The Osprey provides an important stimulant for the shift in con-ops whereby the Navy‘s experimentation with distributed operations intersects with the U.S. Air Force’s approach to agile combat employment and the Marine Corps’ renewed interest in Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO).
In other words, the reshaping of joint and coalition maritime combat operations is underway which focuses upon distributed task forces capable of delivering enhanced lethality and survivability.
The U. S. Navy’s deployed fleet — seen as the mobile sea bases they are – faces a significantly different future as part of a distributed joint force capable of shaping a congruent strike capability for enhanced lethality. This means not only does the fleet need to operate differently in terms of its own distributed operations, but also as part of modular task forces that include air and ground elements in providing for the offensive-defensive enterprise which can hold adversaries at risk and prevail in conflict.
But how did we get here in 2023?
How has the strategic shift for the joint forces evolved and caught up with what the tiltrotor revolution has enabled? A
nd how has the Osprey evolved since the recognition of great power competition by the Trump Administration in 2018?
It began as a pivot to the Pacific in 2013; it is becoming a con-ops revolution enable in part by tiltrotor aircraft. The book takes two snapshots of this transition.
The first focuses on the introduction of the Osprey into the Pacific when the Obama Administration announced its “Pivot to the Pacific.
The second focuses on changes to the tiltrotor enterprise since 2019 after the Trump Administration highlighted the “Great Power” competition.