptable costs for its possible aggression."

Examples of military FDOs include increased readiness posture, alert status, and force protection measures; heightened intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; show-of-force actions; public diplomacy and strategic communications; and deployment orders that move military forces into the joint operations area without placing US forces in jeopardy if deterrence fails.

Typical post–Cold War FDOs eschew employment of nuclear capabilities, but the growing complexity of deterrence in a multipolar, proliferated nuclear world may require demonstrating the potential to employ the strongest military measures. Deployment of nuclear-capable airpower remains available to signal US capability and resolve visibly and flexibly. When the force structure implementation of the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is decided, there likely will be a number of nondeployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles that will provide additional FDOs that may include movement of hedge warheads and stored ICBMs. The NPR also calls for development of “other basing modes” of ICBMs that may provide additional nuclear FDOs in coming decades. Space, cyber, and future conventional capabilities provide an even wider range of additional FDOs. Campaign planners need to be schooled in the full array of military capabilities available for FDOs.

Phase II: Seize the Initiative. For this phase of the joint campaign, future global strike capabilities will provide forces that can prevent an opponent from initiating combat on its terms. Conventional warheads contained in maneuverable, trans-atmospheric vehicles launched on ballistic missiles—systems that are not prohibited by arms control treaties—may enable limited, prompt global strikes that can deny an opponent the benefit it may seek from employment of its limited number of nuclear weapons. For example, a North Korean Taepodong ICBM on the launch pad with a nuclear warhead might be destroyed with a conventional munition within less than an hour of a launch order from the president. Theater campaign planners need to know how to employ and coordinate such strikes as deploying forces stage into the theater.

In some cases, it may be that conventional war-fighting capabilities are insufficient to seize the initiative. In those situations the joint force commander may choose to employ space or cyber capabilities to pave the way for an ensuing decisive operations phase. The capacity to conduct such operations would provide theater campaign planners with powerful deterrent threats. The theater joint force employed in cyber and space operations will also need to have robust, layered missile defenses as a means of deterrence by denying the enemy any benefit from ballistic missile strikes against US forces in the theater.

Phase III: Decisive Operations. The main effort of a joint campaign is to defeat the opposing force in Phase III. Generally this will be conducted by employment of decisive conventional combat power. But in dealing with a nuclear-armed opponent or nuclear-armed ally of a conventionally armed opponent, prudent joint campaign planners will need to prepare branches and sequels that anticipate potential first use of nuclear weapons by a risk-acceptant adversary. Here, again, the theater campaign planner may have future global strike capabilities available to support deterrence during the Phase III main effort. The Air Force chief of staff has said, “The future will call for at least as much if not more deterrence” capability than the service currently wields. Gen Norton A. Schwartz called for a low-cost, flexible family of systems that can meet many possible needs, from precision strikes in an asymmetric environment to full-scale bombing campaigns against heavily defended airspace, centered on a “penetrating bomber.” Future theater campaigns will have to incorporate such capabilities into Phase III planning.

 Phase IV: Transition. Deterrence is not irrelevant to the ending of hostilities and termination of conflict. Capabilities that create fear of consequences in an opponent that has been defeated, is exhausted, or just wants to quit the fight remain important.

Consider the case of the Korean War. In 1950, after the Inchon landing enabled UN forces to fight their way back up the peninsula from the Pusan perimeter, Russia and China rejected any negotiations until all foreign troops were withdrawn. In 1951, after the advance into North Korea, General MacArthur was relieved. Then China dropped its demand and, with North Korea, agreed to a cease-fire along the demarcation line. But the fighting continued for two more years as North Korea and China insisted on mandatory repatriation of prisoners of war captured by UN forces and held in the south. Casualties mounted, reaching numbers greater than those before the cease-fire. In 1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected US president and sought an end to the war by communicating nuclear threats to China and North Korea through third parties. He approved military planning to move atomic artillery and aerial bombs into place; operational staffs ordered their movement into position; commanders readied these nuclear forces for employment in a campaign to be executed on order if the enemy continued to be intransigent. Preparations for use of atomic weapons were made apparent to the Chinese and the North Koreans. When Joseph Stalin died in 1953, his successors put pressure on the Chinese and North Koreans to adopt a more conciliatory posture, and the communists finally accepted voluntary repatriation and a truce at Panmunjom.

Phase V: Enable Civil Authority. Upon cessation of hostilities, military capabilities will still be important to provide deterrence of potential adversaries not involved in the fight who might nevertheless seek to achieve advantage presented by the opportunity of a neighbor’s defeat or the disorder that could ensue from the lack of civil authority in a provisional military occupation. If the conflict involves nuclear weapons, US deterrence capabilities will be critical for providing an umbrella of protection while civil society is rebuilt.

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