Sea Basing

The paper examines Sea Basing with regard to operational functions of operational command and control, movement and maneuver, operational intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, operational fires, operational logistics, and operational protection. The focus is on what Sea Basing could provide the combatant commander twenty years from now compared to what current carrier and expeditionary strike groups and maritime prepositioning force ships provide a combatant commander today. The question of whether Sea Basing is really a transformational concept or simply the next logical step in the continuing development of amphibious warfare is discussed with an eye toward the potential capability tradeoffs faced by the combatant commander resulting from technology and cost tradeoffs.