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Winning the Cold War at Sea with Reagan-Era Navy Secretary John Lehman

By Dmitry Filipoff

CIMSEC had the pleasure of asking The Honorable John F. Lehman, Secretary of the Navy under the Reagan Administration from 1981-1987, questions on his new book Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea 

Q: Your tenure as Navy Secretary was guided by President Reagan’s new national security strategy. How did the 1980s U.S. Navy operationalize this new strategy?

A: President Reagan was quite clear in his naval strategy and policy. Eight months before his election, he declared “We have to maintain a superior navy. We are a nation with vital interests and commitments overseas, and our navy must stay ahead of the Soviet buildup. This means commissioning the ships and developing technology which will enable the United States to command the oceans for decades to come.”  He believed strongly in the importance of confronting and negotiating with the Soviets from a position of strength – a position based on adequate and appropriate forces as well as the will and capability to use them should that ever be necessary. We in the Navy provided him that strategy. He fully embraced the force goal of a 600-ship Navy and its 15 carrier battle groups and 100 attack submarines, along with the tenets of The Maritime Strategy: Offensive, forward, global operations at sea and from the sea, as a critical component of an aggressive and forward total joint and allied strategy. In this he was fully supported by Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger, myself as Secretary of the Navy, and a succession of Chiefs of Naval Operations. There was no daylight between any of us on these fundamentals.

The strategy was operationalized through accelerating the Navy’s building and deployment program; developing and promulgating suitable concepts and tactics; gaming those concepts and tactics at Newport and other institutions; and – most importantly and centrally – demonstrating, practicing, and analyzing them at sea, forward and throughout the world, from the very moment the President took office in 1981. This involved both a revamped forward exercise program as well as responding to real-world crises globally on a daily basis. In 1987, when the administration published its first formal public statement of its national security strategy, achieving and maintaining maritime superiority was enshrined as one of its bedrock ideas.

Q: How did the Soviets respond to the new Maritime Strategy and how did it influence their operations and diplomacy?

A:  They were aghast. At first, they didn’t know what to make of it, so they responded in kind: Throwing wave after wave of ships and aircraft at us wherever we popped up on their periphery – a periphery that they had long taken for granted as being their own backyard, and as vital launching space for further expansion. We were prepared for this, and indeed welcomed it, using their approaching forces as ‘targeting services’ to help refine our own tactics and to signal to them that the days of a free ride on the world’s oceans had come to an end. They also redoubled their own building program, putting their naval industrial base into overdrive – and in the process helping wreck their own economy. Then, when they saw we weren’t backing down, they began to tend to their own defenses, and started pulling in their horns, circling their wagons. This of course, was exactly what we had in mind, as it eased the pressure they had been putting on Norway, Japan, and other forward allies, and on American and allied forces facing them in Europe and Asia. They were particularly taken aback by the prowess of our commanders at sea in cover and deception operations. To kill a ship you need to find it first, and our commanders stayed up nights thinking up ways to bluff, trick, hide, and conceal their forces at sea so that they couldn’t be found. They also railed against The Maritime Strategy loudly and publicly. “Remarkably odious,” Izvestia snarled. “It is hardly possible to imagine anything worse.”

They had their own tricks, of course, in the form of American spies – sailors and government civilians – who were delivering our plans and orders to them by the trash bag-full. And they exploited these greed-heads to the maximum extent that they could. Finally—and this we hadn’t planned as extensively for – they started a massive propaganda campaign calling for a wide range of naval arms control measures that would barely affect their own capabilities but that would hamstring us to a fare-the-well. Fortunately, not just the U.S. Navy but the U.S. nation rose to that challenge, dismissing their proposals for what they were – ploys to cut and constrain our vital naval capabilities while giving them the protection they now craved, and leaving us vulnerable to Soviet challenges at sea. At the very end of the decade, they began shutting down their far forward operations and facilities in Africa and elsewhere, and scrapping hulls that they had kept in their inventory far past their useful lives. But they continued – right up until the Soviet Union disappeared – to throw a multitude of new well-armed hulls in the water – a challenge we had to pay attention to until their country was no more.

Q: How did American maritime superiority contribute to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union?

A: American maritime superiority made essential contributions. It ensured that their far forward forces – like those in Cuba, Africa, and the Indian Ocean – would not be available in a fight, and that our own considerable allied and forward forces always would be, reinforced and resupplied from North America. Maritime superiority meant we could threaten them from all directions, at once or serially, flexing our forces to come at them in the Norwegian Sea, the Arctic, the eastern Mediterranean, and the western Pacific, and reinforcing their need to protect and defend their forces close to their homeland, instead of surging out into the broad oceans and threatening our own shores. American maritime superiority meant that their strategic ballistic missile submarine force – on which their warfighting doctrine relied as a necessary nuclear strategic reserve – was not going to survive the early days of a war, should our president so decide. Finally, American maritime superiority meant that they could never catch up. We would always strive to be ahead of them – and succeed, no matter how many new ship classes they constructed or spies they paid off. As President Gorbachev plaintively remarked in 1989 to President Bush on board the Soviet cruise ship Gorky off Malta, “We are encircled by your Navy.”

Q: The book takes its title from a major exercise, and it is heavily focused on exercises throughout. Why this specific focus? Why are these exercises valuable for naval forces and national security writ large?

A: The Maritime Strategy included a host of interlocking initiatives, but none were more important than the forward at-sea exercises. Like other exercises, they had a number of vital and worthy goals: To train, to test, to experiment, to practice, to hone. But much more importantly, these exercises – especially the very earliest ones like Ocean Venture ‘81 in the Norwegian Sea and its initial companion exercises in the North Pacific – were designed to – and did – send the most powerful of all signals to the Soviets: Presidential candidate Reagan’s “peace through strength” campaign motto was now firm U.S. policy, not a discarded slogan. They also signaled to the plucky Norwegians, our other NATO allies, the Japanese, the South Koreans and others that we once again “had their back.” We really did. And they signaled to those naysayers among the defeated Democrats and in ground combat-oriented American and allied headquarters to get on board, because this President and his like-minded appointed officials were serious, and in charge.

And yet – despite all that has been written about The Maritime Strategy and its effects – including my own work – there hasn’t been much attention paid to the exercises. Operators go to sea and scribes do the writing, and the scribes – even the operators among them – have short-changed the role of the exercises in favor of learned dissections of the role of secret intelligence or wargaming, or exegeses on the evolution of the documents, or any of the many other elements that came together to comprise the “perfect storm” of The Maritime Strategy. This book is intended to put some balance into what had become an important – but unbalanced – literature (see my bibliography). And to pay tribute to the brave and clever Navy operators who devised and carried out these maneuvers – many necessarily in atrocious weather – in the Arctic, the Barents, the Norwegian Sea, the Med, the Sea of O, the Sea of Japan, and elsewhere.

Q: These exercises were often led and designed by leaders with a wily reputation, leaders like Admirals Hank Mustin and Ace Lyons as you discuss in the book. What distinguishes great operational and tactical innovators such as these men?

A: The U.S. Navy is certainly fortunate to have among its numbers a goodly share of “operators” – seamen, aviators, and tacticians who enjoy going to sea and putting warships, aircraft, and their crews through their paces. For them, it’s the ultimate in “fun and zest,” as my old mentor Admiral Bud Zumwalt used to say. They aren’t hard to find in the Navy – everyone knows who the “sea dogs” and “good sticks” are. But it can be hard to place them in senior operational positions where their talents can shine. One of the most important jobs a Secretary of the Navy has to participate in is the identification of those stalwarts, and then ensuring they get assigned top jobs where they can do the most good. I spent a fair amount of time on that when I was secretary, and I believe most of my choices panned out well. And so did the Soviets (see the vignette in the book where post-Cold War Russian admirals are crowding a window to get a glimpse of Ace Lyons at a conference).

John Lehman (Secretary of Navy) posing beside attack plane & in cockpit after completing regulation training week as Naval Reserve commander at Oceana Naval Air Station. (Photo by Mark Meyer/Time & Life Pictures/)

Speaking of Ace, he illustrates another important point as well: Many of the Navy’s most skilled operators are also among its most well-educated and experienced in naval strategy, policy, and global fleet operations. Again, the trick is to identify these folks early on and develop them with alternating sea and shore tours and repeat tours in plans and policy billets so that they can get the necessary breadth and depth of experience once they reach high flag rank. Ace was a famous ship-driver and deception specialist at sea, but he also had had four tours in OP-06 (today’s N3/N5) before being promoted to flag (well before my time, incidentally), as well as tours as a student at both the Naval War College and the National War College. All that, plus his drive, brains and imagination, made him a formidable Navy leader. Hank Mustin –  the other famed mariner you mentioned – had a similar special background, including student tours at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Naval War College, a combat tour on the rivers of Vietnam, and several OPNAV tours in surface warfare planning and crafting CNO Zumwalt’s Project SIXTY – an ancestor of The Maritime Strategy. So the Navy has these men and women – with the right education, experience, aggressive mindset, and imagination. It’s up to the top leadership to develop their careers sensibly and move them quickly into the most demanding top positions, even if it means goring some sacred cows like cookie-cutter career patterns and “Buggins’s turn.”

Q: You described a “virtuous circle” that kept strategy current and evolving. As described in the book, it consisted of fleet exercises that fed into the work of key institutions like the Strategic Studies Group, the Center for Naval Analyses, the Naval War College, and others, who then informed new fleet exercises. Please discuss how this virtuous circle worked.

A: It worked in a number of ways, all essential. First of all, there were the formal linkages. For example, the Navy’s educated and experienced strategists in OP-603 crafted Maritime Strategy briefings that were used by OPNAV and the Secretariat to kick off the POM development cycle each year. Many OP-603 officers had had Naval War College or similar civilian educations that had taught them the principles of naval strategy. These experts also briefed their products to the CNOs and myself, to the Strategic Studies Group (SSG) and the professoriat at Newport, and to a host of others – in the other services, on the Hill and overseas, for example. They listened as much as they briefed, and brought useful new insights back with them to update and polish their briefings. Meanwhile, I was providing the essential political direction that was sorely needed to shift the Navy to a more aggressive posture, and my staff ensured that my speeches and other emanations found their way to OP-603, the SSG, and other homes to direct and influence the growing strategy and the 600-ship Navy program. It took a couple of years of this iterative process before the ever-changing and ever-improving slide decks could be converted to actual documents, but they eventually were. Having benefitted from all these inputs, they proved extraordinarily influential.

Meanwhile, the SSG used its freedom and high-level access to explore extensions, variants, and alternatives to facets of the strategy, and fed them to myself and the CNOs. Some then found their way into the next iteration of the strategy briefing. The fleet commanders – supported by their seagoing CNA operational analysts – debriefed their strategy-influenced exercises extensively, within the Pentagon and on the Hill. Programmers and budget-crafters thus heard firsthand how the strategy – and their programs – were faring forward at sea, facing off against Soviet Backfire regiments and submarines. And they learned what needed changing. Meanwhile once per year, the Naval War College convened a Global War Game to examine elements of the strategy. Players included SSG staff and fellows, Hill staffers, OP-603 strategists, Naval War College and Naval Postgraduate School professors, unified command reps and, of course, the fleets and others. They took back to their commands and offices and classrooms the insights they had gained from the games, and submitted recommendations to the gamers on what might be done better or different next year – and to OP-603 to revise their baseline. Overlaid on all of this were inputs from the Navy’s intelligence officers and CNA, which injected important and counter-intuitive “Red” views into the strategy concepts and media, and enabled the strategy to be further developed at various levels of classification.

Then too, The Maritime Strategy benefitted from the Navy’s rotation policies – when intelligently applied. Conceptualizers and practitioners swapped positions regularly. Examples abound: Ace Lyons went from running Ocean Venture and other Maritime Strategy exercises to serving as OP-06, responsible for updating the strategy briefings and documents, then on to the Pacific Fleet, to apply what he knew in the waters off Kamchatka and Vladivostok, through imaginative use of a revitalized and forward-operating Third Fleet. Hank Mustin likewise went from running imaginative exercises as COMSECONDFLT/ COMSTRKFLTLANT (“Mustin in the Fjords”) to OP-06. And it wasn’t only the flags: CAPT Larry Seaquist, for example, came down from the SSG to run the OP-603 strategy shop, then went on to command USS Iowa at sea in Maritime Strategy exercises, and then on to strategy staff positions on the Joint Staff and OSD. CDR Ray Conrad – one of the Navy’s pre-eminent NATO experts – moved from OP-603 to a destroyer command in which he “walked the talk” in frigid North Pacific exercises, and then moved on to NATO headquarters where he inculcated a generation of allied officers and civilians in the Maritime Strategy’s principles. He was joined there by Peter Swartz, with whom he had earlier worked in OP-603. Swartz subsequently was picked up by CJCS GEN Colin Powell as a Special Assistant during the Gulf War.

And so it went. By the end of the decade, the upper reaches of the Navy – and the Pentagon and the National Security Council Staff – were shot through with officers who had served in a variety of guises in developing and implementing the Strategy, and who also served as mentors to the follow-on generation.

Q: The Navy of 1980 was in many ways still suffering from a post-Vietnam War malaise and had to shift from a power projection focus toward sea control against a great-power adversary, while still maintaining full-spectrum competence. A similar problem exists today. What did it take to reset the Navy’s mindset and skills to meet this challenge?

A: Well, that’s not quite accurate for the 1980s, although it does square with CNO ADM Zumwalt’s views in the early 1970s. What we faced in the 80s was the need to plus-up and advance both sea control and power projection – and strategic deterrence, strategic sealift, and forward presence to boot. We needed more carriers and strike aircraft, more and better amphibs and landing craft, more attack submarines that could work under the ice, more prepositioning and sealift ships to get the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps where they needed to go. Also, we needed to rapidly introduce into the fleet Tomahawk missiles, Aegis cruisers, Vertical Launching Systems (VLS), and a whole new family of strategic nuclear ballistic missile submarines. We had to do it all. We were up against the Soviet superpower, armed to the teeth and deployed worldwide. And not just their Navy, but the Red Army, Red Air Force, and Soviet allies and clients too.

What it took to reset the Navy’s mindset and skills were three things: 

(1) Development and promulgation of a global, forward, and aggressive Maritime Strategy that laid out what we needed to do and how and where we needed to do it, continually re-conceptualized, exercised, gamed, analyzed, discussed, and improved.

(2) A funded force goal of 600 ships, including 15 carrier battle groups, 4 battleship SAGs, 100 attack submarines, amphibious lift for a Marine Amphibious Force and a Marine Amphibious Brigade, and cruisers bristling with Tomahawks and Aegis.

(3) A vigorous campaign to drive and keep costs down, including restoring accountability and authority to officials, not bureaucracies, fixed price contracting, fostering competition, enforcing contract discipline, using common subsystems, technological innovation through block upgrades, terminating unproductive research and development programs, controlling gold-plating and design changes, and cutting bureaucratic layers.

Q: The United States has long been a maritime power. China, after millennia of focusing on continental power, is only recently but seriously focusing on developing its maritime power as a core component of its rise. Russia’s maritime power is a shadow of its Soviet past. What does history tell us about the value of maritime power for great powers and competition between them?

A: Great powers are not great powers without maritime power. And superpowers are not superpowers without maritime superiority. The United States – and, indeed, the entire world – has benefitted greatly from our acting as a superpower ever since World War II. That continues today. It would be a tragedy of the first order – for ourselves and all others—to allow our position as a superpower to slip. Central to maintaining superpower status, however, is maritime superiority. It is U.S. maritime superiority that guarantees freedom of the seas for the world’s commerce, connects us to our allies and innumerable interests around the world, and enables us to use the seas as a decisive global maneuver space, in peace and war.

In my six years in office, under President Reagan, America was spending almost six percent of our gross domestic product (GDP) on defense per year. That investment contributed mightily to our winning the Cold War. Today we are spending just a little over three percent. Given the plethora of challenges that Secretary of Defense Mattis laid out in his recent National Defense Strategy, it is difficult to understand how we will be able to continue to counter those challenges in the future, absent a deeper financial commitment from the American people and their representatives to maintain our maritime superiority and thus our status as the world’s essential superpower. It is the right and necessary thing to do, for ourselves and the world, and as the richest power on earth we can afford it. America can and should do this.

And that maritime superiority must be exercised worldwide and forward. Nelson beat Napoleon off Egypt and again off Spain, not off England. John Paul Jones fought the British off Yorkshire, not off New York. In the earliest and darkest days of World War II, we launched Army bombers from Navy carriers and bombed Tokyo. We won the Cold War at sea off the Kola, Kamchatka, Vladivostok, in the Eastern Med and under the Arctic ice, not off San Diego or Norfolk. Superpower maritime superiority demands forward operations “in harm’s way.” So we must be manned, trained, and equipped to fight and win globally and forward.

Q: Any final thoughts you would like to share?

A: I write this on Memorial Day. We can never forget those who sacrificed so much to bring us where we are in the world today. Sailors, Marines, Soldiers, Airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and civilian government workers and contractors have all given their lives to keep us strong, free, and prosperous. This includes some who died during the very exercises and operations I recounted in my book. They were critical to our winning the Cold War, and we must never forget them.

The Hon. John F. Lehman Jr. is Chairman of J.F. Lehman & Company, a private equity investment firm. He is a director of Ball Corporation, Verisk, Inc and EnerSys Corporation. Dr. Lehman was formerly an investment banker with PaineWebber Inc. Prior to joining PaineWebber, he served for six years as Secretary of the Navy. He was President of Abington Corporation between 1977 and 1981. He served 25 years in the naval reserve. He has served as staff member to Dr. Henry Kissinger on the National Security Council, as delegate to the Force Reductions Negotiations in Vienna and as Deputy Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Dr. Lehman served as a member of the 9/11 Commission, and the National Defense Commission. Dr. Lehman holds a B.S. from St. Joseph’s University, a B.A. and M.A. from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently an Hon. Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University. Dr. Lehman has written numerous books, including On Seas of Glory, Command of the Seas, and Making War. He is Chairman of the Princess Grace Foundation USA and is a member of the Board of Overseers of the School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at Nextwar@cimsec.org.

Featured Image: USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and part of Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 8: four A-6E Intruders, two S-3A Vikings, six F-14A Tomcats, and four A-7E Corsairs. Second half of 1984. (Newport News Shipbuilding photo)

Lost In The Fog: Putting Warfighting Proficiency First in SWO Culture

By Themistocles

Current commentators consider the combination of collisions, groundings, and senior reviews of 2017 to be a watershed event for the Surface Warfare community. Rather than a wakeup call for the community, 2017 should be viewed as a culminating point for the Surface Warfare community overall and the Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) culture in particular. Just as Napoleon’s policy objectives failed to bring Europe under his rule, despite brilliant military victories,1 many post-Cold War policy decisions for the Surface Warfare community, as admitted by past and current leadership, were misinformed. In some cases, they appear to have done more harm than good to the Surface Warfare community. More importantly, those changes in policy drove changes in the SWO culture. And, while many people debate the merits of some of those earlier policy decisions, the debate is lost in the fog and the SWO community is missing the real opportunity to reclaim its warfighting excellence by recreating the culture which led to victories within the last century in the same waters in which sailors died in 2017.

By identifying the warfighting traits the community believes necessary to lead, fight, and win at sea, by developing a modern approach to promotions and assignment processes, and by leveraging readily available techniques and solutions in use by leading industrial sectors,2 the SWO community can return to a culture built on warfighting competence and professional proficiency – excellence – that it once exemplified as it stood as the premier community in the Navy. This is no small task. But it is readily doable and doable in short order.

Leveraging Modern Techniques And Solutions To Restore SWO Warfighting Excellence

The national and global competition for talent in business, industry, and academia has driven the development of a variety of techniques and solutions to help organizations win the competition. Current techniques and solutions include compliance with federal and state job application laws, tailored machine reading, and the ability to develop specific questions or processes in an effort to find the right talent. Applicants build their profile and post or submit their resume. Depending on the traits the customer is looking for, applicants are screened. If their profile and resume are assessed to not meet the desired factors, applicants are notified by email that they are no longer needed to participate in the screening process. Or, if they score high enough, applicants may be required to participate in another level of screening in the form of a battery of questions or other online exercises – all before a single human has reviewed their submission. Of course, articles abound about how inhuman and unfair the process has become. However, more and more talent is migrating to these online processes to find employment and more and more organizations are paying for these services in order to win the competition for talent. These existing techniques and solutions could be applied to improve and align warfighting skill sets and proficiency for the SWO community.

Developing the Warfighting Trait Model

For starters, past naval heroes were not rated by the same processes used today. However, unstructured data in the form of biographies, articles, battle reports, and other sources can be processed using current cognitive processing methods to glean or extract a set of character traits common to those past naval heroes deemed to have exhibited warfighting excellence. In parallel, a cadre of junior officers, with very few select retired flag officers as advisors, can separately develop a set of warfighting traits.3 It is essential that the ideal of warfighting excellence is captured by this group. Once both sets of warfighting traits are generated, they are then synthesized into a single warfighting trait model that would exemplify an individual with premier warfighting excellence. With the ideal trait model in hand, the Surface Warfare community can then embark on “scoring” individual warfighting proficiency reflective of its officers’ performance.

Scoring Individual Warfighting Capability

Returning to warfighting excellence to reinvigorate and restore the SWO culture may necessitate a reconsideration of not only the factors by which warfighting excellence is determined but also an expansion of the data set from which those factors are pulled. The existing performance evaluation system and its fitness reports, and how they are used, do not meet the need and do not drive warfighting excellence. Fitness reports serve a purpose and can continue to serve as one source of data for an officer’s performance. However, there are a myriad of unique and high performing skills demonstrated daily in the fleet. Yet, the proficiency with which those skills are performed is not assessed or recorded. Reportedly, every landing onboard an aircraft carrier is an opportunity to rigorously and objectively score the pilot’s performance, and provide critical feedback in the performance of this critical warfighting skill. The Surface Warfare community should immediately adopt an approach similar to that used by Naval Aviation.

For example, the shiphandling skills necessary to get a ship underway may be observed or scored during the Basic Phase or periodically in a simulator, but there are dozens more special details which are not required to be scored. Similarly, ships routinely go alongside for underway replenishment, but this opportunity is lost for assessing shiphandling proficiency.

In a healthy command, the plan-brief-execute-debrief (PBED) process is alive and well, but scoring against community-wide professional standards does not exist. Establishing such standards and scoring an officer’s performance to those standards would contribute to establishing officer’s warfighting capability and proficiency scores. Table 1 lists some of the means to establish an officer’s warfighting scores.

Some aspects of the warfighting scores would necessarily have a temporal component as proficiency degrades over time, especially time spent away from the waterfront. For example, an Executive Officer (XO) who last took a ship alongside for replenishment at sea four years ago would (and should) have their warfighting capability score appropriately degraded. All things being equal, the XO who went alongside yesterday is likely to be much more proficient at that skill than the XO who went alongside four years ago.

Consider other Navy communities such as Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), Divers, and Aviators. They all have skills that have an “expiration date.” In order to maintain proficiency and prevent triggering a requalification requirement, the skill must be demonstrated at some objectively established periodicity. While the periodicity can be lengthened such that the importance of the qualification is diminished, it must be a consistent standard to restore the warfighting excellence of the SWO community. If maintaining proficiency in basic shiphandling evolutions really is important to the SWO profession and culture, then SWOs will necessarily spend some of their shore duty in shiphandling simulators for their periodic assessments and community leadership will resource the requirement. Going to the Joint Staff for a 22-month tour will not be an excuse for not maintaining proficiency in warfighting skills.

Also listed in Table 1 are those methods that are available to and fully within the purview of a ship’s Commanding Officer (CO). This should help alleviate any concern the community might have on eroding the CO’s ability to lead or develop their wardrooms. While most of the methods are self-explanatory, it should be noted that the scores achieved during the Basic Phase are absent. Fundamentally, the Basic Phase is a training event. As such, introducing those scores into an officer’s warfighting capability score could diminish the training opportunity. In other words, activities that are primarily for training must be treated as such allowing mistakes to be made and learning to occur without concern about an officer’s warfighting capability score. Additionally, a CO’s assessment averages, just as with fitness reports, would need to be tracked as a forcing function to prevent inflating scores.

As an officer approaches a career milestone, such as a selection board or a slate, their warfighting capability score firms up and is then compared to the warfighting trait model. It is this comparison that determines their ranking within their respective cohort. For a selection board, this rank determines whether or not they are selected. Gone are the days where careers are determined by a system which is “as fair and unfair to everyone equally.” A bad briefer will not send the community’s best to “the crunch.” The Board members will know the warfighting trait model and they will be able to see the officer’s score against that model. They will see the score trends over a specific assignment and throughout the officer’s career. This way, warfighting competence and professional proficiency become the primary determinants for selection and assignment.

While most of the discussion has been focused on the determination of an individual’s warfighting capability score and proficiency, similar approaches can be used to assess shipboard teams and the ship as a whole fighting unit.

Slating For Unit Warfighting Excellence

Another benefit of knowing an individual’s warfighting capability score is developing slates which better support the fleet’s warfighting readiness needs by ensuring a ship’s overall warfighting capability score remains above a minimum level through slating officers to that ship using their warfighting capability scores.4 Consider that when a group of individuals come into their slating window, their warfighting capability score is again determined. The group is then ranked and divided into top, middle, and bottom thirds (or quarters). For example, a prospective Department Head who ranks in the top quarter will get slated to a ship where the current Wardroom’s overall warfighting capability score indicates they could use some talent. Of course, there is risk that an officers’ duty preferences will not align with the fleet’s needs, but that issue exists today and will continue to require the same quality engagement by community leaders. Detailers will still need to understand factors listed in Table 2. While Table 2’s factors are important to an officer’s quality of service, they are not factors for determining warfighting excellence. By grouping a slate by quarters or thirds, flexibility is created which allows accommodating factors in Table 2. But, the entering argument for the entire officer slating process is warfighting capability and professional proficiency.

The existence of a strong, objective warfighting excellence scoring system would allow the Surface Warfare community to manage warfighting capability within individual ships and across the fleet. It will provide a means by which the performance of individual ships and the fleet can be improved.

Things to Guard Against

The process of driving the SWO culture back to warfighting excellence and professional proficiency will be challenging and there are those who will fight the change tooth-and-nail. Senior officers will see this as an attack on “their Navy.” Detailers will see this as a challenge to their primary activities. Senior mentors and advocates will see this as an affront to their mentoring and their confederation of mentees. Some will see this approach as a challenge to various support organizations external to DON, such as the Surface Navy Association. Many will immediately start looking for ways to game or manipulate the system, eroding its effectiveness. These things must be anticipated and guarded against as a new process that attempts to change culture will have to face friction posed by existing culture.

Conclusion

If SWO warfighting excellence is the reason that the Surface Warfare Community exists, and if warfighting competence and professional proficiency is the critical need for the current and future maritime warfighting environment, the SWOs must rise to the challenge. By leveraging modern techniques and solutions to develop an objective and rigorous system of assessing warfighting capability for SWOs throughout their career, and by using the warfighting capability scores to make warfighting competence and professional proficiency the centerpiece of promotion and assignment, the SWO community will realize its greatest potential and return to a level of professionalism not seen since the end of World War II.

Themistocles is a pseudonym whose choice is intentional in order to focus on the subject of the article rather than the author. There is also the parallel in the choice of Themistocles that, while some of the ideas presented may not be popular with the establishment, the discussion and discourse prompted by these ideas may again assist in establishing the preeminence of the naval power of the world’s greatest democracy. Statements and opinions expressed in this article represent personal views and not that of the DoD or DoN.

Bibliography

Weldman, Thomas. War, Clausewitz and the Trinity. New York:  Routledge, 2013.

[1] Weldman, War, Clausewitz and the Trinity, 79.

[2] While there is a vibrant debate about what is and what is not ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘machine learning’, and other relatively new terms, this paper focuses on the fact that there are modern techniques and solutions available rather than attempting to define terms which are new, changing and not yet agreed upon by the wealth of experts debating them.

[3] The involvement of and control by current flag and senior naval officers in articulating this set of warfighting traits must be purposefully limited so that an independently developed set of traits can be achieved. The concern is that traits which may have contributed to the current culture will be captured inadvertently. Additionally, the flag officer advisors’ role is to guide the junior officers and constructively challenge their ideas to strengthen their product. The flag officer advisors to have no veto over or approval authority regarding the junior officers’ results.

[4] A unit’s overall warfighting excellence score has further implications in how and when they are employed by operational commanders. However, those possibilities are not discussed here in order to keep the discussion focused on improving the SWO culture.

Featured Image: Pacific Ocean (April 21, 2018) USS Stockdale (DDG 106) fires its Mark 45 Mod 4 5-inch gun during a live fire exercise as part of a Cruiser-Destroyer (CRUDES) Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training (SWATT) exercise. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Amanda A. Hayes/released)

The Nazi’s U-Boat Ace

By Christopher Nelson

Author Larry Paterson joins us to discuss his new book, Otto Kretschmer: The Life of the Third Reich’s Highest Scoring U-Boat Commander

Nelson: Let’s start with you. You live in Italy, you’re a SCUBA instructor, a drummer for a heavy metal band, and you write books about naval history. I’ll admit, it is one of the more interesting author bios I’ve read on a book flap. So how did you end up writing books on naval history?

Paterson: It does seem to surprise people sometimes! Growing up in New Zealand, a lot of people we knew had served in Second World War and even the previous war. One of my grandfathers had gone ashore on the first day of Gallipoli in 1915 and then gone through the Somme, Passchendaele, and so on, while the other was ex-Royal Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy, and fought in the Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. So, the subject of military history was always around, and both of them taught me that it was never as simple as black and white, good and bad, when it came to warfare. Most people hated Germans, while both my grandfathers respected them. I suppose that my interest in the German side of Second World War stems from that.

I left New Zealand in 1988 to be a drummer in the UK (and to see Iron Maiden live because they kept canceling New Zealand tours), so found myself near most of the battlefields I had read about. I’ve been diving since I was a teenager, and I became an instructor, eventually running my own little operation in Brittany, France, which is littered with Kriegsmarine wrecks. The U-boat bunkers and Atlantic Wall are all still there and a friend of mine called Jon Gawne sent me a copy of the First U-Boat Flotilla’s War Diary, who were based in my area. The rest just seemed to come together after that really.   

Nelson: Your newest book is about one of the Nazi’s most successful U-Boat commanders. U-boats, I believe, are a subject in some of your other work. What is it about the German Navy of World War II, particularly U-boats, that fascinates you?

Paterson: I have studied – and continue to study –  all aspects of the Third Reich’s military machine, and specializing in the Kriegsmarine kind of came around by accident after receiving the War Diary and diving on a lot of Kriegsmarine wrecks. Of course, you can’t study one side of a military and political conflict in isolation, so Second World War warfare, in general, is fascinating. I’m glad I was able to know so many people that were actually there, because most are gone now.

Why am I fascinated with U-boats? I don’t honestly know. It’s an intensely interesting subject, as is the whole of the Wehrmacht. What motivated people to fight against such odds? I do not for one minute subscribe to the ‘all Germans were Nazis’ idea that people keep saying, as that provides purely political motivation as a driving factor. There were undoubtedly some like that, as there are now in overly nationalistic people, but in general, the Wehrmacht was made up of ordinary working people. Even the Waffen SS can’t be explained by running home to the ‘Nazi’ label. It was an extraordinary phenomenon, the military services of the Third Reich.

One of my all-time favorite historians Max Hastings writes very lucidly about it and claims, with (I believe) great validity, that the German forces were probably, as a whole and in general terms, the most militarily adept of the war. It’s hard to deny the fact though they were frequently led by chaotic orders, and with such finite resources and a regime despicable in its treatment of subjugated people (even their own) they were always bound to fail. This in no way denigrates other nations’ military. For example, I now live in Italy, a nation whose efforts in the Second World War are roundly mocked, and yet who had superb Special Forces, paratroopers, and torpedo bomber pilots. So…going back to your original question before I got sidetracked into the complexities of it all…why am I fascinated? I have no idea!      

Nelson: Who was Otto Kretschmer? Where does he sit in the ranking of other U-boat commanders when you refer to “scoring” in the subtitle of your book?

Paterson: Kretschmer was the most successful U-boat captain of the Second World War, and the term ‘scoring’ relates to the total tonnage of shipping that he sank while commander of both U23 and U99. It’s terminology that is frequently used in military books dealing with all branches of service, be it tank commanders, fighter pilots or U-boat skippers, but in reality, it is a rather glib way of putting it. Counting tonnage sunk was at the heart of Dönitz’s entire U-boat campaign which, in effect, was designed to sink more merchant shipping carrying capacity tonnage than could be replaced, thereby reducing the cargo carrying potential to Great Britain and correspondingly succeed in enforcing a blockade that could starve Britain into submission.

U-52, A Type VIIB German Submarine (Wikimedia Commons)

However, it has probably become a term that is used too freely in books that deal with the U-boat war. Every ship that was sunk was the home of those crewmen, and even those that went down with no casualties frequently involved a lot of fear, panic, the loss of belongings and even the stoppage of wages for many merchant seamen! Then there are the other ships that sank in flames with men killed and injured and frequently left to die. The other side of the coin is identical: U-boats being sunk with men trapped inside the hull and crushed by extreme pressure or dying through air starvation or the myriad other ways that killed three-quarters of the men of the U-boat service. As always, that is the reality of such a war, which can be somewhat ‘anesthetized’ by talking about a U-boat commander’s ‘score.’ Nevertheless, it is a quantifiable measure of military success, and Kretschmer ranks at the very top of that ‘league table.’ 

Having dived on many wrecks which are war graves, that moment gives you a sense of humility and gravity that I think is very important to remember. The same as standing at the cemetery near Omaha Beach. Truly sobering, and an important feeling for anybody who studies and writes about war to be aware of.

Nelson: What was the standard path for a German submariner to become a captain of their own boat? Did it differ greatly from the allies?

Paterson: Not particularly, though it accelerated greatly as the war dragged on and the ‘old guard’ were either posted ashore or lost in action. In the early stages, men enlisted as officer cadets, served as midshipmen, then junior officers before — if judged competent — given their own command. Often a training boat at first, though that morphed into a combat boat involved in training and trials before heading to the front. Kretschmer was amongst the ‘first wave’ of young captains, the men that served as his First Watch Officer amongst the ‘second wave’ and beyond that the entire process got quicker and quicker. Men were sometimes going to sea with little command experience, and with crews that had been drafted into the U-boats. The mythology of a force of volunteers is just that, a myth.     

Nelson: Did the Germans have better submarines than the allies? How quickly were the German’s able to innovate and field new submarines, and what types of submarines did Kretschmer serve on?

Paterson: Perhaps the Germans possessed better submarines in the early stages of the war. Certainly, the Type VIIB (like Kretschmer’s U99) was a finely-honed weapon, and the larger Type IX cruiser submarines well-suited to more distant operations. However, there hadn’t really been that much development between the wars and the types were reminiscent of those that served in the First World War. The Type II that Kretschmer started on a was a good coastal boat, but of limited endurance and weapon load. The Type VII was the backbone, particularly the later Type VIIC. These had excellent seakeeping qualities and a well-designed hull that gave it quite an extreme depth capability for a boat of its time. Creature comforts were few, but then that can be the story of the Wehrmacht. Conditions aboard a combat boat were difficult, particularly on a long voyage where living and working space was sacrificed for supplies, and yet people just dealt with it.

U-37, A type IXA U-Boat in Lorient (Wikimedia Commons)

As far as development after the war had begun, that proved a major stumbling block. Rather than create a completely new design, modifications to the existing frames were made so that by 1943 the boats were virtually obsolete. The Germans failed in the cypher war most spectacularly when they refused to concede the possibility of compromised codes and were frequently one step behind Allied countermeasures such as radar, the Leigh Light, and air superiority.

The finite resources that Germany waged war with sealed the fate of the entire Wehrmacht; the Luftwaffe declining quickly and unable to counterbalance Allied material and tactical strength. Things like the snorkel helped briefly but were never going to swing the tide of war, much as the German attack that became the Battle of the Bulge was never going to alter the outcome of the war but gave the Allies a momentary fright. The development of the Walther propulsion system never came to fruition and the Type XXI electro-boats would have had to come into service in early 1944 to make any appreciable difference, and even then it would be doubtful. They too were deeply flawed in their construction, due to the dislocation caused by Allied bombing. The Type XXIII electro-boat saw service and was an effective machine, but carried only two torpedoes! The same loadout as a Seehund midget submarine — and not really of much greater endurance. 

So, before the war had gone past 1941, the Germans were reacting to Allied technological and tactical advances rather than leading the field. Dönitz never had enough boats in action during the early years when they could have made a difference. He wanted 300 before war was declared — he started with 57. By the time he had the numbers, the U-boat war was already lost and the ‘greats’ who had captained the ‘Ace’ boats were gone.    

Nelson: I was fascinated to learn in your book that the Germans had their own problems with torpedoes. I’ve read about our own challenges with U.S. torpedoes in the early part of the war, but I wasn’t aware of the Kriegsmarine’s troubles. What exactly was the problem with German torpedo performance? Kretschmer experienced some of this, did he not?

Paterson: German torpedo performance was abysmal. It wasn’t just the Kriegsmarine that suffered this problem, it was the same with aerial torpedoes for the short-lived naval air arm and the Luftwaffe. A lack of rigorous testing and technological development rendered them next to useless. It was really a combination of things that damned the German torpedoes.

First, while the contact detonator that had been used during the First World War was simple and reliable, it had been redesigned between the wars to an overly complex series of levers that were supposed to provide a wider angle in which the trigger would fire, but in effect did not work. It was tested only twice before being issued, and even those tests did not go well.

So, U-boat skippers were advised to use magnetic pistols. However, not only did Allied degaussing provide a problem for them but geographical variations in the earth’s magnetic fields rendered them inoperable — as in Norwegian waters during 1940.

However, even if they had worked, the triggering of a magnetic detonator required the torpedo to pass beneath a ship’s keel at a set depth and German torpedo depth keeping was compromised by a leaking balance chamber. Original tests of the torpedo’s depth keeping had been done at ordinary atmospheric pressure, but the internal pressure of a U-boat differed, and this differential leaked into the chamber and caused torpedoes to run deeper than set and thereby not triggering. This problem wasn’t remedied until the end of 1942! Instead, commanders began to rely on pattern running and, later, acoustic-homing torpedoes that could be countered.      

Nelson: Another thing I read with fascination – again, because it is something that can plague any Joint Force today – and that’s Germany’s challenge of coordination between the navy and the air force. You write that on one deployment, the Luftwaffe attacks Kretschmer’s boat. What happened? And was this a problem throughout the entire war?

Paterson: Yes, indeed…For an effective military, they were extremely ineffective sometimes! The relationship between the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine was frequently strained; a situation that stemmed from the very top as Göring was vainglorious and boastful and despised the ‘cold’ and aristocratic Raeder. It is true that Raeder did not really value the U-boat service as much as his ‘big ships’ but he also failed to understand the potential of aircraft as an offensive maritime weapon, soon demonstrated by most other countries’ navies. Göring, on the other hand, wanted tight control of everything that flew in Germany and frequently engaged in the kind of petty political maneuvering that was rife within the upper echelons of the Wehrmacht and Third Reich as a whole, often at the expense of operational necessity.

Kretschmer’s U-boat was actually attacked by a floatplane from the Scharnhorst after it strayed unintentionally into a prescribed search and attack radius given by the battleship’s reconnaissance aircraft who were guarding against British submarines. But there were more deadly examples of the lack of cooperation between the two services such as when two destroyers were sunk as a result of a German bomber attack. That example was a combination of faulty Luftwaffe navigation — most of their crews not properly trained in nautical navigation — and lack of communication between Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine commands as neither was made fully aware of the other’s movements in time to brief operational crews.   

It’s an interesting topic in itself and I’m actually working on a book about Luftwaffe maritime forces, a long and complicated story! The reality is that although aircraft like the Focke Wulf 200 Condor are (in)famous for their role in the Battle of the Atlantic, they were woefully unprepared, unsuitable, undertrained and underequipped. Thankfully, for the Allies! Proper air and sea coordination between better led, better equipped, and better-supplied forces could have been devastating.   

Nelson: How good was Kretschmer as a tactician? Did he prefer the surfaced night attack? If so, why?

Paterson: He was very good. He was unwilling to follow the norm and obey whatever operational protocol was being promoted. Like many of his generation of U-boat commanders, he thought outside the box and always had two overriding motivating factors: combat effectiveness (i.e. results) and crew welfare. He would not jeopardize his boat or crew without a good chance of survival and success.

His preference was to penetrate the convoy body itself, at night and on the surface. Once submerged, the U-boat was slow, detectable, and unwieldy. On the surface it was fast, well-armed, maneuverable and hard to see as he would sail with the hull trimmed as low as feasible providing very little silhouette. It took great concentration, quick thinking, efficient lookouts, and a good torpedo officer as the First Watch Officer actually aimed and fired while surfaced as the captain maintained the ‘overall look.’

He was not the only commander to adhere to the ‘one torpedo, one ship’ mantra, as Erich Topp and Günther Prien did, to name but two. But their methods were far more successful than the prevailing operational advice of firing a spread of torpedoes from outside the convoy escort screen and hoping for one or two hits.   

Nelson: He’s eventually captured and taken into captivity in Canada. Yet he almost escaped. Can you briefly tell us about that episode?

Paterson: He was captured and did end up in Canada. The escape attempt was relatively far-fetched as it required traversing a great distance to be picked up by a U-boat off the Canadian coast. Not impossible, though as it transpired, not workable either. The tunnel was discovered, although one man did make it over the wire in a separate attempt and managed to reach the area of the rendezvous. Of course, the Allies had discovered the entire plan, and were waiting to trap the U-boat, U536, that had been sent to rescue them. The U-boat skipper sensed the trap and retreated, and the single escaped prisoner was caught. In fact, U536 was soon sunk thereafter as well.  

Nelson: Kretschmer was never a fervid Nazi, was he? What did he do after the war?

Paterson: He wasn’t a particularly politically motivated man, though he was undoubtedly nationalistic. His roots were in Silesia so he would have felt the fractious relationship with Poland resulting from the previous war and was probably in favor of the Third Reich’s stated ambition of reuniting and reinvigorating Germany. But, I don’t want to guess at his thoughts on the matter, as it is indeed a complex area which is also, of course, very sensitive for people. After the war he returned to Germany, studied maritime law, and then joined the navy once more. That in itself would have been a difficult time for such veterans as the Germans attempted to distance themselves from militarism, and yet some of their senior officers were ex-Wehrmacht and extremely militaristic. Tricky.    

Nelson: Das Boot (the film) – underrated or overrated?

Paterson: Brilliant. I actually prefer it to the book. One of my stock questions for U-boat veterans was what they thought of the film. In general, they were all very positive, give or take a few scenes. Many did not like the bar scene and said they would have little respect for officers who passed out and vomited on themselves. Others said there was too much noise from the crew during depth charging, but in general, the consensus was that it is as close to reality as any film has been. Personally, I think it is a superb film in every way. I was lucky enough to get a private tour of the film sets that are at the Bavarian Film Studios and open to the public, and it is remarkably like being inside U995 at Kiel. On the other hand, the movie U571 is junk of the worst kind, in every possible way, apart from a great U-boat model!

U995 in Kiel (Wikimedia Commons)

Nelson: Das Boot (the book) – underrated or overrated?

Paterson: Great book but prefer the film. More U-boat men that I spoke to don’t like the book so much. Sometimes that is because they could not stand the author Buchheim, an ex-propaganda reporter during Second World War. A man that certainly divided opinion amongst the veterans I have spoken to!

Nelson: Who, in your opinion, are some of the other naval historians writing about the German Navy during World War II whose work you admire?

Paterson: There are a lot, I’m not really sure who to name. As I’ve said before, I really like the work done by Max Hastings, though his books are not specifically naval at all. But his studies of aspects of the entire war are truly excellent. He has a refreshing ability to apply clarity and reasoned argument to subjects that are often considered done and unalterable. His views are forthright, accurate, and well presented and I find his books inspirational as he is not afraid to approach subjects as they actually are, rather than repeating the ‘party line.’ It’s hard to make a voluminous study of the war so readable, but he does it. In a similar way that Cornelius Ryan used to with such great books as A Bridge Too Far and so on. Also, Chester Wilmot’s The Struggle For Europe takes some beating. My favorite authors about U-boats? Very hard to say…maybe Jak Mallmann Showell’s older books, Jordan Vause, Eberhard Rössler… I would find it easier to say which books I don’t like…but I’m not going to! 

Nelson: This is great. Thank you.

New Zealander Lawrence Paterson has written fifteen books related to the Wehrmacht during the Second World War – predominantly concerning German naval operations – and one about his time on the road as part of the Blaze Bayley band. He is working on two more books which mark something of a new direction; the first being a history of Luftwaffe maritime operations, and the other detailing Operation Colossus, the first British parachute drop of the war. He is also a scuba diving instructor after having first learnt to dive in New Zealand in 1984, and a touring heavy metal drummer, a career that he started at about the same time! He now lives in Puglia, Italy, with his wife, three cats, two drum kits and a library of books.

Christopher Nelson is a U.S. naval officer stationed at the U.S. Pacific Fleet Headquarters in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School in Newport, RI. He is a regular contributor to CIMSEC. The questions above are his own and do not reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

Featured Image: German U-boat attack, World War II. Artwork of German sailors on the conning tower of a U-boat (submarine) that has surfaced after sinking a British cargo ship during World War II (1939-1945). This 1941 painting is by German artist Adolf Bock (1890-1968).

The Great Game in the Indian Ocean: Strategic Partnership Opportunities for the U.S.

By Chad Pillai

There is a growing strategic competition underway in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea between India and China focused on acquiring commercial ports and military facilities. It is a race for strategic access, leverage, and influence for energy resources, markets, and national security. This competition between two relative new naval powers in the region will directly influence the U.S. and its regional partners in the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (USAFRICOM) Area of Responsibilities (AORs), beyond the usual purview of Pacific Command (USPACOM) whose AOR India lies within. For the U.S., this represents a strategic opportunity to compete against China’s growing influence by expanding its relationship with India in the CENTCOM and AFRICOM AORs.

Nyshka Chandran reported on CNBC in February 2018 that “China and India are competing for regional supremacy in the Indian Ocean as they look establish a stronger military and economic presence in bordering countries.” China’s move into the Indian Ocean, as part of its “String of Pearls” approach to expand its strategic reach, is well documented. The formal establishment of China’s first overseas military base in Djibouti serves as its first military marker on the global map. Recently, China has been in negotiations with Pakistan to expand its access to the port of Gwadar and open its second overseas naval base in Jiwani, Pakistan which is about 80 km from Gwadar. These two locations would provide China the means and proximity to militarily influence two of the world’s eight strategic chokepoints, the Bab el-Mandeb straits along at the mouth of the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. Additionally, China has been expanding its economic presence in the Seychelles, Maldives, and in Oman.

While China expands its presence, India has not remained idle. It has invested in the commercial port of Chabahar, Iran to give it greater access to Afghanistan, circumventing Pakistan. However, questions arise on whether India can use the port to effectively compete against China and its One Belt and One Road (OBOR) strategy. In addition to the port in Iran, India is competing for access to the Seychelles, Maldives, and Oman. The recent tensions between China and India, after China deployed 11 warships to the Maldives in February illustrates this growing rivalry. In the Seychelles, India is spending $46 million dollars in foreign aid to improve costal defense and airstrips; however, that has run into recent issues with the president of the Seychelles. While India doesn’t lack in its ambition to compete with China, it lacks a cohesive political and economic decisionmaking body like China to invest and outcompete, and lacks in its naval capabilities to effectively challenge the Chinese. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), China’s naval surface combatants dwarfs India (83 Chinese combatants vs. 27 Indian Combatants; 57 Chinese attack submarines vs. 15 Indian attack submarines; and 4 Chinese ballistic submarines vs. 1 Indian in development). Of course, the naval disparity between the two nations is spread out across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and China must overcome its “Malacca Straits Dilemma” to surge forces into the Indian Ocean.

This growing competition between China and India present a strategic opportunity for the U.S. to offset China’s growing presence in the region. While the U.S. has generally viewed India as a strategic partner in the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) AOR to offset China, it represents an opportunity to counter-balance China in the USCENTCOM and AFRICOM AOR as well. In concerted effort by USCENTCOM, in partnership with PACOM, can find ways to enhance the Indian Navy’s force projection capabilities in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea to challenge China’s small, but growing, military presence in the region. U.S. Navy Central Command (USNAVCENT) can spearhead this effort on behalf of CENTCOM by encouraging India to more fully participate in the Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) that focuses on Counter-Piracy operations.  NAVCENT could consider future joint naval exercises focusing on combined naval operations, Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), and carrier-based operations. Such combined exercises can assist India in expanding its capabilities and capacity to exert greater influence, in concert with U.S. interests, in the region as a means to counter-balance China’s presence. Additionally, as Harry Halem recently noted, the U.S. can encourage greater cooperation between its allies and partners in the region, to include Israel, to cooperate with India. This also includes expanding ongoing Indian-French naval cooperation in the Indian Ocean as seen by France’s deployment of its Charles De Gaulle strike group to exercise with the Indian Navy. For the U.S., these efforts will have to be delicately balanced with the U.S. relationship with Pakistan and it may raise concerns on the Pakistani Navy’s ability to counter-balance India as well.

Increased ties between the U.S. and India will also support increased foreign military sales of U.S. capabilities. Recently, the U.S. has become one of India’s primary weapons exporters with sales of “Boeing P-8I Neptune — a version of the U.S. Navy’s P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft.” Additionally, the U.S. offered to sell its Harpoon missile to India. The recent cancellation of the Indian-Russian Stealth Fighter presents an opportunity for the U.S. to offer its platforms to include the F/A-18 Super Hornet. An area of future opportunity may lie in a combined shipbuilding program to assist the Indian Navy in its modernization efforts. These sales will contribute towards developing increased interoperability between the U.S. and Indian Navies, along with allied and partner navies in the region.

While China is attempting to build upon the legacy of Zheng He (Ming Dynasty), India must learn to use its geographic positional advantage in the Indian Ocean that dominates east to west maritime traffic. The key to leveraging its geographic positional advantage in the Great Game of the Indian Ocean will be based on a mutual desire by India to expand its military, primarily naval, capabilities to compete with China and, a mutual desire by the U.S. and India to expand their military cooperation. For the U.S., India can no longer be viewed simply as a PACOM partner. Instead, it must be viewed as a trans-regional partner who has the ability to influence both the CENTCOM and AFRICOM AORs as a counter-balance to China’s growing global ambition. As Robert Kaplan, author of Monsoon, has noted, the Indian Ocean represents the fulcrum between American Power in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific, and its growing relationship with India will shape its desire to remain atop the global order against a rising China.

Chad M. Pillai is an experienced Army strategist and is a member of the Military Writers’ Guild, Army Strategy Association, and contributes to the U.S. Naval Institute. He has operational experience in the CENTCOM AOR and has traveled to India, to include 1998 during the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of 1998. He received a Masters in International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). The article reflects the opinion of the author and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Featured Image: SASEBO, Japan (June 10, 2016) – Rear Adm. Brian Hurley, center, deputy commander, U.S. 7th Fleet, tours the Indian navy Kora-class corvette INS Kirch (P62) during Malabar 2016. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ryan J. Batchelder/Released)