Synopsis "Expeditionary Warrior 2012"
This book provides observations and insights from Expeditionary Warrior 2012 (EW12), the latest iteration of the Marine Corps' Title 10 wargame.The EW series serves as a responsive means to examine operational concepts and future capability requirements for the senior leadership of the Marine Corps. Following up on EW11's initial examination of the Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC), EW12 sought to further identify potential gaps and opportunities that would enable joint force access to required operational areas against capable adversaries in an anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) environment.As a global power, the United States must be able to project military power into any region of the world in support of its strategic interests. Over the past several decades, the United States has been able to deploy forces to an operational area virtually unopposed - from the free flow of personnel and supplies to Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and more recently, to the unchallenged deployment of forces and equipment to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 and Kuwait for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.However, current and future operating environments are increasingly characterized by complexity, uncertainty and rapid change. The dramatic improvement and proliferation of A2/AD capabilities by determined adversaries, enhanced by ready access to the information environment, could challenge U.S. and coalition forces' ability to gain operational access to global areas of interest in the future. Enemies may include states with regional aspirations or nonstate/ transnational hybrid adversaries that combine high-tech A2/AD resources with low-tech but innovative methods of employment. These opponents could possess a range of conventional and unconventional capabilities - from sophisticated long- and short-range precision weapons, integrated air defenses, electronic warfare and cyber weapons to distributed forces employing combinations of mines, small boats and small arms.In view of these potential challenges, the Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) and the Deputy Commandant, Combat Development and Integration (DC CD&I) directed that EW12 examine capabilities associated with gaining and maintaining operational access to global regions against capable, dynamic adversaries. This book, which provides observations and recommendations from EW12, is broadly divided into five sections. The first part of the book is an introduction to A2/AD, its challenges to the joint force and EW's role in examining these challenges. The second section is a description of the wargame, its methodology and the scenario. The third and fourth sections provide key observations from the wargame followed by a detailed discussion on the issues and problems related to each of these observations. The final section outlines potential solutions to these issues, suggests actionable tasks for stakeholders, and presents a way ahead for how EW12 outputs can inform future experiments, exercises, concept development and other wargames.
