Distributed Maritime Operations, Logistics, Industry, and American Strategy in Asia

This analysis will examine the U.S. Navy’s operational concept, Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) against the U.S. strategy towards China. A U.S.-China conflict will involve a key air-naval element, meaning the way the U.S. Navy plans to fight has a distinct influence on strategy.

DMO’s combat logic, which distributes naval combat power across the fleet and spreads the fleet out to complicate Chinese scouting and strike, is sound. However, the U.S. is highly unlikely to be able to sustain the DMO with its current maritime logistical system, which is already under peacetime stress, given numerical, manpower, and industrial constraints. A larger logistical force is unlikely in the short-term, reducing DMO’s combat viability. The result is a non-viable operational concept, which undermines U.S. strategy.

This analysis proceeds in five sections. First, it identifies the consequences of a strategic concept absent sufficient resourcing, namely the U.S. Fleet’s move to Pearl Harbor. Second, it examines the U.S. strategy towards China to explicate the DMO concept. Third, it assesses the logistical shortfalls that make DMO difficult to sustain, and therefore less credible militarily. Fourth, it does the same with DMO’s industrial shortfalls. Fifth, it explores the risks of more logistically and industrially viable operational concepts and fleet architectures. No solution is perfect. However, the current model, attempting to employ DMO, has the most obvious logistical-industrial risks, decreasing its viability.

Historical Analogy: The Fleet Moves to Hawaii, 1940-1941

In spring 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt understood that the U.S. would have to participate in an increasingly probable Eurasian-wide war.[i] He tried to sequence threats between Germany in Europe and Japan in Asia, buying time to mobilise as public opinion increasingly accepted the necessity of intervention.[ii] Despite the Japanese threat, American strategy prioritised Europe, particularly once France fell in June 1940, given British capitulation would give Germany the world’s largest navy, and command over European economic resources.[iii]

The U.S. policy end was to defer a confrontation with Japan, ideally to late 1942 or 1943. This had a diplomatic component: the U.S. sought a modus vivendi with Japan until late 1941, and previously believed Japan sought an exit from the Axis.[iv] But it also required military deterrence against Japan.

In March-June 1940, Roosevelt ordered the US Battle Fleet to exercise near Hawaii.[v] Subsequently, Roosevelt had the Fleet take up permanent station at Pearl Harbor, rather than returning to its California bases. Roosevelt, along with Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Stark believed Fleet’s presence at Pearl Harbor would deter Japanese aggression against the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies.[vi] Combined with greater support for China and expanded economic sanctions on Japan, Roosevelt hoped this would force Tokyo to bargain, at least temporarily.[vii]

Pearl Harbor was a reasonable forward base given its oil reserves.[viii] However, it did not match the American strategic way or military means to achieve the policy end of deterrence, an offensive across the Pacific culminating in a major engagement southeast of the Japanese home islands, using the military means of the U.S. Navy.[ix] Threatening a Pacific offensive required a fleet outfitted for war. Per then-Commander-in-Chief U.S. Fleet Admiral James O Richardson, Pearl Harbor lacked the ammunition and other supplies needed to equip the fleet for a drive towards Japan, particularly if, under the Navy’s operational planning, the Philippines would also need to be relieved or liberated as well.[x] Meanwhile, Pearl Harbor’s poorly organised defences exposed it to Japanese air attack, as US exercises had demonstrated in the 1930s.[xi] Richardson repeatedly protested the move to Pearl Harbor directly to Secretary of State Cordell Hull and President Roosevelt.[xii] Roosevelt and Hull ignored Richardson’s assessment, sacking him in February 1941.

December 1941 proved Richardson correct. The Pearl Harbor attack had a number of direct tactical sources, namely poor inter-service air defence coordination, badly interpreted intelligence, and an ambitious, well-executed Japanese operational plan. Nevertheless, the U.S. Battle Fleet was not simply a tempting target, but also a non-credible deterrent, since it could not actually deliver the strategy the U.S. policy end demanded given Pearl Harbor’s lack of practical sustainment capacity.

The Current Situation: The DMO and US Strategy against China

The US again faces a deteriorating Eurasian situation, with several revisionists openly assaulting the U.S.-led Eurasian security and economic system.[xiii] The U.S. again needs to sequence adversaries, balancing Russia’s threat to Europe, Iran’s expansion in the Middle East, and China’s growing military capacity in Asia.[xiv]

China is the largest threat in terms of population and economic capacity, making China policy the focal point of U.S. strategy.[xv] China’s policy goal is to absorb Taiwan for ideological and strategic reasons, which Beijing believes will grant it Asian preeminence. Political circumstances in Taiwan make conquest necessary, whether through an amphibious assault or blockade-induced capitulation.[xvi] China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has already achieved overwhelming superiority over the Taiwanese Armed Forces, making U.S. intervention decisive.[xvii] If China can deter the U.S., or prevent U.S. combat assets from deploying within 600-1,000 kilometres of Taiwan and thereby hold its weapons out of range, the PLA can win quickly.[xviii]

Politically, the U.S. retains strategic ambiguity vis-a-vis Taiwan.[xix] This has, however, begun to shift in practice. The First Trump administration expanded diplomatic contact with Taiwan.[xx] The Biden administration has verbally committed the U.S. to Taiwan’s defence, even if the White House walked these comments back.[xxi] Crucially, the US military sees the PLA as its key threat. The First Trump and Biden Pentagons both termed China some version of a “pacing” or “key” threat.[xxii] Moreover, the Services, and particularly the Navy, see their response to a PLA attack on Taiwan as a key mission.[xxiii] Taipei has admitted to U.S. Special Forces presence in Taiwan, the first confirmed deployment since 1979.[xxiv] The Second Trump administration has articulated some contradictory messaging, particularly with Mr Trump threatening tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors and key Pentagon officials defining Taiwan as a non-existential interest, even if Taiwan’s security remains highly relevant to U.S. defence policy.[xxv] But the broader military direction of travel has been persistent. Thus, one can infer that U.S. policy is to preserve Taiwanese autonomy, if necessary through force.

Strategically, the U.S. hopes to deter a Chinese move against Taiwan by increasing the odds it fails. This involves responding to a blockade or a cross-strait assault, since the former would have profound economic implications.[xxvi] To raise the odds of failure, the U.S. military must jeopardise a PLA amphibious assault by sinking transports, undermine a blockade by sinking PLA warships, and reduce Chinese bombardment capacity by intercepting weapons or destroying PLA Rocket Force missiles and PLA Air Force strike aircraft.

Geography complicates this task. China can concentrate forces against Taiwan faster than the US can counterattack given the PLA proximity to Taiwan and numerous PLA mainland bases. Chinese long-range missiles, long-range strike aircraft, and submarines are meant to keep U.S. forces at a distance by making operations within 600-1,000 kilometres of Taiwan too risky to undertake, particularly for U.S. Carrier Strike Groups. Concurrently, the U.S. must fight 8,000 kilometres from Hawaii or 2,500 kilometres from Guam. The U.S. has other outright-controlled or accessible bases in Japan’s home islands, the Ryukyus, and the Philippines, but all are within Chinese missile bombardment range.[xxvii]

The U.S. military’s solution has two mutually reinforcing parts: increase the difficulty of a cross-strait attack and force the PLA to overstretch its scouting and strike assets. Notionally, unmanned systems will fulfil the first mission, with tens-of-thousands of low-cost unmanned systems sinking PLA transports.[xxviii] The Air Force, Marines, and Navy fulfil the second mission through distributed concepts that force the PLA to scout more ocean and waste valuable long-range missiles against low-value or false targets. The Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment plans to move the fighter fleet between small bases quickly, raising the odds the PLA strikes an empty location.[xxix] The Marines’ Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations deploys Regiment-sized anti-ship missile units to the First Island Chain, directing PLA attention away from Taiwan, and ideally, away from higher-value ships and aircraft to the east.[xxx]

Although both these concepts matter, the Navy’s operational concept is central, since the Navy’s missile-armed surface fleet and aviation have greater magazine depth than Air Force fighters and Marines forward-deployed regiments, and because of distances in the Indo-Pacific.

Since the Second World War, the Navy has concentrated its offensive combat power in the Carrier Air Wing, using surface combatants to screen the carrier against air and submarine attack.[xxxi] Moreover, despite formation flexibility, the carrier group typically is concentrated to enable effective air defence.

The Navy’s new concept, DMO, challenges both these precepts.[xxxii] First, it shifts more offensive combat power to surface combatants, arming the Navy’s destroyers and its future frigates with more, longer-range anti-ship missiles. By dispersing combat power beyond the Navy’s carriers, DMO makes the PLA scout for more ships, while reducing the effect an individual mission kill, even of a carrier, has on combat power in a decentralised fleet. Second, DMO spreads the fleet out over a greater area of ocean, compounding the PLA’s scouting and strike problem. The Navy is building a fleet designed for DMO, specifically with its new Constellation-class frigates, providing the Navy cheaper, smaller hulls to push forward.[xxxiii]

The DMO’s intellectual logic is sound considering trends in broader combat and air-naval scouting and strike.[xxxiv] Indeed, during the Cold War, the US Navy greatly emphasised dispersion and emissions control to hamper Soviet air-naval scouting.[xxxv] As missile technology, unmanned aerial systems, and space-based reconnaissance have all improved, dispersion increases in relevance.[xxxvi] The question is not combat logic, but resourcing.

DMO’s Logistical Shortfalls

An operational concept absent logistical resourcing is a theoretical indulgence. Large-scale combat is extremely resource intensive.[xxxvii] Modern air-naval combat operations are particularly difficult: ships and aircraft need fuel, food, and munitions in plentiful quantities. Moreover, great-power conflicts are almost always long wars given the resources major states can bring to bear.[xxxviii] Hence DMO must be evaluated against long-term sustainment demands.

The U.S. has the world’s largest tactical and strategic airlift fleet, which can rapidly reposition ammunition and some equipment.[xxxix] But sustaining DMO requires supporting warships – transport aircraft could land on small islands and leave supplies for U.S. warships, but this operational concept does not yet exist. Moreover, while the U.S. airlift fleet is significant, air transport cannot match the volume of naval transport. Hence maritime logistics are key to DMO, and to broader U.S. military capacity in the Indo-Pacific. Sustainment more broadly also relies on naval capacity, since aircraft cannot repair damage to warships.

U.S. naval logistics and sustainment includes both moving supplies from U.S. depots to the theatre and sustaining warships within the theatre.[xl] DMO’s greatest chokepoint is intra-theatre logistics, whether intermediate-tier or direct replenishment. The U.S. Navy’s Combat Logistics Force is comprised of 14 ammunition ships and 16 fleet oilers.[xli] The Navy’s 14 Expeditionary Fast Transports also move materiel. Naval logistics resembles a highly complex Time Dependent Travelling Salesman Problem, under which a planner must optimise a supply ship’s route between a number of moving targets that, in combat, will also take damage and may rapidly change location.[xlii] As it stands, the Navy’s Combat Logistics Force is marginally adequate at best, even if different planning mechanisms have improved its efficiency.[xliii] Since the late 2010s, China’s focus on pressuring U.S. logistics has been clear, as has the major shortfall in U.S. logistics vessels, particularly for tankers.[xliv]

DMO will add a much greater stress on the Combat Logistics Force and the Navy’s broader logistical system.[xlv] This stems partly from the physical separation between warships that DMO requires, which increases fuel consumption, and the shift to surface combatant strike, which changes missile load-outs and likely leads to faster magazine depletion.

These changes will compound extant Combat Logistics Force transport limits. With the exception of nuclear-powered carriers, U.S. surface warships are all conventionally powered. The Combat Logistics Force already devotes most of its cargo by weight to marine diesel fuel and jet fuel.[xlvi] While jet fuel demands might decrease, at least in a conflict’s opening phases if carriers are held out of combat, marine diesel fuel requirements are likely to increase, since warships will both sail farther apart and burn more fuel in the combat zone and may need to sail farther to meet a replenishment vessel.

Concurrently, surface combatants must be reloaded at sea for DMO to work – otherwise, they will need to return to port after exhausting their salvoes, creating predictable logistical concentrations that the PLA can attack. As it stands, the Navy only has nascent reload capability for its Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells and has only tested them on its Dry Cargo ships, which will have missions beyond VLS reload.[xlvii] Munitions, food, and other supplies require much more storage space for their weight than fuel, increasing stress on the dry cargo fleet. Nor will the Navy be the only logistical customer in a Pacific War. The Marine Corps’ will have its own logistical requirements[xlviii], as will Air Force and Army units.[xlix]

Additionally, the Combat Logistics Force will have to consume more fuel. The current 7th Fleet customers for the Combat Logistics Force include three to six large task groups and 10 to 30 smaller groups or individual warships, for between 13 and 30 specific customers.[l] DMO would entail, even with the same number of ships, a greater number of customers, demanding the Combat Logistics Force travel farther. Optimal fuel consumption speed is around 26 kilometres-per-hour, but in wartime, logistical vessels will need to move much faster, not simply to evade Chinese forces, but to adjust to a rapidly changing logistics timetable. Hence the sustainment force’s needs will impose an additional strain on logistics.

Manpower is also a critical chokepoint for DMO logistics. The Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC) delivers U.S. maritime logistics, with around 130 ships, crewed by 6,000 Civil Service and 1,100 Contract mariners, under its control.[li] Yet MSC is already overstretched with a Navy yet to transition to DMO concepts. MSC has a personnel-to-billet ratio of 1.27:1, meaning there are only 25 mariners ashore to relieve every 100 at sea.[lii] Given MSC’s high operational tempo supporting U.S. deployments globally, this compels mariners to spend four months at sea for every month ashore, with private-sector mariners getting a paid shore month for every month at sea and better pay.

Despite being the Navy’s contribution to Transportation Command, MSC is almost wholly civilian-crewed. Many of its officers hold Naval Reserve commissions as Strategic Sealift Officers, but they graduate from the US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) or State Maritime Academies, not from the military Service Academies or a reserve officer programme. Transports and merchant ships have a smaller crew than warships, but they remain complex – their officers must have a broader knowledge base than their naval counterparts to operate them safely. The USMMA, which provides the overwhelming majority of MSC officers, graduates only 200 officers per year.[liii] Meanwhile, MSC’s Gangway Up policy during the COVID-19 Pandemic, which prevented active mariners from leaving their vessels while under contract, led to a wave of resignations, accelerating MSC’s personnel crunch.[liv]

MSC is already considering cutting 17 ships, including the 12 remaining Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transports, small but modern logistics ships built from 2010 onwards, to save 700 billets and bring the personnel-to-billet ratio closer to 1.5-to-1.[lv] There is, therefore, no slack capacity in MSC to man new ships.

There are also no additional ships for wartime surge to support distributed naval forces.[lvi] The US Maritime Administration (MARAD) administers the Ready Reserve Force (RRF) of around 70 ships, which theoretically can be activated in under three weeks.[lvii] However, just as MSC personnel numbers are shrinking, so are the Merchant Marine’s. Hence MARAD has not properly maintained the RRF for surge activation, since it takes eight-to-twelve merchant mariners to make a skeleton crew, and merchant mariners are in short supply. Even if these ships could be activated and deployed, they are almost exclusively large tankers, transports, and crane ships, undoubtedly useful logistically, but not for direct fleet support.[lviii]

DMO’s Industrial Shortfalls

There is a clear logistical gap between DMO’s operational logic and US maritime logistics. More logistics vessels could alleviate this gap. However, U.S. shipyards are incapable of producing these quickly.[lix] U.S. yards, overwhelmingly tasked with naval construction and repair, could construct these ships. But that would eat into already limited manpower and yard space for naval tasks.[lx] U.S. yards have not been recapitalised for several decades – irregular Congressional budgeting and poor procurement practices from Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) has reduced the incentive to invest in new processes or expand the workforce.[lxi] Concerted funding over a decade could improve the situation. But the fleet is meant to fight DMO in the next few years, not in the late 2030s.

Industrial issues also undermine the fleet’s ability to deliver combat power under DMO. The concept requires surface combatants to carry a much greater long-range anti-ship missile armament.[lxii] As it stands, however, the longest-range U.S. anti-ship missiles, the LRASM and SLAM-ER, are air-launched. Future weapons like HALO will initially be air-launched, and only later deployed to surface combatants.[lxiii] Similarly, the U.S. recently provided the SM-6, its long-range anti-air missile, with air-launch capability, without providing the surface fleet with a new weapon.[lxiv] The best candidate for DMO surface combatant armament, the navalised Tomahawk, is not yet available.[lxv] Hence a surface fleet employing DMO would be left with, at best, Naval Strike Missiles, which have a reasonable 250-kilometre range, but not nearly enough range to serve as a mainstay long-range anti-ship weapon. Production for all these missiles is low, but particularly for the Tomahawk: the US has expended several years of Tomahawk production during strikes against the Houthis in Yemen, for instance.[lxvi]

DMO’s intellectual principles may be sound. But it is clear that the Navy will struggle greatly to sustain it in combat. Industrial expansion would mitigate these issues, but US maritime industry is in a state of disrepair. Moreover, the weapons the fleet would use under DMO have yet to be fielded, even if the U.S. maritime logistics system could sustain them. Hence employing DMO doctrinally risks undermining U.S. deterrence – the military means of US Indo-Pacific strategy lacks a solid logistical and industrial foundation.

Alternatives

Long-term maritime industrial expansion and greater missile production are undoubtedly necessary. But this timeline exceeds the immediate deterrence problems of the 2020s-2030s. The Navy should therefore look for alternative operational concepts that maximise its structural advantages and mitigate US logistical and industrial weaknesses.

Paradoxically, a return to carrier-centric operational concepts may be the most reasonable solution, despite renewed accusations of the carrier’s obsolescence against anti-ship missiles – accusations that mirror those of the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s.[lxvii] Historically, the carrier adapted to each challenge by modifying operational concepts and, crucially, changing its air wing to enable longer-range combat. A similar solution is possible today. As it stands, the carrier uses only two airframes, the F-18 Super Hornet and F-35C, for nearly every mission, restricting its air wing range to 800-1,000 kilometres. The air wing also lacks organic refuelling aircraft, necessitating reliance on inefficient “buddy tanking” or large, high-demand Air Force tankers.[lxviii] The result is a carrier that must operate in harm’s way, around 600 kilometres of fewer from Taiwan, to influence the balance of forces. This homogenous air wing, however, is an historical aberration.[lxix] In the 1980s, for instance, the air wing included eight separate fixed-wing aircraft using five different airframes.

Adding an organic tanker squadron to every air wing would boost Super Hornet range while fielding another dedicated strike squadron in every air wing, whether an F-35C or new airframe, would improve long-range attack. Most air wings deploy under-strength today – adding another one to two squadrons per air wing would improve combat numbers quickly. Although MSC would still struggle to sustain the carrier, a concentrated Carrier Strike Group is easier to refuel and rearm. Crucially, carriers can also be rearmed at sea without investments in scaling new equipment, reducing reload time. Moreover, while the U.S. aerospace industrial base has obvious issues, it is healthier than the maritime industrial base, making short-term airframe construction more viable than rapid shipbuilding.

The Navy’s surface combatants, meanwhile, are already optimised for carrier defence. New developments like the Missile Segment Enhancement, a smaller, cheaper interceptor, can mitigate magazine depth problems, as can notional directed-energy weapons.[lxx] Air wing range improvements also increase Carrier Strike Group survivability, since a carrier with a more capable air wing can fight farther away from the Chinese coast, ideally at nearer to 1,000-plus kilometres out to sea, exposed only to the longest-range PLA anti-ship ballistic missiles or surface combatants and submarines operating beyond ground-based support.

This solution still has drawbacks. A brittle aerospace industrial base and limited missile production decrease offensive capacity. The Navy needs a much greater number of long-range anti-ship missiles regardless of the operational concept, but a carrier-centric approach would demand a much deeper inventory of missiles with two to three times the range of the Navy’s mainstay long-range weapons. Low-cost air-defence interceptors are not yet deployed. Critically, MSC still faces obvious constraints.[lxxi] Moreover, if space-based reconnaissance and anti-ship ballistic missile targeting improve, or if cheap loitering munition or explosives-laden unmanned surface vessel performance improves, the carrier’s defence problem will intensify once again. Nor does this solution necessarily mean abandoning distributed operational principles. The carrier does retain a role under DMO, even if striking power is shifted to the surface combatant fleet.[lxxii] Spreading out a Carrier Strike Group may still be prudent to reduce detection – although deeper air-defence missile magazines, directed-energy weapons, and new classes of warships might make a concentrated fleet more viable, depending upon the analytical specifics of the problem.[lxxiii]

The issue, then, is where to accept operational risk given the constraints of U.S. logistical capacity and the requirements of U.S. policy and strategy. As it stands, DMO involves placing a significantly greater proportion of risk on U.S. logistical capacity than other elements of the force, precisely when that capacity is weak. No operational concept is perfect, particularly with logistical and industrial constraints. Nevertheless, U.S. strategists must conduct a careful assessment of DMO’s viability, before staking U.S. strategy on an operational concept with weak foundations.