Strategic LoC and Asymetric Warfare

What is the measure of a states power?

In the past its been measured in swords and spears, horses and knights, frigates and dread naughts, artillery and machine guns, most recently its been measured in kilo and megatons of nuclear power or in some cases number of times a nation can destroy the world. Yet, all of these measures are less than accurate because what is the point of having the largest nuclear arsenal in the world if it cant be moved? For this reason I argue that the measure of a nations military power is its ability to project its forces around the world, sustain them once they are there, and redeploy them when they are finished.  Thus at the heart of the United States power has been our unchallenged control over our sea and air lines of communication-but what if this luxury becomes a contested asset again? 

To many people the thought of an air or naval power large enough to challenge even one US carrier fleet seems ridiculous, however, the rise of unmanned vehicles provides just that capability.  In a 2012 unclassified version of of GAO report on the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles found that the number of countries with this technology had nearly doubled in less than six years, Figure 1 shows a map of countries with unmanned aerial vehicles. 

Figure 1: Proliferation of UAVs

There are two major takeaways from this figure: the first is the proliferation of drones along the coasts of some of the worlds major shipping lanes and secondly that this map and the only accounts for sophisticated unmanned vehicles NOT the type of vehicles that can be commercially bought and modified.  These strategically positioned unmanned vehicles allow governments or organizations the possibility of closing or at least severely restricting lines of communication-while granting them deniablity. 

Let me take you to a not so distant world:

A US carrier fleet is sailing through a narrow stretch of ocean when all of a sudden five or six massive explosions can be seen erupting from multiple ships. 

A CH-47 is flying across the mountains loaded with 50 soldiers when it explodes in midair.

A civilian cargo ship sailing from through the straits of Hormuz erupts in flames. 

What do all of these have in common?  Who did it? 

Besides the direct impact that attacks similar to this would have on US power what would the effect of attacks such as this be on our lines of communication? 

If we look at history for solutions we are forced back to World War Two, where we see two examples the Battle of the Atlantic with the Germans, and the suicide attack examples by the Japanese.   During the Battle of the Atlantic when Germany adopted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare the Allies responded with convoys which prevented German submarines from attacking easy prey because they were defended by warships thus the German subs couldn't effectively engage targets without risking the loss of their own lives.  In the case of unmanned vehicles, this isn't a concern, in fact there are no human lives at stake and the craft is the weapon.  Thus we are forced to examine the impact of Kamikaze tactics on US formations during the latter half of World War Two.  In this conflict the United States formed concentric rings of fighters and ships around air craft carriers and protected them in this manner.  Yet there is a major underlying factor in this- during World War Two we knew who were fighting and where they were at (for the most part) with this new type of war where will the front be and who will it be against. 

For the last 70 years US freedom of maneuver on the seas and in the sky has been an unquestioned certainty, what effect will losing this certainty have on our ability to project power?

The US will almost certainly be forced to stretch its already stretched forces even further to defend its military lines of communication, but more importantly is the fact that a nations strength relies on its ability to pay its debts and maintain solvency which would force us to defend our trade routes as well.  As shown on Figure 2, a large number of these are forced to pass through areas where states have developed sophisticated drone technology. 

Figure 2: Density of Maritime LoC

So far I have only dealt with states (or in limited cases groups) and how they would attack our logistics lines not the effect that these attacks would have on the actual logistics plan.  As mentioned before because we have enjoyed dominance of the sea and air for so long we have come to take this as a given and do not devote many of our resources to defending these.  This allows the United States to position more of its forces forward into the combat zone-without activating reserve formations.  If the United States if forced to secure its logistics lines originating in the United States and ending at the end user as opposed to the current system where the lines are only marginally secured until they reach the theater. Adding the costs of securing supply lines from the port of origin through the theater would increase the cost of war exponentially since the units required to secure the support would have to be supported as well. 

In short, the proliferation of unmanned systems provides states and non-state actors the ability to make make conflicts exponentially more costly by attacking supply lines significantly away from the theater of conflict, which will force the United States to devote resources, that will also have to be supported, to securing these lines of communication.  Perhaps most importantly for smaller states and groups will be the ability to do so with near impunity because of anonymity.