WASHINGTON – The Army is embracing a more expeditionary identity, but earlier this month, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recommended it return to an old mission on the home front: coastal defense.

Now the think tank Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is expanding upon that idea in a report released today — "Beyond Coast Artillery: Cross Domain Denial and the Army," authored by Eric Lindsey — advocating a new role for the Army, cross-domain denial.

As with Hagel, who spoke at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual meeting here in mid-October, the report recommends the Army employ land-based forces to deny access to other domains, such as the air and sea. More than defend coastlines, the Army could employ a forward anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) force to constrain the movement of enemy forces.

China's People's Liberation Army can use radars, air defenses and anti-ship missiles to deny access to U.S. and allied forces in the Western Pacific. Yet the Army no longer mans the massive forts and coast artillery emplacements that overlook America's strategic waterways.

The Army could use existing offensive fires, air and missile defenses, adapting its high-mobility artillery rocket and multiple-launch rocket systems, to create maritime choke points along strategic waterways like the Baltic Sea, East China Sea and Persian Gulf.

The advantage for ground forces in this role over the other services is that they are easier to harden, conceal, disperse and resupply than ships and airplanes, Lindsey writes in the report.

And amid shrinking defense budgets, the Army might take a modest route to start by first developing operational concepts, war-gaming them and experimenting with partner-nation or off-the-shelf systems.

Lindsey criticizes the Army's operating concept for falling short of "fully embracing" the denial mission, and indeed the Army's operating concept, released shortly before Hagel spoke at AUSA, typically views A2/AD as an enemy's tactic.

Still, the concept leaves a couple of narrow openings for the idea. In one instance, it calls for the Army to "emulate or disrupt" capabilities like A2/AD. It also affirms the benefits of surface-to-surface and other fires as a means for land forces to project power into the air and maritime environments.

Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.

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