Abstract
The post–Cold War interlude during which U.S. maritime access to and within overseas regions of grand strategic importance faced few challenges was a historical anomaly. Accordingly, in January 2012 the Department of Defense (DoD) formally recognized in its Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC) document that this pause is ending and that joint capability requirements must be revisited. The JOA C establishes benchmarks for developing the doctrine, training priorities, warfare systems and matériel, organizational structures, and other measures necessary to overcome advanced maritime-denial capabilities across all warfare domains.1 Woven throughout the JOA C is the need to disrupt or neutralize the theater-wide surveillance and reconnaissance networks that strategic competitors are developing to provide their maritime-denial forces with tactically actionable targeting cues. Indeed, China’s and (to a much lesser extent) Iran’s deployments of dense, layered, and networked capabilities over the past decade represent continuity with the millennia-old struggles between offense and defense, as well as between localized area control and denial.
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