Navy to drop use of 'A2/AD' moniker

By Justin Doubleday / October 3, 2016 at 1:29 PM

The Navy is dropping the use of "anti-access/area-denial," or A2/AD, to describe the challenges the service faces against potential adversaries with long-range, precision weapons, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson announced today at a think-tank event in Washington.

Richardson described how A2/AD has been bandied about as a catch-all term to discreetly discuss different countries' capabilities, to describe certain types of technologies and even as a specific type of military strategy.

"To ensure clarity in our thinking and precision in our communications, we'll no longer use the term A2/AD as a stand-alone acronym that can mean all things to all people or anything to anyone," he said. "We have to be better than that."

A2/AD emerged as a term to describe the challenges posed by the Chinese military, specifically its sophisticated weaponry that could prevent U.S. forces from operating in the Western Pacific. More recently, the term has been used to describe Russian capabilities in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, as well.

"Since different theaters present different challenges, a one-size-fits-all term to describe the mission and the challenges creates confusion, not clarity," Richardson said. "Instead, we'll talk about the specifics."

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