The Navy Can't "Go it Alone"

Another fault I notice in the Navy's New Maritime Strategy, was the perception that the sea services can ignore the Goldwater/Nichols Act from the 1980's that calls for cooperation in the Pentagon. Loren Thompson noticed this as well:

...The new maritime strategy makes it sound like the three sea services can achieve overseas military objectives by themselves without depending on other components of the joint force.

The reality is a little different. Most of the global connectivity, reconnaissance, navigation and weather information the sea services depend on is provided via satellites managed by the Air Force. Sea-based aircraft can't get very far inland in Southwest Asia or the Western Pacific without aerial refueling from Air Force tankers.

Nothing in the current sea-service arsenal remotely approaches the overland persistence of a Global Hawk surveillance drone or the survivability of a B-2 bomber. And we all know what would have happened to the Marines if they were sent to secure Iraq without the Army.

I would have included the Army first, which seems to be responsible for our fleet's continued dominance on the high seas.