Chapter 5
A da p t i n g M a r i t i m e
S t r at e g y a n d O p e r at i o n s
to C l i m at e C h a l l e n g e s
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Dr. Ed McGrady
This first panel focuses on a very interesting, and in my view
an extremely important, topic as we think about how to prepare
the maritime services for climate change. In particular, the panel
will discuss the strategy, policy, and operational implications of climate change for the maritime services. I think each of those words
Dr. Ed McGrady is a senior research analyst at CNA. He develops games
and conducts studies on a wide range of topics from force structure and
planning to operational deployment of medical forces. He is currently
working on projects related to the effect of climate change on U.S.
military involvement in humanitarian operations and disaster response.
His research work includes studies of humanitarian emergencies, disaster response operations, the role of Naval and other military forces in
medical humanitarian missions, cooperation between military forces
and nongovernmental organizations, and the role of military forces in
domestic disaster response. He has led studies examining recent hospital ship deployments including the tsunami relief efforts and followon humanitarian medical assistance operations in the Pacific. During
the Katrina response, he led a group of 10 analysts in examining the
full spectrum of disaster response operations, from military support to
civil authorities to internal Navy disaster response. He has also examined the role of military forces in complex emergencies, such as during the U.S. intervention in Haiti. As part of that effort, he deployed
with U.S. forces onboard the USS Enterprise. Dr. McGrady has written
extensively on the role of military forces in humanitarian and disaster
response operations. He has authored papers on such diverse topics
as the role of Naval forces in providing emergency communications
support, the impact of these operations on national security objectives,
and type of emergencies that military forces typically get called on to
support. Dr. McGrady holds a B.A. in chemical engineering from the
University of Florida and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the
University of Michigan.
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is very important. We are going to be looking at strategy, policy,
and operations. Those are not topics that we typically focus on
when we think about how climate change is going to impact how
our forces operate, what we are going to have to do, and what we
are going to have to buy, so we want to try to dig into some of
those issues.
We also want to emphasize the maritime services. Many of
the missions that are typically assigned to these services are going
to be affected by climate change, and the services are going to
have to adapt accordingly. Rising sea levels will displace bases,
and the opening of the Arctic will require new deployments of
Coast Guard and Navy forces. Climate-induced instabilities around
the world will increase the number of humanitarian assistance and
disaster response missions as well as peacekeeping and perhaps
even counter-insurgency missions. How are such changes going to
affect the maritime services, and how should we adapt our strategy, our policy, and our operations to deal with them?
From the above discussion, it seems clear that the Navy will be
impacted by climate change. In my view, however, it is the Coast
Guard that is currently charged with much of the mission set that
our other maritime forces will need to do more of in a world adapting to climate change. The Coast Guard is an interagency organization in that it has to work with a wide variety of the other agencies
in an interagency environment. In addition, the Coast Guard has
law enforcement responsibilities, both on the domestic side as
well as overseas in working with naval partners to provide on-ship
capabilities. The kind of challenges that the Coast Guard currently
confronts may end up being issues that all of our maritime forces
have to deal with in the future as increased stresses from climate
change impose new requirements and new missions.
To discuss these issues, we have assembled a very representative panel in terms of both strategy and operations. Their charge is
to try to help us understand how our maritime forces should adapt
their strategy and operations to climate change.
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Ms. Amanda Dory
I am the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy,
and part of what my office does that you are very familiar with is
developing the big-picture strategic articulation and then explaining it over time, updating it, and testing our assumptions regularly.
Our office also focuses on the long-term future in that we project
out at least 20 years, depending on Congressional requirements,
Ms. Amanda J. Dory currently serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Strategy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).
She is a career member of the Senior Executive Service. From 2007 to
2008, Ms. Dory served as the Principal Director, Policy Planning responsible for strategy development, oversight of contingency and campaign
plans, and long-term trends analysis and futures. In 2006–2007, she
served as the chief of staff for the Irregular Warfare and Building
Partnership Capacity Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Execution
Roadmaps. From 2003 to 2006, Ms. Dory served as the Director for
Planning and Integration in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Homeland Defense, and in 2002–2003, Ms. Dory was a
Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow based at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). From 1999 to
2002, Ms. Dory worked in the OSD Strategy office on a broad range of
strategy and guidance documents. From 1996 to 1999, Ms. Dory served
as the Country Director for Southern Africa and the Country Director
for West Africa. Ms. Dory joined OSD as a Presidential Management
Intern in 1994 and conducted rotational assignments related to
European and African security affairs as well as international arms
control negotiations. Ms. Dory’s nongovernment experience includes
positions with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and
the World Bank. She received an M.A. in international affairs from The
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.S. in
foreign service from Georgetown University. She is a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations.
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and farther when we can. We use these forecasts to support longterm trends as well as to guide our development of force planning
scenarios for the midterm and long term. Those tasks form the core
of what our office does.
On the basis of that brief description, you should be able to
see how climate change and climate change trends would begin
to intersect with our work. What I would like to do first today is to
touch briefly on the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) (Figure 1).
[1] I will not spend a lot of time going through the QDR in detail
because I have a feeling that almost everyone in the audience has
either read the QDR or heard me or others from my staff—I am
joined here today by Ms. Esther McClure and Lieutenant Colonel
Paul Schimpf—who have been out and about talking about the
findings of the QDR. So I do not want to duplicate what you may
have already heard; instead, I want to push ahead to the next step,
to talk about what we are, or should, be doing about some of the
important issues identified in the QDR and how we are progressing on that agenda.
Figure 1. 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review
The overall theme of 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review was
rebalancing and reforming the DoD. In the months since its release,
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you have seen more of that, particularly with the efficiencies initiative that the Secretary of Defense led over the past year to find
lower-risk areas in order to create resource availability for higher
priorities. I think that is a rebalancing and reforming effort that we
will continue, particularly as the nation grapples with how we get
our defense and government budgets back in alignment as far as
inputs and outputs.
The first of the four strategic imperatives that we focused on in
QDR 2010 is prevailing in today’s operations in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and the global effort to defeat Al Qaeda and its associates. We
placed that at the very top of the priority list, as you know. We also
talked about preventing and deterring conflict—a strategic imperative that ties in directly with climate change projections in the midterm and in the long term; I will say more about the implications
for conflict later on.
The third strategic imperative was to prepare to defeat adversaries across a broad range of future contingencies. This was really
a deliberate effort to try to take ourselves out of focusing on what
had become, through the years, an almost canonical war fight. We
have become very comfortable with these as analytical manifestations of potential future conflict. As a result, we continued to refine
and update them without broadening our scope to think about a
broader range of future contingencies to which the Department
may be asked by the President to respond. Preparing for a broader
scope and preparing for complexity are thus a key strategic imperative in the QDR.
For the first time, this QDR raised the importance of preserving
and enhancing the all-volunteer force to the level of the strategic
imperative. We have certainly always addressed the roles and the
responsibilities associated with caring for the all-volunteer force,
but this QDR raised this issue to the level of a strategic imperative
by recognizing that the all-volunteer force is at the heart of what
the Department does.
Based on Congressional guidance, the QDR also included a
focus on climate change for the first time. Since you have probably read that section, I will not repeat it here; we can talk about it
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further in the question and answer period, if there is particular interest. What we did was go through the potential impacts of climate
change on our operating environment and on the Department’s
roles and missions. We also looked at energy because we consider
energy and climate change as highly inter-related or, if you like,
two sides of the same coin. You cannot really think about climate
change without also thinking about what is happening with energy
production and consumption.
I also want to touch briefly on what I will call upstream and
downstream guidance that has come out since the QDR was published. There are two very important documents in this regard
(Figure 2). The first is the National Security Strategy (NSS), which
was released in May 2010. [2] The NSS is the overarching strategy
for all of the national security departments and agencies. If you
have been through the NSS, you have noted that it includes very
forward-leaning guidance on climate change and that it talks about
climate change as a danger that is real, urgent, and severe. The
NSS calls on our nation’s security and development communities
to work together to successfully integrate our approaches and the
different elements of American power to address climate change
now and in the future.
Figure 2. Other Strategic Guidance
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Last month, Admiral Michael Mullen released the National
Military Strategy (NMS). [3] In the hierarchy of strategies, the
National Security Strategy is the most overarching. The Defense
Strategy included within the QDR is subordinate to that and
expresses the way that the defense toolkit—the assemblage of
ways and means at our disposal—nests within the broader national
security goals. The NMS takes it a step down by focusing on the
military instrument, on military personnel and forces and the application of power, in particular.
In the recently released NMS, you see again the importance of
climate change in describing the future security environment. You
also see a robust discussion of conflict prevention in which the
Chairman emphasizes the savings that we believe are associated
with preventive action as opposed to responsive action. I am sure
that you are very familiar with the idea that the least costly wars are
the ones that we do not fight; but it is that type of approach that is
embedded in the NMS.
Figure 3. Related Strategic Guidance
Two other documents (Figure 3) have been released recently
that round out the strategic discussion. The first is the Presidential
Policy Directive on Global Development (PPD), which was
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released in September 2010. [4] That PPD is a critical implementing step in what was laid out in the National Security Strategy.
(In the Obama administration, PPDs serve the same function that
National Security Presidential Directives or National Security
Decision Directives have in prior administrations—they provide
definitive guidance to all elements of the executive branch of the
U.S. government.)
Within the PPD, the President calls for the elevation of development as a core pillar of American power and articulates what
is termed the 3-D approach, meaning the integration of development, diplomacy, and defense to reinforce and complement one
another in a comprehensive approach to national security. This
PPD in particular has three initiatives within it. One is a global
health initiative, a second is a global food security initiative, and
a third is a global climate change initiative. The National Security
Council is actively managing the process of implementing all three.
The final document I would like to raise to your attention is
the QDDR. [5] If you have not had a chance to look through that
document, it is the State Department’s first ever effort to do what
the QDR does for the DoD. Completion of the QDDR took about
a year. During the process, the State Department and the U.S.
Agency for International Development looked both internally and
externally at how they should organize and orient to address today’s
challenges. The final report was released in December 2010. The
DoD was highly supportive of the State Department in this effort,
not only sharing the lessons learned from our experience in completing multiple QDRs through the years, but also providing personnel support when requested and actively participating where it
was relevant toward their effort.
I think the most important thing coming out of QDDR is the
concept of civilian power as a complement to military power. As we
try to balance what happens within national security approaches
to problems, we have to find ways to accommodate the fact that
the proverbial 800-pound gorilla, otherwise known as the military instrument, is the most resourced, the strongest, and therefore
the most frequently used. Part of what Secretary of State Hillary
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Rodham Clinton has done in the QDDR is to craft her own version
of “rebalance and reform” that really focuses on civilian power.
I have one quote from that report that I want to share with you;
I commend the entire report to your attention if you have not had a
chance to look at it. Secretary Clinton speaks about civilian power
as the combined force of women and men across the U.S. government, so it is not just focused within the State Department—it is
women and men across the U.S. government who are practicing
diplomacy, implementing development projects, strengthening alliances and partnership, preventing and responding to crises in conflict, and advancing America’s core interests. To me the framing of
the idea of civilian power is, in addition to all the particular pieces
of guidance and implementation that will follow, very powerful as
we head forward.
To summarize then, the key theme through all of the different
strategic articulations is the concept of prevention and deterrence
of conflict—that is the way it is described in the QDR, but conflict
prevention is a common theme throughout all strategic guidance
documents (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Common Strategic Theme: Conflict Prevention
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Within the department, we look at conflict prevention as a way
to help shape the future security environment. At the same time,
however, there are physical trends within the future security environment, like climate change and demographics, that also shape
the future. Conflict prevention efforts are one way we can actively
seek to shape outcomes instead of just responding to what is evolving and unfolding.
As we have seen all too clearly over the past decade, state
weakness can create as many challenges as state strength. We
spend a lot of time in the DoD focusing on state strength, but part
of the broadening of our suite of challenges is recognizing the challenges associated with state weakness. Among other things, weak
states heighten the risk of conflict, like humanitarian crisis, and the
potential for becoming terrorist sanctuaries.
Figure 5. Notional Interagency Partnership on Climate
Security Issues
I am trying out Figure 5 for the first time. It is something we
have been working on within the Strategy Office; it does not have
official standing of any sort—it is a concept, if you will. But it is a
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concept for a holistic approach for how we could begin to, as a
U.S. government, convert climate science and data into actionable,
whole-of-government preventive efforts, as well as response efforts.
I will try to explain what it is we are trying to convey in
Figure 5 and then look forward to a discussion in the question
and answer period. What we are starting to show, if you move
from the top of Figure 5 down, are the various departments, agencies, and other federal entities that are involved on a particular line
of effort. The output of each line of effort appears in the blue boxes
along the right-hand side. The amount of effort being expended on
these topics is very impressive. When you go to some of the interagency meetings, whether they are called by the State Department
or the National Security staff, you see stakeholders from all the
different agencies and departments that have equities, expertise, or
activities underway.
At the very top of Figure 5, you can see where entities such as
NASA, the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories,
the National Science Foundation (NSF), the DoD to include Navy,
and the intelligence community (IC) are all collecting various types
of climate data or working in the climate science arena.
One of the challenges in this process is to create the translation function where the science and data eventually are converted
into something that is tractable and actionable. Thus, the vertical
arrow is intended to show how you move from science and data
into model inputs, then into the creation of climate projections,
then into the creation of more granular projections, for example,
developing concepts for food, water, energy supplies, and security.
The final piece, and the one critical for the DoD, is the national
security assessment piece where the intelligence community comes
in. You are all, I imagine, very familiar with the pioneering work
of the National Intelligence Council and their National Intelligence
assessments on climate change. Importantly, they are now working
on a full-blown climate impact estimate.
The translation function is particularly critical for the national
security piece because that is where you start to bring to bear the
human dimension and state behavior in a way that causes the
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national security agencies to focus on what potential pathways lay
ahead. In the bubble in the middle you see the role of the Executive
Office of the President, the National Security staff focusing internationally, and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), along
with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) focusing
on domestic concerns. These organizations play key roles in terms
of integration and guidance development and promulgation, such
as the Presidential Policy Directive that I described earlier.
The spectrum of actions appears at the very bottom of the
chart. You can see that we have opportunities that are response
related vis-à-vis climate change and security, and we have opportunities that are prevention related. Within each response, there is
an array of responses. There are responses that happen—adaptiontype responses, for example—at a local level, at a regional level,
or at a state level. There are also responses like migration that are
based on a local manifestation of climate change. The other places
where the DoD and other U.S. agencies tend to get engaged are
humanitarian assistance and disaster response activities, particularly in the event of natural or man-made disasters.
On the prevention side, as I have mentioned previously, climate
change at a global level is not a particularly tractable challenge, and
there are different ways of starting to make it more tractable. One
of those is to develop a regional or a subregional focus and assessment process to support the planning and response development.
Another way is to focus on some critical basic human needs
such as water, food, and energy. The scarcity of any of those items,
whether it is absolute scarcity or relative scarcity, is where one
begins to see a range of adaptation responses. Those can include
things like destabilizing migration or conflict over resources.
In closing, I would like to make a few points about the way
ahead. I have summarized these points in the list below and then
describe them in greater detail:
• It is no longer enough to simply recognize climate change
as a national security issue. Now is the time to begin moving into the “planning and solutions phase.”
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• Debate about whether or not climate change constitutes a
stand-alone “threat” or whether climate change, by itself,
causes conflict are less helpful than identifying prudent
actions to begin taking, given our improving understanding
of vulnerabilities and risks.
–– The DoD should apply a risk management framework to
climate change considerations.
–– Reducing the impacts of climate change will reduce the
likelihood of conflict in vulnerable regions.
The first point is that we need to move beyond simply congratulating ourselves for recognizing climate change as an important
dimension of the future security environment. Instead, it is an area
that we need to pay attention to on a day-to-day basis. The DoD
crossed that bridge with the 2010 QDR. Many other departments
and agencies preceded us and a few others have followed behind.
In my view, we now need to be moving into the planning and solutions phase of the discussion. The DoD needs to figure out how it
can most effectively plug into and enhance interagency efforts on
mitigation and adaptation, working not only with the United States
Agency for International Development and the State Department,
but also with the full array of other actors who are engaged in prevention activities.
We also need to think about adaptation solutions that we
develop for our own installations, particularly domestic installations, and how we will transfer knowledge and work with civilian
communities around those installations. In cases where the civilian
communities are on the cutting edge as opposed to the DoD, we
need to find ways to take advantage of their expertise as we think
through adaptation planning.
We also need to move beyond just asking questions such as:
Is climate change a threat, is climate change a threat accelerant,
or is climate change a threat multiplier? We need to focus beyond
just the semantic tangles that we get ourselves into at times. They
are not particularly helpful. Instead, we need to focus more on
where are we with data, where we are with the science, and
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where are we with assessments and projections and what can we
do about them.
As part of that, I think it is particularly important that we refocus our discussion on risks and vulnerabilities, particularly moving
from global scales down to regional scales.
REFERENCES
1. Department of Defense, 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review,
2010,  http://www.defense.gov/qdr/images/QDR_as_of_
12Feb10_1000.pdf.
2. The White House, National Security Strategy, May 2010, http://
www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_
security_strategy.pdf.
3. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, The National Military Strategy of the
United States of America, 2011, http://www.jcs.mil//content/
files/2011-02/020811084800_2011_NMS_-_08_FEB_2011.pdf.
4. The White House, Fact Sheet: U.S. Global Development Policy,
2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/
09/22/fact-sheet-us-global-development-policy.
5. U.S. Department of State, The First Quadrennial Diplomacy and
Development Review: Leading Through Civilian Power, 2010,
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/153142.pdf.
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Rear Admiral Thomas Atkin
It is a great opportunity to be here, and it is certainly great to
sit on the panel with Ms. Amanda Dory and Rear Admiral David
Woods. I have had the opportunity to work for and with Ms. Dory
a couple of times now, and it is intimidating to say the least. She
Rear Admiral Thomas Atkin recently assumed the position of Assistant
Commandant in support of the Deputy Commandant for Operations.
Prior to this assignment, Rear Admiral Atkin served as the Special
Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Transborder Security;
first Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard Deployable Operations Group
(DOG); and the Deputy Principal Federal Official to the Gulf Coast in
2006 and Chief of Staff in New Orleans, Louisiana, for the Principal
Federal Official for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Before working the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Rear Admiral Atkin served as Chief,
Maritime Homeland Security and Defense Policy in the Office of
the Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense. In 2003, he served
as the Chief of the Counterterrorism Division in the Chief of Naval
Operations Office, Deep Blue. Rear Admiral Atkin’s operational assignments included Commanding Officer, Tactical Law Enforcement Team
(TACLET) North in Chesapeake, Virginia; Commanding Officer, TACLET
Gulf in New Orleans, Louisiana; Operations Officer, TACLET Seven in
Miami, Florida; Navigator, Coast Guard Cutter ALERT in Cape May,
New Jersey; Deputy Group Commander in New Orleans, Louisiana;
and Coast Guard Liaison to Joint Task Force One Six Zero at the U.S.
Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His staff assignments included
Chief, Office of Law Enforcement and Intelligence for the Eighth Coast
Guard District, New Orleans, Louisiana; Fisheries Enforcement Officer
for the Eighth Coast Guard District, New Orleans, Louisiana; and
Mathematics Instructor, Assistant Football Coach, and Head Lacrosse
Coach at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.
Rear Admiral Atkin graduated from the United States Coast Guard
Academy with a B.S. degree in mathematical sciences. He also holds
an M.S. degree in management science from the University of Miami.
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is obviously brilliant. I am also intimidated because when I first
found out I was coming here to speak I thought that I would be the
only Coastie here, and that if I did poorly, I could always go back
to work and say that I was awesome. I now see that I am not alone
and there are people who will be inclined to tell the truth when
I go back to work. So it is a little bit scary from that perspective.
I have just a few slides, and I am not trying to repeat too much
of what Ms. Dory talked about already. I am going to try to cover
my material quickly so that we have a lot of time for questions
and answers.
To start, I am going to talk a little about climate change in
general and how we look at it from the Coast Guard perspective.
Then, I will turn briefly to strategic engagement. Finally, I am going
to talk about the Arctic, which is really where, from a Coast Guard
perspective, climate change will require that we focus first.
Climate change, as I think everyone here already knows, is not
so much about the Earth just getting warmer. Climate change is
really about severe weather extremes; it is about how the weather
is changing, becoming more severe—events such as the snowstorm we had here in Washington, D.C., not too long ago in which
people were stuck on the roads for 13 or 14 hours. It is those types
of things that are really starting to affect us. Several days ago, on
one of our piers up in Alaska, we were getting steady-state winds
of 80 knots, with gusts up to 120 knots—very unusual, indeed, but
another sign that the times are changing.
So, many types of severe weather—to include hurricanes and
floods—are going to become more severe. On top of those direct
effects, you have all the indirect effects that are associated with
severe weather—the degradation of the environment, for example
(Figure 1). When we look at the coastline of Louisiana, we can see
how it is eroding and the speed at which it is eroding. Such effects
are certain to affect our pipelines, our offshore oil rigs, and the
Louisiana Offshore Oil Port that brings oil into the refineries along
the Gulf Coast. The implications will eventually extend all the way
to the global supply chain and our overall economy.
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Figure 1. Climate Change Effects
As more and more countries are impacted by significant environmental change, population migration is likely to increase. There
will invariably be more migration from countries that are impacted
to countries that have greater opportunities; migration to the United
States may well increase. Another concern is critical infrastructure;
we have a lot of critical infrastructure around our coastline that will
be impacted. Obviously, a lot of our Coast Guard infrastructure is
located at the water’s edge. Any significant rise in sea level will
have an adverse effect on that infrastructure. These are all things
that we have to take a look at, and all are starting to impact what
the Coast Guard and the nation will have to do.
So how do we look at it? How do we do that strategic engagement part (Figure 2) and who do we need to work with?
Obviously, the Arctic Council is a huge player from the perspectives of both the Arctic and climate change. As climate change
advances and the Arctic opens up, we will have no choice but to
interact with the eight other Arctic nations. This coming May 11,
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to sign a searchand-rescue agreement with eight other Arctic nations on how we
respond from a search-and-rescue perspective in the Arctic.
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Figure 2. Strategic Engagement
On the national security side, we have the strategies and
policies laid out in the National Security Presidential Directive/
Homeland Security Presidential Directive (NSPD/HSPD) on
Arctic region policy. [1] This document includes specific implementation tasks. While originally signed by President George W.
Bush, it has recently been reaffirmed by President Barack Obama.
Unfortunately, only two interagency policy committee meetings on
the Arctic have been held since it was signed. Having hosted one
of those, I understand that we need to have greater involvement
from the National Security staff on the Arctic and the associated
implementation of a national policy. We need to ensure that it is
being implemented uniformly across the whole of government.
The National Ocean Council is an Obama Administration
initiative to develop a National Ocean Policy and a governance
structure for how we move forward. While the National Ocean
Policy does not really have a security component, is does include
a coastal marine spatial planning effort. That effort describes how
planning should be divided up regionally around the United States
and how it is going to be a joint effort between federal, state, and
local governments and private industry.
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I do not think you can go into any climate change discussion
without talking about the United Nations Convention on the Law
of the Sea (UNCLOS) and how critical it is that we have UNCLOS
ratified by Congress. We have to move forward on that. UNCLOS
is going to be our lifeline into the international community and how
we protect our own national security interests. We have talked a
lot about what the impacts are from an environmental perspective,
from an energy perspective, and from a natural resource perspective, but I think we really need to re-look at this issue. We must
bring UNCLOS into our national security discussion because it is
imperative to make that part of our way ahead.
The International Maritime Organization, which establishes the
standards and regulations for the shipping industry, is also going
to be critical. Consider, for example, something as simple as the
Bering Strait. There are two islands in the middle—one is Russian,
one is American. As the Arctic sea ice melts and we get more
and more open water, the shipping industry will want to use the
Northwest Passage. We will need some type of vessel traffic separation scheme up there. We have to work that through the international community and the IMO. Simply stated, we are going to
have to utilize and partner with our international organizations.
Figure 3. Importance of the Arctic Region
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We in the Coast Guard like to remind people that the United
States is an Arctic nation, even though we usually do not think
about our country that way (Figure 3). While everyone in this room
probably understands that, if you asked someone in Ottumwa,
Iowa, about the Arctic, they probably would not have a whole lot
to say about it. So you have got to think about how do we communicate to the American public the importance of climate change
in general, then the importance of the Arctic in particular, and then
how that is going to impact not only our national security but also
things like the global supply chain and global economics.
It is a fact that climate change is going to have some impacts.
Although the most significant effects in the Arctic will occur well
after my time in the Coast Guard comes to an end, and perhaps
even after I am alive, given the rate I am going right now, we have to
make dealing with these effects a priority. The question becomes:
how do you get people interested in something that is not going
to even happen in their lifetime? For me, I always think about my
children. I make them recycle.
But those are the little things that we can do as we teach and
talk about the impacts of climate change and the impacts of where
we are going as a country. There is already more open water in
the Arctic, there is more human activity, and there is more maritime traffic. While I do not understand the science part or how we
got to where we are, it does not really matter to me. I do not care
what people’s cultural, political, or scientific beliefs are or why we
are where we are with climate change, but there is more water
and there is more traffic, so we have to start accounting for it, and
we have to develop the right strategies, plans, and policies as we
move forward.
From a Coast Guard perspective, we have the same responsibilities in the Arctic Ocean as we do in the Gulf of Mexico. We
have the same law enforcement responsibilities, we have the same
search and rescue responsibilities, and we have the same fisheries enforcement responsibilities. While it used to be ice covered,
that no longer matters since now all of a sudden, there is plenty of
open water. So now we have to start looking at how we are going
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to fulfill our responsibilities by law in the Arctic and how that will
impact us.
Operating in the Arctic will entail immense challenges. I am
sure all of you have seen a map with the Arctic placed over top
the United States and how big it is. I was actually going to bring
that slide, but my staff told me that I could not have another slide,
so I left it behind. But the distances that we will have to cover are
dramatic. Other challenges include the lack of infrastructure and
the lack of the knowledge of just what is going on up in the Arctic.
Then, of course, there is severe weather, which will have impacts
on infrastructure, vessels, and people.
Another challenge that we face is dealing with the indigenous
peoples who live in the Arctic region, including Alaska. We have
to make sure we are talking to them and make sure that we understand their concerns. As you probably know, the Coast Guard likes
people to wear life jackets when they are out on the water. When
we tried to push the idea of life jackets to the Native Alaskans, they
were adamantly against them. They said that if you put on one of
those big orange life jackets, you are just making yourself an easy
target for polar bears to zero in on.
Their fear was genuine, so we had to go with white life jackets which are very hard for rescuers to see. But at the same time
we had to understand their concerns and we had to adapt ourselves accordingly. The indigenous people are also going to provide us with a lot of knowledge of the area. They can help identify
the impacts because they can remember what it was like 50 or
60 years ago. That knowledge will help us identify impacts as we
go forward. A big concern is melting permafrost and its impact on
our infrastructure, for example.
So how does the Coast Guard look at that from a strategic
or an operational perspective? The answer for now is that we go
right back to the strategy that was signed out by Admiral Thad
Allen in 2007 and is still in effect today. It is our strategy for maritime security, safety, and stewardship. It is a legal regime along the
lines of the other legal regimes, like UNCLOS, IMO, and the Arctic
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Council. It is about the domain awareness—understanding what
the domain is about, to include talking to the Native Alaskans.
For the last 3 or 4 years we have had forward operating locations at Barrow and Nome up on Alaska’s North Slope. We have
flown up there in our aircraft, which gets kind of scary. We did not
realize when we first started flying our C-130s up there that aviation fuel freezes at about –43°. So when it is hitting –40°, we are
trying to get those things turned on and come home pretty quickly,
especially when an admiral is on board. Speaking from experience, they can get a little nervous.
What we have done is we have forward deployed people and
assets during the right weather and right time of year to see if we
can operate, if we have the right capabilities, and if we have the
right understanding of the area. What we have found is that most
of our small boats and our short-range helicopters are ineffective.
We found that we currently do not really have good charts for the
Arctic; we do not understand where all the shallow water is. We
need ships that can operate with the right endurance. There is not
always an opportunity to refuel so we have to be able to get where
we want to go, and then we have to be able to stay there for a
long time. We have to have ships that have platforms for embarked
helicopters in order to provide the extended reach that we need.
We have also learned that there is not a lot of infrastructure
that can provide logistics support. So if something breaks, we have
to worry about how we get the part that we need. It is pretty easy
if we are operating in the Caribbean or in the Gulf of Mexico; we
have an established network, and we can get parts within a couple
of days. It is not so simple in the Arctic. The existing communications network is not very effective. So that is something else we
have to work on as we go forward.
We know for certain, however, that there is going to be a
requirement for the Coast Guard and for the nation up there. We
understand that. We understand that we will have responsibilities
for law enforcement, fisheries regulation, search and rescue, and
environmental response. But there are things we do not understand yet. For example, how do you clean up oil spilled on the ice?
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I do not know anyone who knows how to do that at this time, but
we have to start accounting for that, we have to start figuring it out,
we have to carry out essential research and development, and we
have to partner with industry.
One of the neat things about the Arctic, if you think about it,
is that there is not a lot of infrastructure. However, as we get more
and more open water, and as private industry wants to operate
more up there—whether it be cruise ships, fisheries, or oil and
energy companies—we have an opportunity to establish rules
and regulations to fit the environment. We have an opportunity to
build the infrastructure that fits the regimes instead of building the
regimes to fit the infrastructure, like we do now.
It is an opportunity for us to look way ahead and say okay,
if somebody wants to operate in the Arctic, let us establish the
regulations by which they can operate. If you want to be there,
you have to establish the appropriate logistic and communications systems that will enable the federal agencies to carry out their
assigned responsibilities. There has to be a partnership between
the federal government and private industry.
REFERENCE
1. The White House, National Security Presidential Directive 66/
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 25 (NSPD-66/HSPD25), Arctic Region Policy, 9 Jan 2009, http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/
nspd/nspd-66.htm.
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Rear Admiral David Woods
You probably wonder why, with my operational background, I am the head of strategy for the Navy. Before this job,
I served for 18 months as the head of our strategy team for the
Rear Admiral David Woods earned a B.S. degree from the U.S. Naval
Academy in 1981 and a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College in 1997. In 1983, he was designated a naval flight officer. His shore assignments include: research
officer, Naval Surface Weapons Center; aviation enlisted rating
assignment officer, Bureau of Naval Personnel; EA-6B fleet replacement training officer and flight instructor, Electronic Attack Squadron
(VAQ) 129, Vikings; EA-6B wing readiness and requirements officer,
Electronic Combat Wing, U.S. Pacific Fleet; and EA-6B and airborne
electronic attack requirements officer, Office of the Chief of Naval
Operations (OPNAV) Air Warfare Division. His sea duty assignments
include: VAQ-131 for deployments with Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 6 and
CVW 2 and VAQ-138 for two deployments with CVW 9. Woods’s commander command was with VAQ-132. His bonus commander command was with VAQ-129, the Navy’s EA-6B Prowler Fleet Replacement
Squadron. Woods’s major command was as commander of CVW 11
for two deployments with Carrier Strike Group 11 in combat support of both Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. He
served as deputy director, Combined Air Operations Center, Joint
Task Force Southwest Asia, Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. He returned in
September 2008 from a combat tour in Iraq as the commander of Joint
Crew Composite Squadron 1. Woods’s decorations include the Legion
of Merit, a Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medals (four awards),
Strike/Flight Air Medals (five awards), a USAF Aerial Achievement
Medal, Navy Commendation Medals (four awards), Navy Achievement
Medals (two awards), the 1995 National Navy League Vice Admiral
John Perry Award for excellence in electronic warfare, and various
other awards.
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Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) with Ms. Michèle Flournoy
and Ms. Amanda Dory.
The Navy’s new strategy, and that of our sister services, the
Coast Guard and the Marine Corps, came out in October 2007. It
laid out exactly where we wanted to go. It defined the ends, the
strategic imperatives, and the core competencies that we think that
the maritime forces should deliver to the nation. During my first
year and a half on the job, I was kind of doing missionary work. I
am from Utah so I understand missionary work. It was my job to
explain the new strategy to the citizens of our country as well as to
citizens of other nations, and to conduct kind of the litmus test of
that strategy to see if we got it right.
As Ms. Dory discussed earlier, over the last 18 months, we
have gone through several higher-level strategy efforts, including
the QDR, as I noted in my introduction. Specifically, the QDR
updated our national defense strategy. In addition, the National
Security Strategy, the National Military Strategy, the Ballistic Missile
Defense Review (BMDR), and the Space Strategy have all been
accomplished in the last 18 months.
The Cooperative Strategy for the 21st Century went through a
similar process in 2007. Based on our more recent efforts, we found
that we got it about right. As the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)
says, the recent strategic reviews validated the Navy strategy, even
though it preceded all of those efforts. As you go through the collection of strategy documents, you will see some similar words and
similar themes and ideas, not only regarding the security environment that we expect to face in the future, but also regarding what
the nation expects the maritime forces to deliver.
For the last 10 years, we have been focused on the current fight
in the Middle East. But as the NATO operations against Libya and
the international response to the recent tsunami off Japan show,
once the current fight is wrapped up, maritime forces are not going
to be done. Moreover, the demand signal probably is not going
down; it is going to be reoriented and focused elsewhere in order
to deliver some of the strategic imperatives and core competencies
that we articulated in our strategy.
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If you looked across the globe a couple of weeks ago, you
would have seen that the Navy had some 16,000 sailors on the
ground, another 10,000 at sea, and two carrier strike groups supporting U.S. and allied operations in Operations Enduring Freedom
and Iraqi Freedom along with related activities in Bahrain, in
Yemen, and on the African continent. You would also see the
counter-piracy effort that is going on off the coast of Somalia and
the dedicated assets and capabilities that go into that. Beginning
just several weeks ago, the Navy has committed additional forces
to support the no-fly zone that is part of Operation New Dawn. A
great example of the Navy’s inherent flexibility is that we were able
to shift some of the Navy’s electronic attack aircraft from flying
combat missions over Iraq to flying combat missions enforcing the
no-fly zone over Libya. For the affected units flying out of Aviano,
Italy, just 47 hours elapsed between their last combat mission over
Iraq and their first mission over Libya.
At the same time that all of these things were going on, the
Navy was also responding to the tsunami-caused disaster in Japan.
Sailors and Marines from the George Washington Strike Group and
its escorts, and from the Essex Amphibious Ready Group, have
been involved in a variety of humanitarian relief and disaster relief
operations in Japan. The Ronald Reagan Strike Group and nine
other ships also responded to that crisis and as of today are on station delivering humanitarian relief and assistance. The command
ship Blue Ridge and naval forces from the Seventh Fleet and the
Pacific Fleet are leading the joint task force that is providing overall command and control for the operations off of Japan. At the
same time, our SSBNs are at sea providing a deterrent capability
as the most survivable leg of our nuclear triad. The impressive U.S.
response effectively demonstrates the operationalization of the maritime strategy. The capabilities available in those forces range from
deterrence to sea control and include power projection, maritime
security, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief. Moreover, the
Navy is conducting all of those missions simultaneously.
Now let us spend a few minutes examining the question: how
does the Navy respond to climate change, how do we move forward into the future, and how do we operationalize that? Climate
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change will directly impact several of the strategic imperatives
that we articulated in our 2007 strategy, in particular, our desire to
limit regional conflict. As we have already heard, climate change
will invariably heighten the competition for resources in the maritime environment, especially in the Arctic as it opens up. Those
resources will not only include strategic materials like petroleum
and important minerals, but also trade. As a result, the Bering Strait
could well become a main trade route and another strategic choke
point. And any time that there is competition, there is the potential
for conflict.
Obviously, prevention of such conflict is a key component
of the strategy guiding the employment of our Navy and other
maritime forces. Our goal is to prevent local disruptions, whether
in Japan or on our own shores as in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina. Such issues were brought home to me last month when I
was taking a course attended by a number of allied officers, one
of whom was from New Zealand. During one class he was talking
about climate change and sea-level rise. He pointed out that the
ocean would not have to rise very much before several of New
Zealand’s Pacific Island neighbors would be under water. The
potential need to evacuate the entire population of an island state
brings home the importance of climate change, especially in the
maritime environment. So, it will be important that the Navy foster
and sustain the essential cooperative relationships with our sister
services and those of our allies.
We are doing that with Japan today. It is humbling to see the
world’s third largest economy brought to its knees in one fell
swoop; it reminds one of the collapses of ancient civilizations, how
they could perish so quickly. That level of disaster obviously is devastating. And, it shows the importance of the Navy being able to
contribute to homeland and defense in depth—being able to take
our mission-tailored forces and globally distribute them as required
are important mission capabilities.
As we think about adapting the Navy’s strategy and operations
to climate challenges, it is clear that there is a need to apply the
deliberate-planning process that the DoD and the Navy employ on
a regular basis to the issues associated with climate change. You
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will hear more tomorrow from Rear Admiral David Titley about the
CNO’s commitment to use Task Force Climate Change to kick start
that planning process for Climate Change. And later today, you will
see how we are doing the same thing on the energy side when
Rear Admiral Philip Cullom talks about Task Force Energy.
We are taking deliberate planning steps to address not only
climate change, but how we are going to operate in the Arctic. We
have a capability based assessment underway to define what the
infrastructure requirements are, not only for our shore-based facilities but for our operating forces. We have a 30-year ship-building
plan that is looking at the next generation of surface ships and
submarines. With the 50-year-old Enterprise out on deployment
now, we are reminded that the follow-on to our Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, the SSBNX, will be on deployment in the
year 2080. Thus, given the lifetimes of our capital assets, it is clear
that the Navy has to think about what the operating environment is
going to be like far into the future.
So what is required to operate in the Arctic? What kind of hardening, what kind of propulsion, and what kind of systems will we
need there? Moreover, we need to be concerned not only with our
ships and our people, but also with the infrastructure that supports
them by providing navigation, search and rescue, communications,
and all of the other pieces that come into play.
So, that is where the Navy is headed. We realize that as we
come out of the current fight, the demand signal is going to change
for us. As we have seen from some of our recent activities, the
demand for offshore options is likely to be an increasing one.
The climate is changing, and those changes will both increase
the demands on our naval forces and impose challenges on
employing them. As the Arctic opens and that region takes on
increasing strategic importance for us, the demand signals will
change. If we do not get out ahead of those changes with efforts
like those being led by Rear Admiral Titley and by Rear Admiral
Cullom, then the assets that we are buying today in anticipation
of future operations will not be equipped to handle the extremes
that we may be facing.
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Q&
A
Session with THE PANELISTS
have been tracking the initiatives and efforts of Task Force
Q: IClimate
Change and Task Force Energy for some months now,
and I am very impressed. I was privileged to attend the Navy Energy
Forum in Washington, D.C., in October. My question to the panel is how
do you convince, at worst, a doubting, but at best, an ambivalent set
of policymakers to take climate change and the energy issues seriously?
From my perspective north of the border, we seem to be addressing the
problem from a bottom-up approach, while you have the benefit of topdown direction.
While we are thinking about that, I would like to respond to the
observation made by several of the speakers regarding the poor or incomplete mapping and charting in the Arctic. I would like to make people
aware that in Ottawa last year, there was an inaugural meeting of the
Arctic Regional Hydrographic Committee where all five nations of the
Arctic got together to formulate plans and strategies to actually improve
charting. So, better charts will be coming your way.
Ms. A manda Dory: Let me address your question about how
to get policymakers and decision makers to take these issues seriously. You described a little bit of a top-down effect here in the
States and maybe more of a bottom-up approach in Canada.
I think to really optimize, you need to apply both approaches
together. In fact, in the United States, the approach has kind of
shifted over time. There is a strong grassroots effort in favor of
action and change, whether it has a climate focus or whether it has
an energy efficiency focus. But then there are opposing views that
tend to work against those signals and, in effect, cancel them out
at various points. So there is not a clear, unified demand signal, in
my view, that is from the bottom up.
What you have seen from the top-down perspective over the
course of at least two administrations now is a Commander in
Chief demonstrating leadership and saying this is an issue, it is
real, and we need to take it into consideration in our planning
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and move deliberately in directions that are based on data and
projections. As a result, we are planning and making investments
relative to our understanding. In the view of some people, we are
moving way too slowly, and in the view of others, we are moving way too quickly. I like to think that we have chosen a middle course consistent with the uncertainty that surrounds future
projections.
I would like to comment briefly on Rear Admiral David Woods’s
earlier observation about the concurrency of efforts that the United
States is engaged in right now. We have the ongoing efforts in Iraq
and Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, the “prevail” component of our
national defense strategy. On top of that, we are providing an ally
with a massive humanitarian disaster response that will extend for
a lengthy period of time, and now, with another group of allies,
we are enforcing a new no-fly-zone over Libya that will remain in
place for an unclear duration.
When you start to stack all of those efforts together, it takes me
back to some of our internal discussions during the Quadrennial
Defense Review (QDR) process in which we talked about exactly
what the DoD should be using as its force planning and sizing construct. We wanted to be able to describe what the force is able
to do in aggregate, so we created some hypothetical cases along
those lines. We thought the DoD should be able to handle a longterm stabilization campaign plus something similar to what we are
doing in Afghanistan right now, plus a domestic disaster of some
sort, as well as our steady-state activities. We came up with several different force sizing constructs along those lines. The overall
result was something that looks like what we are actually doing
today. Although this approach is somewhat more complex than the
scenarios we were using, I think we will benefit by acknowledging
that the DoD needs to be able to do a variety of things and have
a variety of measures of effectiveness. Doing that analytically will
make it tractable for the department.
I think “tractability” also relates directly to the question that
you posed, which is: how do you get decision makers to a point
of seriousness? This is accomplished by making problems tractable
and actionable. I think that is a challenge for us collectively, and
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there are different ways to do it. I mentioned two of them here, but
I think analytical tractability is a third path that we need to follow.
possible that one could potentially see some sort of a trigQ: Isgeritevent
that would change that bottom-up equation, say a
large-scale disaster or a series of disasters that might encourage people
to think differently about climate change?
Rear Admiral David Woods: I think we are seeing just such
events. We sent an Amphibious Ready Group with a Marine Air
Ground Task Force (MAGTF) to Pakistan during the floods a few
months ago (July 2010), and that event was publicized via social
media and the interconnected world. As a result, we see a burgeoning partner in the conflict that we are engaged in today. We
reacted not to a military threat, but to a threat associated with a
natural disaster.
That event and our reaction to it are part of the bottom-up
piece that ties things together for the support that you are talking about. You typically see a lot of discussion in the media about
Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan and its effect on our military
efforts there. Adding to that the story of the relief efforts going
on inside Pakistan to stabilize that country following record floods
starts to bring it home for many Americans.
I think the science underlying climate change is undeniable,
as Rear Admiral David Titley will tell you. But as Rear Admiral
Thomas Atkin noted, many of the effects will not occur during our
lifetimes, and that is the point that is ultimately going to matter to
the people living in Dubuque, Iowa, or Ogden, Utah. However,
seeing people suffering as the result of a natural disaster and the
subsequent response from the United States makes it clear to people that we have to start thinking about such eventualities.
Rear Admiral Thomas Atkin: In recent years, we have had
numerous natural disasters that have had dramatic effects—
Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, the Christchurch earthquake, the earthquake in Japan, floods in Pakistan, and floods in
the United States. The reality is that these events are probably not
linked all that well just to climate change.
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Despite multiple occurrences of huge disasters, for the most
part, the American people see each as a singular event that has
either an adequate or an inadequate response. They see the U.S.
government coming in and supporting it if it is an international
event or the federal government working with state and local governments if it occurs here in the United States. But I would argue
that we have to convince the media—both the traditional media
and the new social media—to do a better job of tying these things
together. We need to examine whether they are linked to climate
change without getting into why the climate is changing. We have
to make clear that climate change is occurring and that it is impacting us by making disasters occur more often and be more severe.
While I think that both the current and the previous administration
looked at climate change as happening in the Arctic, how well are
we doing at convincing policymakers and Congress that it is important to them right now?
Let us look, for example, at the issue of Coast Guard icebreakers. You probably noticed that I did not mention icebreakers during
my talk. Do we really need icebreakers in 2040 and beyond, or do
we need ships that are able to operate in different ice conditions,
whether it be broken ice, chopped ice, or 3-foot ice? Do we really
need something that could get through 16–20 feet of ice? I do not
know the answer to that, but we need to establish what those true
requirements are based on the future, and that is hard to do.
So I think if we are going to start convincing policymakers and
those in Congress to look forward, it is not necessarily the members themselves we have to convince, but rather their staffs. Those
are the folks that we have to show that there is a linkage and that
we need to start focusing on this problem today because it will
impact us 10, 15, 20, or 30 years from now.
Vice Chief of Naval Operations made it clear that the
Q: The
Navy does not really want to build new icebreakers. The
Coast Guard has long believed that some will be needed. Strategy is the
job of portioning your resources in the right way. So, I ask you, should we
be buying new icebreakers? Do we really need them? When do we make
the decision? How long can we afford to wait?
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Rear Admiral Thomas Atkin: I will go ahead and jump on
that hand grenade. I hate using the term icebreaker—it is just a
pet peeve of mine because it has certain connotations, especially
when I talk with my colleagues at the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB). Whenever we talk to them about icebreakers, they
invariably ask: what are the true requirements in the future? Do we
really need to build a Polar Sea- or Polar Star-type ice breaker that
can break through 15–20 feet of ice if we are not going to have
15–20 feet of ice in the future?
So I think we have to take a hard look. One of the planning activities that the Coast Guard engages in is called Project
Evergreen. As part of that project, we take a look at a broad set of
scenarios that could happen 20–30 years out and, based on those
scenarios, we develop our strategy. Then, based on the strategy,
we work with our colleagues in the DoD and establish the overall
requirements for ice-capable ships.
We know that we will need to be able to conduct search and
rescue, we will need to be able to conduct fisheries enforcement,
we will need to be able to conduct law enforcement, and we will
need to be able to conduct environmental response in the Arctic
Ocean. Sometimes that ocean is going to have ice on it; sometimes
it is just going to have broken ice. But we need develop the right
ships or platforms to conduct operations regardless, and I would
say the time is now.
As of today, we are down to one icebreaker, the Healy, and it
can only operate in the Arctic; it cannot operate in the Antarctic.
Even then, it is somewhat limited. It is more of a scientific platform
than a response platform, so we need to start looking at the right
types of ships that can operate in that environment, and they need
to be ice capable versus icebreakers.
Rear Admiral David Woods: I think the Navy sees ice-capable
ships as something it needs as well. As we project ourselves operating in the Arctic in the future, at least a portion of the fleet needs
to be able to operate in a marginal ice environment. So it is probably not icebreakers as we know them today, but ice-capable ships,
as Rear Admiral Atkin indicated. Then, as the Vice Chief of Naval
operations said, the issue is when we buy them.
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Ms. A manda Dory: Just from the strategic perspective, I think
that my colleagues have already addressed the perspectives as
far as the right sizing and the right timing of the U.S. government
response and the need to continue to refine and define what the
missions are. We understand those missions in a broad sense, but
we need to understand them in a more particular sense. Are they
maritime security missions? Are they freedom of navigation missions? Are there sovereign defense issues? There are already activities underway to identify the appropriate subsurface, surface, and
above-the-surface assets.
The issue is, consistent with the projections, what is it that the
U.S. government will need? Where can we work with allies and
others in a complementary fashion? Where can we work with the
private sector? Where does the private sector have the preponderance of interests and therefore need to take the lead?
We need to find the right balance. Strategy is aligning your
ends with your ways and your means. I think what you have heard
from my colleagues is the means piece. We understand what the
ends are and we have plenty of guidance that lets us know the
extent of U.S. interests in the Arctic.
Getting the right sizing and the right timing of the capabilities
to support the missions is really the crux of the matter now. No
one wants to overinvest, and no one wants to underinvest. We are
not in a resource climate where we can do the “field-of-dreams”
strategy, build it, and wait for people to come. We need to build
what we need in tandem with the arrival and the manifestation of
our interests.
I ask my question, I would like to offer some comments
Q: Before
that get to this issue of how do you get people to act on cli-
mate change based on a study that we recently conducted. On behalf
of the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program
(SERDP), we looked at the potential effects of climate change on military installations. In the process, we talked to a lot of people all across
the DoD, everybody from the combat guys to the environmental folks.
Almost to a person, we heard two things. One was agreement that climate change is out there but that we do not have to do anything right
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now. Their perception was that the effects would occur in the future, and
we do not need to act now. Second, we heard that even if we had to act,
we do not have any data that we can use. We do not know what to do.
All the data we have are so general that they are useless to us; we cannot
act upon them.
After we heard those responses over and over, we made up some scenarios to try to identify the type of data needed. For example, we said
what if the number of days per year when the temperature at Ft. Benning,
Georgia, was over 90°F increased from 10 days to 40? With that sort of
data, we heard different responses: “Holy cow, we would have 15 blackflag days and 37 red-flag days, and it would shut us down—we could
not do training.” But essentially the minute we gave them data, everybody began processing the data and began to figure out what they meant
to them. So the need is for data, and we heard Rear Admiral Atkin say
that. They look at scenarios, and once you give people information that
is relevant to what they are doing, they will act upon it immediately.
The question then is what are the DoD, the Navy, and everyone else doing about getting data that are specific to the needs of all
these folks? The Special Forces trainers need to know about lightening
because if there is lightening within 10 miles, they have to stop training.
So is there going to be a lot more lightening? Will there be more blackflag days to shut down everybody? That is what they want to know.
How are you all dealing with getting the data that we will need to do
detailed planning?
Ms. A manda Dory: I think you have described perfectly the
DoD culture of being analytically informed and data driven in the
way we conduct our planning processes. When we do not have
scenarios to work with, for example, or when we do not have the
data, we run into a brick wall until we have created those kinds of
approaches for whatever the particular planning is, whether it is
installations, operational, or long-range force planning.
So, we have a lot of different data needs and a lot of different
scenario needs. I think you are beginning to see that in the course
of the tremendously valuable work that SERDP does, for example,
and in how the QDR included a preliminary data call to all of the
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DoD’s domestic installations to get a preliminary sense of the data
they were working with and what responses they projected given
some basic scenario parameters. With that, you can begin to start
the dialogue and start the thinking.
I think what you are highlighting is that this is a process that will
mature, and there will be a lot of different hands on the different
pieces and parts of it. I think there are some in the audience who
work closely with the installations and the environmental component of the DoD’s Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology
and Logistics, who has overall responsibility for that piece. In the
force planning arena, what we have done is to create a number of
scenarios to help us think through what the requirements will be
in the Arctic, for example, to enable us to better understand what
kinds of missions and capabilities come into play. At the same time,
you can also see the workarounds that are preventing actionable
responses in some cases.
Rear Admiral Thomas Atkin: I am always intrigued when we
start talking about data with climate change only because the data
look back, and we are trying to project forward into an environment that we do not really know. We know it is all changing, we
just do not know what the rate of change is or the overall scope
of the change. Certainly from a search and rescue area, which we
have looked at in the Arctic, the question I usually ask is: what
kind of water will our search and rescue forces have to face? What
will the ice be like? Will it be 2 feet of ice, broken ice, or just
clear water?
The more we understand, the more likely we will be able to
project the requirements going forward. But I would argue that we
have a variety of projections already of what the climate will be like
30, 40, and 50 years from now, and it is a pretty wide picture. So I
think what we have to do is not try to narrow it down to say there
is going to be more lightning strikes in this area or there is going to
be 16 more days over 90°F. We have to take a look at all of the different projections out there and see what capabilities work across
all of them. That is what we need to then build from within both
the strategy perspective and the asset perspective.
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I will sing Project Evergreen’s praises a bit more because that is
what this scenario-based planning process does so well. It enables
us to look across all the different projections, build the different
scenarios, and then identify the capabilities that apply across all
of them. I do not think we are going to be able to get that specific
on projecting exactly what we are going to face. Although I would
like someone to tell me that I am only going to have 16 ice days
in 2050, I know I am not going to get that. So I have to look at it
from a different perspective, and it is not always going to be the
data that are going to get me there. Data are good, but we need to
try to identify what things work best across all the different projections going forward.
Rear Admiral David Woods: We are very good at the data
piece at the tactical level and even at the operational level. We collect and process a wide variety of data to support environmental
characterization and forecasting. As an aviator, winds and freezing
levels and those types of things are critical to operations. Where
we are not as good, but we are getting better, is strategic planning. We are trying to capture such considerations in some of the
wargame scenarios that we are conducting. We did one in 2009;
we are planning one in 2011 that focuses on the Arctic. In these
events, we give the game players data to act upon. The outcomes
will inform our thinking—not only our roadmap, but also our strategy for the Arctic.
More of that is required to get us out of the comfort zone that
says that climate change is only of concern in the future that we
do not need to deal with it in the near term. We need to devise
wargame scenarios where you need to deal with climate change
and provide the necessary data so that the players can act on it.
In large part, that is our approach, especially for the Arctic. We
are trying to focus our wargaming efforts appropriately and then
feed the results back into higher-level games that are going on in
the department.