Amphibious Operations and the Future of War

Modern War Institute

John Amble

Government, News

4.7 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The war in Ukraine has been playing out in—and across—all domains. So it is perhaps surprising that Russia's invasion plan held almost no role for the type of operation designed to bridge two of those domains. There has been little sign that Russia sought to employ amphibious operations to gain a foothold in the south of the country—despite Ukraine's long Black Sea coast. Is this an indicator that such operations are a relic of the past? Or is it an anomaly? To help understand those questions, we're returning to an episode originally released early last year that featured a conversation with Tim Heck, MWI's deputy editorial director and coeditor of the book On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The vaguely cliche, but I think very true way, it's a truism, is that, you know, amphibious
0:12.6	operations are some of the most complex you can do in a military domain, in a military environment.
0:17.2	And as a result, this is where multi-domain operations, you can prove all of it at once.
0:24.7	You know, if we say we don't need to, we can't do amphibious operations because of the A2AD bubble.
0:29.7	One that implies the bubble is this hard and fixed thing.
0:33.3	And I don't buy that.
0:37.7	Hey, welcome back to the MWI podcast.
0:40.1	I'm John Ambo, editorial director at MWI.
0:42.3	And a few weeks ago, we published an article examining the role of amphibious operations in Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
0:49.2	Specifically, the fact that there didn't seem to be much of a role at all, which was somewhat of a surprise given Ukraine's long Black Sea coastline. The challenge is to figure out what we should infer
0:58.5	from that fact. Are amphibious operations a thing of the past, or is this an anomaly?
1:03.8	One of the authors of that piece was Tim Heck, MWI's deputy editorial director, and about a year
1:08.7	and a half ago, before he joined MWWI I had a chance to talk to him
1:11.8	about a book he edited on the subject of amphibious operations across the history of warfare.
1:17.8	As I've been following the war in Ukraine playing out in all domains and across domains,
1:22.9	I found myself really thinking about what we should make of the general lack of amphibious operations
1:27.6	and thinking back to that discussion that I had with Tim. So I think it's a really timely
1:32.3	opportunity to give listeners a chance to hear it again and for many of our new listeners
1:36.0	a chance to hear it for the first time. Before we get to it, a couple quick notes. First, if you
1:40.5	aren't yet subscribed to the MWI podcast, find it on your favorite podcast app.
1:44.6	And second, what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and don't represent those of West Point, the Army, or any other agency of the U.S. government.
1:52.3	All right, here's my conversation with Tim Hack. Tim, welcome to the MWI podcast, and thank you so much for making some time so we could, so we could chat.
	...

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