Sea Control - Sea Control 466 - Deliberate Campaigning in the Pacific with Benjamin Van Horrick and Steven Bancroft

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Links1. "A Strait Too Far: How a Deliberate Campaigning Approach in the Pacific Can Make Beijing Think Twice," by Benjamin Van Horrick, War on the Rocks, June 5, 2023.2. "Creating a Sea Change: TF 76/3, Adaptation, Experimentation, and the Joint Force," by Steven Bancroft and Benjamin Van Horrick, Modern War Institute, March 1, 2023.3. "The Complicated Legacy of Jean Larteguy's "The Centurions" and America's Post-9/11 Wars," by Benjamin Van Horrick, Modern War Institute, August 30, 2023.4. The Chinese Invasion Threat, by Ian Easton, Eastbridge Books, April 2019.

Hey folks, it's Jared. I'm joined today by Ben Van Horek and Steve Bancroft to discuss a pair of articles they've written about some innovative new approaches to command and control Task Force 76-3's experiments in the Pacific. This episode was edited and produced by Addison Pellerano. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime peace and security through an exchange of ideas and the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime topics. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. You might be interested in our latest call for articles, a collaboration with the Naval Postgraduate School on Integrated Campaigning. Go see for yourself. And with that, Kimber's Men.

You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello, shipmates, and welcome aboard Sea Control. My guests today are Benjamin Van Horek and Stephen Bancroft, and we're going to be discussing Ben's article for War on the Rocks entitled Straight Too Far, How a Deliberate Approach to Campaigning in the Pacific Can Make Beijing Think Twice, and their co-authored article for the Modern War Institute, Creating a Sea Change, Task Force 76-3, Adaptation, Experimentation, and the Joint Force. So gentlemen, welcome up. Benjamin, we'll start with you. Could you start by telling

the listeners a little bit more about your background, please? Yes. Good evening. Thanks for having me. I got commissioned in 2008. I've done four overseas deployments. For a period of time, I was in the Marine Corps Reserves. During that time, I took a number of activations. I was fortunate enough last year to get returned to active duty. I also met Lieutenant Colonel Bancroft when we were at U.S. Army Command General Staff College. My first assignment back on active duty is back with Task Force 763. I serve there as the current Logistics Operations Officer. Thanks, Ben. And Steve, would you mind introducing yourself to the audience, please?

Yeah, of course. Steve Bancroft. I've been in the Marine Corps maybe about 17 years or so, And I've got various combat deployments, exercise deployments kind of all over the globe. Specifically, I've got about 10 years or so worth of experience in the Pacific. Ben mentioned he and I met a little over a year ago at Army Command and Staff. And then back to 3rd MEB, now Task Force 763, as we chart the new evolution of what naval integration is. well thank you both for coming on today as a reminder to the listeners all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated so steve i'll come to you for the first question what is the cat of cliff concept and then why are

you arguing it's no longer effective or useful when you consider china's capabilities i think from our perspective out here in the pacific with the chinese weapons engagement zone scope And then looking at our old doctrine of Cadiff Cliff, it doesn't really fit because Cadiff Cliff requires a significant amount of survivability for the actual amphibious group that's going to be conducting some joint force entry operations. So air protection, protection of the surface, subsurface, missiles, aircraft, et cetera, that type of protection that has been traditionally used in older amphibious operations, so think like Tarawa, Okinawa, Normandy, et cetera. I don't think, my personal opinion and some of my colleagues at 763, don't think that that's going to be reasonable. I would also add something that General Milley had talked about, the changing character of war. And when looking at the PRC's WES, its Weapons Engagement Zone, and its integrated A280 system collectively, I don't know and I don't believe the Caddiff-Cliff doctrine in the 3-TAC-02, I don't think that's viable. So we've got to come up with a new way of merging amphibious forces inside of the littorals.

So I'm going to go over to Ben to add in. Can I ask a follow up before we hop over to Ben there? So you mentioned the survivability piece, and I was just thinking about the way that Navy is intending to operate there, the way that the Marine Corps is talking about operating there. Is distribution also an issue for the cat of cliff concept just because the traditional, you know, the cutovers, like when the cliff becomes the supportive commanders, you know, you're established ashore. But if you're constantly establishing, disestablishing, establishing, disestablishing in different places and different size elements, is the distribution as much of an issue as the survivability is? Or does that not really matter? I think they go kind of hand in hand because if you're going to be able to execute Cadiff Cliff, you're going to have to bring your forces together in mass and then essentially push them or puke them, if you will, onto the beach and then distribute them from the beach inland. And if you mass all of that combat power in a singular location, you have a high propensity that you are going to get struck.

One example, bring out this more modern that we put in our article, is the Moskva. And that's, you know, single ship, but they were kind of, the Russians were kind of bringing all their vessels into a singular area, not a singular location, but like a broader area. And they were allowed to, or the Ukrainians provided a decoy, and then they actually struck and sunk the vessel. And we have a very limited amount of naval assets. And if the Chinese can kind of mass their fires on a singular location, very much like what we do, that means that that amphibious force is going to be really susceptible. So our ability to do Cat of Cliff in a distributed way, we don't have. I don't think we've thought through that because it's actually counter to what our joint doctrine says about coming together in mass, executing your joint amphibious operation, establishing a shore, and then attacking further inland. Ben, over to you for any additional thoughts before I transition to a second question. One of the unique things about 763 is we get to question these types of relationships. So with Cat of Cliff, it's come under question.

And it's also when we're dealing with a new external threat that we have, it's a very capable, incredible force. All things, whether it be doctrine or pre-existing relationships, are now questioned. So we're in a unique position to do this because we're putting the staffs together. We also have the external stimulus of trying to face down the PRC and the threat within the First Island chain. And so we are afforded an opportunity by being here and by taking on these new risks and these new mission sets that we're looking at these pre-existing relationships in a whole new light. All right. So perfect transition here. What is Task Force 763's experimental organization and how does that then differ from Catafcliff or the Navy CWC concept? So what's unique about the organization, we'll talk about kind of Task Force 763's organization and then how it relates to Catafcliff and CWC.

So our relationship is truly integrated. So one example, very, very minute of the integration is my billet on the L5. So the Litoral 5 section, and it does all future operations and plans. So our way that we've organized our integrated staff at the headquarters level is we have essentially three bins. The center bin of our test organization chart is all integrated Litoral. So we've got a L2, L3, L5, and an L7. Obviously, the 2 does intelligence, 3 does operations, 5 does plans, the 7 does our assessments, and I forgot about the L4. It's integrated as well for logistics.

And kind of off to the wings, you've got the service-aligned things. Think, a good analogy would probably be Title X-like functions, the train, man, and equip, the personnel, the comm strat, the PAO, the judge, oh, and fiscal. So those service-aligned things. That's how we've integrated at the headquarters level, the one star. Very different than CWC does, headquarters. Very different than Cat of Cliff. when you look underneath that organization and what the actual units are 763 has uh all of the traditional uh ctf 76 units a little different than other um ctfs kind of on the third fleet

second fleet etc so we've got deseron 7 or destroyer squadron 7 which is really has no destroyers it's just lcs's we've got mcm runs of mine sweepers hsc 25 and then with all of those traditional naval units we have marine units as well so we'll have chopped in the arg mu teams and then we have a connecting file when the muse are opcon to the marine corps so that we prepare them appropriately so that when they cut over and become opcon to the navy you've already got that connected relationship so we have that essentially a standing relationship across the entire naval force amphibious force to do a bunch of different things and we have to kind of to moderate this at the command level our commander is admiral stone

it was admiral trink he just uh turned over and our deputy commander for the task force is the third MEB commander. It was Brigadier General Fredrickson, and now it's Brigadier General Select Hull. Now that relationship, it can flip-flop back and forth, kind of like a cat-of-cliff idea. It's similar, but if the preponderance of actions and forces are sea-based, it is going to be the naval commander. So it will be Admiral Stone. Now if that relationship flip-flops

And we say we go ashore, stay ashore. The command will then transfer to the deputy commander. So very similar to Kedofcliff, but not exactly the same. For the CWC and kind of how our relationship works with CWC is we've rolled CWC into our headquarters. So some of the actual aligned functions of CWC. One example is fires. So in our marine traditional construct, we've got an effect inside of our three-shot. The fire effects coordination cell, or center rather, that organization is typically designed to do joint fires ashore. And there's always that handover between cat of cliff on who's got what fires, who's responsible for what. Well, in a littoral fight, kind of going back to the previous question, the fluidity of combat is going to go back and forth, land, sea, land, sea, all the time, and it's never going to stop.

So we have to figure out how do we add our naval assets, all of the LCSs, into that fires process and then have a common language so that if Air Force comes in or the Army comes in or Space Force, whoever, how do we speak in a common fires language well it's going to be the joint fires process so our our fec now merges um scc from the cbc construct which is represented by this by the commodore of deseron 7 with our fec you know on our actual operations floor our our integrated littoral warfare center the coc that we've made as well as plugging in the iwc from the cbc construct so really what we've done is we've taken these different parts and pieces from the cat of cliff doctrine the cbc doctrine we smashed it all together and we kind of mixed it up and then we made sure that the three main parts all kind of talk to each other and

function together which is very different than a very naval naval centric cbc or a very you know kind of parallel command structure of the cat of cliff and then i think ben probably has some talking points specific on logistics yes i think with logistics what we have more than any other marine unit is visibility over naval vessel readiness and also the unique challenges that we're going to face within a contested maritime environment so one of the things that we are developing right now is looking at how we will build a logistics web a lot of people talk about the kill chain, but we need to look at how would we use the assets that are coming online that we could leverage with commercial vendors in order to supply sailors and Marines that are in the

contest environment and also the limits of competency as well when competition turns to conflict. Another important document that has been underutilized when we've talked about 763 And something that Lieutenant Colonel Bancroft and I pointed out is Forces 9-20-30 has received most of the headlines. But really, if you want to understand where 7-6-3 came from, it was really the genesis of the NDS of 2018 and also advantage at sea. So if you want to look at the bumper sticker and say what 7-6-3 does, it generates integrated all domain naval power. And that's something that Advantage at Sea articulates quite well. They came out in December of 2020 and was overshadowed by current events at that time. But rather than looking at it from a purely Marine Corps or a Navy, this is actually a formation that's trying to address a problem that the Joint Force faces.

And that's one of the reasons why we wrote the article for Modern War Institute, is because we want to show not just to our audience in the Naval Services, but this has implications across the joint force. What problems did you encounter in early implementation? How did you overcome those? so kind of like what we were talking about at the beginning before we before we started i think a lot of a lot of the difficulties come down to our own personal perspectives on what what we do in the marine corps and what someone else does in the navy or you know what individuals are supposed to do inside of their individual shops the operation shop or the intel shop or whatever shop it is and essentially it's just various sizes of your individual silo that you live in that you're comfortable with so i think all of that comes down to our our culture

how we see ourselves how we see others um and i'll bring up a couple examples um the one that kind of sticks out in our mind because operations you know plans all that stuff drives everything that we do it our entire existence in any organization is the thing that we focus on and then what we produce the value to the broader organization so differences in culture differences in understanding the navy and you know i know you're a navy guy i'm not trying to disparage navy folks we're supposed greatest people in the world we can fight it's cool yeah yeah 05 on 05 violence is authorized let's go yeah so it's it's the navy is really good at executing you give the navy a task they they don't really push back they don't really question they take

the task they run with it and they always accomplish the mission like that is the hallmark of the u.s navy always been that way marines do the same thing but we ask a significant amount of questions we're the we're the kid in the back of the bus always asking why why why why why why I think that goes down to a difference between the execution culture and the planning, you know, the reason culture, the purpose culture. Those two kind of didn't work really well initially. So years ago when I was at Third Med, we would do exercises, Third Med and 76. We'd come together, we'd play a little bit, and then we'd separate. And we never really fleshed out our cultural differences.

We never really understood them. And then, again, this is my opinion. So when we looked at how do we merge the two organizations together, obviously, we'd have a clash of cultures. That clash of cultures came out specifically with the operations cycle. So every organization has an operations continuum. In the Marine Corps, everybody understands current operations is 96 hours and in, and it is the fight right now. And then everybody understands that future operations plans something into the 96-hour mark and then transitions it over and plans are all the you know 0505 types thinking in in a in a windowless room of all the great

stuff and then they kind of dump it on the fops table and they got to wrestle through how to make it a reality then the navy that was not that process or at least that's my experience i can't speak for other people's experience with the navy but that wasn't mine mine was the navy they viewed COPS as right now like it was if it was happening it was right now FOPS was 72 hours out and then anything plans or what was the term oh food plans future plans that was kind of like maybe six months out maybe 12 months out depending on where you were and so it was very much like take task do task take task do task and then every now and then you plug in at two and the Marine Corps has invested significant amount of education and time into 0505s the Navy

is now starting it from my understanding so those two cultures kind of clashed and so we had to find a way to speak a common lexicon which is difficult and then we'd have to find ways to create something new that was inherent to us truly integrated not the navy's way not the marine way and so we what resulted in is a a new lexicon as well as a new operations continuum how we take something process it and then put it out there and now we have a process of our plans and our future operations shops are together they take something to the 30-day mark and then the future operations folks, the L3-5, take it until about that 96 hour mark. And then the current operations folks, the L3-3, take it all the way through. But we have bleed over points. So the bleed over point

between FOPS L3-5 and COPS L3-3 really starts at seven days. And the bleed over point between the L-5 and the L-3-5 really starts at eight to six weeks out before we transition. So we've created a new kind of understanding of our culture. I think it'll be the number one cultural problem. And then over to Ben, I'm sure you have some comments as well. I think the Marine Corps is a very strong culture and they are always looking for an opportunity to lead. And what we've had to do is exercise some patience and humility to understand the thought process behind some of the procedures that the Navy is dealing with. And so what we are understanding is we're learning. We're learning the challenges that they face and getting a better appreciation for not only the

systems that they have to deal with, but also how they view the mission set within the first on one chain all right well those were both extremely tame critiques if they were critiques at all of the navy so i mean i'll take that no return fire for me ben this one's for you you mentioned the open forum and every sailor marine having the opportunity to have his or her voice heard what do those forums look like and how are they implemented let's uh you go to an auditorium all hands. Any Marine or sailor can present their ideas within this forum. They're given one slide, they present that, and then they make their pitch as to why this change needs to be implemented. And then a dialogue ensues. So anybody in the room can get up and criticize

and critique the idea. And then you look for refinement and iteration. And so one of the things that we go through at 763 is in many ways like a startup you're refining and iterating all throughout you gain knowledge you go back you go through that cycle again and again and again in order to make a better product and namely improve the exercises that we are participating in and that seeing that life cycle coming around to year two i think that's where we're going to start to see some significant dividends. Can you give me an example of one of those that was presented, adopted? I think one of the things that we talked about was the planning process

with the Navy and the Marine Corps. The Navy pushed back pretty heavily about individuals being placed in positions to be planners, and what the Marine Corps has said is that every Marine officer is a planner. It doesn't matter what your MOS is. You don't have to go to one of the schools like Sam's, SAW, or MAWS at the Naval War College. If you are a Marine or a Navy officer, you have the capability to run an operational planning team. You have the capability to be a planner from an exercise from start to finish.

And Lieutenant Colonel Bancroft has set that standard with his sailors and Marines, and that is permeated all throughout the command. All right, let's get into a little bit more of the War on the Rocks article. What are the weather conditions specific to Taiwan and what's the scope of, quote unquote, spring campaigning that you mentioned in the War on the Rocks article, Ben? So this builds on the work by Ian Easton, his book, The Chinese Invasion Threat. He identified March through May as the ideal meteor weather and also sea state conditions that would make a Chinese cross-strait operation feasible. That happens to line up with the spring exercises the Joint Force conducts as well. So starting off with Ironfish, going to Cobra Gold, Sun Yung in Korea, Salcanib in the Philippines, and then Balacatan where I served as the Director of Logistics. All of those exercises in the spring do three things.

They impose cost upon the PRC. By having the joint force there, it forces the PRC to pay attention to our activities. Number two, what it does is it reassures partners and allies in the region. So if you think about diplomacy, diplomatic concessions are made. Putting the U.S. military in those positions, in those countries, makes good on those agreements. And we'll come back to that with the Philippines. And then the third thing is also it acts as a deterrence. So if you look at this window of opportunity where the tide window is favorable, there's favorable weather conditions.

If you go through the checklist as a PRC planner and you look at whether you want to do this, you look very heavily at the disposition of enemy forces. And so having a large contingent of the Joint Force in key maritime terrain during that window of opportunity serves as a significant deterrence in order to attempt a cross-strait operation. All right. So in addition to the two articles that you two wrote, we'll also have a link to Ian Eason's book, The Chinese Invasion Threat, in the show notes there. And then final question for you, Ben. And again, Steve, any thoughts you have there are welcome as well. but how do Task Force 76-3's efforts fit with the remainder of the Joint Force? What sort of opportunities are there for the Army, the Air Force, the Coast Guard even, to fall in on some of these efforts, or should they be trying to fall in on them? I think what the Joint Force needs to take away is the campaign of learning and experimentation. So this can serve as a

template for any organization within the Joint Force that is going through a transition. There's number of initiatives within the Marine Corps, namely the Marine Littoral Regiment, and also with the Army with their multi-domain task force. And so many of these challenges that we face from a cultural point of view, doctrine, policy, et cetera, Task Force 763 has a great deal of experience in getting through that bureaucratic inertia. One thing that we have to our advantage which is the threat that the PRC poses, that is forcing adaptation. And so part of our success is a testament to that external force. It's also to the professionalism of the sailors and Marines that are in our formation as well.

When we have an honest look at what we face, threats in both theaters with the Russians and also the Chinese, we need to be very honest with ourselves as well and look at those own internal biases which inhibit growth and slow decision making steve any final thoughts from you sorry go ahead yeah yeah no i if i could add i think the i i absolutely agree with everything ben said fundamentally though we're on the decisive terrain of the future so we are in okinawa We are a stone's throw away. I think it's like an hour and a half or hour and 20 minute commercial flight from Okinawa to Taipei. So if we are looking about how do we create a force or how do we plug into someone that knows the area, knows what's going on, has relationships with allies and partners, it is 763.

The Air Force, Space Force, Army, Army's MDTF is a great unit, emerging unit, and can do things. They just have to reach out to us, connect with us. We've got a great C2 capability inside of our Integrated Littoral Warfare Center that can see and do a bunch of different stuff. It really comes down to we're at the right place, and I think we're going to be there at the right time. just reach out reach out and give us a phone call well gentlemen oh i'm sorry go ahead yeah to piggyback on that i think one thing that uh lieutenant colonel bancross and i've talked about before is in general dunford pointed this out our center of gravity in the pacific and across across the globe is partners and allies these exercises that occur in the spring and also

the 763 and how we interact with our partners and allies it gives credence to the promises that we make and the presence there means a great deal to those partners and allies well gentlemen i'm sorry that's all that we have time for today i'd like to thank my guests steve bancroft and ben ben hork steve i know you don't have a tremendous online presence so if somebody out there wants to get a hold of steve and discuss this further please reach out to out to me via the show email address there. I will connect you after I screen you out here, but what are you working on next? Right now, Ben and I are working on a follow-up article to what we had produced back in March. Kind of looks at maybe what a Goldwater-Nichols 2.0 could look like for the joint force,

but specifically for naval integration. And then Ben, same question to you. Where can we find you online and what's your next project yes uh if anybody has interest in uh expanding the conversation or any follow-up questions please reach out to me i'm via my linkedin as far as my next project uh i'm looking at uh doing a recollection of the centurions by jean uh like the guy and that is a book about uh french paratroopers experience in india uh in Indochina and also Algeria that happened to be one of the most influential pieces of fiction for General Petraeus and General Stanley McChrystal. So if you want to look at

Global War on Terror, that experience, and also look at some of the developments within the Special Forces community, reexamining the centurions is an important work and gives you lens in which to evaluate that some of the recent developments well thank you both again for joining us to listeners thanks for tuning in we'll see you next time © transcript Emily Beynon It's immoral.