The United States strategic environment has changed drastically in the past ten years. As a result of numerous, complex factors, the United States carried out a significant redeployment and retrenchment of its military forces. Ironically, as the United States reduced and withdrew its military forces, the threats to national security have become more numerous and more uncertain, thereby increasing the need for the United States to maintain a capability to project power across the oceans. This paper uses three illustrative scenarios in which amphibious forces perform missions representing the spectrum of conflict, to determine the amphibious forces' requirements for support. The capabilities of naval gunfire assets are then determined and compared against the support requirements to determine if their capabilities meet the requirements. Where the capabilities fall short of meeting the requirements, the capabilities of other supporting agencies are then examined to determine if other agencies can compensate for the shortfalls of naval gunfire. Finally, the net shortfalls and their impact on the abilities of the NCA and Unified Commanders to achieve the national security objectives are determined. This monograph shows that the current naval gunfire assets cannot support amphibious operations across the spectrum of conflict. As a result of their insufficiency, the capabilities of United States amphibious forces are significantly degraded. They cannot adequately conduct a conventional amphibious assault against a defended beach, and accept much greater risk while conducting missions at the lower end of the spectrum of conflict.

ADA 366270 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)