I think it was General B.B. Bell who took on the aspect of Commander, United Nations Command, Commander, Combined Forces Command, Commander, United States Forces Korea who came up with the slogan all those guys promptly adopted as their own, if you believe them, that asked, "what if we had to fight tonight!?" He thought it was a wake up call to a combined force of thousands who rotated into and off of the Korean Peninsula every year to prepare to fight the North Koreans.
Oddly enough, as powerful as the message might have been to the Army and the Air Force it had just about no meaning to the United States Navy. It didn't really apply to the naval forces ashore or to the staff in Seoul and there was a reason for that. The U.S. Navy in Korea was not really there to fight a war, it was there to prepare for a war. Every scrap of war fighting naval stuff was located away from the Korean Peninsula with some of it nearby in Japan but the naval forces in Korea filled a role similar to that of the maître d’ in your fine dining establishment.
It occurs to me that my days on the staff at NAVCENT were never really tortured by inept Admirals coming in and telling us that we needed to be able to fight tonight. We too were akin to the maître d’s. Our role was to plan for the war but the tactical execution of it was going to be, in the first moments of war, totally up to the Battle Group Commanders in the Gulf and those just outside. It never even occurred to us what would happen in the event things got spicier than, say, Praying Mantis which was the last time we waxed Iran's tail in a straight up naval war nobody here ever heard of or knew about.
There wasn't a single ground based missile launcher anywhere and the role of Aegis in defense was probably disposed of when Bahrain declined to punch holes into the last remaining aquifer by dredging the navigation channel to permit Aegis ships to enter the port. I suspect Aegis would do well enough at Sitrah or even out by the Bahrain Bell.
I'm trying to remember all my ARCENT briefs from JTF A in Cairo but I cannot recall if there were any missile defenses in the Kingdom or anywhere else in the Gulf. I don't think there were. Aegis was about all there was back then except for a handful of Patriot batteries and IHawk batteries. I'm not even sure we were selling that stuff to the Saudis or the Gulf emirates outside of Kuwait.
The long standing difference between the Navy and the other Armed Forces is that the Navy is, on deployment, always prepared to fight at the drop of a hat. It has been that way for a very long time. In areas where armed attacks are a possibility, the ship mans its weapons 24/7 underway and inport. Where the danger is nonexistent the ships are still prepared to fight for their lives because fire is a constant risk and an all consuming hazard that ship's companies fight just about every single day.
As I read the tiny bits that make it out about the Iranian missile attacks on places like NAVCENT Headquarters in Bahrain I wonder if they had any time in the 18 years since the last time I was there, actually taken any steps at all to shore up their air defenses beyond the scope of Aegis in Sitrah. I wonder if the King did either.
At the end of the day there is still a significant difference between the Army and the Navy's readiness. Unlike Korea where the Army has large tactical formations that should be prepared to fight instantly on warning, the only thing like that in the Middle East might be the Air Defense Artillery and maybe the ATACMS guys if they're still around.
I wonder if the Commander's of the force formerly known as ARCENT had psychologically prepped their forward deployed forces to be ready to fight tonight. Maintaining a heightened tactical readiness places great demands on manpower and weapons and sensors. Operating sensors from fixed locations in a hostile environment is an invitation to anti-radiation missiles. I wonder how that worked out for them. It seems to be a huge weakness in the Russian air defense forces. The thing is, all the planners around the world know that among the very first targets in a shooting war are the air defense sensors and weapons. How Ground Based Air Defense Systems in a 'non-hostile' neighborhood make the leap to full readiness with fixed sensors is a bit of a mystery.
On the gripping hand, we are moving closer to the "uncommanded sea and skies" mentioned by the great naval strategist, Sir Julian Corbett. A true revolution in military affairs right in front of your eyes.
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