All posts by Guest Author

Capability Analysis

Armed and Independent: Thinking Outside the Box on Small Carriers

2 Comments

By Ben DiDonato

There is a long-running debate in the United States Navy over building smaller aircraft carriers. These arguments generally focus on cost and hull count. Rather than dive into these arguments and attempt to argue for what should be done, we will instead explore how we use these arguments to rethink requirements and produce a more robust concept.

A new thought process illustrated here in the context of a small aircraft carrier is applicable to many other complex problems. As such, while a hypothetical design for a small carrier to supplement the current supercarrier fleet will be presented, part of its purpose is to illustrate how this thought process can proceed to unconventional conclusions. The question remains as to whether the merits of this design justify its substantial cost, and follow-on studies and wargaming may be required to explore this concept further.

How Can We Make a Smaller Carrier?

In order to determine the requirements for a small carrier, we must begin with the requirements for a modern supercarrier. Fortunately, the one-sentence mission statement for the Ford-class carriers defined this clearly:

“The critical capability of the aircraft carrier is that the aircraft carrier’s air wing must simultaneously perform surveillance, battlespace dominance, and strike and sustain combat operations forward.”

Form must follow function, and studies repeatedly show ‘bigger is better’ according to this mission statement. If we want to make a smaller carrier viable we must find a way to alter that mission statement without rendering the resulting carrier irrelevant.

This discussion focuses on omitting ‘strike’ from the mission statement. This does not mean the carrier will be completely incapable of performing strike missions, but it does mean any strike capability will be largely incidental and context-dependent. While omitting the strike mission may be jarring to the modern Navy, it has a strong historical precedent in the escort carriers of the Second World War, and was revisited in the  Sea Control Ship concept of the 1970s. Like these historical examples, this ship would primarily be an escort with a focus on protecting convoys, and feature extensive anti-submarine capabilities. However, it could also perform other missions like forward surveillance, chokepoint defense, and troop support.

Sea Control ship concept illustration from 1972 (Wikimedia Commons)

Most critically, the removal of the ‘strike’ objective from its mission statement means that the carrier is no longer expected to divide its limited air wing capacity. This bypasses the otherwise crippling weakness commonly referred to as ‘the small carrier problem,’ where having a small air wing forces a hard choice between offense and defense. By changing goals and expectations in this manner, we can tailor the ship and its air wing for defensive operations and leave major strike operations to the supercarrier fleet. It should also be remembered that this omission does not preclude offensive operations because the ship could be sent forward in certain contexts.

One issue that limited the utility of the Sea Control Ship was the aircraft of the day, especially the Harrier. Unlike the modern F-35B, the Harrier had serious deficiencies in air combat capability, range, and payload. These deficiencies resulted in a relatively inflexible air wing. A modern small carrier would be much more capable thanks to the improvements the F-35 brings to the table. It is fully capable of defending the carrier from air attack, has the range to intercept targets, and the payload to strike targets if the opportunity arises. The F-35’s sensors and networking also let it perform many tasks which previously required a dedicated early warning aircraft, allowing it to replace the helicopters envisioned for this mission on the Sea Control Ship. It may not provide the same degree of situational awareness as a dedicated platform like the E-2D, but it is far more survivable and does not give the enemy a large, easily detected radar signature to point them toward the ship.

The Escort Problem

The other major factor in any discussion of carriers is the cost of escorts. Even if serious savings were reaped in fielding the carrier itself, immense costs are incurred by fielding a major combatant that necessitates additional escorting platforms.

An undesirable solution to this problem is to reduce the number of supercarriers in the fleet to free up escorts for the new ships. This might come from the concentration of even more aircraft into a substantially larger class of future CVNs, generating savings by exploiting the efficiency of very large carriers. However, this option is inherently limited since it would allow the addition of only a handful of smaller carriers. This approach will not be discussed further here, but future fleet composition studies should closely examine the possibility of even larger supercarriers, since that has been largely omitted in recent studies.

Another less conventional solution is to take a page out of the Soviet playbook by adding a heavy weapons and sensor suite to allow the ship to potentially defend itself without escorts. Modern weapon and sensor systems have substantially reduced the design conflicts associated with this concept. This helps address the historical Sea Control Ship’s inability to defend itself against anti-ship missiles, and substantially improves the flexibility of the resulting ship.

Soviet heavy aircraft cruiser Baku, later known as the Admiral Gorhskov. Note the forward-placed anti-ship missiles. (Photo via Wikimedia commons)

A Hypothetical Design

Now that we have established the mission and design goals, we will move into the hypothetical design process starting with the hull.

Since convoy escort is the primary mission, and there is no need to keep up with the supercarriers, a top speed in the 20-to-25 knot range should meet mission requirements. The ship will be some combination of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and the historical Sea Control Ship plans, so adding these two vessels’ displacement together for 20,000 to 30,000 tons is a reasonable estimate for this modern escort carrier. The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock fits into this range, so its base hull and propulsion plant form the basis of this concept, and the superstructure will be completely replaced. This selection would allow a single test ship to be inserted into the existing production line without too much trouble and avoid many of the problems normally associated with unique ships. This enables the construction of an initial prototype to identify and correct any shortcomings prior to serial production.

Author’s concept of a CVE escort carrier (Author graphic)

For weapons and sensors, the Flight III Burke can serve as a template. As the most capable Aegis platform in the fleet, it provides an excellent, full-spectrum capability set. This makes a separate escort more redundant than necessary, and also provides vertically-launched land-attack and anti-ship missiles to provide a degree of strike capability. Naturally, it also offers the same type of logistical and industrial advantages provided by the use of the San Antonio hull.

Author’s concept of a CVE escort carrier detailing the aft superstructure and port side Vertical Launch System cells. (Author graphic)

With these design decisions, the author built a 3D model of the concept ship to improve granularity and assess the layout. Most notably, it is possible to wrap the superstructure around the vertical launch system (VLS) to shield the flight deck from exhaust, or more importantly, foreign object debris, avoiding serious conflict between missile launch and flight operations. This model also demonstrates that it is possible to fit enough hangar capacity for an air wing of 12 F-35Bs, 12 MH-60Rs, 2 MQ-8Cs, and 1 MV-22 to provide persistent air cover, plus a few extra utility aircraft. Furthermore, while the vast majority of the San Antonio’s amphibious capabilities would obviously be eliminated, the model shows that it is possible to leave a reduced-height well deck to support UUV, USV, and small boat operations if desired. These sea launch capabilities are a particularly notable example of the need for prototyping, because testing may show the need to remove the well deck or replace it with another type of launch facility or critical spaces.

Author’s concept of a CVE escort carrier showing possible well-deck configuration. (Author graphic)

The notional armament is 96 Mark 41 vertical launch cells, a Rolling Airframe Missile launcher, two Mark 32 triple torpedo tubes, a laser, a railgun or 5-inch gun, and five Javelin/Browning pintle mounts. Anti-ship missiles are launched from the VLS or embarked aircraft instead of top-side mounted launchers to improve upgradeability. The bridge is also clearly visible on top of the forward end of the superstructure, as is Primary Flight Control at the aft end, which protrudes over the sloping superstructure to provide excellent visibility of the flight deck without interfering with flight operations. Finally, it is possible to retain a small portion of the San Antonio’s infantry capacity for EABO and special operations support.

The larger America-class amphibious assault ships, the commonly discussed example in light carrier concept discussions, are not well-suited to serve as a basis for this concept. Most notably, while they carry more aircraft, the incremental improvement is not enough to provide a major step-change. An America-class hull configured in this manner would likely provide an additional six MH-60Rs and four F-35Bs. The extra anti-submarine helicopters would allow three of these aircraft to be airborne at all times, but this does not provide a dramatic performance improvement because the Sea Control Ship demonstrated that two are adequate to maintain sonobuoy barriers on both sides of a convoy for early warning of submarines. The additional F-35Bs are not enough to increase the standing combat air patrol from two to four, so the additional aircraft would functionally provide a reserve force that could either be held to respond to threats or sent on small strikes without compromising top cover. While that is certainly useful, as are the larger magazines and fuel storage allowed by a larger hull, the America costs an additional $1.5 billion and hundreds of crew, a one third-to-one half increase in cost to $4.5-5.5 billion for limited gains. One final point that applies broadly against a larger hull is that in any environment dangerous enough to require a doubled air wing, carrying it in two smaller hulls with full defensive suites provides a major survivability advantage. 

With all that said, it is still worth examining the cost to rebuild the USS Bonhomme Richards (LHD-6) as a prototype carrier of this type. Since the ship would require a new, much larger superstructure to house the weapons and sensors, the old superstructure and underlying structure would have to be completely replaced regardless, making the extensive damage there irrelevant. That could make the rebuild more affordable since it would be competing with a new-build prototype, and it would allow the Navy to act more quickly on the stated goal of acquiring small carriers without the risks associated with developing a new class of ship.

Costs and Benefits

The next step is to examine this design’s impact on the Navy. The San Antonio and Arleigh Burke each cost around two billion dollars, so it is reasonable to assume that the overall cost of this hypothetical ship will be in the $3-4 billion range after accounting for the savings from eliminating duplication and the extra cost of the aviation equipment. The San Antonio and Burke have about 300-350 crew each, so this ship will probably need about half-again (500 personnel). With the addition of air wing personnel, the crew complement increases to a total of roughly 800. Crew count could likely be reduced from this number with modern automation technology, as was done on the Zumwalt-class destroyer. However, it is difficult to automate aircraft maintenance, so a crew of less than 500 seems unlikely. Finally, it should be noted that this cost represents a complete task force since no separate escort is required. That said, it does omit the optional ground combat element in the crew count and makes no attempt to address logistics requirements due to the complex interactions with the rest of the fleet.

While that cost is substantial, this hypothetical ship does offer plenty of capability which might justify the investment. As an escort, the aerial targeting information from its F-35Bs will make it much more capable than traditional surface combatants against most surface and air threats, while its large helicopter complement offers similar advantages for anti-submarine warfare. Defensive employment would be similarly effective for closing chokepoints to enemy movement, and would be particularly effective against submarines since it could maintain an extensive drone and sonobuoy field. They could also be used to support distributed operations in a variety of ways, such as forming a distant screen to expand overall situational awareness or supporting expeditionary operations with forward air cover and light sealift. 

Alternatively, they could conduct a variety of special operations from a single hull by backing up ground elements with organic airlift, air support, and missile strikes. Finally, the use of common systems means they could easily be incorporated into any conventional task force to provide additional mass, although they are not particularly efficient in this role. In peacetime, these ships would offer flexibility to the fleet because they could fill in for essentially any kind of ship needed, provide a distributed rapid reaction capability, carry the diplomatic prestige of being an aircraft carrier, and free supercarriers from low-end operations. When everything is said and done these benefits may not outweigh the costs, but it should illustrate how rethinking a small carrier’s mission set can lead to interesting alternative solutions.

This concept may also benefit international navies. Since these ships would cost substantially less than a fully escorted carrier, they may appeal to smaller navies that may be unable to afford super carriers and may be willing to sacrifice some capability to reduce cost. For example, Norway might choose to replace the Helge Ingstad with a ship of this type since they already operate the F-35. This would more than fully replace its defensive capabilities while adding unprecedented power projection, giving them much greater capability. Politically, acquiring an aircraft carrier would be a dramatic signal of intent and commitment to defense out of proportion to its cost, and would go a long way toward addressing longstanding tensions with the U.S. over NATO spending.

Finally, it is important to reiterate that this is only one possible outcome. The Sea Control Ship concept would also be a valid application of this reduction in mission scope, and there are plenty of other alterations to explore. Similarly, the concepts presented using a small aircraft carrier are just as applicable in other contexts. The output may be unexpected and may need to be integrated with other platforms or concepts to be truly viable, but it can open up alternative solutions to bypass seemingly impossible problems.

Ben DiDonato is a volunteer member of the NRP-funded LMACC team lead by Dr. Shelley Gallup. He originally created what would become the armament for LMACC’s baseline Shrike variant in collaboration with the Naval Postgraduate School in a prior role as a contract engineer for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. He has provided systems and mechanical engineering support to organizations across the defense industry from the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) to Spirit Aerosystems, working on projects for all branches of the armed forces.

Featured Image: The amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio (LPD 17) steams through the Red Sea June 16, 2013. The San Antonio was part of the Kearsarge Amphibious Readiness Group and was underway in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility supporting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons, by GySgt Michael Kropiewnicki)

Strategy

Implementing National Maritime Strategy With a Shrunken Fleet

Leave a comment

By Robert C. Rubel

Soon the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower will depart from Norfolk, Va., on a “double pump” deployment; going back out for another six or seven month cruise just six months after returning from a deployment that set records for the amount of time at sea.  This departure will occur shortly after Ike’s sister ship USS Theodore Roosevelt did the same thing from the West Coast. This will take a toll on both the ships of the two battle groups and the sailors that man them, not to mention their families. The reasons behind the decision to double pump Ike boil down to too much demand from the regional combatant commanders and too few ships available to fill those demands at an operating tempo that allows for adequate ship maintenance and stateside time for sailors.

Although former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper issued a plan for expanding the fleet, its prospects for implementation are unclear at best due to massive government expenditures for COVID-19 relief and vaccines. For its part, the Navy is looking for ways to meet demands within expected budgets, such as fielding unmanned vessels and building smaller ships. But these measures miss seeing the strategic forest for the operational trees. The current U.S. military command and control system of regional combatant commands is tacitly based on having a much larger military force than is available today. In lieu of building the U.S. military, especially the Navy, back up to Cold War levels, a new approach to managing the use of naval forces on a global level is needed.

U.S. maritime strategy, which consists of the way the nation uses the seas to support its overall grand strategy, has been consistent since shortly after the end of World War II. The national grand strategy, adopted by President Roosevelt and his Secretary of State Cordell Hull, was to broker a system of international institutions and rules that would level the international economic playing field and at least work toward a rules-based international order. That grand strategy has been consistent to the current day despite changes in administrations, their differing policies, and massive geopolitical shifts; the U.S. seeks to comprehensively defend the global system of commerce and security. 

The maritime component, as described by the political scientist Samuel Huntington in 1954, is to ring Eurasia with naval power to deter, suppress or defeat instability and aggression that might threaten the system. This maritime strategy is mechanized by the Navy, which is tasked with raising, training and maintaining forces for use by the regional unified combatant commanders. The combatant commanders, for their part, develop both war plans for use in case of military aggression and theater strategies for day-to-day security operations. Both include estimates of forces needed, which can be broken down into surge forces that might be needed for contingencies and steady state forces for day-to-day use, including deterrence, engagement and general constabulary functions. Thus, in the Navy’s case, it not only needs forces to meet the demands of day-to-day operations, but to have in reserve forces to surge in case war breaks out. During the Cold War, especially in the 1980s, the Navy had sufficient forces to support both aspects of force demand. Now it does not.

The strategic paradigm taught in the nation’s war colleges is ends-ways-means. These three elements must be harmonized if strategy is to be successful. Ends and the ways to achieve them must not be based on inadequate means. This implies, in the current instance, that either U.S. ends – a liberal global trading order – must be modified to be less expansive, or the ways, a grand strategy of comprehensive defense and support of that system, must be adjusted. Despite the Trump Administration’s adoption of an “America First” policy, it does not appear that it made any significant move to alter the supporting maritime strategy aspect of the traditional grand strategy, and the Biden Administration is likely to reaffirm U.S. adherence to it.

Given that the means the Navy has at its disposal to support the national maritime strategy are more or less fixed, something has to give. At various points suggestions have been made to shift the Navy to a surge posture, significantly reducing its forward deployments, but this would be out of step with the character of the national grand strategy. Altering fleet design to an architecture of a larger number of smaller and cheaper ships is a possibility, but this will take a decade or more to achieve, even if sufficient institutional and political support for it can be mustered. A way must be found to stretch the available means to accommodate the national maritime strategy in the short term.

One way of viewing the U.S. joint command and control structure is that it is based on strategic sufficiency of means. Whether the overall U.S. military strategy was based on two simultaneous major contingencies or down to one in one theater and a holding strategy in another, the demands for day-to-day forces emanated from all six geographic commands all the time, and a grand strategy of comprehensive system defense required that all of them be honored, even in light of the Navy’s severe difficulty in satisfying those demands. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work attempted to shift the formula from a demand-based model to one based on supply; the combatant commanders would be placed on a diet of forces that could be sustained by the Navy. He was not able to institute such an approach because starving the combatant commanders of forces across the board was neither consistent with the U.S. grand strategy nor was it politically acceptable to the combatant commanders. Another way of dealing with scarcity must be found.

An answer can be found in U.S. Air Force air power theory. That theory asserts that air power is a scarce but mobile resource. These two characteristics imply that it must be subject to centralized management such that can be applied strategically across the theater. This logic can be scaled up and applied to sea power on a global basis. In other words, the nation’s sea power, at least the allocation of it, should be managed by a staff in Washington that has a global perspective. Sea power, given the reduced size of the fleet, is a scarce asset whose application must be managed strategically.

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis devised the idea of randomizing naval deployments or at least keeping intended movements of forces under wraps such that potential adversaries would not know when a U.S. task force would show up. In theory this would maintain deterrence with a force too small to conduct a station keeping strategy. While it made for good deterrence theory, it did nothing to address day-to-day combatant commander requirements and, from a global perspective, reduced the availability of U.S. Navy forces for response purposes. In any case, the strategy was never fully implemented; the combatant commander demands for forces just overrode it.

The failure of both the Work and Mattis schemes, even though emanating from the top two Defense Department officials, indicates that a more institutionalized fix is needed. That fix would consist of a new staff within the Pentagon with global command authority, at least for maritime operations. Its authority to allocate maritime resources would echo that of Admiral Ernest King in World War II in his role as Commander-in-Chief U.S. Fleet. He was the only officer that had the “latitude to change the longitude” of Navy ships. However, simply establishing the authority to manage the global distribution of naval forces is not enough, that distribution must be based on a new approach to the nation’s maritime strategy.

The U.S. Navy simply does not have enough ships to provide “full service” of robust deterrence, contingency response capability and engagement capacity in all areas, at least at an acceptable cost in terms of maintenance and personnel tempo. Prioritization on a global basis will be needed, and that is where a global maritime staff with global allocation authority is needed. Such prioritization must be strategic; that is, on the basis of some idea for how forces can be allocated to achieve desired effects or to manage the risk associated with executing the current maritime strategy with fewer forces. The current organizational structure is only able to allocate on the basis of satisficing. Such a staff might also be able to conceive of and implement a new version of the national maritime strategy.

Heretofore the U.S. Navy has, from time to time, issued what have been called maritime strategies, but as a military service constrained by statute to raising, training and equipping forces, it has no formal authority to do so. On the other hand, the Navy does have a global and maritime perspective, which at times has impelled it, notably in the cases of the 1980s Maritime Strategy and the 2007 Cooperative Strategy, to deal with an operational/strategic problem in the maritime domain that needed to be solved but which the joint chain of command either could not or would not address. A maritime staff within the joint chain of command would have such authority. This would require close coordination with most other cabinet departments and the National Security Council, which suggests that it be located in Washington. 

A kind of template for such a staff already exists; each combatant command has a Joint Force Maritime Component Commander (JFMCC) embedded within its C2 structure. The JFMCC possesses the requisite authorities for moving, tasking and supporting naval forces, including not only the needed administrative mechanisms but a maritime operations center (MOC) that provides real-time situational awareness and communications.

A national level version of a JFMCC would be feasible from a mechanical point of view; the challenges to its instantiation would be political. First, it would essentially constitute a new unified command that combined the characteristics of current geographic and functional ones. However, unlike the geographic commands, the new global JFMCC would not directly command naval forces within a theater, it would simply allocate forces. Nonetheless, new legislation would be needed to create it and imbue it with the requisite authorities. Opposition from the Air Force and Army could be expected, as it might be viewed as giving the Navy too much power. However, the command would not have any Title X authority over budgets, although as a joint command, it would have a draw on forces from those Services if it thought necessary; the maritime domain involves the functioning of all types of forces. Moreover, as a joint command, it would be staffed by personnel from all the Services and its commander could wear any uniform. It is the perspective of the command – global – and its function – strategic allocation of forces – that governs the approach of whoever commands it, not the color of their uniform.

The current structure of the Unified Command Plan bakes in an inefficient approach to the execution of the national grand strategy and its maritime component. When the United States enjoyed a robust force structure this inefficiency could be tolerated; in the current environment of resource scarcity it creates more strategic risk than is necessary by limiting the global mobility of naval forces, and to some extent other forces. Strategic allocation vice satisficing must be achieved, and current structures such as the Joint Staff and Office of the Secretary of Defense are not able to accommodate the function. The creation of a new unified command with a global, maritime perspective is a viable and frankly necessary solution.

Robert C. Rubel is a retired Navy captain and professor emeritus of the Naval War College. He served on active duty in the Navy as a light attack/strike fighter aviator. At the Naval War College he served in various positions, including planning and decision-making instructor, joint education adviser, chairman of the Wargaming Department, and dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. He retired in 2014, but on occasion continues to serve as a special adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. He has published over thirty journal articles and several book chapters.

Featured Image: U.S. Navy ships from the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and the America Expeditionary Strike Group transit the South China Sea March 15, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nicholas V. Huynh)

Project Trident

Project Trident Call for Articles: Maritime Infrastructure and Trade

Leave a comment

Submissions Due: April 19, 2021
Week Dates: May 3-7, 2021
Article Length: 1000-3000 words
Submit to: [email protected]

By Jimmy Drennan

CIMSEC is partnering with Maersk Line, Limited to launch the Project Trident call for articles on maritime infrastructure and trade! Maersk Line, Limited provides end-to-end transportation solutions to support the unique requirements of the U.S. government. As the largest owner and operator of U.S. flag vessels trading internationally and the largest participant in the VISA/MSP programs, these network ensures reliable and regular connection to all corners of the globe.

Security and prosperity go hand-in-hand, and as the complexity of the global economy grows, so too does its dependence on the maritime domain. The increasing connectedness of national and regional economies, combined with the COVID-19 pandemic, have highlighted the importance of infrastructure and trade in maritime security.

Last year, shipping carriers rejected U.S. agricultural exports worth hundreds of millions of dollars in favor of returning empty containers to China, which faces a container shortage due to a surge in consumer goods. Government stimulus packages and shifting consumer trends resulting from the pandemic have put a strain on global container capacity, and China is making it more profitable for shippers to bring back empty containers than American agricultural exports. Meanwhile, containers full of American goods stack up in slammed ports like Los Angeles and Long Beach. The growing intricacies of the global supply chain demonstrate the need for a coordinated maritime strategy.

Port capacity and accessibility is rapidly changing as the developing world increasingly becomes more urbanized and developed, thereby increasing their demand of the global maritime commons. The volume of commercial maritime traffic is ever increasing, and the ability of ports to keep pace is in flux. Ports have significant geopolitical value as well, especially as China is securing long-term leases on port infrastructure beyond its borders.

The global shipbuilding industrial base remains heavily concentrated in China, Japan, and South Korea, which account for around 90 percent of all ships launched in recent years. In 2018, the world’s global merchant fleet totaled 50,000 vessels with a combined value of $851 billion, and a total deadweight tonnage of 1 billion. The shipbuilding industrial base in the United States is dominated primarily by military shipbuilding contracts while large-scale commercial shipbuilding capacity has largely gone overseas. The shipbuilding industrial base of China, both commercial and military capacity combined, is overshadowing that of the United States, raising questions about their respective abilities to mobilize industry in a time of conflict.

Often overlooked is the critical, but often opaque world of shipping finance and insurance. For example, China is rapidly becoming the preferred option for ship financing as western banks exit the market space. U.S. Military Sealift Command contracts with foreign tanker companies to charter ships for some overseas operations. These ships are sometimes leased to tanker companies from Chinese banks, with little to no awareness by the U.S. government.

Data is the new lifeblood of global commerce and the shipping industry is in the midst of a digital revolution. The industry is looking to seize opportunities posed by emerging technologies and networks, but must be considerate of the associated cybersecurity concerns and the risks of failing to keep pace with change.

CIMSEC wants your ideas on how infrastructure and trade will impact the future of international maritime security. What could be the maritime security impacts of Sino-American economic interdependence, changing infrastructure capacity, rapid port development, decarbonization, digital revolution, and other trends and facets of global maritime infrastructure?

Authors are invited to answer these questions and more as we consider the future of maritime infrastructure and trade. Send all submissions to [email protected].

Jimmy Drennan is the President of CIMSEC. Contact him at [email protected].

Featured Image: A container terminal (bellergy via Pixabay)

Europe

Russian Black Sea Fleet Activity in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea: Implications for the Israeli Navy

Leave a comment

By CDR (ret.) Dr. Eyal Pinko

In recent years, and significantly since the 2011 Syrian uprising, the Russian Navy’s presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and Syria has expanded dramatically. The increasing Russian presence in Syria is part of Russia’s updated naval doctrine, which was first published in 2012, and revised in July 2016. This doctrine was called the Revised Russian Naval Doctrine up to 2030. 

As in the case of previous strategic doctrines, it defines the navy’s role as part of Russia’s security policy, its goals, its main directions for the buildup of naval forces, and the geographic areas of naval operations. The doctrine also includes and specifies an assessment of threats to Russian maritime security up to 2030. 

The doctrine states that the maritime domain’s main threat originates from the U.S. and NATO forces, which endeavor to dominate the ocean and achieve absolute superiority at sea. It also states that the Russian Navy must be ready to deal with technologically advanced adversarial navies, which are equipped with high-precision weaponry and missiles, and that Russia must strive for a situation in which its navy remains in second place regarding warfare capability. 

This aspiration expresses the Russian understanding that the U.S. Navy is the most advanced globally and that Russia does not intend to build a navy similar in size or quality. 

The new doctrine relates in a general way to the need for operational capability in all regions and ensuring the ability to maintain Russian naval forces’ long-term presence in strategically critical maritime arenas. It explicitly emphasizes the strategic importance, from the Russian government’s perspective, of naval presence in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Arctic.  

The Russian strategy in the Mediterranean Sea becomes more strategically important because of U.S. naval forces’ reduced presence in the Mediterranean arena in the last decade. It began under President Obama’s administration and continued with even greater intensity under President Trump’s administration. 

The reduction of the U.S. naval presence in the region results from a strategic decision made by the two U.S. presidents to transfer the bulk of its naval forces to Asia to view China and North Korea’s growing threat. 

The primary objective of Russia’s increased involvement in the region is to reposition itself as a world power. Through its focused and determined intervention in Syria, Russia demonstrated that it is a key player whose involvement is essential to resolving international issues. For more than four years, the West, which had failed to resolve a steadily exacerbating problem in Syria, was now forced to consider the Russian positions even more carefully and involve Moscow in resolving the crisis.1

The second objective of Russia’s involvement was to leverage the Syrian issue to resolve problems in other areas vital to it, mainly Europe in general and Ukraine in particular. Russian involvement in Syria intended to pressure the West to remove the sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe following Russian operations in Ukraine.2

The Russian naval presence in Syria is one of the significant ways in which Russia implements its maritime strategy. In practice, the implementation of the Russian maritime strategy in the Mediterranean is manifested in the expansion and upgrade of the Russian naval port at Tartus, the deployment of strategic weapon systems along the Syrian coast, such as the advanced S-300 and PANTSIR (SA-22) air defense systems, the SS-N-26 Yakhont shore-to-sea anti-ship missile systems, SS-26 Iskander short-range ballistic missile, long-range detection systems, and advanced electronic warfare systems.

The reinforced presence of Russian military forces in the Mediterranean and particularly in Cyprus and Syria also include the deployment of corvettes, submarines (equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles), fighter aircraft squadrons, and helicopters. 

The Russian aircraft squadrons, which are deployed at the Khmeimim base near Tartus’ port, are intended to provide an air ‘umbrella’ to the Russian Navy operating in the Mediterranean. 

In January 2017, Russia signed an agreement with the Syrian regime to lease a naval base within the Tartus port and the Khmeimim airport for 49 years with automatic renewal for another 25 years. Russia began constructing the port and its expansion to station 10 to 20 ships there and to provide maintenance capability. As part of the agreement, the defense of the base from sea and air attack is under Russian responsibility, while its physical protection on land in Syria’s commitment. 

The Russian maritime strategy’s implementation can be seen in the prolonged campaign in Syria, during which the Russian Black Sea Fleet demonstrated an intensive presence in the arena. The Black Sea Fleet performed patrols and was also responsible for supplying weapons systems and munitions from Russia to Syria using supply and auxiliary ships, which brought cargo from its base in the Black Sea to Tartus. 

Furthermore, during 2016-17 the Russian Navy carried out several attacks on high-quality ground targets in Syria using submarines and surface vessels firing cruise missiles from the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea. 

In this context, it is worth mentioning the demonstration of power by the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in the Mediterranean and notably opposite the Syrian coast from November 2016 until late January 2017. The aircraft carrier, which was accompanied by a large task force (and perhaps even a submarine), was the platform from which attack aircraft took off for missions in Syria. 

Even though two aircraft that took off from its deck crashed and its exit from the Mediterranean was accompanied by black smoke seen coming out of the ship’s funnels, the Kuznetsov’s presence in the Mediterranean and primarily off the Syrian coast had significance from the perspective of Russia’s ability to project power and its desire to be an influential and dominant player in the Mediterranean arena. 

The Russian Navy’s presence in Syria enables Russian strategic and critical capabilities such as power projection with an air-defense umbrella, logistics basing for operations in the region, and securing oil transportation from Iraq or Syria to Russia.

Russian Mediterranean Activity  Impacts on the Israeli Navy 

For many years, the Israeli Navy operated secretly and discreetly in the Mediterranean as one of the area’s strongest navies. The Israeli Navy operated in this arena and executed its missions during peace and war times almost freely. However, the Israeli Navy is affected by the Russian Navy’s presence and operations in the arena on several operational levels. 

First, Russian intelligence gathering on Israeli naval activity affects the freedom of executing routine secret operations and will also affect the ability to perform them in crisis times. The intelligence gathered enables the Russians to build a maritime picture and evaluate the Israeli Navy’s routine operational activity (from this, it can also identify any non-routine activity it carries out).

The first of four new Saar 6 ships, left, is docked in Haifa, Israel, on Dec. 2, 2020. (Photo via Heidi Levine/AP)

It can be assessed with high probability that intelligence gathered by the Russian Navy is also conveyed to Syrian and Iranian troops and indirectly even to the Hezbollah terror organization. 

Second, the presence of Russian vessels not only threatens the secrecy of Israeli navy operations in the arena but also exposes its ships to Russian forces (including Russian Navy firepower). This causes an inability for the Israeli Navy to maneuver freely in the arena where Russian vessels are present without prior coordination (deconfliction). 

The threat to the secrecy of Israeli naval operations will make it difficult to carry out intelligence missions and special operations both in peace and in war. In addition, it is reasonable to assume that in the case of war or conflict, the Israeli Navy will be highly challenged in attacking its adversaries’ vessels and coastal targets (both in Lebanon and in Syria) by the presence of Russian Navy vessels and aircraft. 

The Russian Navy’s presence and maritime control in the Mediterranean region threaten Israel’s vessels and aircraft operations, essentially constituting access denial operations carried out by the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean arena towards the Israeli Navy. 

Eyal Pinko served in the Israeli Navy for 23 years in operational, technological, and intelligence duties. He served for almost five more years as the head of the division at the prime minister’s office. He holds Israel’s Security Award, Prime Minister’s Decoration of Excellence, DDR&D Decoration of Excellence, and IDF Commander in Chief Decoration of Excellence. Eyal was a senior consultant at the Israeli National Cyber Directorate. He holds a bachelor’s degree with honor in Electronics Engineering and master’s degrees with honor in International Relationships, Management, and Organizational Development. Eyal holds a Ph.D. degree from Bar-Ilan University (Defense and Security Studies).

Endnotes

1. Yadlin Amos, “Russia in Syria and the Implications for Israel,” Strategic Assessment, Volume 19 No. 2 (7/2016): 9. 

2. Ibid.

Featured Image: Russian Navy Captain Alexander Shvarts stands near the main gun system on the Russian missile cruiser Moskva as it patrols in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Syria, on December 17, 2015. (Max Delany/AFP)