Publishing Disclaimer: In all of its publications and products, Military Review presents professional information. However, the views expressed therein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Army University, the Department of the Army, or any other agency of the U.S. government.

---

 

Beyond the Shoreline

Landpower, Access, and Maritime Chokepoints

 

Sgt. Maj. Paola Delarosa-Lloret, US Army

 

Download the PDF

 

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most consequential maritime chokepoints. It transits one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption and about one-fifth of the global liquefied natural gas trade.¹ Recent tensions in the region show how quickly disruptions in a narrow waterway can affect shipping, energy markets, and international security planning.² These developments reinforce a familiar principle of maritime strategy: chokepoints matter because they compress movement, concentrate traffic, and give even weak actors a chance to create strategic leverage.³ Modern trade networks amplify those effects, which means even limited disruption can produce consequences far beyond the region.⁴ Chokepoints are not just narrow waterways; they sit inside larger operational and economic systems, so even limited disruption can carry strategic weight.

Modern adversaries have adapted their approach to conflict in ways that make those nodes even more important. Chinese military thought frames modern war as a contest between interacting systems. It emphasizes breaking the functions that allow those systems to operate, especially their information, command, intelligence, and strike networks.⁵ Maritime chokepoints fit that idea because they connect commercial and military systems in predictable, vulnerable corridors.⁶ At the same time, land-based capabilities such as long-range fires, unmanned systems, and antiaccess/area denial (A2/AD) networks allow actors to influence maritime traffic without first achieving traditional sea control.⁷ For military planners, that means chokepoints can no longer sit at the edge of the problem set. They now shape competition in direct and practical ways.

The Strait of Hormuz offers a contemporary example of that reality, while China’s posture along the first island chain shows how adversaries prepare to influence access in advance.⁸ Together, these cases highlight the need for integrated approaches that help allies and joint forces secure access before a choke point becomes a point of strategic coercion. The US Army has a role in that effort because the conditions that shape maritime access often begin on land in infrastructure, fires, networks, and forward positioning.⁹ Multidomain operations (MDO) provide the framework for integrating those capabilities into a broader joint approach.¹⁰ The Army helps shape the land-based conditions that determine whether critical corridors stay open when pressure rises.

Historical Lessons: Chokepoints and Landpower

Military history shows that maritime chokepoints rarely remain purely maritime in practice. British naval historian Julian Corbett argued that command of the sea must always be understood in relation to communications, access, and the larger political purpose of war, not as an abstract naval condition divorced from surrounding geography.¹¹ Maritime strategy expert Reynolds Peele emphasized that chokepoints derive their strategic value from the way they compress movement and tie trade to national power.¹² Those arguments point to a larger truth: military forces influence chokepoints not only with fleets but also by controlling the land, infrastructure, and lines of communication that shape maritime access.¹³ Chokepoints represent environments where domains converge rather than separate neatly. This perspective matters because it places today’s access challenges inside a longer strategic tradition rather than treating them as a novel anomaly.

Historical patterns also show that disruption at chokepoints produces effects far beyond the immediate theater. Violet Johnston et al. argue that major chokepoints hold strategic relevance precisely because interruption at those points can reshape shipping behavior, alter cost structures, and affect wider trade networks.¹⁴ Jasper Verschuur et al. reinforce that point by demonstrating that chokepoint disruptions can trigger systemic economic consequences across globally connected supply chains.¹⁵ Those findings help explain why crises in narrow waterways repeatedly produce effects that exceed their geographic size. They also show why states and coalitions must think about chokepoints in terms of resilience, redundancy, and access, not simply tactical control. Modern competition has not changed this reality; it has only made the pace and scale of disruption much faster.

Recent Gulf crises illustrate the same pattern in a more contemporary form. The Strait of Hormuz has remained strategically important for decades because no alternative route can fully absorb the volume of oil and gas that moves through it, even though regional pipeline options can mitigate part of the disruption risk.¹⁶ When instability rises in and around the strait, markets react immediately because they recognize that limited disruption can still affect global supply, pricing, and shipping behavior.¹⁷ That relationship matters for military planning because it shows how relatively limited actions can generate outsized effects without producing a decisive naval battle. Actors can therefore use chokepoints for coercion, signaling, and strategic pressure short of full closure or occupation.¹⁸ Modern adversaries now apply these same pressures with far better sensors, range, and speed.¹⁹

Modern Threats: A2/AD, China, and the Return of Chokepoint Competition

China’s regional posture provides a useful example of how adversaries prepare to influence chokepoints before conflict begins. Si-Fu Ou argues that China’s A2/AD strategy draws much of its power from geography, especially along the first island chain, where narrow seas and constrained access routes shape military options.²⁰ In that framework, Taiwan sits in an operationally significant position because it affects access, basing, and the movement of air and naval forces into the broader Pacific.²¹ China can therefore use geography, long-range fires, and integrated systems to shape the conditions under which access becomes easier or harder to maintain.²² That posture does more than prepare for a single battle. It shapes the environment before a crisis ever turns into open conflict. This broader approach shows that adversaries do not wait for war to think about access. They shape it in advance and treat it as a standing condition of competition.

Chinese doctrine deepens that logic by emphasizing system disruption over force attrition. Jeffrey Engstrom explains that Chinese military thought treats modern conflict as a confrontation between operational systems and seeks to degrade command and control, reconnaissance, logistics, and firepower by striking key nodes and flows.²³ Maritime chokepoints fit that model as they create concentrated, predictable patterns of movement that connect commercial and military systems alike. An adversary that can pressure those patterns can degrade joint operations without first seeking a climactic engagement.²⁴ That insight matters because it links physical geography to doctrinal purpose. Chokepoints matter not only because they are narrow, but because they also connect vulnerable systems that modern adversaries already seek to disrupt.

Taiwan illustrates the point but also requires nuance. Jonathan Caverley argues that Chinese control of Taiwan would matter operationally. Yet it would not fundamentally transform the regional military balance because China already poses a substantial antiaccess challenge to US and allied forces.²⁵ That point matters because it keeps the analysis disciplined. Taiwan is operationally significant, but it does not suddenly transform the theater on its own. Taiwan influences access, contested space, and operational positioning along the first island chain, but it does not single-handedly determine regional power.²⁶ That distinction strengthens the larger chokepoint argument rather than weakening it. It suggests that serious adversaries do not rely on one decisive point; rather, they build layered conditions that shape access across an entire theater.

Emerging technologies make those conditions more dangerous and more difficult to manage. Kelley Sayler explains that hypersonic weapons, along with other long-range precision systems, can provide responsive strike options against distant and defended targets while compressing warning time and complicating defense.²⁷ Combined with unmanned systems, integrated sensors, and networked fires, those capabilities shift competition toward denial rather than sustained physical control.²⁸ In practical terms, they allow actors to threaten shipping, ports, infrastructure, and military movement from extended distances without maintaining a constant presence in the waterway itself. That trend matters for chokepoints because it increases the speed with which a corridor can become contested. It also raises the premium on preparation, dispersal, and integration before a crisis begins.

Recent events in the Strait of Hormuz show how these dynamics operate in practice. Reuters reported that these events left thousands of seafarers stranded and drove proposals for a safe maritime corridor, while the Associated Press reported documented attacks tied to energy infrastructure and maritime activity in the Gulf region.²⁹ Reporting also shows that the crisis quickly expanded into a broader question of who could transit, on what terms, and under what level of risk.³⁰ Those developments illustrate just how a chokepoint can become contested without a major fleet engagement. It also shows how disruption to a narrow corridor can trigger operational, economic, and humanitarian effects at the same time.³¹ Chokepoint competition is already here, and the more useful question is how nations and alliances should prepare now so that similar pressure do not become wider strategic coercion later.

Landpower in Maritime Space: The Army’s Role in Multidomain Operations

The Army contributes to the preparation by helping the joint force shape and secure chokepoints before disruption becomes strategically decisive. Its MDO concept argues that Army forces, as part of the joint force, help break apart layered denial networks, restore operational flexibility, and create conditions for maneuvering in contested environments.³² That framework matters for chokepoints because these environments combine geographic constraint, layered threats, and intense dependence on resilient access. In such settings, the Army does not replace naval power; it complements naval and air power by helping create conditions that preserve access and reduce vulnerability.³³ This distinction matters. The point is not to assign blame during a crisis but to identify what allies and partners can do before disruption becomes decisive. Preparation, not reaction alone, gives the joint force the best chance to keep critical corridors usable under pressure.

Land-based fires represent one of the Army’s clearest contributions to that problem. The MDO concept emphasizes convergence and the rapid integration of capabilities across domains to create multiple dilemmas for the adversary.³⁴ In a chokepoint environment, land-based precision fires can help deter aggression, hold hostile coastal systems at risk, and support joint freedom of maneuver when adversaries try to impose denial from ashore.³⁵ Geography amplifies that contribution because narrow waterways often place ships, infrastructure, and launch sites inside overlapping engagement zones.³⁶ This does not mean the Army can solve a maritime problem by itself. It means the joint force can use landpower to complicate an adversary’s approach and reduce the leverage that comes from threatening a constrained corridor.

The Army also strengthens the networks that make joint action possible under pressure. Engstrom’s discussion of system destruction warfare underscores why this matters: adversaries seek to break the coherence of an opponent’s system by disrupting information flows, command structures, and key nodes.³⁷ The MDO concept responds to that challenge by emphasizing convergence, mission command, distributed capability, and multidomain formations that can operate under contested conditions.³⁸ In a chokepoint crisis, this approach points toward resilient command and control, distributed sensors, protected infrastructure, and redundant paths for sustainment and communications.³⁹ Those measures do not remove risk, but they do make it harder for an adversary to turn limited disruption into broader strategic paralysis. They also help allies preserve decision space when commercial, military, and political pressures converge.

Forward posture and partner integration provide a final piece of the solution. Corbett’s work reminds readers that control of maritime communications depends on the wider strategic relationship between land, sea, and political purpose, not on fleets alone.⁴⁰ The Army supports that relationship by helping secure ports, lines of communication, and critical infrastructure near key corridors while also building partner capacity and interoperability over time.⁴¹ In practical terms, this means helping allies build a posture that makes coercion more difficult and access more resilient before the crisis begins. Such preparation does not guarantee freedom of navigation, but it raises the cost of disruption and lowers the chance that limited attacks produce strategic shock.⁴² That is the kind of practical preparation chokepoint competition now requires.

Preparing the Chokepoint Before Crisis

The most important lesson from the Strait of Hormuz is not simply that maritime chokepoints are vulnerable, but that once disruption begins, economic and operational effects move faster than most states and coalitions can build a durable response. The US Energy Information Administration notes that the strait still carries roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption and about one-fifth of global liquefied natural gas trade, which means even partial disruption can generate immediate strategic effects.⁴³ Recent reporting from the Gulf region reinforces that point by showing how rapidly shipping uncertainty, transit restrictions, and security concerns can alter maritime behavior during a crisis.⁴⁴ Anthony Cordesman strengthens that lesson by arguing that Iran can create strategic effects through hybrid methods, including limited attacks, mines, and maritime pressure, without needing to launch a major conventional war.⁴⁵ If allies and partners want to reduce the strategic leverage that chokepoints provide during a crisis, they must shape the environment before disruption begins.

Preparation starts with posture because access is usually contested well before the first shot is fired. Eric Larson et al. argue that adversaries seek in peacetime and crisis to deter outside intervention, influence regional partners, and shape the access environment before forces arrive.⁴⁶ The Army reaches a related conclusion by explaining that adversaries seek to keep US and partner forces at a distance through overlapping military, political, and technological pressures across domains.⁴⁷ In a chokepoint environment, that logic points toward forward-positioned sensing, resilient communications, protected sustainment nodes, and land-based capabilities that can support access before a corridor becomes fully contested.⁴⁸ Ou reinforces that point by showing how China’s approach to access and denial along the first island chain depends on geographic realities that shape military options in advance.⁴⁹ Allies and partners should draw a general lesson from that example: serious competitors prepare to influence access early, not after conditions deteriorate.

Preparation also requires the ability to influence maritime access from land. Terrence Kelly et al. argue that ground-based antiship capabilities can strengthen partner defenses, add depth to denial strategies, and complicate movement through key maritime corridors.⁵⁰ Joshua Ratta makes the Army-specific version of that case by arguing that Army strike forces positioned near chokepoints can make movement through key approaches far more hazardous, disrupt maritime movement, and improve the joint force’s ability to shape the wider fight.⁵¹ These arguments matter because they demonstrate that landpower does not sit outside maritime security. When integrated into a joint framework, it can shape access directly.⁵² It does not mean landpower replaces sea power, but rather means allies and partners can reduce chokepoint coercion by combining geography, posture, and land-based capability into a broader access strategy before the crisis escalates.

Finally, preparation depends on resilience across the larger operational system and on effective partner integration. Engstrom explains that modern competitors seek advantage by disrupting key nodes, flows, and functions rather than only destroying fielded forces, which means chokepoint preparation must include ports, logistics, communications, and command relationships as much as physical defense.⁵³ Larson et al. reinforce that point by showing that competition over access begins well before open war and continues through crisis and conflict.⁵⁴ Johnston et al. and Verschuur et al. further show that chokepoint disruptions can trigger systemic effects across trade and energy networks that far exceed the immediate tactical event.⁵⁵ For allies and partners, the implication is straightforward: treat chokepoints like critical systems. Build redundancy, protect infrastructure, rehearse degraded operations, and decide in advance how access will be preserved under pressure.⁵⁶ Preparation will not make chokepoints invulnerable, but it can make them less decisive as instruments of strategic coercion.

From Access Assurance to Deterrence

Preparation at maritime chokepoints matters not only because it improves crisis response but also because it shapes deterrence before a crisis begins. Larson et al. argue that the contest over access unfolds in peacetime and crisis as much as in war, with adversaries seeking to influence partners, deter outside involvement, and restrict operational freedom before forces arrive.⁵⁷ That logic applies directly to chokepoints because these corridors concentrate political, economic, and military risk in a small geographic space. A state or coalition that prepares posture, resilience, and partner coordination in advance does more than improve its ability to react; it reduces an adversary’s confidence that limited disruption will produce strategic leverage.⁵⁸ In that sense, access assurance and deterrence reinforce one another. The more credible the ability to preserve access under pressure, the less attractive chokepoint coercion becomes as a strategy.⁵⁹

This deterrent effect depends on visible preparation rather than abstract declarations. The Army argues that MDO relies on calibrated force posture, convergence, and the ability to create multiple dilemmas for an adversary across domains.⁶⁰ In a chokepoint environment, those ideas translate into concrete signals: forward-positioned sensing, resilient communications, protected infrastructure, interoperable partners, and land-based capabilities that complicate an adversary’s effort to impose denial.⁶¹ Ratta strengthens that point by arguing that Army forces positioned near key maritime passages can help create high-risk conditions for hostile action and support the broader joint force in protecting access.⁶² Deterrence, therefore, does not rest only on threatening retaliation after disruption occurs. It also rests on convincing competitors that the systems surrounding a chokepoint are prepared well enough that limited attacks, selective closures, or hybrid pressure will fail to generate a decisive advantage.⁶³ That is a more durable and more strategically useful form of deterrence than crisis improvisation alone.

This perspective also helps avoid overcorrecting toward a single scenario. Caverley warns that excessive optimization for one contingency can weaken a state’s ability to compete across a broader regional conflict.⁶⁴ That caution applies to chokepoints as well. Allies and partners should not prepare one corridor in a way that leaves surrounding access routes, logistics networks, and political relationships underdeveloped. Instead, they should treat chokepoints as parts of larger operational systems in which resilience, redundancy, and posture matter across an entire theater.⁶⁵ Preparing access in that broader way makes coercion harder, strengthens deterrence, and gives the joint force more options before disruption turns into strategic shock. For this reason, deterrence at chokepoints begins with preparation, not with reaction.

Just as important, chokepoint security depends on relationships built before a crisis starts. Once pressure mounts, time shrinks and choices narrow. The MDO concept emphasizes active engagement with partners and calibrated force posture. At the same time, RAND’s access-assurance research shows that competition over access begins in peacetime, not only after conflict starts.⁶⁶ This makes preparation with allies less of an option and more of a necessity.

Chokepoint Coercion in Practice: Strait of Hormuz, 2026

The events that unfolded beginning on 28 February 2026 transformed the Strait of Hormuz from a case study in potential disruption into a demonstration of strategic coercion at operational scale. When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iran under Operation Epic Fury, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy responded by announcing the closure of the strait to international shipping.⁶⁷ Daily traffic fell from approximately 130 transits to fewer than six, and the International Energy Agency characterized the disruption as the largest supply shock in the history of the global oil market.⁶⁸ This response was not improvised; the IRGC has spent decades layering antiship missiles, unmanned aircraft systems, fast-attack boats, and naval mines along the approaches to the strait precisely to hold the corridor at risk without requiring conventional fleet engagement.⁶⁹ The closure confirmed what A2/AD analysis had long suggested: an adversary does not need sea control to contest maritime access; it needs geography, preparation, and willingness to absorb shared costs in pursuit of strategic leverage.

What the crisis also revealed is that contesting a chokepoint and reopening one are fundamentally different problems. Once the Strait of Hormuz closed, the United States found itself navigating a set of options that carried serious risk at every turn. Forced transit exposed naval assets to a layered threat environment, which the IRGC had optimized for exactly that contingency. A diplomatic resolution required reconciling sharply different aims and constraints among the United States, Iran, Israel, and European partners, some of whom later said they had not been consulted before the conflict began.⁷⁰ The economic pressure of the naval blockade produced the largest energy supply disruption in recorded history, distributing pain across allies and adversaries alike.⁷¹ Iran further refined its approach by throttling rather than fully closing the corridor, charging transit tolls, and granting selective access to specific nations, thereby converting a geographic chokepoint into a graduated instrument of coercion that resisted clean military or diplomatic resolution.⁷² The frustration that followed was not a failure of military capability but was the predictable result of attempting to solve a crisis that had not been shaped in advance.

The distinction is the central lesson this conflict offers for joint force planners. Cordesman’s earlier analysis of Iranian hybrid methods identified the outlines of exactly this approach, and the 2026 crisis confirmed its operational logic at a scale that affected global energy markets, alliance cohesion, and military decision-making simultaneously.⁷³ The Army’s contribution to chokepoint security, land-based fires, resilient networks, forward posture, and partner integration matters most before that moment arrives. Once a determined adversary has activated its denial architecture and accepted the economic costs of partial closure, the joint force inherits a problem set in which every option carries strategic risk and no solution is clean. Preparation does not guarantee that chokepoints remain open under pressure. What it does is raise the cost of closure, reduce the adversary’s confidence that limited disruption will produce decisive leverage, and preserve decision space for the alliance before the crisis forecloses it. The Strait of Hormuz in 2026 did not change that argument; it made it urgent.

Conclusion

The Strait of Hormuz shows how quickly a maritime chokepoint can become a source of strategic pressure when constrained geography, land-based threats, and economic dependence converge.⁷⁴ China’s posture along the first island chain illustrates the same logic in a different form by showing how adversaries prepare to influence access before conflict begins.⁷⁵ These cases confirm that chokepoints matter not only because they channel trade and military movement, but because they also connect vulnerable systems that adversaries can disrupt for outsized effect.⁷⁶ Modern competition, therefore, turns less on who physically occupies a corridor and more on who can keep it usable under pressure.

The US Army has a role in that contest because maritime access often depends on conditions shaped by land. Through MDO, the Army helps the joint force secure those conditions by contributing land-based fires, resilient networks, protected infrastructure, and forward posture.⁷⁷ That role does not make the Army a substitute for naval power, but it does make landpower essential to preserving access in contested chokepoint environments.⁷⁸ If allies and partners want to reduce the chance that future chokepoint crises produce strategic coercion, they must prepare those landward conditions in advance. In that sense, moving beyond the shoreline is not a slogan. It is a practical requirement for keeping critical maritime corridors open under pressure.

---

Notes

1. Candace Dunn and Justine Barden, “Amid Regional Conflict, the Strait of Hormuz Remains Critical Oil Chokepoint,” US Energy Information Administration, 16 June 2025, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65504.
2. Jonathan Saul, “Countries Propose Safe Corridor to Free 20,000 Seafarers Stranded in Gulf,” Reuters, 18 March 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/countries-propose-safe-corridor-free-20000-seafarers-stranded-gulf-2026-03-18/; Jasper Ward, “UN Official Calls for Humanitarian Cargo to Be Allowed Through Strait of Hormuz,” Reuters, 13 March 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-official-calls-humanitarian-cargo-be-allowed-through-strait-hormuz-2026-03-13/.
3. Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, part II (1911; Project Gutenberg, 2005), chap. 1, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15076/15076-h/15076-h.htm; Reynolds B. Peele, “The Importance of Maritime Chokepoints,” Parameters 27, no. 2 (1997): 61–74, https://doi.org/10.55540/0031-1723.1828.
4. Jasper Verschuur et al., “Systemic Impacts of Disruptions at Maritime Chokepoints,” Nature Communications 16 (2025): 1–3, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-65403-w.
5. Jeffrey Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare: How the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Seeks to Wage Modern Warfare (RAND Corporation, 2018), ix–xi, 23–25, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1700/RR1708/RAND_RR1708.pdf.
6. Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare; Violet G. Johnston et al., “Strategic Relevance of Maritime Chokepoints for Global Trade,” Defence Horizon Journal, 1 December 2025, https://tdhj.org/blog/post/nato-maritime-chokepoints/.
7. Si-Fu Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective,” Asia-Pacific Forum 60 (2014): 81–124, https://www.rchss.sinica.edu.tw/files_news/1239_4394902e.pdf; Kelley M. Sayler, Hypersonic Weapons: Background and Issues for Congress, CRS Report No. R45811 (Congressional Research Service, 2025), 1, 4–6, https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45811.
8. Dunn and Barden, “Amid Regional Conflict”; Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective.”
9. TRADOC Pamphlet (TP) 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028 (US Army Training and Doctrine Command [TRADOC], 2018), 5, 17–20, https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2021/02/26/b45372c1/20181206-tp525-3-1-the-us-army-in-mdo-2028-final.pdf.
10. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–18.
11. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, part II, chap. 1.
12. Peele, “The Importance of Maritime Chokepoints,” 61–63.
13. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy; Peele, “The Importance of Maritime Chokepoints,” 63–65.
14. Johnston et al., “Strategic Relevance of Maritime Chokepoints for Global Trade.”
15. Verschuur et al., “Systemic Impacts of Disruptions at Maritime Chokepoints,” 1–3.
16. Dunn and Barden, “Amid Regional Conflict.”
17. Dunn and Barden, “Amid Regional Conflict”; Johnston et al., “Strategic Relevance of Maritime Chokepoints for Global Trade.”
18. Peele, “The Importance of Maritime Chokepoints,” 65–66; Johnston et al., “Strategic Relevance of Maritime Chokepoints for Global Trade.”
19. Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare, 13–14, 78–80; Sayler, Hypersonic Weapons, 1, 4–6.
20. Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective,” 81–87, 112–14.
21. Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective,” 83–87.
22. Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective,” 86–87, 112–15.
23. Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare, 13–14.
24. Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare, 13–14.
25. Jonathan Caverley, “So What? Reassessing the Military Implications of Chinese Control of Taiwan,” Texas National Security Review 8, no. 3 (2025): 28–53, https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/2f6c5762-e197-4366-a44e-57152a38e203/content.
26. Caverley, “So What?”; Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective,” 83–87.
27. Sayler, Hypersonic Weapons, 1, 4–6.
28. Sayler, Hypersonic Weapons, 4–6.
29. Saul, “Countries Propose Safe Corridor”; Bridget Brown et al., “The Latest: U.S. Knew Israel Would Strike an Iranian Gas Field, AP Source Says,” Associated Press, 18 March 2026, https://apnews.com/article/5b4338067e0c09a2d0fd51b8d9de8bf1.
30. Ward, “UN Official Calls for Humanitarian Cargo.”
31. Saul, “Countries Propose Safe Corridor”; Dunn and Barden, “Amid Regional Conflict.”
32. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–18.
33. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20.
34. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–18.
35. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20; Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective,” 112–15.
36. Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective,” 112–15; Peele, “The Importance of Maritime Chokepoints,” 63–65.
37. Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare, 13–14.
38. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20, 23–24.
39. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 23–24; Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare, 13–14, 42.
40. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, part II, chap. 1.
41. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20, 23–24; Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, part II, chap. 1.
42. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20; Eric V. Larson et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions: Toward a Long-Term Strategy (RAND Corporation, 2004), https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG112.sum.pdf.
43. Dunn and Barden, “Amid Regional Conflict.”
44. Saul, “Countries Propose Safe Corridor”; Ward, “UN Official Calls for Humanitarian Cargo.”
45. Anthony H. Cordesman, The Strategic Threat from Iranian Hybrid Warfare in the Gulf (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 13 June 2019), 2–3, https://www.csis.org/analysis/strategic-threat-iranian-hybrid-warfare-gulf.
46. Larson et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions.
47. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, vi–viii.
48. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20, 23–24; Larson et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions, xii–xiv.
49. Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective,” 83–87, 112–15.
50. Terrence K. Kelly et al., Employing Land-Based Anti-Ship Missiles in the Western Pacific, Technical Report No. TR-1321 (RAND Arroyo Center, 2013), xii–xiv, xvii–xviii, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/technical_reports/TR1300/TR1321/RAND_TR1321.sum.pdf.
51. Joshua Ratta, “Support the Fight! The U.S. Army, the Joint Force, and the Indo-Pacific,” Military Review 102, no. 2 (March-April 2022): 90–98, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/March-April-2022/Ratta/.
52. Kelly et al., Employing Land-Based Anti-Ship Missiles; Ratta, “Support the Fight!,” 91–94.
53. Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare, 13–14, 42.
54. Larson et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions.
55. Johnston et al., “Strategic Relevance of Maritime Chokepoints for Global Trade”; Verschuur et al., “Systemic Impacts of Disruptions at Maritime Chokepoints,” 1–3, 9.
56. Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare, 13–14; Johnston et al., “Strategic Relevance of Maritime Chokepoints for Global Trade”; Larson et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions; Verschuur et al., “Systemic Impacts of Disruptions at Maritime Chokepoints.” 1–3, 9.
57. Larson et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions.
58. Larson et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions; TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20.
59. Larson et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions; Cordesman, The Strategic Threat from Iranian Hybrid Warfare in the Gulf, 2–3.
60. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–18.
61. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20, 23–24; Kelly et al., Employing Land-Based Anti-Ship Missiles, xii–xiv, xvii–xviii.
62. Ratta, “Support the Fight!” 91–92.
63. Ratta, “Support the Fight!” 91–94; Cordesman, The Strategic Threat from Iranian Hybrid Warfare in the Gulf, 2–3.
64. Caverley, “So What?,” 51–53.
65. Caverley, “So What?,” 51–53; Johnston et al., “Strategic Relevance of Maritime Chokepoints for Global Trade”; Verschuur et al., “Systemic Impacts of Disruptions at Maritime Chokepoints,” 1–3, 9.
66. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028; Larson et al., Assuring Access in Key Strategic Regions.
67. Ward, “UN Official Calls for Humanitarian Cargo”; Reed D. Rubinstein, “Operation Epic Fury and International Law,” Office of Legal Adviser, US Department of State, 21 April 2026, https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-legal-adviser/2026/04/operation-epic-fury-and-international-law.
68. “The Middle East and Global Energy Markets,” International Energy Agency, accessed 30 April 2026, https://www.iea.org/topics/the-middle-east-and-global-energy-markets.
69. Michael Baucum, “The Perilous Options in the Strait of Hormuz,” Proceedings 152, no. 4 (April 2026), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2026/april/perilous-options-strait-hormuz.
70. Rubinstein, “Operation Epic Fury and International Law”; Andreas Rinke et al., “Not Our War: Europe Says No to Trump,” Reuters, 18 March 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/not-our-war-europe-says-no-trump-2026-03-18/.
71. International Energy Agency, “The Middle East and Global Energy Markets.”
72. Parth Adhikari, “Lessons from the Strait of Hormuz Crisis,” University of Oxford Blavatnik School of Government, 8 April 2026, https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/blog/lessons-strait-hormuz-crisis.
73. Cordesman, The Strategic Threat from Iranian Hybrid Warfare in the Gulf, 2–3.
74. Dunn and Barden, “Amid Regional Conflict”; Saul, “Countries Propose Safe Corridor.”
75. Ou, “China’s A2/AD and Its Geographic Perspective” 83–87, 112–15; Engstrom, Systems Confrontation and System Destruction Warfare, 13–14.
76. Johnston et al., “Strategic Relevance of Maritime Chokepoints for Global Trade”; Verschuur et al., “Systemic Impacts of Disruptions at Maritime Chokepoints.” 1–3, 9.
77. TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20, 23–24.
78. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, part II, chap. 1; TP 525-3-1, The U.S. Army in Multi-Domain Operations 2028, 17–20.

 

 

 

Back to Top

July-August 2026