Lundquist: What about the East China Sea?

Montgomery: I don’t want focus solely on the South China Sea, because the East China Sea presents an equally challenging problem with sovereignty disagreements. And really the significant difference with the East China Sea is that the U.S. treaty partner is a significantly more capable air-maritime force in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense force. And I think that has a stabilizing effect there. But that does not mean that all risk is removed from the East China Sea.

We have different types of allies and partners – including five of our treaty-bound allies – out here in the Pacific, and we have a significant number of partners among the 36 countries that are in the U.S. PACOM AOR. We work very closely with some of those countries, and our relationship is based on exercising and high end maritime, air and ground operations – it involves all three – and the building of interoperability between similarly-equipped forces. This includes high-end exercises like Keen Edge with Japan; Key Resolve/Foal Eagle with Korea; and Talisman Saber with Australia, as examples.

Lundquist:  How is the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) working?

Montgomery: CUES is not a U.S.-Chinese agreement; it’s a broad Western Pacific Naval Symposium-sponsored agreement among 20 nations, on basic communication principles, standards and processes, in order to prevent what are otherwise routine encounters from turning into something non-routine through a misunderstanding. I think it’s logical to approach that, especially recognizing that in both the South China Sea and East China Sea we have unresolved sovereignty claims between multiple claimants. It’s always good to have as many of these countries as possible adhering to a standardized protocol to prevent unintended escalatory behavior.

Lundquist: How is this protocol different from “normal” safe and professional navigation on the high seas?

Montgomery: It establishes English as a common language, and specifies phrases and codes that remove ambiguity. It provides some routine signaling that makes clear your intent, and therefore increases understanding. It will not resolve a disagreement between two belligerents, but it will prevent unintended consequences of meetings at sea.

Lundquist:  We consider many of the nations in the PACOM AOR as our allies and partners. How are we helping to build their capacity and capability for their own security and collective safety and security in the region?

Montgomery: We have different types of allies and partners – including five of our treaty-bound allies – out here in the Pacific, and we have a significant number of partners among the 36 countries that are in the U.S. PACOM AOR. We work very closely with some of those countries, and our relationship is based on exercising and high end maritime, air and ground operations – it involves all three – and the building of interoperability between similarly-equipped forces. This includes high-end exercises like Keen Edge with Japan; Key Resolve/Foal Eagle with Korea; and Talisman Saber with Australia, as examples. Building interoperability means similar communications systems, such as Link 16. And that implies that some of our partners have acquired and operate the same systems that we have, and that we are probably buying each other’s equipment. Japan, Korea and Australia have all purchased the Aegis Weapon System. Japan and Korea have ships that are very similar to our Arleigh Burke DDGs. The Australian ship is similar to the Spanish F-series DDG. In addition, we’re building partnerships with our allies and partners in the South China Sea – the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, and, Vietnam — where, to varying degrees, we exercise and work on that force integration, communications and interoperability, but maybe not at the Link 16 level. The Philippines is a treaty-bound ally, and we have a certain level of relationship and exercising with them, which culminates in an annual exercise called Balikatan. It is a very comprehensive exercise that involves all our services, and is one of our largest bilateral, or now multilateral, exercises that we conduct worldwide each year. Similarly, we have the Cobra Gold exercise with our Thai allies.

And we conduct single event exercises such as the Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training, or CARAT, which we do with almost all the countries in South East Asia. Finally, I should mention India, because this is definitely a strategic partnership for the United States, and PACOM plays a role in that across all our components. We’re working hard to build a shared vision of security, and support security and stability in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, and building up a bilateral and multi-lateral exercise plan. The relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Modi has been very positive and, as such, has allowed for some significant advances in the relationship over the last 18 months.

We’re introducing a number of LCS and LCS-derivative ships. And we need a concept of operations for how you train, maintain, and equip it; how you operate it; and how it fits into the operational design of our various war plans.

Lundquist: You attended the Littoral OPTECH East workshop in Tokyo in December, hosted by ONR Global and the Naval Postgraduate School’s Littoral Operations Center. What is it that makes littoral operations different from the blue water environment or open-ocean operations?

Montgomery: Our ships are multi-mission ships across different warfare areas. But within a warfare area, there are different challenges. So air defense in the littoral is significantly different than air defense in the open ocean environment. The ability of your radar to see over land, the integration with ground force systems, and the return-to-force protocols and the prevention of fratricide, are much more challenging in a littoral environment. I think that same analogy could be applied to surface warfare and anti-submarine warfare missions, and even strike and gunnery missions. Our multi-mission ships are now required to operate in significantly different environments. So littoral warfare challenges our ships. It’s not that the blue water mission is necessarily easier, there’s some really challenging blue water missions, but the littoral is different, and different means you need to get skilled at it. And so I think the littoral introduces challenges to our man-train-maintain-equip programs and to our operational design efforts. It’s not that we can’t meet the littoral challenge with both the Arleigh Burke destroyers and Ticonderoga cruisers, but both classes of littoral combat ships are optimized for the asymmetric threats of mines, submarines and armed surface craft in in the littorals.

Lundquist: How is the Littoral Operations Center going to be valuable to the Navy?

Montgomery: We’re introducing a number of LCS and LCS-derivative ships. And we need a concept of operations for how you train, maintain, and equip it; how you operate it; and how it fits into the operational design of our various war plans. So having a center like the LOC that studies the littorals, and the assets that could be employed there, will invariably support the more efficient and effective integration of the LCS into persistent naval operations in the decade ahead. And we expect to see that here. We have had a persistent LCS deployment now for well over a year, and the number of LCS ships operating in the Western Pacific will increase over the next three years. So I see this as a way to make sure they’re effectively and efficiently employed. Anything that helps us with that is a significant benefit to the Navy and PACOM.

Courtesy of Surface SITREP. Republished with the permission of the Surface Navy Association.