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Capability Analysis

More Hulls Now: What Treaty Cruisers Can Show the Navy About Innovating Ship Design

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By Ryan Hilger

“‘I am forced,’ said Mr. Balfour, ‘to the conclusion that now, for the first time in modern history, we are face to face with a naval situation so new and so dangerous that it is difficult for us to realize all its import.”1 Germany had launched its fourth dreadnought in four years and Britain was nervous. The Royal Navy had ruled the waves since Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar. But the international situation in the early 20th century was anything but certain as Britain and Germany embarked on an arms race, and with the United States and Japan close behind. After World War I, most of the major naval powers realized these enormous ships would only get larger, keeping all of them locked in an arms race when the world was supposed to be permanently at peace.

Today, the United States finds itself again in a multipolar world, with the Chinese and Russian navies looking more threatening by the day. Yet the Navy continues to wrestle with defining target ship counts and fleet sizes, and is struggling to find enough funding to substantially grow the fleet while adequately maintaining it. An op-ed in Breaking Defense called it the “spectacular collapse of Navy force planning.”2

In response to mounting tensions after WWI, the five major powers negotiated the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, limiting capital ship development to stabilize the arms race. The treaty, followed by the 1930 London Naval Treaty, created a new class of ship—treaty cruisers—and launched a long period of innovative naval development. The Navy responded with tremendous shipbuilding activity, producing 18 cruisers across five classes in 20 years. Treaty cruisers would go on to play a pivotal role in the outcome of World War II in the Pacific and were present at every major fleet action. The story of the treaty cruisers offers lessons for today’s Navy to creatively solve problems around hard constraints and innovate at the fleet level while building up for great power competition.

Early Cruisers

In 1915, the Navy learned through its annual fleet exercises that it needed a ship somewhere in stature between a destroyer and a battleship. Before this, the major maritime powers focused primarily on building ever-larger battleships and small destroyers to fight between them. At the time, cruisers served primarily as long-range scouts for the battle fleet—an important role. But the Navy only had a few of these ships. In an annual letter to Congress in 1915, Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Frank Fletcher, noted that on two fleet maneuvers, conducted while en route to Guantanamo Bay, the lack of cruisers for scouting allowed inferior forces to evade the battle fleet. Several days later, that same battle fleet found itself being tracked by destroyers for lack of cruisers to provide advance warning and keep the destroyers at bay.3 Admiral Fletcher noted:

[T]he lack of heavily armored fast vessels and light cruisers was especially felt for seven days from the start of the problem until it ended. The Blue commander in chief has no reliable information of the position or movements of the enemy while the enemy due to superior cruiser force was well informed of our movements and dispositions at all times.4

Admiral Fletcher noted that destroyers filled an admirable role here, but that their performance and seakeeping, especially during the winter months, made them unsuitable for long-range scouting and attack.5 Destroyers had vital roles to fill, but scouting was not one of them. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels noted in his letter with Admiral Fletcher’s report that “fast armored ships and fast light cruisers” were his third-highest priority, only behind the shortage of officers and Sailors.6 Out of this would rise the 10-ship Omaha class. It was a start.

The Battleship Holiday

In 1922, as the USS Omaha (CL 4) was being fitted out prior to commissioning, the United States negotiated the Washington Naval Treaty with Britain, Italy, Japan, and France. It contained a number of provisions designed to lessen the tensions between great powers by ensuring approximate tactical parity existed between them and that no fleet could become overly dominant.

The U.S. Navy light cruiser USS Omaha (CL-4) passing through the Panama Canal, circa 1925-1926. (Photo via Naval History and Heritage Command)

The treaty limited the total tonnage and armament of capital ships, generally seen as battleships and battlecruisers, limited aircraft carriers, and set tonnage and armament limits on a non-existent class of combatants: 10,000 tons and 8-inch guns.7 Importantly for the United States, Article XIX forbade improvements to shore fortifications in the Pacific, meaning that bases in the Philippines and Wake Island could not be strengthened further. This played a major role in shaping the strategic purpose of the new class and the decision to retire the oldest, most-costly, coal-burning ships in the fleet to free up tonnage for these new ships.8 The five powers immediately set to work developing this new class.

This new, unknown class presented a number of constraints for the Navy, in particular the General Board, to wrestle with. Combined with the 10,000 ton and 8-inch caliber gun limits, the prohibition on improving fortified shore bases in the Pacific and the limits on capital ship tonnage created additional degrees of complexity. The ships had to fill a strategic role, and wargaming War Plan Orange against Japan revealed that the fleet needed to be much larger than previously thought. The treaty’s 5-to-3 American advantage in capital ship tonnage over the Japanese was driven by the Navy’s desire to have at least a 7-to-6 advantage on reaching the Western Pacific, assuming the fleet lost 10 percent of the battle force for every thousand miles steamed.9

Ship readiness became of paramount concern. Planners quickly realized that they needed readiness levels in peacetime of greater than 90 percent to achieve the required wartime superiority against Japan.10 That threshold, especially when factoring in modernization, maintenance, and overhaul periods, became a pipe dream. Therefore the General Board worked aggressively to maximize combat power in the treaty cruisers, where individual ships would have a lesser individual impact on readiness figures. Simply put, they needed many more ships coming off the building ways than previously thought.

Constraints Foster Innovation

Given the complex constraints, the debate within the Navy and the General Board was understandably heated. The differences between “the General Board, and various bureaus representing the engineering, ordnance, and ship design communities” led to a protracted design process, and by the time the Pensacola was finally laid down in 1926, “work had already begun on an alternative design with a radically different hull configuration and armament layout,” which would become the Northampton class.11 Budgetary pressure from Congress in 1924 and 1925 complicated matters further as Congress refused to appropriate funds for the recommended eight new Pensacola-class cruisers.

Common wisdom considers the freedom from constraints to produce more creative solutions, but constraints actually produce better outcomes. Creativity is enhanced by embracing constraints.12 The Navy knew that it needed a new class of warships rapidly—the competing powers were all doing the same. The General Board felt international pressure to produce an affordable, minimum viable design to the maximum limits allowed by treaty as quickly as possible. Only an iterative approach would work to optimize these constraints, and the Board knew that it could not wait for new technologies to mature before producing the new class. The Pensacola-class cruisers were therefore designed for fast, independent steaming and long-range gunnery performance, reflecting the Board’s desires. Achieving this required the Board to sacrifice much of the armor and cram as much weaponry as they could into the design, earning the class the nickname ‘tinclads.’

The U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Pensacola (CA-24) underway at sea in September 1935. (Photo via Naval History and Heritage Command)

Today’s Navy faces a similar predicament. In an eerie parallel, the Navy has about the same number of surface combatants as it did in the mid-1920s when the Pensacolas were being built. It faces an even more complicated strategic environment and the curse of geography. Similar concerns over unrealistic force generation models, such as those that drove the 5-to-3 advantage, are echoed by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s recent comments to Congress. When asked why he rejected the Navy’s proposed shipbuilding plan, Secretary Esper said because in part “it kept the old deployment and readiness model, which is broken: It hasn’t worked for years, so why should we assume it will work in the future?”13 Current congressional budget challenges, especially with the coronavirus pandemic and the lagging Large Surface Combatant (LSC) timeline, are reminiscent of the challenges faced by the General Board and the ship design community in 1925.

The interwar Navy found a constrained solution through the iterative design and production of classes of ships. In fact, the recent award of 10 ships for the next generation frigate, FFG(X), could be considered the first iteration on a previous design.14 With longer construction times than in the 1920s, the Navy should consider iterating on the industry-proven frigate design to continue the production of successive flights when the first ten ships complete to keep the production lines hot.

Innovating Ship by Ship 

From 1922 to 1941, the Navy commissioned 18 treaty cruisers. While that seems like a good production run when compared to today’s Arleigh Burke destroyers, those 18 ships were from five different ship classes. By 1926, the General Board had approved the design for the Pensacola class and the first ships began construction. The Pensacola cruisers featured four 8-inch gun turrets—two turrets with three guns, and two turrets with two guns—extensive, but thin armor belts, two seaplanes, and a host of smaller armaments. In terms of dimensions and handling, she was comparable to the Ticonderoga class cruisers in service today: nearly 600 feet long, almost 60 feet wide, and top heavy with mediocre seakeeping.15

At the time cruiser production took approximately three years per ship. The Navy would normally have waited for the Pensacola to deliver and be put through sea trials and a myriad of experiments before making revisions or designing a new class. But other major powers were laying down cruisers just as quickly, forcing “successive classes…to be designed and ordered before their predecessors had been completed (or even launched), so modifications had to be made on a theoretical basis without the benefit of trials and operational service.”16 Thankfully the Navy only ordered the Pensacola and the Salt Lake City. The class did not keep well at sea. Their dimensions and top-heavy design made them prone to large rolls and the low freeboard meant that water shipped over the sides easily.17

The Navy quickly modified the base design to eliminate the unusual turret configuration and correct the stability issues before the Pensacola even launched from the New York Navy Yard. The six-ship Northampton class delivered with three triple turrets and vastly improved seakeeping. The class also delivered 1,000 tons below the treaty threshold, an unexpected bonus, allowing the Navy to proactively add armor and other enhancements after commissioning. Taking advantage of the improved seakeeping that Northampton displayed, the Navy ordered the two Pensacola cruisers be retrofitted in the 1930s to match. Retrofitting the classes of treaty cruisers with designs from newer classes would be a hallmark of the Navy’s cruiser fleet through World War II.

USS Northhampton (CA-26) underway, August 23 1935. (Photo via Navsource)

CNO Admiral John Richardson learned these lessons and incorporated them into the Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority. Admiral Richardson thought that “the large combatant and others could be designed and fielded rapidly through an approach that focused on a good hull design and significant power margins now, and worried less about systems that would be upgraded throughout the life of the ship.”18 But today, the Large Surface Combatant program continues to slip further right as the Navy seems focused on getting mostly everything right in a single step. Admiral Eugene Black, recently the Director of the Surface Warfare Directorate OPNAV N96, stated that the Large Surface Combatant was pushed to the right as part of a broader, lower risk approach while waiting for other technologies, like directed energy and advanced combat systems, to mature.19

The Navy has the opportunity to evolve its surface combatants more rapidly, and it must do so. While the Flight III Arleigh Burke has some improvements over previous flights and will continue building to pace the threat from China, the Zumwalt-class destroyer represents the best opportunity for the Navy.20 Despite their success, the Burkes have reached maximum structural capacity for innovation—there is simply no margin left.21 But there is hope. Recent at-sea testing of the Zumwalt, with its tumblehome hull, shows excellent stability in high seas.22 The class has many advantages and drawbacks, similar to what the Navy experienced with the early Pensacola and Northampton cruisers. In many ways, the improved seakeeping characteristics, integrated electric propulsion system, and large surplus of design margin gives the Navy an excellent platform on which to innovate. Indeed, the drawbacks for the Zumwalt class, such as the procurement costs and the armaments, are excellent constraints to build a better ship. The Navy has done this exercise before in transforming the improvements from the Seawolf class submarine into the more affordable and more capable Virginia class.23

CHESAPEAKE BAY, Md. (Oct. 17, 2016) USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) passes under the Gov. William Preston Lane Memorial Bridge, also known as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, as the ship travels to its new home port of San Diego, California. (U.S. Navy photo by Liz Wolter/Released)

A Twist

As the General Board iterated on the Northampton class, seeking to improve seakeeping and armaments, the world situation took another turn. In April 1930, the five naval powers met in London and signed the London Naval Treaty. The treaty created two distinct classes of treaty cruisers, with no limitations on ships with armaments under 6.1 inches and more restrictive limitations on the heavier treaty cruisers with 8-inch guns.24 The Navy gained an 18 to 12 advantage in heavy cruisers over Japan.

The Portland class, originally planned for eight ships, had already started construction on the first two ships of the class when the London Naval Treaty was signed. The General Board allowed Portland and Indianapolis to complete and again suspended the rest of the class. The twist reflected the slow deterioration of the international environment and the attempt to prevent a future war by enforcing a further degree of parity among the competing powers. The Navy, with great foresight, took the opportunity to shift the remaining Portland hulls to the fresh New Orleans class design.

Rapid Innovation

The New Orleans class proved pivotal. The Pensacola and Northampton cruisers attracted widespread criticism for their lack of armor, but these designs reflected Captain Frank Schofield’s 1923 General Board decision that the cruisers “forsake nearly all attempt at passive defense of these vessels—armor—in order to have weight available for the full development of steaming radius and gun power.”25 Before the London Naval Treaty, the General Board envisioned the future New Orleans class to show only modest changes from the Northampton class, but the treaty changed all of that.

The General Board acted boldly, ordering seven ships with three different designs to try out experimental technologies and configurations. The New Orleans class featured a complete redesign of the propulsion spaces, to spread the boilers and engine rooms out to improve performance, and the introduction of “immune zones,” which hardened vital areas, such as magazines, to better protect them without armoring the entire ship.26 The reduction in weight from redistributing armor allowed the designers to improve protection in key areas. As a class, these ships featured a better layout and continued the use of dedicated command spaces for flagship activities, which the Board first inserted in the truncated Portland class.

The U.S. Navy New Orleans-class heavy cruiser USS Astoria (CA-34) operating in Hawaiian waters during battle practice, 8 July 1942. (Photo via Naval History and Heritage Command)

Overall, the highly successful New Orleans class laid the foundations for the light and heavy cruiser classes, the Cleveland and Baltimore classes, that the United States would produce in large numbers after the passage of the Naval Expansion Act of 1938 (more commonly known as the Two Ocean Navy Act) which authorized the U.S. Navy that won World War II. The mature design and features of the New Orleans, which were included with one eye toward looming conflict and the other on the lessons from the prior classes, allowed the Navy to rapidly upgrade these ships as new weapons and radar-directed fire control systems came online, with devastating combat effectiveness.27

Prompt and Sustained Combat at Sea

 The evolutionary improvements in cruisers in the interwar period helped the Navy hold the line against the Japanese early in World War II. All classes of treaty cruisers, from the unstable, ‘tinclad’ Pensacola to the New Orleans classes, the last of the official treaty cruisers, fought in every major fleet engagement of the war, and their names are some of the most hallowed in naval history: Vincennes, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco.

Had the Navy waited, whether to perfect its requirements, for radar systems to mature, for the treaties to expire or to be renewed, it would have been deprived of ships that proved badly needed when war broke out. The General Board shows today’s Navy the path forward as it looks toward an era of renewed great power competition and constant congressional pressure to increase the battle force count. Several specific lessons include:

  • Older ships cost more to sustain. Aggressively aim to retire them in favor of new ships.
  • Embrace constraints to accelerate innovation while still delivering the needed ships.
  • Long production runs produce stable build times and lower procurement costs, but iterating through smaller production runs across multiple classes allows the Navy to deploy newer capabilities sooner.
  • Take modestly successful designs and continue to improve on them with each successive ship to the limits of naval architecture.

The Navy has already laid the groundwork to leverage our history with the new frigate class and the Zumwalt class. The Navy should not wait for new technologies to fully mature, but continue the evolutionary improvements to each successive flight of ships, inserting the technologies, like directed energy, when they are combat ready. As Vice Admiral Joseph Taussig remarked: “good men with poor ships are better than poor men with good ships.” We cannot predict when war might emerge, but should it start, we know that we will need more ships than we have today. Start building them now.

Lieutenant Commander Ryan Hilger is a Navy Engineering Duty Officer stationed in Washington D.C. He has served onboard USS Maine (SSBN 741), as Chief Engineer of USS Springfield (SSN 761), and ashore at the CNO Strategic Studies Group XXXIII and OPNAV N97. He holds a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. His views are his own and do not represent the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Navy.

References

1. “Germany’s Navy Scares Britain.” New York Tribune. 17 March 1909. Page 1, Image 1, Column 3. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1909-03-17/ed-1/seq-1/

2. Mark Cancian and Adam Saxton. “The Spectacular & Public Collapse of Navy Force Planning.” Breaking Defense, 26 January 2020. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/01/the-spectacular-public-collapse-of-navy-force-planning/

3. “The Atlantic Fleet in 1915: Letter from the Secretary of the Navy.” United States Congress. 64th, 1st Session, Senate Document No. 251, 1916, pp. 14-15. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015025950596&view=1up&seq=7

4. Ibid, p. 15.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid, p. 26.

7. “Limitation of Naval Armament (Five-Power Treaty or Washington Treaty).” 43 Stat. 1655. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1922, Vol. 1, Treaty Series 671, pp. 351-371, https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000002-0351.pdf

8. John Keuhn. “The Influence Of Naval Arms Limitation On U.S. Naval Innovation During The Interwar Period, 1921 – 1937.” Ph.D diss., Kansas State University, 2007, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5164353.pdf.

9. Trent Hone. Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898–1945. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018, pp. 124-125.

10. Edward Miller. War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991, p. 144.

11. John Jordan. Warships after Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets, 1922-1930. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011, p. 110.

12. Oguz A. Acar, Murat Tarakci, and Daan van Knippenberg. “Why Constraints are Good for Innovation.” Harvard Business Review, 22 November 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/11/why-constraints-are-good-for-innovation

13. Paul Mcleary. “SecDef Esper Seeks Detente With HASC; New Navy Plan This Summer.” Breaking Defense, February 28, 2020. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/02/exclusive-secdef-esper-seeks-detente-with-hasc-new-navy-plan-this-summer/

14. Megan Eckstein. “Fincantieri Wins $795M Contract for Navy Frigate Program.” United States Naval Institute News, 30 April 2020. https://news.usni.org/2020/04/30/fincantieri-wins-795m-contract-for-navy-frigate-program

15. James Stavridis. “Handling a Ticonderoga.” Professional Notes. United States Naval Institute Proceedings. January 1987. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1987/january/professional-notes

16.Jordan, p. 113.

17. Ibid, p. 122.

18. Megan Eckstein. “Future Large Surface Combatant Pushed to Late 2020s, Navy Takes ‘Measured’ Development Approach.” United States Naval Institute News, 14 January 2020. https://news.usni.org/2020/01/14/future-large-surface-combatant-pushed-to-late-2020s-navy-takes-measured-development-approach

19. Ibid.

20. Megan Eckstein. “Navy’s Next Major Ship Program Sees Challenges Balancing Requirements and Cost.” United States Naval Institute News, 17 March 2020. https://news.usni.org/2020/03/17/navys-next-major-ship-program-sees-challenges-balancing-requirements-and-cost

21. Joseph Trevithick. “The Navy May Use One Hull Design To Replace Its Cruisers And Some Destroyers.” The Drive. July 13, 2018. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/22138/the-navy-may-use-one-hull-design-to-replace-its-cruisers-and-some-destroyers

22. David Larter. “Here’s how the destroyer Zumwalt’s stealthy design handles stormy seas.” Defense News, 23 January 2020. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/01/23/heres-how-the-ddg-1000s-stealthy-hull-design-handles-stormy-seas/

23. John Schank, Cesse Ip, Frank LaCroix, Robert Murphy, et. al. Learning from Experience: Lessons from the U.S. Navy’s Ohio, Seawolf, and Virginia Submarine Programs. RAND National Defense Research Institute. 2011. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG1128.2.pdf

24. “Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament (London NavalTreaty).” 46 Stat. 2858. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1930, Vol. 3, Treaty Series 870, pp. 1055-1075, https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000002-1055.pdf

25. Hone, pp. 144-145.

26. Jordan, p. 149.

27. Hone, p. 145.

Featured Image: The U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS New Orleans (CA-32) steams through a tight turn in Elliot Bay, Washington (USA), on 30 July 1943, following battle damage repairs and overhaul at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. (Photo via Naval History and Heritage Command)

Podcast

Bilge Pumps Episode 27: It’s Missile Time with a Different Jamie

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By Alex Clarke

Bilge Pumps, Episode 27. This should come with a warning, as normal Jamie was busy, but luckily Alex and Drach were not left Jamie-less, being joined by Jamie from the Royal Navy. It continues the air defense at sea theme of Episode 24, although this time we are looking not at the weapons to protect the ships, but the missiles, the threats to the ship at sea.

#Bilgepumps is still a newish series and new avenue, which may no longer boast the new car smell, in fact decidedly more of pineapple/irn bru smell with a hint of jaffa cake and the faintest whiff of cork. But we’re getting the impression it’s liked, so we’d very much like any comments, topic suggestions or ideas for artwork to be tweeted to us, the #Bilgepump crew (with #Bilgepumps), at Alex (@AC_NavalHistory), Drach (@Drachinifel), and Jamie (@Armouredcarrier). Or you can comment on our Youtube channels (listed down below).

Bilge Pumps Episode 27: It’s Missile Time with a Different Jamie

Links

1. Dr. Alex Clarke’s Youtube Channel
2. Drachinifel’s Youtube Channel
3. Jamie Seidel’s Youtube Channel

Alex Clarke is the producer of The Bilge Pumps podcast.

Contact the CIMSEC podcast team at [email protected].

Current Operations

A Looming Calamity: Will Secretary Pompeo Seal the Fate of the Red Sea?  

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By Dr. Ian Ralby, Dr. David Soud, and Rohini Ralby

Over the past five years, the people of Yemen have endured famine and warfare. Now, as they and their Red Sea neighbors face the imminent likelihood of overwhelming oil spillage from the abandoned tanker FSO Safer, the means to avert a regional catastrophe may be stripped away.

It has been reported that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is about to designate Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, better known as the Houthis, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Doing so will not only complicate prospects of peace in Yemen, but potentially catalyze one of the worst humanitarian and environmental disasters in modern history.

For two and a half years, we have led a team of experts in a range of fields, working pro bono, to game out and highlight the threat of the Safer while also proposing achievable approaches to reducing or eliminating that threat. The Safer is a rapidly deteriorating tanker that, before the Yemeni civil war, served as the export terminal of the country’s main crude oil pipeline. Permanently moored less than five miles off the Red Sea coast of Yemen with a cargo of 1.14 million barrels of oil, the vessel is linked with an undersea pipeline that holds nearly as much crude as the Safer itself. As the tanker has deteriorated, the threat of a catastrophic spill – four times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill – has only increased. A burst pipe in the engine room in July was only one of many signs that the 45-year old Safer is not going to hold together much longer. Not only is the vessel owned by SEPOC, a state-owned company of the Hadi Government – effectively trapped in Houthi-controlled territory, but for the past six months, armed Houthi militants have been stationed onboard the vessel, which is being kept intact by a resourceful skeleton crew of SEPOC personnel.

Just this summer, at a special session of the U.N. Security Council regarding the FSO Safer, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft cited our work while urging resolution of the danger posed by the tanker. In recent months, we have been making steady progress toward a two-phase option: first to install devices in the area to contain a spill, and then to replace the dying tanker and transfer its cargo to a new, seaworthy vessel. Designating the Houthis as an FTO would close off avenues for negotiation with those who control access to the tanker, and thus end any hope for either of those measures. Time is our enemy, as the tanker is rapidly deteriorating and will, at some point, break apart.

While the Houthis have recently signed an agreement to allow a United Nations inspection team on the vessel, it will still take months before such an inspection could actually occur, and by that point, it may be too late. Furthermore, this is not the first time permission has been granted. Past reversals by the Houthis raise the question of whether that permission will still be in place when an inspection team is ready to board. And even then, an assessment is just the first step. The FTO designation would only diminish the chance of this long and arduous process of having any meaningful impact.

A spill of the Safer’s cargo could mean the destruction of Red Sea fisheries vital to human security in the region, as well as irreversible damage to the only coral reef systems known to be able to withstand warming seas. The consequences on land are no less extreme, beginning with the devastating impact of a spill from the Safer on water security. Millions of inhabitants of Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and other nearby states, including Egypt and Sudan, get their drinking water from desalination plants along the Red Sea coast. If oil contaminates those plants as it spreads along the coast, the remaining supply of drinking water will last only days. Even in the best of times, that is not enough time to mobilize a major humanitarian relief effort to make up the shortfall. Now, in the face of conflict, famine, and the likelihood that a spill would constrict (and in some places, close off) shipping, such an undertaking would require far more time, coordination, and ingenuity. There would be no realistic chance of avoiding a calamity.

Yemen is already at risk of losing an entire generation to famine. Roughly 80 percent of the aid for Yemen’s starving population comes through Hodeidah. Even a temporary closure of the city’s port due to the toxicity from a spill would increase the death toll.

Even on purely economic grounds, the Safer could cause long-term harm to the region and to key U.S. allies. The Red Sea is narrow and semi-enclosed, and seasonal currents and winds will alternately spread the oil southward toward the Horn of Africa and northward toward Israel, Jordan, and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. With oily water up and down the coast, devastating coral reefs and islands, and decimating fish and wildlife populations, the Safer’s spill could ruin coastal tourism for Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Eritrea, and Djibouti for years to come.

In light of this predictable and preventable scenario, there should logically be a highly compelling set of foreign policy benefits deriving from the FTO designation that would offset the huge risks of designating the group that controls much of Yemen and the FSO Safer. The benefits should outweigh the costs, but in this case they do not. We see great risk to the critical operational work we now have underway to head off a humanitarian and environmental disaster of massive scale. For anyone attempting to provide aid to Yemenis in Houthi territory, the designation would add layers of difficulty and risk, and at tremendous human cost. Beyond that, our experience leads us to conclude that designation would do nothing to pressure the Houthis. On the contrary, it would let them further off the hook in terms of their responsibility for governance writ large and for this issue in particular which impacts so many countries in the Red Sea region.

Some may argue that a U.S. move would simply replicate the Saudi government’s own designation of Ansar Allah as a terrorist organization, establishing a united front. In reality the Saudis operate by their own rules and are still negotiating with the Houthis regardless. Such engagement would be barred for the U.S. government, or other U.S.-linked entities, and virtually impossible for a range of international actors, including private sector experts like us.

In the years leading up to the disastrous port explosion in Beirut on August 4, 2020, customs officials and international experts warned Lebanese authorities about the possibility and were ignored. In the same way, the demise of the Safer and the fallout of that event are eminently foreseeable and will almost certainly have an impact far wider and more extreme than the Beirut blast.

Designating the Houthis as an FTO may look and feel like an assertive, decisive application of pressure. In concrete reality, its practical consequences would be dire, not only for Yemenis, their neighbors, and the critical natural infrastructure of the Red Sea, but also for U.S. credibility on the global stage. We strongly encourage the Secretary of State to reconsider imposing this designation.

Dr. Ian Ralby is a maritime law and security expert and is CEO of I.R. Consilium, a family firm specializing in maritime and resource security. He spent three years as a Maritime Crime Expert for UNODC and four years at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. 

Dr. David Soud is an expert in resource crimes and is Head of Research & Analysis of I.R. Consilium. 

Rohini Ralby is an expert in strategy and problem solving and is Managing Director of I.R. Consilium.

Featured Image: A satellite image of the FSO Safer taken by Planet Labs on September 14, 2020. (via Forbes)

Fiction

Violent Peace: Coming to Washington

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The following excerpt is from David Poyer’s latest novel,  Violent Peace: The War with China: Aftermath of Armageddon, and is republished with permission.

By David Poyer

In the event, he had to get another dose of vaccine, a shot this time, since the version Homeland had given him hadn’t been approved by DoD. Then he had to cool his heels for two hours before he got to see the CNO’s flag secretary.

She was new, and didn’t seem to have any idea who he was. And of course since he was in a rumpled, oil-stained uniform, and probably stank of exhaust and sweat and too many days sleeping rough, he had to explain. Looking skeptical, she’d gone in to notify her boss.

And come out smiling. “He’ll be with you shortly, Admiral. I’m so sorry. I should have recognized your name. Task Force 91, right? Operation Rupture Plus?”

“That’s me.”

“I wish I could have been there. But some of us had to hold the fort here in DC.”

“I understand completely.” Dan forced a smile and got up, but staggered as a wave of dizziness rushed over him. From the dual vaccinations, probably.

“Are you all right, sir? Should I call—”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Just been . . . I’m fine.” He braced a finger against the bulkhead until the vertigo passed, then followed her into Niles’s office.

His old mentor, then enemy, then reluctant rabbi again, had lost a shocking amount of weight. Barry “Nick” Niles’s service dress blouse sagged loosely on a once-massive frame. His shirt collar gaped around his neck. His color seemed less that of a healthy African American than the hue and texture of gray wax. And he’d apparently gone to the shaved-head look. But his first words, from behind his desk, were robust. “Where the hell have you been, Lenson?” he boomed, just like the old Niles.

Dan came to an awkward attention. “I had leave, Admiral.”

“That doesn’t mean you drop off the face of the planet. Where were you?” Niles squinted. Sniffed the air. “Do you smell gasoline?”

“I bought a motorcycle. My daughter was kidnapped. So I . . . I was trying to pick up her trail across country.” The CNO nodded. “And did you?”

Dan swallowed, fighting a tickle in his throat and a sudden desire to weep. The dizziness peaked, then receded again, like a tide. He blinked rapidly, looking toward the shatterproof windows. “No. No, sir. I lost track of her in Wyoming. No telling where they went after that, or . . . what they did with her. There’s a body in Nebraska that . . . is . . . that may be her. I couldn’t make a positive identification.”

The CNO nodded heavily. Grunted. Muttered, after a moment, “Sorry to hear. I know it doesn’t help to hear it, but a lot of other people are missing relatives, friends, kids . . . two of my nephews, working oil out west, not a word since the laydown.”

“Things are confused out there, sir. They could just be in one of the camps.”

Niles waved his hope away and picked up a piece of paper. Seemed to remember Dan was standing, and pointed to a chair. No offer of an Atomic Fireball, as in the old days. The bowl was empty. Maybe they’d stopped making them during the war.

He sagged gratefully into the armchair. Cleared his throat, and tried to focus as Niles set the paper aside.

“You been home? Seen Blair yet?”

“No sir. Came straight here.”

“Uh-huh . . . uh-huh. Well, good work out there with Rupture, Dan. If I haven’t made that clear. If you hadn’t stopped the clock to build up your ammo and fuel reserves, then kept shoving when the going got rough, we’d have gotten kicked back into the China Sea.”

“Yes sir. Resistance was a lot heavier than I expected.”

“Than anyone expected. Including our intel and our AI. That took a lot of moxie, to keep driving ahead when you were looking at casualty reports of twenty, thirty percent.” Niles tented his fingers. “Of course, if that’d been the wrong decision, we would have hung you by the balls.”

Dan figured that for a rhetorical statement, so simply nodded. And waited for the other boot to drop.

Niles searched through what was apparently Dan’s personnel file, though it seemed odd that it was printed out. He rumbled to himself, as if musing, then said a bit louder, “Your stars may be permanent.”

“Oh. Is that right, sir?” It didn’t seem that important, but he tried to look gratified.

“At least you’re on the postwar list for Senate confirmation. Nothing’s guaranteed these days.” He sighed, sat back, glanced out the window. “We’re having to fight for every flag billet. There’s a lot of pushback about anything to do with the Pacific. We need to pull two carriers back for core replacement and overhaul. That’s going to be a major fight in the next budget. There are already calls to scrap them, rather than refuel.”

“Then, thank you, sir. For the nomination, at least.”

Niles shrugged and rolled his eyes, and Dan added, “I saw something new on the way in here. Something called a Homeland Battalion.”

“Uh-huh. In black uniforms?”

“Yes sir.”

“Uh-huh.” Niles tilted a massive head. “Homeland Security’s amalgamating loyal Guard units and militias into Blackies. Also known as Special Action Forces. And they want new general billets for them. They’re not DoD formations, they’re DHS, but they count against our general and flag authorized strengths.”

“That doesn’t sound exactly . . . fair, Admiral.”

Niles’s eyelids flickered. “There’s worse coming over the horizon. Posse Comitatus may be suspended. To fight the unrest in the cities, and out west. And the closer we get to the elections . . . the slogan’s ‘Forward as one,’ but the reality may be that we’re headed for one-party rule.”

Niles looked away. “Some of us are determined not to let that happen. At least, not if we can prevent it.”

Dan weighed that last sentence. Then, despite himself, glanced around the office.

The admiral caught his reaction, and waved a large hand. “You can speak freely. This room’s a SCIF. Noise suppressors on the walls, and we sweep it every morning. One island we keep as sane as we can. The Joint Chiefs, I mean. Just don’t face the windows if you’re discussing anything you don’t want overheard.”

“Yes sir.” He wanted to know more, but decided he’d better digest what had just been intimated first. Because Niles’s words could be construed, in the wrong hands, into something close to treason.

Niles reached for the empty candy container, but halted his hand halfway. He rumbled, “I’m going to be stepping down pretty soon, Dan. We won, if you can call losing ten million lives a win. And I’m tired.”

“Ten million,” Dan repeated blankly, horrified. This was the first he’d heard of any round figure. Most of the deaths must have taken place within the areas he’d routed around in his trek east. Plus fallout effects, carried by the wind. Radiation, looting, revolt, disease . . . so the dying wasn’t over yet. He straightened his shoulders. “You’re punching out, sir? Retiring?”

Niles rubbed a palm over his bare scalp. His smile resembled a sardonic jack’o lantern’s. “I have pancreatic cancer, Dan. They’re treating it, but as you can see, it’s a losing battle. I’d rather not die walled up in this fucking office. Scenic as the view is.”

“No sir. Of course not. I don’t—I’m very sorry to hear that.”

A tap at the door, and the aide stuck her head in. “Five minutes, Admiral.”

Niles sighed. He stood from behind the desk. Dan, rising too, saw anew how shrunken his old senior’s body was beneath the now nearly tent-like blues. Niles shrugged again. “That’s the cookie . . . Anyway, you’ll want to know what’s next for you. It’s still up in the air. Jung Min Jun called. He wants you as ambassador to reunited Korea. I told him that was a nonstarter. No way the administration would go for it, and you weren’t a fucking diplomat anyway.”

Dan nodded, not chagrined. Dealing with Jung could be stressful, and he wasn’t eager to leave home again. “Yes sir. So what were you thinking?”

The CNO waved the question away. “Let’s talk about that next time you come in. For now, go home. Take a shower. See Blair. Get some sleep. We all need a rest. Still got that boat of yours? Go sail it. Come back in when you feel up to it. Three, four days or so. Tell Marla to give you a District pass and a ration card.”

Niles looked at the papers again, a contemplative, lingering glance. Then shoved the chair back and came around the desk. He didn’t move like a lumbering bear anymore. His steps seemed tentative, cautious. His grip, though, was still strong as he pincered Dan’s shoulder. “We go back a long ways, Lenson. All the way to Crystal City and the JCMPO. I’ve been hard on you at times, I guess.”

Dan forced a smile. “No more than I deserved, sir.”

“But I fought for you too, when you needed it. The way I hear you do for your own people.”

“Your example, Admiral.”

“An officer who knows when to take a risk, even dares to disobey, for the good of the service—that’s a rare thing. We were headed for a zero-risk Navy for a long time, before this war. I tried to fight that, whenever I could.” Niles held out his hand. “I guess after all these years you’d better make it Nick. In private, at least.”

Dan’s eyes stung. At the Academy, spooning—a senior’s giving a junior permission to use a first name—was a time-honored tradition. One never given lightly. He cleared his throat and took the proffered hand. “Yes sir. I mean, Nick.”

“Sir?” said the aide, from the door. “Before you leave. Legal wants a word.”

“Legal? Hell. Well, make it short,” Niles said, turning away, letting go Dan’s hand, clearly annoyed.

A tall woman in blues introduced herself. She carried a red striped folder. “I heard Admiral Lenson was in the building.”

“Get to it,” Niles growled.

She turned to Dan. “The notification by the ICJ. Admiral, has anyone discussed this with you?”

The International Court of Justice. “Uh, my wife mentioned it.”

“Blair Titus,” Niles clarified. “Undersecretary of defense.”

The legal officer nodded. “Yes sir. I thought as long as he was here, we could go over the administration’s stand. That no US citizen will be judged.”

Dan said, “But doesn’t that mean the Chinese won’t attend either?”

Niles shook his head. “They’re trying to take that position. But they signed the treaty. Giving up war criminals was one of the stipulations.”

“That’s actually a political question, Admiral.” The attorney clasped her hands primly in front of her, elbows out. “It goes to war guilt, if we still want to align ourselves with that concept. But if we do, the ICJ may indict Americans as well. As they may with Mr. Lenson, here.”

Niles said irritably, “Forget it. He’s not responding.”

“What happens if I don’t?” Dan said, accepting that he probably wasn’t going to, but also curious as to what would happen if he didn’t.

“You wouldn’t be able to travel to Europe, probably,” the advisor said. “At least to Europe, the UK, the other standing members of the court. If you did, you’d be subject to arrest, extradition, and trial.”

Niles patted his arm. “Don’t lose any sleep over this, Dan. This’ll all get settled way above our pay grades.”

He nodded to the aide, who stepped aside to let them both pass.

_______________________________________

DAN stopped by Blair’s office, but her people said she was overseas, in Singapore. “Oh, yeah,” he muttered. “The peace conference.” He stopped in at the cafeteria and put a lunch on his new ration card.

Next stop: home, in Arlington. And just about time; the bike was down to a top speed of forty, and its smoke trail was like a burning bomber’s.

He shut the engine down and rolled the last few feet down the driveway.

The house looked . . . deserted. Desiccated pine needles carpeted the roof, with patches of green moss. One of the gutters had come loose and hung down like a torn hem. The shingles needed attention. The lawn had grown two feet high, and Virginia creeper and the red hairy cables of poison ivy twisted through the undergrowth and up the trunks of the pines, clinging and strangling. He’d have to take a machete to them.

Around back, he found the spare key under a brick in the patio. Let himself in to first quiet, then alarmed mewing. He scooped Blair’s cat up and cradled it, ruffling its fur. “Hey, Jimbo.” Remembering suddenly how he’d cradled his daughter the same way, so many years ago.

The house smelled musty. No wonder; the windows were taped over, as if for a hurricane, and duct-taped shut, no doubt as a preparation against fallout, though it hadn’t reached this far east. He fed the cat, then let himself down the narrow steps to the basement. Here, in his study, it smelled even worse, as if the books were moldering. He went back up and checked the air-conditioning. But a crimson sticker sealed the breaker in the off position: Save Energy for Victory.

So he went around untaping and opening the windows and sliding down the screens. Not much of a breeze, but it might cool the house a bit. He checked the refrigerator: empty. The panty was bare too, except for a few staples: olive oil, beans, rice, canned stuff, bottles of wine. Blair must have been getting her meals at work.

He stood at the window, watching squirrels squabble and play in the pines. Feeling suddenly . . . aimless. Apprehensive.

Fuck that! He should feel relieved, right? The war was over.

And the US had “won.”

Yet he’d lost too much to feel relieved, or happy, or even curious about what came next. An indictment? He couldn’t muster concern for that, either. Like the legal beagle had suggested, maybe the whole concept of “war guilt” was a thing of the past. Quaint, like honor, or virtue, or truth, or the idea noncombatants weren’t legitimate targets.

He just felt . . . empty. Peculiar, out of place, as if this were some uncanny, alternate world he’d never expected to inhabit. And guilty, too, as if by surviving he’d betrayed those who had not.

The wine, in the pantry. He could uncork it. Forget all this. Blot it out, if only for a few hours.

No. He’d been sober for too many years. The craving faded. It wouldn’t help. When he woke up tomorrow, his daughter would still be dead.

He’d have to learn to live with that. Somehow. Like millions of others, all across the US. Across China. Pakistan. India. Indonesia. Iran. Vietnam. In all the countries this war had wrecked, trampled, and poisoned. Remember that, he told himself. You’re not the only one. He looked at the coffeemaker, but decided Niles was right. He needed a shower, a good long sleep more.

Upstairs, to a rumpled bed. The comforter was pulled up haphazardly, as if his wife had left in a hurry. Stooping to the pillow, he could smell her. Her lotions and emollients stood lined up in the bathroom. He peed, got a quick shower, then lay down. Blinked at the ceiling.

He didn’t bother to set the alarm.

David Poyer’s sea career included service in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, and Pacific. He’s the author of nearly fifty novels and works of nonfiction, including the Dan Lenson War with China series: Tipping Point, Onslaught, Hunter Killer, Deep War, and Overthrow. His next book, Violent Peace, will be published this December. Poyer’s work has been required reading in the Literature of the Sea course at the U.S. Naval Academy, along with that of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville. He lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (March 26, 2008) An unarmed Trident II D5 missile launches from the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Nebraska (SSBN 739) off the coast of California. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Ronald Gutridge/Released)