1. 60 www.mca-marines.org/gazette Marine Corps Gazette • May 2016
IDEAS & ISSUES (CONCEPTS)
O
n 17 January 1991, the Unit-
ed States military launched
Operation DESERT STORM.
After six weeks of an aerial
bombing campaign, coalition forces be-
gan the ground offensive. One hundred
hours later, the Iraqi government capitu-
lated and the war was over. Prior to the
Persian Gulf War, Iraq had the world’s
fourth largest army, including a modern
integrated air defense network.1 Despite
numerous points of inter-Service fric-
tion, Operation DESERT STORM proved
to be one of the most dominating tacti-
cal victories in the history of warfare.
While the American public—along
with western allies—patted their mili-
tary on the back, the results horrified
many of the U.S.’ potential rivals. The
Soviet Union, China, and a host of other
countries studied the Persian Gulf War
in detail. In their assessments, the So-
viets and Chinese determined that the
most serious mistake Saddam had made
was allowing the U.S. military forces to
establish themselves in the region and
subsequently build up a robust inva-
sion force completely unmolested.2 Had
Saddam contested the initial landings
by the 82nd Airborne or the offload of
U.S. forces and equipment off naval
shipping, he may have inflicted much
heavier casualties on U.S. military per-
sonnel which was his ultimate opera-
tional aim.
Operational
Maneuver
from the Air
Leveraging the hybrid ultra-large aircraft
to become a true counter antiaccess force
by Capt John Schenck
>Capt Schenck wrote this article
when he was a student at the Expe-
ditionary Warfare School.
A hybrid airship. (Photo courtesy of Lockheed-Martin.)
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2. www.mca-marines.org/gazette 61Marine Corps Gazette • May 2016
Denying adversaries the ability to
establish combat power in a specific
region has driven the development of
technology and doctrine known as an-
tiaccess/area denial (A2/AD). To deal
with the growing proliferation of A2/
AD technologies and threats, the De-
partment of Defense published the Joint
Operational Access Concept (JOAC) in
January 2012 (Washington, DC: Joint
Staff). The JOAC discusses, in broad
terms, how the DOD may potentially
counter the growing A2/AD threat.
Intended partially as a response to
the JOAC, the USMC published Ex-
peditionary Force 21 (EF 21) in March
2014 (Washington, DC: HQMC).
EF 21 highlights many of the USMC-
specific challenges to countering the
A2/AD threat; however, many of its
proposed solutions are flawed. Specifi-
cally, EF 21 proposes that the Marine
Corps needs to compensate for the in-
adequately low number of L-Class ships
by relying more on forward deployed,
landbased units,3 and a more robust role
for the maritime prepositioning force
(MPF).4 The geopolitical challenges of
positioning a landbased force in a sov-
ereign foreign country and the realistic
timelines involved in offloading MPF
shipping without host-nation infrastruc-
ture call into question the viability of
these proposed solutions. The Marine
Corps must look beyond its nostalgia
for its naval roots without becoming less
operationally agile and invest in hybrid
ultra-large aircraft (HULA) technology
in order to be capable of countering A2/
AD networks and remain the Service
most capable of forcible entry.
HULAs are essentially 21st century
blimps with a few significant differences
from the early 20th century airships.
First, HULAs use helium5 rather than
the highly flammable gas, hydrogen,
which the Hindenburg used. Helium
is not only a non-flammable gas, but
it also acts as a fire suppressant. Next,
HULAs have non-rigid hulls in which
the envelope is made of fabric. Earlier
20th century blimps had rigid hulls
made of expensive aluminum.
HULAs can provide the Marine
Corps the capability to embark a
middleweight-sized MAGTF and its
equipment from its home base; trans-
port them across the globe in less than
a week; and land them in an austere
environment with no receiving area
infrastructure requirement—all at a
procurement cost that is most favor-
able when compared with purchasing
L-Class amphibious ships.
Experts estimate that fully loaded
HULAs capable of carrying 500 tons
of equipment only require an 8,000 foot
circular or rectangular concrete take
off area,6 which could easily be made
available on any Marine Corps base.
Experts further estimate that 500-ton
HULAs could travel at an average speed
of between 80 to 110 knots7 depending
on weather. The landing area would
only require an estimated 1,500 feet and
would not require any infrastructure.8
The capability to embark a unit’s organ-
ic personnel equipment at its home base
and to then deploy them into theater
without any host or receiving country
infrastructure requirements, ready to
fight, is a capability commonly known
as “from the fort to the fight.”9
Our current doctrine fails to achieve
the same degree of deployability as the
“from the fort to the fight” concept.
The Marine Corps relies on L-Class
and MPF shipping to rapidly respond
to crises and the subsequent buildup
and sustainment of follow-on forces if
required. Units embarked on L-Class
shipping operate using organic equip-
ment; however, opportunities to train
with and maintain the larger major
end items are limited while underway.
Units deployed to theater not previ-
ously embarked on L-Class shipping
fall in on equipment once they arrive.
The equipment they fall in on typically
will come from the MPF. The goal of
any MPF operation is to be “fully op-
erational within 10 days following the
initial offload.”10 The 10-day timeline
would be in addition to the time it takes
for the maritime prepositioning squad-
ron (MPS) to transit to the theater, the
time of the offload itself, and the time
incurred by unforeseen problems ready-
ing the equipment. During the MPF
offload prior to the Persian Gulf War,
the state of some of the equipment to
come off the MPS was disappointing.
Many vehicles had the wrong type of oil
or none at all.11 Additionally, batteries
were so depleted that Marines had to
search the local markets to replenish
them.12 Much of the trouble with the
MPF equipment in the Persian Gulf
War was not repeated during Opera-
tion IRAQI FREEDOM (OIF). However,
one thing that will never change in an
MPF operation is that an arrival and
assembly phase will always be required
to make the stored equipment opera-
tional. If everything goes right in the
assembly phase, it should not take lon-
ger than 10 days. However, if unfore-
seen problems occur as they did in the
Persian Gulf War, more than 10 days
will be required. Additionally, prior to
assembly, an MPF operation that relied
exclusively on the mobile landing plat-
forms (MLP) to keep the seabase out of
range of A2/AD weapons would incur
a significant amount of additional time
for the offload. Simply put, a “from the
fort to the fight” operation would have
Marines and their equipment fighting
in days and weeks, while compositing a
MEB on L-Class ships and a follow-on
MPF operation would take months.
In addition to being timelier, “from
the fort to the fight” operations are also
more cost effective. Looking at the pro-
curement costs of the separate fleets,
L-Class ships and HULAs is probably
the simplest way of comparing costs. An
Experts estimate that fully loaded HULAs capable of
carrying 500 tons of equipment only require an 8,000
foot circular or rectangular concrete take off area,
which could easily be made available on any Marine
Corps base.
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3. 62 www.mca-marines.org/gazette Marine Corps Gazette • May 2016
IDEAS & ISSUES (CONCEPTS)
industry study examining the deploy-
ment of a U.S. Army Stryker Brigade
Combat Team (SBCT) from the conti-
nental United States to Korea estimat-
ed that thirty 500-ton HULAs could
accomplish the movement in a single
lift.13 Additionally, the study estimated
the time for deployment at 96 hours,14
which is competitive with the time it
would take for a MEB to composite in
theater on L-Class ships. Because there
is no known study conducted on lift-
ing a MEB using HULAs, this article
will compare the cost of lifting two
SBCTs via HULAs against lifting two
MEBs with L-Class shipping, while ac-
knowledging the tables of organization
and equipment between the two types
of brigades are different. The Marine
Corps L-Class shipping requirement
is a total of 38 ships15 consisting of 11
LHAs/LHDs, 14 LSDs, and 13 LPDs.16
At $3.8 billion per LHA/LHD, $1.7
billion per LPD, and $1.5 billion per
LSD,17 the 38-ship fleet costs roughly
$84.9 billion in terms of procurement
costs. A fleet of sixty 500-ton HULAs
would cost an estimated $12 billion.18
These savings alone justify a more de-
tailed investigation of adopting a “from
the fort to the fight” model. Other cost
comparisons between personnel, fuel,
operational maintenance, basing op-
tions, and acquisitions costs would pro-
vide a truly accurate picture of how cost
effective the HULA platform would be.
The largest counterargument usu-
ally raised over employing HULAs is
their survivability. However, HULAs
are unexpectedly more survivable than
one may believe. HULAs do not face a
threat from sea mines or antiship ballis-
tic missiles that have become far cheaper
and more prevalent in recent years. The
threat of most surface-to-air weapons
systems is mitigated be the sheer size
of the HULA’s envelope. According to
two Air Force colonels studying HULA
employment, “Even if a MANPAD were
to detonate against the envelope … it
would still take hours, not minutes, to
bring the airship down. And it would
land, not crash.”19 As hostile aircraft
represent the largest threat to HULAs,
the one unavoidable prerequisite to em-
ploying HULAs is local air superiority.
To mitigate the air-to-air threat during
a forcible entry-type HULA operation,
the intelligence preparation of the bat-
tlefield would optimally find strategic
and operational avenues of approach
with little or no enemy presence, ide-
ally devoid of any human civilization.
The world’s shipping lanes bottleneck
at several strategically significant re-
gions. Countering an A2/AD leveraged
force entrenched at one of these strate-
gic bottlenecks represents a significant
challenge to the Navy and the Marine
Corps. Because HULAs maneuver from
the air, predicating avenues of approach
will be a significant challenge for the
enemy. Regardless of how effective the
operational security of a HULA opera-
tion could be, escorts would be needed.
It is unlikely that the USMC would
be able to organically escort a HULA-
based force. Some level of escort would
undoubtedly need to come from the Air
Force. Joint doctrine between the Air
Force and the HULA-based force would
need to be developed and subsequent
joint training conducted. If an adequate
amount of operational security exists
and an appropriate escort is apportioned
then a HULA-based force could be con-
fident that they would marshal, move,
and arrive in theater unmolested.
To understand the need for addition-
al maneuverability and deployability in
The hybrid airship would land, not crash, if hit by a MANPAD. (Photo courtesy of Lockheed-Martin.)
... HULAs are unexpect-
edly more survivable
than one may believe.
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4. www.mca-marines.org/gazette 63Marine Corps Gazette • May 2016
our current operating environment, our
recent experience in Operation IRAQI
FREEDOM serves as a worthy example.
The original war plans for IRAQI FREE-
DOM called for a division-sized attack
from Turkey. Planners thought that a
northern front would divert the Iraqi
Army’s attention from the south, rap-
idly secure northern oilfields at risk of
being scuttled, and establish a presence
to mitigate potential ethnic violence
between the Arabs and Kurds.20 After
months of negotiations, planning, and
coordination, the Turks pulled out of
the agreement.21 War planners at the
time were then faced with a near-crisis
of not being able to open a northern
front as planned.
The attack from the north that never
was is a typical example of the geopoliti-
cal challenges war planners face. Tradi-
tionally, the Navy and Marine Corps
have limited the amount of influence
a nonbelligerent, but sovereign, foreign
government can have on U.S. military
operations by using the world’s oceans
as maneuver space. The majority of the
world’s ocean areas are not under the
legal authority of any nation; therefore,
permission neither needs to be asked
nor granted for its use. Similarly, the
world’s airspace is equally maneuver-
able with regard to legal considerations.
The most significant difference between
maneuvering from the sea and the air
is that avenues of approach in the air
are not bottlenecked at strategically
vulnerable areas like the world’s ship-
ping lanes are. Had the Iraqi Freedom
planners had the appropriate amount
of HULA-based lift in the planning
of the operation, the Turkish reneging
would not have resulted in the canceling
of a major part of the operation. The
planners could have simply attempted
to negotiate overfly approval of another
adjacent country’s airspace, since there
would not be any infrastructure require-
ment. If no adjacent nation granted
overfly, the HULA-based force could
have crossed the Iraqi coast and navi-
gated along strategically void portions of
the Iraqi desert to an appropriate drop
zone, landing in a matter of hours af-
ter entering enemy airspace. Again, no
host-nation infrastructure requirements
need to be considered.
The growing pervasiveness of A2/AD
threats and the inability of the Navy and
Marine Corps to counter those threats
on the water should drive the Marines
to develop HULAs as an alternative
platform to get “from the fort to the
fight.” If the Marine Corps loses its
expeditionary edge on the other sister
Services, it loses its right to exist.
Notes
1. Michael R. Gordon and Gen Bernard E.
Trainor, The General’s War: The Inside Story of
the Conflict in the Gulf, (New York: Hatchette
Book Group, 1995), 102.
2. Sam J. Tangredi, Anti Access Warfare: Coun-
tering A2/AD Strategies, (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 2013), 28–29.
3. Department of the Navy, Headquarters Ma-
rine Corps, Expeditionary Force 21: Forward and
Ready: Now and in the Future (Washington,
DC: 2014), 18.
4. Ibid., 42–43.
5. Col Walter O. Gordon, USAFR and Col
Chuck Holland, USAF(Ret), “Back to the Fu-
ture: Airships and the Coming Revolution in
Strategic Airlift,” Air Force Journal of Logistics,
(September 2005), 49–50.
6. Ibid., 55.
7. Ibid., 53.
8. Ibid., 55.
9. NAVAIR, “Hybrid Aircraft Envisioned
Military Relevance: Report to EUCOM S&T
Conference,” (Stuttgart, Germany: 20 June
2007), Slide 37.
10. Department of the Navy, Headquarters
Marine Corps, MCWP 3-32/NTTP 3-02.3M,
Maritime Prepositioning Force Operations,
(Washington, DC: 2011), 1-4 to 1-5.
11. Gordon and Trainor, 61.
12. Ibid.
13. Gordon and Holland, 57.
14. Ibid.
15. Expeditionary Force 21, 18.
16. Ronald O’Rourke, Congressional Research
Service, “Naval LPD-17 Amphibious Ship Pro-
curement: Background, Issues, and Options for
Congress,” (Washington, DC: 2009), 8.
17. LtCol James W. Hammond III, USMC(Ret),
“The ACE That Ate the Marine Corps: Restore
Balance to the MAGTF,” Marine Corps Gazette,
(Quantico, VA: January 2014), 7.
18. Gordon and Holland, 57.
19. Ibid.
20. Michael R. Gordon and Gen Bernard E.
Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Inva-
sion and Occupation of Iraq, (New York: Vintage
Books, 2007), 127–128.
21. Ibid., 384–385.
The most significant difference between maneuvering
from the sea and the air is that avenues of approach
in the air are not bottlenecked at strategically vulner-
able areas like the world’s shipping lanes are.
Visit http://bit.ly/20QzO7H to watch a video of the hy-
brid ultra-large aircraft.
LINK
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