Integrated Campaigning Topic Week

By CDR Brett LeFever

Introduction

Since the release of the latest National Defense Strategy in October 2022, the Department of Defense has been struggling to define, resource, and measure the effectiveness of campaigning. This struggle to adequately resource campaigning can be oversimplified into a questions – how much can the Navy campaign afford to campaign within its force generation constructs? This question is difficult to answer in practice, which has often led to the department focusing its resourcing decision on the basis of warfighting plans vice day-to-day campaigning below the threshold of war.

This running analytic tradeoff between resourcing to campaign to deter conflict or resourcing to win the conflict has been focused on the latter, despite fleet operations being focused on the former. It is much easier to measure the effect of resourcing additional weapons and platforms towards a conflict model, such as asking what is the effect of 100 additional Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASMs) on a wartime contingency. The other side of the resourcing coin is trying to measure the effect of 100 additional ship-days of steady-state campaigning. Looking at both sides of these resourcing strategies, the Navy needs to answer the hard questions of both campaigning capacity and effectiveness, allowing the department to evaluate campaigning with a budget lens. This could provide a different strategy for future defense budgets and resourcing.

Campaigning Capacity

The campaigning capacity question might be the easiest for the Navy-Marine Corps Team since the Navy has the most predictable force generation model. Force generation models help force planners predict the number of ready forces that can be provided to the Joint Force, both for steady-state campaigning and for warfighting surge capacity. These models attempt to plan for a sustainable amount of maintenance, modernization, training, and surge capacity to maintain routine deployments for the force.

In theory, the Navy’s model, the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP), provides an understandable construct of how the Navy can provide around 110 ships to campaigning from the total inventory of about 290 ships. In practice however, OFRP is not simple, and requires a significant amount of effort from the entire enterprise for timely execution. But from a budget and force generation perspective it provides a planning tool to generate forces for campaigning, port capacity, and a measure of the ready reserve forces in case of conflict. The Navy’s description of how a ship goes from deployment to deployment with specific training and maintenance entitlements based on the age of the ship creates a predictable model for campaign and budget planners. While it is almost impossible to predict what the world will look like in the future, the OFRP provides a reasonable baseline of options to generate and budget forces for campaigning and conflict.

The great unknown within the OFRP is the “Sustainment” Phase. As the Navy describes this phase:

“This OFRP period is attained after a deployment certification is achieved and readiness for employment sustained. Regularly scheduled rotational deployments happen during this time. Additionally, forces in a dedicated sustainment phase will sustain their deployment readiness levels to maintain combat proficiency and be prepared to deploy at any time.”¹

The Navy routinely has about one-third of the fleet in this phase, but it not fully utilized in campaigning for a variety of reasons, from budget constraints to personnel tempo. This additional capacity within the OFRP could be used to augment campaigning efforts if the department chooses to resource more targeted operations from these ready forces in a surge capacity. OFRP does create this capacity, but after digging deeper, this capacity might be difficult to employ. A full utilization of forces in the sustainment phase will add stress to the fleet and the enterprises supporting the operating forces.

There are a few complications with the sustainment phase that should give pause to the planner. First, the length of the sustainment phase, which needs to incorporate a routine deployment (per OFRP guidance) and the additional surge capacity depend significantly on the planned and executed maintenance phase. Future maintenance planning is critical, but longer maintenance execution often results in compressed training or complete re-phasing of forces, which adds pressure to the system.

Looking at a pure maintenance planning scenario, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has a nominal 36 month or 1,080-day cycle under OFRP. Within this cycle, the full training entitlement (individual and group) is around 330 days, which leaves around 700 days to complete maintenance and modernization, with the remaining time left for campaigning. For just destroyers, the maintenance cycle can vary from a less intrusive availability of 150 days, all the way to a major modernization of more than 400 days, based on the age of the ship, the modernization plan, port loading, and a variety of other factors considered by the type commands. And this assumes the actual material needs of the ship conforms to what can be achieved within the planned availability. This planning construct quickly eats into the campaigning potential of the fleet as each ship has its own maintenance and modernization requirements, not including the forward deployed ships operating under a different planning construct.

The Navy has made strides in the optimization of these maintenance periods to support strike group deployments and sustainment over the last 20 years with innovations like the Surface Master Plan, Plan-to-Plan (P2P), Integrated Aviation and Surface planning conferences, and others, all of which have sought to improve the predictability and timeliness of force generation. Still, none of these efforts have added significantly more days to the sustainment phase, instead focusing on the better execution of the maintenance phase and providing ready-to-train assets with the latest modernization efforts.

For example, one force element with significant pressure in this cycle is the amphibious ready group, as its available campaigning time is circumscribed by the force generation models of the ships as well as the embarked Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU). The experience of the ARGs are a good example of how “sustainment phase” capacity is often quickly cut as the ships must return to their maintenance phase not only due to material condition, but also to meet their next integrated training events with MEU force generation requirements. These competing factors are driven by the routine deployment needs of acting as a joint, combined-arms force package, not just the ships’ maintenance and modernization needs. This frequently reduces the available sustainment time of the ships and complicates planning.

These factors and pressures are managed within the OFRP with great difficulty and very little room for error. Yes ready ships can be generated in sustainment in predictable fashion, but preparing these assets often require significant engagement across the phases from various lower echelon staffs. If the OFRP pressures compress things further, it is often the excess time in sustainment that is reduced. Sustainment time is not adequately exploited, so the forces become slaves to the “next deployment,” instead of ready for the most opportune times for presence and deterrence. The sustainment phase is therefore more of a cushion to absorb disruptions to the sensitive OFRP force generation cycle, rather than a meaningfully resourced phase that can surge ready forces as intended. Campaign planners must factor in the reality of how the Navy actually manages the sustainment phase, rather than assume the phase will rise to meet its theoretical promise in a time of crisis.

One other issue compounding the ability to use forces in sustainment is balancing operations tempo with overall readiness. It is not a secret that there is more demand for naval forces than can be generated, but it is often self-imposed requirements that limit full utilization in practice. A good example of a readiness metric is the deploy-to-dwell standard which recommends the services maintain a 1:3 ratio of deployed time to home station time, with the redline set at 1:2. This means for every one month of deployment, a unit or sailor should have a minimum of 2 months in their home station. This requirement further complicates the sustainment phase as now the nominal DDG has gone from a 1,080-day cycle with 275 days of maintenance, 330 days of training, and 475 days of time for both deployment and sustainment.² Within those 475 days, the Navy sends the ship on a nominal 210-day (7-month) deployment, leaving only 265 days remaining in sustainment, which are likely only used for personnel tempo reset.

This schedule leaves planners with two options – end sustainment early to reset the cycle with the maintenance phase, or extend sustainment through the personnel tempo reset and a second deployment. Most Navy sailors have experienced two deployments on a single training cycle (which is much more common with carrier fleet). This is often seen as excess hardship and likely atrophies key skills and morale in the process. This extension of sustainment to complete two routine deployments is easy to plan and calculate with readiness metrics, but it only considers presence forward without effectiveness. With better effective campaign evaluation, smaller extensions of sustainment to reset personnel tempo and execute targeted campaigning presents a different option to make better use of routine deployments and targeted sustainment execution windows.

A final issue is the funding of the fleet in practice. The OFRP sets the budget guidance for the operational planners on the OPNAV staff. For the FY2024 budget request, about one-third of the Navy’s total budget was in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) spending at $74 billion. Breaking this down further, about $22 billion of this figure is spent on the surface operations and over half the ship operations budget (at about $14 billion) is reserved for depot maintenance, including operating the four public shipyards and private yard maintenance for the non-nuclear forces. The Navy programs 24 days underway for non-deployed units and 58 days for deploying units, with the vast amount of cost difference in fuel and food, which is very little in the grand scheme of O&M budgets. This ability to add underway days to the ships in sustainment is where the opportunity lies for increased campaigning at a relative low cost in the broader budgetary context, given how fuel and sustainment is far cheaper than the manpower or procurement cost of the ship. The money is therefore the least complicating issue compared to the pressures of maintenance planning and operations tempo.

The next step is measuring campaigning impacts. If in fact constant presence of naval forces does not meet campaign objectives, then the Navy needs to think differently on how to execute the sustainment phase of OFRP. In a statement to Congress, Admiral Aquilino, commander U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, defined the intent of campainging:

“Persistent and synchronized coalition and joint operations linked over time and space in the western Pacific [that] contributes to our ability to deter conflict. A coordinated campaign of all domain operations, activities, and investments (OAIs) reassures our allies and partners, builds partner capacity, increases interoperability, and normalizes our operations throughout the AOR. Additionally, these consistent and persistent OAI’s better familiarize our forces with the challenges associated with the current operating environment.”

Unfortunately, measuring deterrence has proven difficult. One measure, “the enemy hasn’t attacked…” is easy to measure, but does not accurately reflect the complexity of deterrence initiatives balanced against the competitor’s own strategy of campaigning. This is especially the case when it comes to campaigning below the threshold of war. But a whole of government approach to measure the effect of campaigning below the threshold of war and across the spectrum of operations is difficult to manage and synthesize into a usable or actionable tool. There have been and are efforts underway to attempt this type of analysis, but most are in the early stages and the actual effectiveness and timeliness is still not well-understood.

A Different Model

There needs to be more focus on devising campaign effectiveness tools and criteria to better understand the effect of operations on strategy and the behavior of other actors. The Navy’s OFRP force generation model presents force planners and key leaders flexibility to understand the ready forces available. Combined with a campaign effectiveness framework, the Navy can best apply the fleet’s readiness, presence, and deterrence value to greater strategy.

The Navy, along with the Defense Department, needs to re-think routine heel-to-toe deployments in order meet presence demands, such as having certain areas of responsibility needing a constant 1.0 Carrier Strike Group presence. In the world of many threats and limited budgets, the Navy needs to sharpen its ready forces in the high-end environments and ranges only available near CONUS. Assets are then mainly deployed forward for opportune events, for example major force exercises, key seasonal events, or in response to strategic intelligence. This ability to sharpen forces near CONUS toward ever higher levels of warfighting readiness would allow more flexibility in deterrence while improving the overall readiness of the force. This change in thinking from constantly rotating 5–7-month deployments to more targeted presence operations could vastly improve the force and its deterrence value.

Consider a destroyer with 300 days of deployment and sustainment time. Current practice would utilize about 200 days in a routine, planned deployment and the rest would be home-station reset. With a more effective framework for campaigning effectiveness, planners could use two key 90-day surge operations to coincide with intelligence predictions for provocative competitor activity, key seasonal events in the region, or notable events associated with allied or joint forces.

The home-station reset now is an opportunity for fully-trained forces to conduct CONUS-based high-end exercises on training ranges in Live, Virtual, and Constructive environments to sharpen tactics, trial warfighting concepts, and refine operational plans. These efforts are a vital campaign in their own right, a campaign to build the combat credibility of the fleet. Compared to typical presence operations, these activities greatly enhance the ability of the force to meet the demands of high-end conflict, and allow the Navy to more rapidly reconstitute warfighting skills that atrophied during 20 years of campaigning in the Middle East. The sustainment phase affords the Navy an opportunity to conduct more service-retained deployments and apply ready forces toward its service-specific force development efforts, rather have its ready forces solely be applied to the demands of combatant commands. These forces still have the capacity for at least a second 90-day operation within their cycle for a second planned or unplanned force utilization.

This model still meets the intent of shaping the environment and allows planners more flexibility. This is just one possible outcome of many possibilities, but it represents a change in utilization without significantly affecting the underlying maintenance or training establishment. It could represent a more effective use of forces in a resource constrained environment.

Conclusion

Moving forward, the Navy needs to continue to improve its force generation within its existing model and decide how best to use its forces in the sustainment period. In tandem with these efforts, the Navy needs to reconsider what constitutes the effective use of forces in the context of campaigning while it competes with many demands for its forces. Current processes are limited, but if the limits are understood in more precise detail, then the fleet can plan and resource more effective utilization of forces to support campaigning and strategy. Resources will always be constrained, but utilization and effectiveness within these resources can be improved to best address the evolving threat environment.

CDR Brett LeFever is a career Surface Warfare Officer with a degree in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School. At sea, he served on two destroyers and various afloat staffs. Ashore he was an analyst for the N81 division of the OPNAV staff and on Surface Forces, Pacific staff. He is currently an analyst in the Readiness and Force Employment Division for the Office of the Secretary for Defense Cost Analysis and Program Evaluation. These views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the views of any U.S. government department or agency.

References

1. COMUSFLTFORCOM INSTRUCTION 3000.15B COMPACFLT INSTRUCTION 3000.15B

COMUSNA VEUR/COMUSNAV AF INSTRUCTION 3000.15

2. A simple average of 150 days min maintenance with 400 days long maintenance.

Featured Image: Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Va. USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) at Norfolk Naval Shipyard undergoing a Drydocking Planned Incremental Availability. (U.S. Navy photo)