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Strategy

A New U.S. Maritime Strategy

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By Representative Elaine Luria

This article outlines the path that led to the U.S. Navy’s current strategic deficit and proposes a framework for a new maritime strategy, one that I believe should be immediately developed along with the corresponding force structure assessment. With a modest 5% additional investment in the Navy over the next five years, 90% of the changes required by this strategy can be achieved.

The Death of Naval Strategy

The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 effectively ended U.S. naval strategy. Through this legislation, Congress affirmed its authority to step in and “right the ship” after a series of well-publicized military failures, which at the time seemed to lay squarely on the shoulders of the services’ inability to work together without service-specific parochial interests getting in the way. 

The Goldwater-Nichols Act affirmed and strengthened the role of Secretary of Defense and greatly expanded the power of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, effectively removing the Service Chiefs and Secretaries from any role in the operational chain of command and from any advisory role to the President. They were relegated to budget warriors – and the Navy was a ship not under command. 

The Act also sought to increase the caliber of officers in joint positions and required that all officers serve in a joint tour as a prerequisite for promotion to flag or general rank. As a result, the services realigned officer career paths to meet these new joint timelines. Each service had to align to statutory promotion boards, which ultimately drove the career path of each officer, resulting in officers moving as quickly as possible from one milestone tour to another. No longer could an officer afford to spend multiple tours on Navy staffs learning the craft of strategy. Strategy was only for the Joint Staff—only for the Chairman.

The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)—the only service chief with “Operations” in his title— had a unique role since the position’s establishment in 1915. The official role of the CNO was codified in 1947 under General Order 5 as “(a) command[er] of the Operating Forces, (b) principal naval advisor to the President and the Secretary [of the Navy].” The ink had barely dried on the General Order, when forces in Congress and the White House set about to further the trends in unification of the armed forces. Over the next 20 years in a series of laws, the role of the CNO in operational matters was fully removed and by the 1970s, then-CNO, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, was convinced that the Navy “was confused about its justification for existence.” 

Thomas Hone noted in his book, Power and Change, that “OPNAV [the CNO’s staff] is a loose confederation, not an operational organization.” It was, however, not until 1978, when CNO Admiral Thomas Hayward, fresh off a tour as Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, translated Zumwalt’s criticisms into real change. Hayward was convinced the Navy needed to be revitalized, strategically and tactically – simply put, the Navy needed a strategy around which to plan and program. As professor John Hattendorf of the Naval War College observed, “Hayward sought to change…from a budget battle to an analysis of the strategic issues of a global maritime power.” In 1981, Navy Secretary John Lehman built on Hayward’s Sea Strike concept to establish the goal of a 600-ship Navy, which he very nearly reached before leaving office.

Then came Goldwater-Nichols. One cannot deny that the Act has been successful in more fully integrating the services into a Joint Force, however, one cannot overlook the deleterious effects on strategy and procurement in the individual services that have resulted. As I wrote in Look to the 1980s to Inform the Fleet of Today, the Navy does not have, and has not had, a maritime strategy for the past 30 years. Moreover, the past 30 years have seen failures in ship class after ship class, resulting in a lost generation of shipbuilding. 

As “budget warriors,” many CNOs since the late 1980s have attempted to leave their mark on the service, and some have—for better or worse. However, it is precisely because the Navy has lacked a strategy that the success or failure of the Navy has relied solely on the strength of the CNO or Navy Secretary’s personality. As I noted in my article, Secretary Lehman’s bullish approach: “first strategy, then requirements, then the POM, then budget,” stands in stark contrast to the budget-driven Navy leadership of subsequent decades. 

What is, and is not, a Maritime Strategy?

A strategy is the military means to accomplish political ends – or as often quoted from Clausewitz, “a continuation of politics with other means.” 

This year, like many others, military leaders reiterated in repeated testimony before the House Armed Services Committee that they are “prepared to compete globally and fight and win the nation’s wars…” However, when asked what “win” means, the same leaders seem befuddled. The Chief of Staff of the Army recently testified that “winning with China means not fighting China.” I happen to agree with him, except, that was not the question—which is precisely the problem. We cannot define what “winning” means. When one cannot define winning, one cannot write a strategy.

What does winning with China look like? Numerous naval strategists including Sir Julian Corbett have argued that war cannot be won by naval (or air) action alone. Similarly, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, recently testified that “decisive outcomes in war are ultimately achieved on land…” Does this mean that we cannot have a decisive outcome with China without a ground invasion of the mainland? 

Today, the military rise of China threatens the balance of power globally and as Thucydides noted – the rise in power of one actor threatens all others. This is not to say that China—or any other country—does not have the right to defend itself, but that a country that does not share the ideals of a free, democratic world is disrupting international norms. As with the destabilizing actions of Russia, if not properly managed, China’s actions could be misinterpreted and lead to unintended conflict. 

It is precisely this ambiguity that drives the Navy’s need for a new global maritime strategy – and a complementary national maritime strategy that includes the full range of commercial maritime activities, domestic shipbuilding and repair, and Maritime law enforcement activities. The need is especially critical when defense resources are strained amid competing priorities from non-defense spending and among the services themselves. This naval strategy should be developed by naval leaders, not by the Joint Staff nor the Office of the Secretary of Defense. 

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. defense planning strategy has been a variation of a two-front war policy. Today’s National Defense Strategy (NDS) calls for the Armed Forces to be capable of “defeating aggression by a major power; deterring opportunistic aggression elsewhere.” By placing offense (defeating aggression) as the primary capability of our forces, it constrains thinking in the offense-defense balance of military strategy and has resulted in maintaining a large standing army and Cold War-era battle tactics as the preferred methods of training and equipping our forces.

Today’s “Maritime Strategy”

In the 1984 Maritime Strategy, “winning” meant keeping the conflict to a conventional war and supporting ground forces in driving the Soviets back to their own borders. This is the “deny and punish” approach still employed today. The Navy developed the strategy on the assumption, backed by intelligence, that any conflict with the Soviets would quickly engulf much of the globe. This required the Navy to be present and ready in three key regions simultaneously, instead of the “swing strategy” preferred by the Joint Staff. 

The Navy developed a maritime strategy based on a three-front conflict and centered it around the carrier battle group. The strategy did not consider limitations in maintenance, training, or employment. It was assumed every ship would be available in conflict and that the number needed was 600. 

If the same construct were applied to our force today using the current NDS, the Navy could simply use the Indo-Pacific Command Commander’s most demanding contingency to determine the number and type of ships required for the whole Navy. This resultant force structure would be well below the 355-ship requirement, even when accounting for “opportunistic aggression elsewhere,” and would likely fall below 250 total ships.

So, how did the Navy develop its current Battle Force 2045 plan that calls for somewhere between 382 to 446 manned ships and 143 to 242 large, unmanned vessels? 

Instead of starting with a single contingency, or multiple contingencies, the Navy made assumptions about force development, force generation, and force employment to drive their final assessment. The range of ships presented in Battle Force 2045 came about not from a global maritime strategy, but instead, three different studies were simply coalesced into a single force structure assessment, and the resulting force requirements present a range based on the final product of each study.

As a 2019 RAND Corporation study on defense planning noted, “different assumptions and types of guidance can produce very different results in the process.” In other words, our assumptions greatly drive outcomes. Combatant Commanders (CCDR) develop contingency plans to combat specific scenarios in their theater while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, through the Joint Staff, is tasked with global strategic planning. The study concluded that “a common assumption is that the plans and programs of the defense planning process should be strategy-driven, but the final size and shape of the force are highly budget-influenced. When operating in that realm, defense planners do not have a reliable way of estimating—or quantifying—risk” (emphasis added).

Former Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2015, that the Joint Staff force planning process, the process that translates strategy into the forces we need, is deeply flawed and guided much more by parochial interests vice national interest. She goes on to say “the current process is antithetical to the kind of competing of ideas and innovation that the Department [of Defense] really needs…”

When a force structure assessment begins by using inputs like force generation and employment to counter specific scenarios, the output will always be dependent on current force employment constructs. The Optimized Fleet Response Plan uses a 5:1 model, where five ships result in one deployed. For example, if one wanted 100 ships deployed around the globe annually (the Navy’s traditional deployment rate), the force structure required would be 500 ships. However, if the force generation model is changed to 4:1, the total force would require only 400 ships. Further, if the force generation model was a forward deployed naval force (FDNF) model where ships are available two-thirds of the time (3:2), the force structure assessment addressing the same threat would only require 150 total ships. These force generation models are critical assumptions that drive the force structures used in defense planning.

In a seminal article, “Cruising for a Bruising: Maritime Competition in an Anti-Access Age,” Naval War College Professors Jonathan D. Caverley and Peter Dombrowski, note “the most likely location for great-power friction is at sea.” Many scholars have written about the balance of power that affects competition on land, especially over the last 20 years, but much less has been written about maritime competition and the offense-defense balance on the oceans. However, a truth remains, “when offense has the advantage, the security dilemma grows more acute, arms races grow more intense, and war grows more likely.” 

Naval platforms are ideally suited to provide a flexible deterrent option, however, Barry R. Posen and Jack Snyder postulate that the U.S. military is offensively minded, and one can see this through public testimony and statements of our military leaders. The defense side of “offense-defense” is often thought of as a natural output of a strong offense. This was true in the 1980s Maritime Strategy that envisioned an exclusively offensive plan and is what Caverley and Dombrowski refer to as the “Cult of the Offensive…” They argue that even if the Navy could instantly develop the fleet of the future, the doctrine of power projection would still dominate the thinking.

In the 1984 Maritime Strategy, the deterrent role was ancillary from the demand-based wartime strategy that resulted in the 600-ship requirement. In that strategy, deterrence was an output of force structure, and it articulated the requirement for a peacetime presence to fill deterrent roles, reduce response times, and provide policymakers with naval crisis-response options. One-third of the ships needed for wartime missions in each theater would always notionally be forward deployed under the strategy. However, by 1987, the 600-ship requirement was exclusively tied to a deterrent presence model. Vice Admiral Hank Mustin testified that dropping below the 15-carrier requirement would necessitate a discussion of “what [region] do you want to give up?”

Deterrence as a Strategy

I agree with many of today’s military leaders that war is not inevitable, but to conclude that the only way to win in the face of malign or belligerent nations is not to go to war is naïve at best, and is not grounded in a strategy that uses deterrence as its first principle. 

It would be better to acknowledge that we are not going to conduct a land campaign against China, so in conventional thinking, the U.S. cannot “win” a war, however, much as with nuclear war, deterrence should be considered “winning.” When military leaders use language like “fight and win,” it downplays the primary objective of deterrence and ultimately may shape force structure and force employment in the wrong direction. 

A deterrence strategy should not be a byproduct of an offensive strategy. According to a 2017 Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) study, in the decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, “the U.S. Navy pursued a deterrence posture that relied on modest levels of forward deployed forces that were smaller representations of the larger force. To avoid instability caused by regional powers, deterrence was premised on the promise of punishment that would arrive with follow-on forces.” Bryan Clark, testifying about the study in 2017, affirmed “the emergence of great power competition is going to put the onus on us to deter conflict with those great powers.” 

Each contingency plan has a phase of deterrence, or what the Navy terms “presence,” day-to-day requirements for ships at sea. In the past 20 years, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dominated the Navy’s power projection requirements and structural cracks in our force generation and employment models have been revealed. Many ships have deployed back-to-back with maintenance truncated, only to have future maintenance availabilities extended to double or more of their original length, requiring another ship to deploy in their place. The Navy has tried to “reset” this cycle on several occasions, only to be told that they must surge again to meet emergent requirements. 

Today, the combined CCDR day-to-day requirements for all theaters would require 150 more ships than are presently in the fleet. Moreover, although the Navy can provide flexible strike options without the need for overflight consideration, the last two decades of war have shown that our Navy is not adequately sized using current force employment models to provide this enduring capability.

The inherent mobility of a navy provides a deterrent when present, but when removed it reminds enemies—and allies alike—of the unfixed nature of a mobile force, and could create the incorrect perception that an opening exists for aggression. Case in point is the recent deployment of the forward-based carrier Ronald Reagan from Japan to the Middle East. A ship can only be in one place at one time, therefore, political decisions or CCDR requests can also take away the deterrent that was present yesterday. 

The same is not true for forward based ground troops. During the past twenty years, the Army did not lower the troop levels in Korea or Germany to deploy them to Iraq and Afghanistan—but that is precisely what the Navy did with its own force posture commitments. Naval forces that otherwise would have been present in the Mediterranean, Western Pacific, and North Atlantic have instead persistently been deployed to the Middle East, leaving a massive presence gap that China has exploited.

A New Maritime Strategy

The same 2017 CSBA study cited earlier provides a compelling model for developing a new maritime strategy. This study proposes a revolution in naval strategy and presence. This new “deterrent strategy” would organize forces into distinct Deterrence Forces and Maneuver Forces, with each having separate force structures and missions. The study suggested that the Navy should “focus on sustaining an effective posture for conventional deterrence rather than an efficient presence to meet near-term operational needs.” 

The Deterrence Forces

Much has been written over the past 70 years about the actual success of deterrent strategies, but many believe it is a strategy worth pursuing. Deterrence cannot be measured in real time and although it is the cornerstone of our National Defense from nuclear to conventional conflict, there is no way to accurately measure its success or failure. Only in retrospect can we know that our strategy of deterrence has worked – and it has clearly worked in nuclear conflict, but not always in conventional conflict. 

In a deterrent strategy, the commitment of the defender, in this case the U.S., must be resolute and unwavering. As Robert Jervis noted, “perceptions are the dominant variable in deterrence success or failure.” Bruce Russett concluded that deterrence fails “when the attacker decides that the defender’s threat is not likely to be fulfilled.” This does not mean that the U.S. must respond to every provocation, as it often did during the Cold War, but as Michael J. Mazarr noted, “successful deterrence typically involves…taking steps to demonstrate both the capability and determination to fulfill a threat.” It is this capability and determination that may have led Michèle Flournoy to state that if the U.S. had the capability to “credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines, and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours, Chinese leaders might think twice before, say, launching a blockade or invasion of Taiwan…” 

The Navy and Marine Corps by their inherent construct are uniquely positioned to provide both general (ongoing, persistent) and immediate (short-term, urgent) deterrent forces. In a 2020 article, Erik Gartzke and Jon R. Lindsay stated that “One of the defining characteristics of a naval force is its special role in projecting power. Navies enable countries to influence politics in more places, more decisively, farther from home.” The article provides an in-depth discussion of the role of naval power and identifies actions that demonstrate resolve and capability, and that make room for adversaries to reach bargains, rather than conflict. This is precisely the reason the U.S. Navy should be persistently present on the high seas around the globe. This deterrent presence cannot simply be the byproduct of the current Navy global presence construct. It must be intentional, persistent, and tailored to the individual theater.

The CSBA study provides a detailed proposal of the composition and deployment locations of the deterrence force, and although I do not agree with the entirety of the force structure or locations outlined in the study, the overarching concept it defines is valid and should be considered as a foundation of a new maritime strategy. 

In this construct, the Deterrence Force consists primarily of forward deployed naval forces, with a force generation model that produces a full year of deployed ship presence for every two ships, which is 2.5 times what we achieve today through purely rotational forces. The study’s force construct provides for a mix of low- and high-end forces, including unmanned surface and sub-surface vehicles. Carrier strike groups would not be part of Deterrence Forces.

The Maneuver Forces

While the Deterrence Force is the first line of defense preventing near-peer competitors from achieving a fait accompli, the Maneuver Force arrives to conduct sustained warfare, and will be augmented by the remainder of CONUS-based rotational forces when they arrive later.

In the CSBA study the Maneuver Forces are deployed on a more traditional, rotational model such as the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP) and are centered exclusively on carrier strike groups. The study provides for two carrier strike groups deployed continuously, but independent from current global force management plans. Instead, these forces “will need to be prepared for a wider range of possible operational environments, more potential adversaries, a larger number of alliance relationships, and a higher likelihood of being faced with high-intensity sustained combat.” In the study, the Maneuver Forces consist of multi-carrier task groups not assigned to a particular region, but free to move between theaters conducting major exercises, experimenting with tactics, and operating with allies. 

Next Steps

The Navy should develop a maritime strategy and corresponding force structure based on the Deterrence and Maneuver Force construct outlined in the CSBA study, make changes to operating models as rapidly as possible, and make their intentions widely known. 

The 2017 CSBA study makes a strong case for adoption of this new operating model and for making significant changes to future naval forces. We simply cannot continue to use the same outdated approach to conventional deterrence and expect to successfully deter peer competitors. The study concludes that:

“This [current] approach to conventional deterrence will likely not work against the potential great power aggressors of the 2030s, who are likely to seek the ability to achieve a quick, decisive victory over adversaries. Efforts to reverse the results of aggression would require a much larger conflict and would likely have global consequences that would create international pressure to reach a quick settlement. To be deterred in the 2030s, aggressors must be presented with the possibility that their goals will be denied or that the immediate costs to pursue them will be prohibitively high.”

The conundrum we face today is that there is no time to waste in developing this new strategy and method of operations. The CSBA study calls for significant investment in new platforms and overseas basing that are both costly and time consuming. 

Many of the force changes proposed in the study would take decades to achieve and proposals such as basing forces in Vietnam and the Philippines are unlikely to materialize. However, force employment and generation can be changed quickly, and existing infrastructure and basing agreements can be rapidly leveraged to achieve the goals of this strategy.

In order to quickly establish the Deterrence Force, I differ somewhat from the CSBA study in the proposed locations for these units and believe that we must take advantage of locations where we currently conduct routine operations and have existing infrastructure. These forces could be postured in a sweeping arc encircling China, from Djibouti to Diego Garcia to Singapore to Guam to Japan, very similar to the Akhromeyev Map. This would include standing up the First Fleet in Singapore, as proposed by the former Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite. We should work with allies in the region on increasingly-coordinated operations and extend and strengthen our compacts with island nations, such the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, who have expressed a willingness to work closely with the U.S. to reject Chinese influence.

In the Mediterranean and European theater, deterrent forces should be based in Souda Bay, Spain, and Norway to counter Russian malign efforts in the region, with additional forces stationed in Alaska. This would also be a deterrent force poised to respond in the Arctic.

For the Maneuver Force, a slightly different approach than that discussed in the CSBA study is achievable today. Operating these maneuver forces using a FDNF CONUS-based model would position one carrier strike group on each coast, with the remainder of the carriers operating in a rotational model (such as OFRP) until it is their turn to rotate into the FDNF model. Additionally, the Japan-based FDNF carrier would remain on its current cycle. The two FDNF CONUS carriers would then split the globe and operate as maneuver forces in a regional model vice specific allocation to a combatant commander. 

Finally, I propose that by using existing platforms we can achieve most of the deterrent effect of this strategy in the next five years. We should increase DDG procurement to four per year (two per yard per year), rapidly ramp-up and expand the FFG program to a second production yard, modify current platforms such as the MK VI patrol boat with missile launchers, field the Naval Strike Missile on LCS, and convert commercial vessels to large VLS magazines. Additionally, while the Marine Corps fully develops its Expeditionary Advance Base Operations concept, they could begin testing the concept using the LCS and EPF platforms. I postulate that this deterrence effect can be gained for as little as a 5% increase in the current Navy budget ($10B) per year. Much as John Lehman wrote in discussing the development of the 1984 Maritime Strategy, 90 percent of the deterrent power of this buildup could be achieved in the first year. This was done by publicly declaring and explaining the strategy, especially its naval component, and taking actions that left no doubt among friend and foe that it would be achieved.

Conclusion 

The United States has a unique role in history. Seth Cropsey and Bryan McGrath wrote in 2017, “the paradox of the American experience is that the U.S. is not simply a great power – it is an exceptional power, for which ideals count as much as strength.” It is this exceptional power – and responsibility – that requires exceptional thinking by the political and military leaders of our nation. This global maritime strategy can work, but the Navy will have to overcome substantial barriers to change in the Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, amongst the Services, and within the National Security Council and Congress. However, one cannot argue with a good plan. All we need is the plan and a few champions on Capitol Hill.

Representative Elaine Luria is a 20-year Navy veteran who represents Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District and serves as the Vice-Chair of the House Armed Services Committee.

Featured image: PERSIAN GULF (April 7, 2007) – Guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio (CG 68) conducts normal underway operations as part of Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) Carrier Strike Group. Anzio is on a scheduled deployment in support of Maritime Security Operations (MSO). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Angel Contreras)

Capability Analysis

Is the Moskva-class Helicopter Cruiser the Best Naval Design for the Drone Era?

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By Przemysław Ziemacki

A variety of factors, including the long range capabilities of modern artillery, the evolution of drones and missiles, together with the need for stand-off and distributed lethality, have combined to make space in the world’s navies for a great comeback of helicopter cruisers.

Cold War Cruiser Redux

In the mid-part of the Cold War, helicopter cruisers became a quite popular ship design. This trend was less noticeable in the US Navy, which concentrated on full-size carriers during that period, but a few other navies decided to operate such naval vessels. In the 1960’s, the French Navy commissioned the Jeanne d’Arc, the Italian Navy – Andrea Doria, Caio Duilio and Vittorio Veneto, and the Soviet Navy – Moskva and Leningrad. All of these ships were either heavily armed or could easily increase their armament, while also providing relatively large flight decks and hangars. The helicopter cruisers responded to the increasing threat and role of submarines in naval warfare. The air wings on each ship class consisted of four or more ASW helicopters.

The most representative among these designs is the Moskva class helicopter cruiser. Although 12 hulls were originally planned, only two vessels were built. The Moskva class had a length of 189 meters (620 feet) and 19,200 tons full displacement – a bit smaller than a San Antonio-class amphibious warfare ship. The aft hangar and flight deck of the ASW cruiser was designed to carry 18 medium helicopters, such as the Kamov Ka 25 Hormone; its bow and midship section included 2 medium caliber (57mm) guns and 3 missiles launchers for 48 anti-aircraft and 24 anti-submarine missiles.

The helicopter cruisers quickly assumed roles beyond ASW, even as improvements in ship-mounted sonar and the need to operate fixed-wing aircraft curtailed further development of ASW cruisers. Successors of the ships mentioned above were mostly full-length flight deck vessels.

Today, as full-size aircraft carriers are increasingly vulnerable due to long-range and land based anti-ship missiles, the Moskva class design could emerge from the shadow of history. A ship design inspired by this cruiser would have both enough space for stand-off weapons and for an air wing composed of vertical lift drones and helicopters. The promise of greater range artillery, such as high velocity projectile (HVP) ammunition for existing 5” naval guns, could redefine the role of artillery in war at sea. These developments would allow a couple of 5” Mk45 guns to replace standard range anti-ship missiles (like Harpoon or NSM) and to complement anti-aircraft missiles in local defense. In the near future, long range anti-ship missiles will assume the strike and attack roles long held by fixed-wing manned naval aircraft. A design inspired by the Moskva-class could be equipped with 96 VLS cells – or more – that would allow for carrying a mix of at least 32 long range anti-ship missiles and various air defense missiles.

Naturally, the key point of choosing a helicopter carrier is to use helicopters. This proposed solution concentrates on replacing the platform’s original ASW helicopters with a mix of manned airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) heavy helicopters and vertical lift reconnaissance UAVs.

The hangar space would probably need to be divided between a flight deck level hangar for the larger, heavier helicopters and a lower hangar for smaller drones. This arrangement might limit the AEW&C helicopters to only four, but this would nevertheless equal the number of E2D Hawkeyes frequently embarked on a full-size aircraft carrier. Moreover, one should not forget the potential for tiltrotor manned aircraft for AEW&C missions, which would effect better range and operational time than helicopters. Projects like DARPA’s Tern promise compact reconnaissance UAVs that have the range of a fixed-wing UAV but can still take off and land like a helicopter.

The vessel’s strong armament and the vertical lift air wing would make it a self-dependent unit, harkening back to the reconnaissance-strike roots of early carrier-based aircraft. In this context, a vessel inspired by the Moskva-class helicopter carrier and upgraded with stealth lines seems to be a ready solution for distributed lethality and stand-off tactics.

Tactical Employment

A wartime task group would include two of the proposed helicopter carriers and at least 3 ASW frigates, which also could provide additional long range anti-ship missiles, extra naval guns, and organic ASW helicopters.

The areas where such task groups would be the most effective include waters of the South-West Pacific Ocean and the triangle of the Norwegian Sea, the Greenland Sea and the Barents Sea. These waters are key zones for global business and security during peacetime while also being characterized by great air- and land-based missile threat during conflict. A potential enemy has high anti-access/area denial (A2AD) capabilities in these areas, which makes traditional air-sea battle tactics too risky. The proposed helicopter cruiser task groups could execute distributed lethality tactics, as they would be less expensive and more numerous than the carrier task groups.

The main aim of the proposed task groups is to create their own sea denial capabilities, in other words, to prevent enemies’ activity in the circle of about 200 nautical mile (Nm) against the air targets and about 500 Nm against the surface targets from the task group. The air wing of the new Moskva-class should be able to provide long-range, over-the-horizon reconnaissance and closer early warning of both surface and air threats.

The AEW&C helicopters carried by the proposed task groups would allow the ships in the task group to turn off their ships’ radars and minimize their electro-magnetic signature. Because of their self-dependence, these ships could easily employ lone wolf tactics, for example sortieing out against enemy task groups. They could also be used for taking control of choke points, or they could prevent enemy forces from landing on allied islands – especially with submarine support.

Many assert that submarines are the right tool to operate near the enemy coast during hostilities – for example, within the first island chain. The problem, however, is that submarines remain vulnerable to enemy ASW forces. Deploying the proposed task group behind own submarines, in a supporting role, would allow the destruction of enemy ASW surface vessels before they could fulfill their mission. Naturally, in more favorable and less threatening circumstances the proposed helicopter cruisers could join a carrier strike group or support forward-deployed Marine Corps operations. Conversely, if full-size carriers are in high demand within a given theater, these vessels could perform presence operations elsewhere.

The new Moskva-class design provokes reflection about the Zumwalt-class destroyer. If we make the Zumwalt-class a bit bigger and a bit less high tech, we will get a vessel that would be very similar to the proposed helicopter carrier but probably much more cost effective and flexible. In the Cold War there was a plan to create a helicopter destroyer (DDH) as a modified Spruance-class destroyer. The DDH was believed not to cost much more to build than a standard Spruance-class destroyer in the condition of series production – as they say, “steel is cheap and air is free.” It is fair to assume that the cost of the helicopter cruiser in relation to a cruiser (or a big destroyer – the difference between these two types is diminishing) could be attractive today as well.

There is also another naval design close to the helicopter cruiser – a landing platform dock (LPD). Most LPDs have enough space and adequate designs for being equipped in AESA radars, missiles, MCGs, helicopters and UAVs. Naturally, a LPD design would need to be adapted for both speed and hull survivability of DDGs. However, it would be very important to remember that the proposed helicopter cruiser is not an arsenal ship. There must exist a balanced quantity of missiles per warship, adequate to the distributed lethality concept. If naval combat requires more missiles, navies should rather look for new concepts of external floating storage rather than concentrating great amounts of scarce and expensive weapons in a single hull – a valuable sitting duck.   

After WWII there were very few naval battles and very many non-war naval operations which favored vessels with maximal aircraft capability and a lot of cargo-like space. A helicopter cruiser would have these qualities in far greater measure than typical cruisers and destroyers. The key advantage of the proposed helicopter cruiser is the flight deck, which enables at least two helicopters to take off or land at the same time. It would be easy to replace the AEW&C helicopters with other platforms and cargo, supporting special forces, humanitarian assistance, mine countermeasures, ASW, and many other missions. The history of the Jeanne d’Arc helicopter cruiser proves this flexibility well.

A design evolved from the Moskva-class could provide high AAW and ASuW self-sufficiency as well as it could be a very flexible platform for many additional tasks. The key assumption of this concept is to consider the proposed vessel as an expendable destroyer/cruiser rather than a distributed carrier. This is why the term “sea control ship” has not been mentioned above – it is a sea denial ship. In the face of the great missile threat and unmanned revolution the air sea battle concept needs to evolve and incorporate new solutions. In spite of strong criticism, full size carriers still provide capabilities and inherent flexibility that other warships cannot match. By adding the proposed air wing to a DDG or CG, the US Navy might get an additional class of capital ships that could act in parallel to CVNs – making the whole fleet architecture both less vulnerable and more diversified.

Przemysław Ziemacki is a freelancer journalist and photographer from Poland. He currently writes for Polityka, one of the largest Polish weeklies. He previously worked for the local press and has also published in National Geographic Poland. He has a long-standing avocational interest in naval matters; this article is his first foreign publication on the subject.

Feature photo: A port beam view of the Soviet Moskva-class helicopter cruiser Leningrad underway. Photo Credit: U.S. Department of Defense.

Future Tech

For America and Japan, Peace and Security Through Technology, Pt. 2

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By Capt. Tuan N. Pham, USN

Part one of this two-part series calls for a bilateral technology roadmap to field and sustain a lethal, resilient, and rapidly adapting technology-enabled Joint Force (Multi-Domain Defense Force) that can seamlessly conduct high-end maritime operations in the Indo-Pacific.

Part two underscores the imperatives to do so, and provides geostrategic context by framing the growing technology competition within the region through the lens of Great Power Competition (GPC) in the 21st century. China, Russia, America, and Japan are intertwined in GPC, with all four nations fully committed to national security innovation for competitive advantages.

China – Seeking Global Technological Dominance (Technological Revisionism)

China has embarked on a whole-of-nation effort to achieve civil-military development and integration of emerging technologies, seeking to become a Science and Technology (S&T) superpower with a strong economy, a powerful military, and a harmonious society – able to fight and win global conflicts across every domain of strategic competition (economic, political, ideological, and military). Using national tools – government, industry, and academia – to promote domestic technological innovation and access foreign technology, Beijing hopes to leapfrog the United States and the other industrialized nations in technological prowess en route to global preeminence and the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. China invests heavily in advanced dual-use technologies, hoping that they will improve the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) capabilities and increase its capacities to achieve battlefield dominance across contested and interconnected warfighting domains.

The Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy’s ultimate goal is the “gradual build-up of China’s unified military-civil system of strategies and strategic capabilities.” The strategy is not an addition to China’s other national strategic priorities, but rather a “supporting strategy whose parts integrate into China’s system of national strategies to form a broad national strategic system” that advances the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) overarching security and development goals and realizes its strategic aspirations (Chinese Dream). General Secretary of the CCP Xi Jinping described the MCF strategy as a “major policy decision designed to balance security and development, and is a major measure in response to complex security threats and a means of gaining strategic advantages.”

As the name suggests, the strategy seeks to synchronize and integrate civil and military operations, activities, and investments. The civil aspects encompass the economic and social systems that relate to national security as well as the contested domains and competitive technologies such as maritime, space, cyberspace, autonomy, and artificial intelligence (AI) that are intricately linked to the development and sustainment of “New Type Combat Capabilities.” The military aspects cover every aspect of national security to include the PLA and enabling national defense technologies and infrastructures. The MCF strategy gives the PLA unfettered access into civil entities developing and acquiring advanced technologies, to include state-owned and private firms, universities, and research programs such as the Thousand Talents Program. All in all, the strategy’s core goals are the optimization of national resource allocation, generation of combat readiness, and manifestation of economic prosperity.

The drive for technological dominance is not a new policy. The fixation with advanced technology dates back to the founding of the country and the founder Mao Zedong. Mao envisioned the “socialist world’s overwhelming superiority in S&T and came to see technological strength as central to economic, ideological, and geopolitical power for China” – a view that CCP leaders still hold today. Xi characterized the national pursuit of technology as “ganchao” (catch up and surpass). The strategic objective is one of the CCP’s most defining and enduring goals, and provides an essential policy framework to understand “China’s ambition to become a technological superpower, bringing together the legacies of Marxism, Maoism, and the relentless drive toward modernization [realization of the Chinese Dream] by the CCP.”    

Xi embraced “ganchao” and made it his own. In January of 2013, shortly after assuming power, Xi laid out his vision for China’s future through the lens of national rejuvenation and reinvigorated national efforts to “catch up and surpass,” reinforcing the legacy linkage of technological advancements to the ideology and identity of the CCP. Four years later, at the 19th National Congress of the CCP, Xi reaffirmed the strategic roadmap for the Chinese Dream. Xi moved China forward from Mao’s revolutionary legacy and Deng’s iconic policy dictum – “observe calmly, secure our position, cope with affairs calmly, hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile, and never claim leadership” – and heralded a new era in Chinese national development. To Xi, technological innovation, by all means, is necessary to surpass the West, and technological dominance is the path to realize global preeminence by 2049.             

Beijing’s Made in China 2025 and Internet Plus policies are two key components of China’s strategic plan to achieve technological dominance by the end of the decade and global preeminence by 2049. The former aims to push the economy towards higher value-added manufacturing and services through digital technology and automation. It is a blueprint to upgrade the manufacturing capabilities of Chinese industries into a more technology-intensive dynamo. The latter aims to capitalize on China’s massive online consumer market by building up the country’s domestic mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, and Internet of Things (IoT) sectors. It is a roadmap to integrate information technology with the key industries of manufacturing, commerce, banking, and agriculture. Both policies have been characterized as an innovation mercantilism that leverages the power of the state to “alter competitive dynamics in global markets from industries core to economic competitiveness.” 

In the maritime domain, Xi called for accelerating innovation in marine technologies to increase capacity and improve naval development capability, fostering the development of domestic marine industries in support of both PLA modernization and reform efforts and national civilian projects like the Made in China 2025 and Digital Belt and Road Initiative. He promoted marine connectivity and practical collaboration to develop “blue partnerships” among like-minded maritime nations under the One Belt and One Road framework at last year’s China Marine Economy Expo.

Russia – Rebuilding Technology Base for National Greatness (Technological Revanchism)

In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin presciently declared that “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere [explicitly AI and implicitly technology at large] will become the ruler of the world.” The bold statement summarizes the purpose and intent behind the 2017 Strategy for the Development of an Information Society for 2017–2030, one of Putin’s key policy initiatives to restore Russia to its former glory. The strategy prioritizes areas deemed essential for the successful development of Russian information and communication technologies, specifically:

  • New generation of electronic networks
  • Processing of large volumes of data
  • AI
  • Electronic identification and authentication
  • Cloud computing
  • Post-industrial Internet
  • Robotics
  • Biotechnologies Information security

The strategy also devotes considerable attention to “ideological concerns, including the prioritization of Russian traditional spiritual and cultural values, popularization of Russian culture and science abroad, and proliferation of steady cultural and educational contacts with Russian compatriots living abroad.” The intent relates to the “Russian World” concept that aims to propagate Russian soft power abroad.

The 2017 Strategy for the Development of an Information Society supplements and complements the greater 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS) that codifies Russia’s strategic interests and national priorities. The strategic document identifies Russian national interests as “strengthening the country’s defense, ensuring political and social stability, raising the living standard, preserving and developing culture, improving the economy, and enhancing Russia’s status as a leading world power.” The strategy reflects a Russia more confident in its ability to defend its sovereignty, resist Western pressure and influence, and realize its great power aspirations.

The Russian military remains essential to Putin’s ambitious and expansive strategic plan to restore Russia to its former Soviet greatness. The incremental modernization of Russia’s military depends on the future viability and sustainability of the Russian defense industry. Moscow funds or subsidizes its defense industry primarily through four state-supported investment approaches that provide insights into current defense priorities and future defense developments: “In certain areas, the Kremlin invested significant resources in recapitalizing key defense corporations indicating its prioritization of the systems they produce and the technologies they develop. In other areas, Russia engaged in enduring support of critical defense corporations demonstrating its long-term commitment to key technologies. Another approach reflects the incorporation of its defense corporations into state-owned enterprises. The last approach is speculative investment in dual-use technologies through means such as venture capital.”

America – Maintaining Global Technology Leadership (Technological Superiority)

The 2017 NSS charges the National Security Enterprise to promote American prosperity by leading in research, technology, invention, and innovation to sustain and expand competitive advantages in today’s strategic environment of GPC. The tasked priority actions include understanding worldwide S&T trends, attracting and retaining inventors and innovators, leveraging private capital and expertise to build and innovate, and rapidly fielding inventions and innovations. The NSS also charges the Department of Defense (DOD) to preserve the peace through strength by renewing military capabilities to retain military overmatch for competitive advantages. Overmatch strengthens diplomacy and shapes the international environment to protect and advance U.S. national interests. To maintain military overmatch, the United States must restore the ability to build innovative defense capabilities, force readiness for major conflict and strategic competition, and size of the force so that it is capable of operating at a sufficient scale and for a duration to win across a range of contingencies and interconnected domains. Lastly, the NSS calls on key allies and partners to modernize, acquire the necessary joint warfighting capabilities, improve force readiness, expand the size of their forces, and affirm the political will to compete and win.     

Within the DOD, the 2018 National Defense Strategy, 2018 National Military Strategy, and Defense Planning Guidance collectively highlight the need for competitive technological innovation in national security to sustain and expand the U.S. military competitive advantages, and direct greater partnerships between the DOD and commercial enterprises to out-innovate global competitors. Nowhere is the need for commercial technological innovation more compelling than in the DOD. The 2019 Digital Modernization Strategy states that “technological innovation is a key element of future readiness and essential to preserving and expanding U.S. military competitive advantage in the face of near-peer competition and asymmetric threats.” The strategy calls for the ability, flexibility, and agility to innovatively and rapidly field technology-enabled warfighting capability to the warfighter faster than potential adversaries. The guiding principles for DOD’s acquisition of commercial technology capabilities underscore that “preserving and expanding our military advantage depends on our ability to deliver technology faster than our adversaries and the agility of our enterprise to adapt our way of fighting to the potential advantages of innovative technology.”   

Within the Department of Navy, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday emphasizes the role of allies and partners in enforcing international maritime norms and operating together as a technology-enabled Joint Force. He declared his intention to bring key U.S. allies and partners along with the U.S. Navy (USN) as it moves into high-end maritime operations at last year’s 12th Regional Sea Power Symposium. He told his contemporaries from more than 30 foreign navies that “today, the very nature of our operating environment requires shared common values and a collective approach to maritime security…and that makes steady, enduring Navy-to-Navy relationships more important than ever”. He concluded his remarks by addressing the fluid technological environment and how emerging disruptive technologies affect the character of naval operations and warfare (warfighting). He underscored tactical cloud computing, AI, and machine learning as technological drivers of change for the USN and by extension allied and partnered navies. 

Admiral Gilday expounded on these points when he promulgated his initial guidance to the Fleet a few months later. The directive, in the form of a fragmentary order (FRAGO), simplified, prioritized, and built on the foundation of “A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0” issued by his predecessor. The FRAGO directs dedicated efforts across three critical areas – warfighting, warfighters, and the future Navy – and focuses on building alliances and partnerships to broaden and strengthen global maritime awareness, access, capabilities, and capacities. 

The FRAGO aligns well with the Secretary of Navy’s (SECNAV) guidance to mitigate the unpredictability of the future by building and maintaining a “robust constellation of partners and allies to work with us to solve common security challenges which are beyond our ability to predict, or defeat alone.” The SECNAV underscored two key initiatives. First, cooperative international agreements jointly produce, procure, and sustain naval armaments to reduce U.S. and partner costs, improve bilateral interoperability, and forge closer ties between U.S. and partner nation operating forces and acquisition and logistics communities. Second, S&T and data exchange agreements facilitate Research and Development (R&D) and information exchanges with allied or friendly nations, and marshal the technological capabilities of the United States and our key allies and partners to accelerate R&D and fielding of equipment for the common defense.  

The FRAGO also aligns well with the newly released Tri-Service Maritime Strategy (Advantage at Sea, Prevailing with All-Domain Naval Power). The joint strategy focuses on China and Russia and guides the Naval Service (USN, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Coast Guard) for the next decade to prevail across the continuum of competition. The strategy has two main components. First, it articulates the employment of integrated all-domain naval power across the competition continuum. Second, it guides the development of an integrated all-domain naval force.

Japan – Advancing Toward Society 5.0 (Technological Evolution)

Japan takes a broader societal perspective of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). In 2017, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiled Society 5.0, a future society that leverages technology in the key pillars of infrastructure, finance technology, healthcare, logistics, and AI to achieve economic advancement and solve societal problems. The super-smart society (Society 5.0) is the fifth step in the evolution of human development. It follows the information society (Society 4.0), industrial society (Society 3.0), agricultural society (Society 2.0), and hunting and gathering society (Society 1.0). The vision is to liberate people from routine tasks and to meet the needs of every person while not surrendering all control to technology. Society 5.0 boldly creates a social contract and economic model by fully integrating the technological innovations of the 4IR throughout every facet of Japanese society. The dual-use nature of these developing civil technologies also has national security applications and implications. 

Like in the United States, GPC influences Japan’s national security perspectives as outlined in its NSS. The NSS shapes Japanese defense priorities through the lens of enduring regional threats like China, North Korea, and Russia; emerging contested and interconnected domains of space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS); the U.S.-Japan Alliance; and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific. Within the Ministry of Defense (MOD), the National Defense Planning Guidelines for FY2019 and Beyond, Mid-Term Defense Program FY2019-2023, and 2019 R&D Vision call for the development of a Multi-Domain Defense Force (Joint Force) that can conduct seamless and integrated cross-domain operations to preserve the security, prosperity, and independence of Japan. These operations fuse the new domains of space, cyberspace, and the EMS with the traditional domains of maritime, air, and land. The challenge for the MOD is how best to leverage the pervasive technological innovation happenings in the government, private industry, and academia within Japan and collaborate with the U.S. DOD on technological innovation.

Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), in coordination with the other services, continues to make prudent targeted investments to develop a Multi-Domain Defense Force, strengthen the U.S.-Japan Alliance, take better care of its personnel, and hedge for the future. The FY2019,  FY2020, and FY2021 defense budgets (JMSDF allocation) focus on building capabilities and increasing capacities in command, control, communications, computers, ISR, and targeting (C4ISRT), information warfare, cyberspace network operations and defense, space warfare, undersea warfare, and ballistic missile defense. The JMSDF also makes investments in four enabling organizational areas. Firstly, enhance function in all phases through continuous enhancement of necessary capabilities. Secondly, better develop concepts necessary for defending the country by utilizing the JMSDF capabilities to their full potential. Thirdly, further strengthen cooperation through deepening relationships with other navies with the U.S.-Japan Alliance as its core, and through making full use of joint and comprehensive relationships with various partners. Lastly, improve personnel programs, the foundation of the JMSDF, both in quality and in quantity.

Technology Competition

GPC is alive and well in the Indo-Pacific, particularly in the contested technology domain. Russia, China, America, and Japan are entangled in a competitive technology race for economic prosperity and national security. Although allied Washington and Tokyo are fully committed to national security technological innovation as evidenced by their respective national defense strategies and mutual pursuit of a technology-enabled Joint Force (Multi-Domain Defense Force), the broader DOD (USN) and MOD (JMSDF) must better leverage emerging technologies and developing concomitant warfare concepts (doctrines) to adapt to the new way of fighting. Otherwise, the United States and Japan risk ceding the technology domain and consequently military superiority in the Indo-Pacific to revisionist China and revanchist Russia.

CAPT Pham is a maritime strategist, strategic planner, naval researcher, and China Hand with 20 years of experience in the Indo-Pacific. He completed a research paper with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) at the U.S. Naval War College (USNWC) in 2020. The articles are derived from the aforesaid paper. The views expressed here are personal and do not reflect the positions of the U.S. Government, USN, ONR or USNWC.

Featured Image: SAN DIEGO (Feb. 23, 2017) Cmdr. Mark Stefanik, commanding officer of the littoral combat ship USS Montgomery (LCS 8), discusses the ship’s engineering capabilities with Japan Maritime Self Defense Force Director of Ships and Weapons Division, Capt. Shinichi Imayoshi. (U.S. Navy photo by Fire Controlman 1st Class Nathaniel J. Wells/Released)

Strategic Sealift Week

Clandestine Cargo: Hiding Sealift in Plain Sight

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Strategic Sealift Topic Week

By Christian Morris and Heather Bacon-Shone

Introduction

Insulated by oceans to the east and west, and friendly neighbors to the north and south, America will always have to concern itself with sealift when fighting. It is well-acknowledged that while for some eight decades the U.S. has been able to move military materiel largely without contest from one theater to another. But this will likely not be the case in some future fight. This concern has dredged up, in memory and in practice, tactics employed decades ago to defend against contested oceans.1 To pace threats and ensure sealift survivability, America could relatively safely “smuggle” a certain amount of clandestinely loaded military materiel across contested oceans and through contested chokepoints, until reaching friendly offload destinations in theater.

Devising A New Approach to Sealift 

In a 21st-century world of over-the-horizon ballistic missiles, cloud-penetrating synthetic aperture radar, and global satellite imagery, where remarkable resolution and coverage are available even from open sources, we can no longer rely upon 20th-century tactics to “hide” sealift, whether solo or convoyed, in transit. While certain elements of emissions control (EMCON) and operational discipline can complicate adversary firing solutions and enhance escorts’ ability to shield high-value assets from attack,2 we must assume the adversary will be attentively watching every step of loadout, transit, and offload and in near-real time.

America’s hope is that its large network of allies and coalition partners worldwide, a small handful of Afloat Prepositioning ships, and a scattering of vestigial bases largely left over from previous generations’ conflicts, will provide sufficient maritime resupply and security in case of conflicts across contested waters. Though such friendly ports may wait with welcome roads, railways, and runways at the end of an arduous maritime journey, sealift ships still have to get there safely. For those early stages of overseas conflict, before America has gained control over her sea lines of communication (SLOCs), she still lacks a 21st-century secure sealift solution.

If the Chinese Communist approach to contested oceans is state ownership and control of resources, it seems the capitalist, democratic approach would be to embrace the natural camouflage of a heterogeneous, profit-driven, highly international containerized shipping industry. For example, a vessel’s owners may be Greek, the company Danish, the insurers British, the officers Eastern European, the unlicensed mariners Filipino, the embarked security American, the cargo from a half- dozen countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, and bound for customers throughout the Americas. And that is just one ship among thousands. For locating military sealift cargo that was clandestinely loaded, it would be fiendishly difficult to find one particular ship in the company of hundreds of lookalikes.

While sealift is often thought of in the context of sustainment, it is often also the precursor to initial intentional action. While existing national sealift assets – the Ready Reserve Fleet (RRF), Military Sealift Command (MSC) ships, and Maritime Security Program stipend ships – all play a valuable role once combat is engaged and SLOCs secured, the U.S. still lacks a good way to move assets into theater securely and discreetly at the start of hostilities or before opening a new front in the conflict. Secretly loading containerized military equipment among the millions of TEUs processed annually at key U.S. ports such as Los Angeles/Long Beach, New York/New Jersey, Houston/Galveston, and Savannah could help military sealift hide in plain sight.

The aging RRF ships, which struggle to maintain readiness despite heroic efforts from crews, could still be employed as decoys. These ships could make a big show of loading dummy vehicles, empty fuel bladders, and aircraft aboard them and sending them out in convoys, communicating in codes that are known to be compromised. Meanwhile, the actual critical materiel can move invisibly aboard MSP ships (provided their “cover” of commercial shipping remains unbroken) and in contracted spaces on other containerized vessels flagged under friendly nations.

To shepherd the cargo’s movement into theater, a plainclothes Navy Tactical Advisor (TACAD) could be hired, on articles, as an unassuming member of the ship’s company – since all TACADs, commissioned as Strategic Sealift Officers in the Navy Reserves, carry unlimited-tonnage deck or engine licenses. (TACADs, who currently conduct secure Navy communications and train for convoy operations aboard civilian vessels carrying military cargo, are well-suited for such duties.) Alternatively, with sufficient time to prepare, TACADs could be embedded unobtrusively as employees throughout international shipping fleets, similar to their natural civilian-job distribution in U.S. commercial shipping; and TRANSCOM could prioritize ships with TACADs in the crew for surreptitious military cargo movement.

To avoid concerns about their combatant status under the Geneva Conventions and Law of Armed Conflict, such “undercover” TACADs could be required to travel with a uniform and ID card to show in case of enemy capture – a tactic similar to that used by the Merchant Marine during the Vietnam War.

Additionally, TACADs could be required to surrender their civilian salaries to the government while on simultaneous orders, avoiding conflicts of interest while keeping the arrangement opaque to the ship’s crew. Finally, the U.S. government would need to be prepared to reimburse vessel owners for any loss or damage during transit; since the charter party contract, to maintain proper “cover,” likely would not specify the carriage of military cargo or employment of personnel under military orders.

It would be both unnecessary and unwise for such undercover TACADs to communicate updates on their secret cargo regularly, even by secure means. With the location and identity of those vessels easy to track via satellite imagery and cloud-piercing synthetic aperture radar, and with the elementary algebra of cryptanalysis resting on using knowns (vessel name and location) to guess unknowns (the method of encrypting that information), those codes, and all they protect, would be unnecessarily exposed. Nor should these vessels attempt to mask their location or identity; in a commercial shipping world where deck officers largely “drive by AIS,” being a dark target draws unnecessary navigational danger and sound Bridge Resource Management principles require deck officers to maintain a proper lookout by all available means, commercial shipping’s dependence on AIS as a near-sole means of collision avoidance creates significant risk of collision for even the most attentive mate aboard a non-transmitting vessel in a busy shipping channel. Modern deck officers often assume non-AIS radar blips are tiny pleasure craft or fishing vessels; unused to looking out the window to visually confirm, and assuming they are passing something small, they can create dangerously close CPAs – particularly hazardous in congested shipping lanes. Indeed, the lack of Navy ships’ AIS signals contributed to the 2017 collisions, spurring the Navy’s policy change to allow AIS transmission in crowded shipping lanes.

A congested AIS/ECDIS screen in the Singapore Strait. (Author graphic)

At the same time, coastal nations tracking marine traffic assume non-AIS targets are either warships or bad actors engaged in illegal activity – either way, drawing outsized attention, and potentially even aggressive engagement. “Going dark” might as well be wearing a giant “Look Here!” signboard in today’s operational intelligence world. It would be better to keep the civilian crew unaware of their clandestine military cargo, so the ship, operating normally, unwittingly, and safely blends into ordinary commercial traffic.

Conclusion

These clandestine solutions offer more flexibility for sealift and could help mitigate capacity shortfalls. They could also stretch adversary intelligence capabilities and dilute assets allocated toward finding and targeting sealift.

If, as Sun Tzu said, “All war is deception,” we should seek more ways for our 21st-century sealift to hide in plain sight.

Lt. j.g. Christian Morris, a graduate of Great Lakes Maritime Academy, sails commercially on the Great Lakes. He is a warfare-qualified Navy Reserve Strategic Sealift Officer who has twice served as a TACAD aboard commercial ships, in addition to assignments aboard Ready Reserve Fleet and Military Sealift Command ships. He holds an unlimited-horsepower 2nd Engineer’s license for steam and diesel.

Ens. Heather Bacon-Shone is a prior-service Coast Guard officer who sails as a civilian mariner with Military Sealift Command. A warfare-qualified Navy Reserve Strategic Sealift Officer, she has deployed twice as a TACAD and assisted the SSO Force with strategic planning and public affairs. A former member of the Chief of Naval Operations’ Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC), she holds an unlimited-tonnage Chief Mate’s license and is a Coast Guard Permanent Cutterman.

The opinions in this article are made in the authors’ personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or the authors’ civilian employers.

Endnotes

1. “The positive necessity for radio silence on the part of vessels engaged in naval operations during war cannot be emphasized too strongly.” J.M. Lewis, A digest of naval communications, US Naval Institute, 1928. In addition to emissions control, Lewis also champions the use of tactical signals passed through visual communications, including semaphore and flashing light. The use of emissions control to evade radio direction-finding dates to WWI; so does zig-zagging to avoid torpedoes. See Remarks on submarine tactics against convoys, Office of Naval Intelligence, 1917. Within a year, the Navy questioned the value of the zig-zag: Analysis of the Advantage of Speed and Changes of Course in Avoiding Attack By Submarine, Office of Naval Intelligence, 1918.

2. That is, if escort combatants are even available. See https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/10/10/youre-on-your-own-us-sealift-cant-count-on-us-navy-escorts-in-the-next-big-war-forcing-changes/. 

Featured Image: The Port of Singapore. (Photo via Reuters)