Naval officials seek 'intellectual renaissance' in the sea services.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

As they continue to ponder the value of naval forces in the nation's wars, Navy leaders want to broaden the debate by encouraging participation from all levels of command. The goal is to come up with more innovative and expedient ways to deploy sailors and Marines around the world.

In a departure from tradition, the Navy and the Marine Corps issued a new "naval operations concept" that leaves unanswered specific questions about how forces will be organized for particular missions. Instead, it invites further discussion about how the Navy will "meet the security challenges of the 21st century and reinforce the pre-eminence of U.S. naval forces to help defend the homeland and win the nation's wars."

The document was signed in September by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Mullen and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee. In it, they call for an "intellectual renaissance" in the naval service.

The Navy began in the early 1990s to focus more attention to non-traditional areas such as littoral warfare and operations in support of land forces. But only in recent years--after the invasion of Iraq and the start of the counterinsurgency campaign-did the Navy begin to worry that its forces were too conventional for this fight.

Mullen took steps to engage more sailors in ground combat and created a new command to oversee these missions, which include deploying small river-faring boats in Iraq and other hotspots. Mullen also directed naval commanders around the world to work more closely with third-world navies, in an effort to gather intelligence about nascent terrorist groups and prevent future attacks.

But Mullen's goals also would require a broad reorganization of the fleet, which is built around massive carrier battle groups. In this new concept of operations, Mullen asks for fresh thinking about how to deploy forces in irregular wars.

"Specifically, this concept calls for more widely distributed forces to provide increased forward presence, security cooperation with an expanding set of international partners, preemption of nontraditional threats, and global response to crises in regions around the world where access might be difficult," the document says.

Mullen and Hagee characterize the concept as senior "commanders' intent" that aims to "guide the considerable creativity and judgment of our sailors and Marines ... The end-state is decentralized decision-making and execution based on broad, centralized guidance."

Robert Work, naval...