Force Structure Perspectives Series

By Dmitry Filipoff

As a part of CIMSEC’s Force Structure Perspectives Series, CIMSEC discussed the Battle Force 2045 fleet design with Dr. John T. Kuehn, a retired naval aviator who serves as the Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King Visiting Professor of Maritime History for the Hattendorf  Historical Center (HHC) at the U.S. Naval War College, and served on the Chief of Naval Operations’ 2016-2017 Fleet Design Advisory Panel. In this conversation, Dr. Kuehn discusses the pitfalls of designing a fleet around a short war, the historical context behind earlier fleet design efforts, and why naval leadership sometimes needs a push from Defense Secretaries to go in the right direction.

The Secretary of Defense recently announced a new fleet plan for a future U.S. Navy of 500 ships, a major increase over today’s fleet of around 300 ships. Among many changes, the fleet emphasizes substantial additions in areas such as sealift, unmanned warships, submarines, and smaller surface combatants. What do you make of the size of this fleet and its mix of platforms?

I recently penned an article about the U.S. Navy’s attempts to “right size” over 115 years ago, when the fleet numbered just over 300 ships. Unlike today, the fleet was steadily growing, but there were voices that claimed it was big enough to do what the American people wanted, such as to protect trade and enforce the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere. The title was “no magic” number, and as mentioned by Trip Barber on this forum, I think we all need to keep from thinking there is some absolute in terms of numbers. “How many ships do we need?” is really the wrong question. There is no magic number. Naval officers always want more—more money, more ships, and more time.

The better questions have to do with what our maritime interests are, both for the U.S and for its alliance structures (NATO and in the Pacific), and how do we modify the existing fleet to address those interests, whether in peace or in war. Can the fleet we have today do that? Can the system we have in place to change fleet structure be responsive enough to self-correct?

That said, the capabilities the plan wants to leverage seem the right sort of mix, and it represents a better approach to both an actual conflict breaking out as well as a deterrent to prevent that conflict. This last seeming contradiction is the great paradox of military and naval power and it causes no end of resentment by amateur strategists who have difficulty understanding that preparedness is indeed the best guarantor of peace. But there must be progress to make that happen, and if competitors read big words but see little action, they are likely to be emboldened rather than deterred.

I think the mix of platforms is a sensible one, and I am prepared to see a modest reduction, but not elimination, of the aircraft carrier force to get the ball moving. This does not mean I necessarily think the overall naval air force needs reduction. Again, we want our competitors to see results. I share the concerns about loss of budget share, but I think strong leadership by whoever the next president and Secretary of Defense will be should prevent that.

The undersea components are the ones most likely to have significant impact for the near-term fight or its deterrence. I am on the record in a number of places—including CIMSEC—about building more submarines as well as maintaining core anti-submarine warfare capabilities in the fleet.

This new force structure may be used to execute Navy and Marine Corps warfighting concepts, including Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). These concepts and the new fleet design embody leadership’s thinking on the nature of future warfighing tactics and operations. Are these warfighting concepts mature or flexible enough to provide a long-term foundation for building this redesigned fleet? Are trends in tactics and technology adequately captured?

Distributed maritime operations that enable what is termed “distributed lethality” hinge on certain factors. In the first place, the fundamental vision should be for an approach that is enabled and enhanced by what some are calling the new capital ship, “the network.” But getting to that point requires enough resilience—a buzzword I do not use lightly, maybe robustness is better—in the force to be able to fight in a highly chaotic electromagnetic and cyber environment that will be degraded once the missiles and electrons start flying.

An important element to manage this risk is tactical mission command, and empowering subordinates at the scene of action to exercise initiative. But there is a catch. Nelson’s advice that “no captain can do very wrong in placing his ship alongside that of the enemy” must be updated to include the unmanned battlefield. Does this mean no drone operator, or operator(s) on a mothership, can do very wrong in placing these systems in a position to inflict lethal damage to enemy systems? Quite right. However, at what point do they trust the algorithms? A culture of micromanagement that wishes to monitor every weapon and engagement cycle is counterproductive to such an approach, and will stand as an obstacle to these nascent warfighting concepts.

As for the Marines and EABO, if the concept is more than just updated offensive methods, but a more holistic doctrine that includes defense, then it has promise. Everyone forgets that the first doctrine for Marine advanced base operations in World War II was really a defensive doctrine—at Wake Island and then again at Guadalcanal on a much larger scale (remember, the Marines landed unopposed at Guadalcanal). But I see few scenarios out there that might merit seizing advance bases rather than defending those we and our allies already control in what the Chinese call the first and second island chains. The next fight that is most likely to occur is in the seas around Taiwan, not the South China Sea.

I am concerned that the foot is being cut to fit the shoe in this case, or might the need for the Marine Corps as presently configured be an item that needs closer examination? It is not only the icon of the aircraft carrier that needs reexamination, but its amphibious counterpart, the Amphibious Readiness Group (ARG). As for applications outside the Pacific, we already have force packages with mature doctrine for most of the Marine Corps missions we might envision elsewhere. I am talking about things like non-combatant evacuation operations (NEO). ARGs are better suited to an expeditionary spectrum of war in the current environment.

The light carrier force in the Battle Force 2045 plan seems to be coming out of the ARG force structure with the America-class ships. As with the amphibious assault ships, I do not favor elimination, but reduction, modest reduction, of the ARG numbers—or repurposing as discussed in the Esper plan. But those remaining ARGs do need examination—what are they for? If they are simply to be advanced base “first responders” in a very lethal environment – that might not work out so well. So my question for EABO is: advanced bases where and under what circumstances?

I am not convinced that we really need to do much more to develop a force to establish advance bases in the Pacific. Our alliances there have already done that. Our need for such bases is not nearly as urgent as some may think.

The Navy has long been concerned about whether it can sustainably increase the size of the fleet within traditional levels of shipbuilding funding. How can we view the affordability and sustainability of this fleet? 

Underrating the cost of sustainability is a chronic issue in force structure assessment. In a report of mine to Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson in 2017, I  referenced the Congressionally mandated fleet structure reports from 2016, one by MITRE Corporation, one by the Center For Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), and one an in-house study by the Navy (OpNav).

In that report to the CNO, I mentioned how one of the most telling comments I heard was, “Whatever fleet we build, it must have readiness built into it as part of the plan.” I noted that the three reports were weak in addressing long-term logistics and supportability issues, although CSBA’s did make some effort in its discussion of how to use fleet logistics (e.g., oilers). I continued on to say that this was a great concern because the existing budget paradigm has led the Navy to the point where it risks becoming a hollow fleet due to fragile readiness, as was the case after Vietnam in the 1970s. And if the geopolitical risks are assessed to be low, then this is not such a big problem, but when the Embassy in Teheran was seized, the poor readiness of all the U.S. military services’ forces came into sharp focus.

I concluded to the CNO that I would take a smaller, more ready fleet than a larger, unready one. In 1914 we had a large fleet with plenty of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, but not nearly the trained people to crew them, never mind all the trained crews for destroyers that we needed to fight submarines when war did come in 1917.

I would add that we were weak in our ability to logistically support the 1914 fleet outside the Western Hemisphere. We had a similar situation in 1941 with a Pacific Fleet that simply did not have enough fast oilers (although we were trying to remedy that), but we had gotten the cart before the horse, or rather forgotten that we needed more carts.

Any expansion or change in fleet structure and size has to include the second and third order requirements for maintenance, trained personnel, logistics, and parts support. Designing around winning a short war as some have mentioned works against this. It is always better to plan for a long war, that way, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, we will not be caught short.

This process was notable for including the direct involvement and direction of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which initially rejected the Navy and Marine Corps force structure assessment delivered in January. What is unique about how this process played out and what can we learn for making future assessments?

Others have already pointed out some of the historical context that informs the uniqueness of this approach. It has not always worked out so well with Secretaries of Defense in the past “pulling rank” on the Navy. Recall that in 1949 a Navy Secretary resigned and a CNO was relieved by the SECDEF in the so-called “Revolt of the Admirals” over the cancellation, of all things, of the construction of a super-sized aircraft carrier, the USS United States, as well as the neutering and reduction of naval aviation. Only the outbreak of the Korean War reversed this trend and brought some sensibility back into naval building policy and structure. I might add the Korean War also saved the Marine Corps from a permanent reduction in its size. I don’t think we should count on the serendipity of unexpected wars to solve our force structure problems.

That said, in this case I think the Secretary of Defense is correct. My own view is that the Navy and Marine Corps have an overly romanticized view of aircraft carriers and amphibious warfare based on World War II. In some sense, they are having cultural difficulties overcoming their history and answering the “why do we need these ships?” questions for today.

There is often no help from the top because of policy confusion over places like the South China Sea, the Senkaku Islands, and Taiwan. When policy is confused, answering the question of what to do with the fleet becomes even more difficult than it already is. The crystal ball becomes a black hole. In Esper’s case, it seems there is more policy clarity with respect to prioritizing China. His adoption of a different approach to fleet design, if it is sustained in the next couple of administrations (and that is a big if), can at least begin to give naval leaders new “sailing instructions.”

Another case study comes from my research. In 1922, naval leaders were again forced to go in a direction against their advice and collective will with the Washington Naval Treaty, which they did not like because it cut down the size of the fleet and instituted a battleship building “holiday” for ten years. Imagine an aircraft carrier building holiday (for all nations) for ten years today! Nonetheless, the Nay’s admirals grudgingly began designing a new fleet and I argue that they –  and the fleet they designed – were better for it.

Sometimes naval leaders need to be pushed in the right direction. Sometimes they don’t (as in 1949). In this case, I think Esper is pushing them in a better direction than they were going with the status quo.

What does it mean for U.S. naval strategy and great power competitiveness to build this fleet, and to build it soon? Does it address a gap between national strategy and the navy needed to execute it?

I think the building it “soon” concept is a message that will be undermined by subsequent events. We may send an unintended negative message of a lack of resolve if it appears we have a new plan, but we have no political will to see it through, especially with regard to China. But if our competitors see us making real progress with real change, that message will be received.

However, saying we will do it quick is gratuitous and counterproductive. We simply do not have the shipbuilding capacity or the budgetary flexibility to do any of this quickly, even if we get to reprogram billions of dollars from carrier construction. And while some of the components have the potential to be fielded a bit more quickly, there is still much to be learned and experimented with. We have to be careful about how we do this.

Trying to do this quickly can amount to counterproductive sloganeering. And doing it quickly in the hopes of the aforementioned, magical short victory solution is historically a chimera. The short war “masters” of the past—Napoleon and the Nazis—lost in the long run, didn’t they? I would also lump the Imperial Japanese Navy into that category.

Previous force structure assessments conducted in 2016 were later considered by some to be overly optimistic with respect to certain factors, such as available resourcing. How can we be confident in this new assessment, and that it will spur the change it recommends? What comes next to build this fleet?

When I took a look at all three of those 2016 force structure studies and analyzed them, I found that perhaps the most optimistic of them, the CSBA study, still had the most promise. But it was not perfect—it discounted the capabilities of the other services (especially the U.S. Air Force) and allies. So this new assessment has to include the larger U.S. defense force structure, as well as our allied capabilities. Too often we plan in an American-only maritime vacuum.

What we do know, and have known for over 10 years now, is that the status quo, especially with a surging China at sea, is a long-term loser. If we keep doing what we are doing, with whatever assessment we say is guiding our path, then the taxpayers—and I believe the global community—will be poorly served by a legacy fleet instead of an updated fleet designed for the problems of this century, not the last one.

I am not overly optimistic, but neither am I totally cynical. The problem has made it to the Defense Secretary level, but if it fades after the election into business as usual, I think we will all lose. And by “we” I mean the American people and the people of allied nations.

Dr. John T. Kuehn currently serves as the Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King Visiting Professor of Maritime History for the Hattendorf  Historical Center (HHC) at the U.S. Naval War College. He retired from the U.S. Navy in 2004 after 23 years, serving as a naval flight officer who specialized in airborne electronic warfare. In 2016-2017 he participated as a member of then-CNO Admiral John Richardson’s Fleet Design Advisory Panel. He authored Agents of Innovation (2008), A Military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21^st Century (2014), Napoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns (2015), America’s First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the Navy, 1900-1950  (2017) and co-authored Eyewitness Pacific Theater (2008) with D.M. Giangreco as well as numerous articles and editorials, and was awarded a Moncado Prize from the Society for Military History in 2011. His latest book from ABC-CLIO is The 100 Worst Military Disasters in History (2020), co-authored with David Holden. He is the former Major General William Stofft Chair of Historical Research (2013-2016) at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. The views are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Naval War College, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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

Featured Image: SOUTH CHINA SEA (March 15, 2020) The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) leads ships from the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and the America Expeditionary Strike Group during a transit of the South China Sea during a photo exercise, March 15, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Brandon Richardson/Released)

Force Structure Perspectives Series

By Dmitry Filipoff

As a part of CIMSEC’s Force Structure Perspectives Series, CIMSEC discussed the Battle Force 2045 fleet design with Congresswoman Elaine Luria (D-Va.), Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, and a retired nuclear-trained surface warfare officer with 20 years of active duty service. In this conversation, Rep. Luria discusses investing in the industrial base to support the new fleet, carefully developing shipbuilding plans, and how Congress should become more involved with fielding new force structure.

The Secretary of Defense recently announced a new fleet plan for a future U.S. Navy of 500 ships, a major increase over today’s fleet of around 300 ships. Among many changes, the fleet emphasizes substantial additions in areas such as sealift, unmanned warships, submarines, and smaller surface combatants. What do you make of the size of this fleet and its mix of platforms?

More than simply focusing on the size of the fleet, we should be concerned with capability, lethality, and our ability to generate forces and deployed presence. Any major changes to our fleet structure should come through serious analysis that balances lethality with force projection.

As a counterpoint to simply growing the size of the Navy, we have failed to make adequate investments in the infrastructure that allows us to maintain and deploy the existing fleet to its full capability. Public shipyards are at maximum capacity, and our private shipyards are not optimized to complete maintenance in a timely and efficient manner. Any commitment to grow the size of the fleet must have an accompanying investment in the infrastructure to grow and sustain the industrial base to support a fleet of this size.

Recently, Michele Flournoy wrote the U.S should be able to “credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines, and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours.” I agree with this type of strategy that would focus our naval efforts on a narrow goal that would achieve and preserve maritime dominance in the Western Pacific. With such a defined goal, we could design a fleet not based on size, but based on capability. Deterrence must be credible and is only effective when an adversary believes, through our daily actions, that the cost of their armed aggression will be met with such overwhelming force (damage) that the loss would be too extreme for the benefit.

The failure of current and past administrations to translate a national strategic vision into actionable long-term goals for the U.S. military necessitates additional Congressional involvement, and not just with purse strings or oversight, but with a seat at the table to develop the National Defense Strategy (NDS). Additionally, the national strategic vision should be signed into law so that it extends beyond the terms of elected officials and military leadership.

This new force structure may be used to execute Navy and Marine Corps warfighting concepts, including Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). These concepts and the new fleet design embody leadership’s thinking on the nature of future warfighting tactics and operations. Are these warfighting concepts mature or flexible enough to provide a long-term foundation for building this redesigned fleet? Are trends in tactics and technology adequately captured?

I am concerned that neither DMO nor EABO are mature enough to be used as a basis for developing the foundation for a redesigned fleet. Particularly in the technology realm, the Navy and Marine Corps combat systems and communications systems have many interoperability shortcomings. DMO specifically requires a robust network of sensors and communications that allows seamless interoperability. Although we have focused on joint interoperability in the past few decades, there are still many challenges to providing a seamless joint network, which has been exacerbated by a piecemeal modernization strategy.

The Navy has long been concerned about whether it can sustainably increase the size of the fleet within traditional levels of shipbuilding funding. How can we view the affordability and sustainability of this fleet?

Current levels of shipbuilding funding cannot grow to and sustain a 355-ship fleet, much less a 500-plus ship fleet. Far too often we field technology for technology’s sake without having a fully developed plan that dovetails costs like maintenance and increased end-strength requirements to crew these vessels. Current shipbuilding programs have been plagued by cost overruns, production delays, and other issues related to technology insertion on first-in-class vessels, like the Ford-class carriers. All of these costs must be considered upfront when planning for the future fleet. Current Navy budget levels will not be sufficient to grow and sustain the fleet proposed by the Secretary of Defense.

The founders of this country understood the importance of the Navy to maintain freedom of navigation, freedom of trade, and power projection. The constitution states that it is the responsibility of Congress to “Raise and support Armies,” but to “provide and maintain a Navy.” The distinction between the Army and the Navy outlined in the constitution is critical, because the founders understood that regardless of peace or war, the country must have a robust Navy.

I think there need to be hard conversations in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill about the allocation of resources between the services. A defined national strategic vision developed jointly by the legislative and executive branches would allow these tough conversations to take place. Some legislators, including Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) and Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) who serve as the chairman and ranking member of the House Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee, respectively, have long advocated for the funding of the SSBN program to reside in the National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund (NSBDF). This would be a good start to free up funding for additional shipbuilding in the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), and I fully support moving the SSBN program to the NSBDF. One could make the argument for other strategic programs to be funded similarly as we engage in the modernization of our nuclear deterrent.

An additional area of focus that I will be working on in the upcoming Congress is the role of civilian mariners within the Navy. Currently, civilian mariners man logistics, sealift, special mission, and many other ships—over 130 in the Military Sealift Command (MSC) inventory. Although MSC has operated hybrid crewed ships (civilian mariners and military) for some time now (e.g. USS Mount Whitney, USS Ponce), the introduction of the Expeditionary Sea Base (T-ESB) advances the potential for civilian mariners to play a larger role in the Navy. There are legal hurdles to overcome, but one should examine constructs such as the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Landing Ship Dock program to see the possibilities of a hybrid crew on a traditional warship.

This process was notable for including the direct involvement and direction of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which initially rejected the Navy and Marine Corps force structure assessment delivered in January. What is unique about how this process played out and what can we learn for making future assessments?

The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 removed strategic planning as a primary responsibility of the Chief of Naval Operations and moved the responsibility to various other entities, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and the Combatant Commanders. However, responsibility for developing the force structure assessments and 30-year Shipbuilding Plan remained with the Navy.

So one hand is developing the strategy and another the means to deliver the strategy, but neither is fully delivering. As previously mentioned, additional congressional involvement must be a top priority in the 117^th Congress in developing a national strategic vision, and I believe this must include revisiting Goldwater-Nichols.

What does it mean for U.S. naval strategy and great power competitiveness to build this fleet, and to build it soon? Does it address a gap between national strategy and the navy needed to execute it?

Building the right fleet should be a national priority. Our main global adversary is China, so future conflicts are likely to be naval. Again, it is not about the size of the fleet, but the capability that fleet brings to the fight. Building a fleet of this size would enhance American naval presence around the world.

But I maintain my concerns about the makeup of this new fleet and that its composition must be framed by defined objectives and concrete goals that support our National Defense Strategy. Our shipyards are challenged to keep up with maintenance of our current fleet, so this will also require intensive investment in the industrial base to ensure that both our existing and new vessels remain functional and readiness is enhanced. More than just fleet size, we should also think about capability and lethality.

Previous force structure assessments conducted in 2016 were later considered by some to be overly optimistic with respect to certain factors, such as available resourcing. How can we be confident in this new assessment, and that it will spur the change it recommends? What comes next to build this fleet?

The next step is for Defense Secretary Esper, Navy Secretary Braithwaite, and other top Defense Department officials to explain the assessment to congress.

Recently, my colleague, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) proposed that members of congress participate in wargaming at the Naval War College. I think this would be a good start, but Congress needs to understand the requirements being proposed and why. Most members of Congress don’t understand specifically the needed mix of ships, aircraft, and missiles required to prevail in a conflict with China. Congressional buy-in will be critical as we determine funding levels for each acquisition program, maintenance, and readiness requirements.

Congresswoman Elaine Luria represents Coastal Virginia, home to the world’s largest naval base. Before running for Congress, Elaine served two decades in the U.S. Navy, retiring at the rank of Commander. A Surface Warfare Officer who operated nuclear reactors, she was one of the first women in the Navy’s nuclear power program and among the first women to serve the entirety of her career on combatant ships. Of all members in the House Democratic Caucus, she served the longest on active duty, commanding hundreds of sailors and deploying six times to conduct operations in the Middle East and Western Pacific. Congresswoman Luria serves on the House Armed Services Committee, where she is Vice Chair of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, and on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, where she is the Chair of the Disability and Memorial Assistance Subcommittee.

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

Featured Image: Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG-52), front, and the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) transit the South China Sea April 18, 2020. (U.S. Navy Photo)

Force Structure Perspectives Series

By Dmitry Filipoff

As a part of CIMSEC’s Force Structure Perspectives Series, CIMSEC discussed the Battle Force 2045 fleet design with Capt. Robert Rubel (ret.), who served as the chair of the Naval War College’s wargaming department and dean of the College’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies. In this conversation, Capt. Rubel discusses the Navy’s longstanding aversion to distributed force structure elements, why the Office of the Secretary of Defense may have seized the process of fleet design, and how to move the fleet toward move effective strategic and tactical dispersion. 

The Secretary of Defense recently announced a new fleet plan for a future U.S. Navy of 500 ships, a major increase over today’s fleet of around 300 ships. Among many changes, the fleet emphasizes substantial additions in areas such as sealift, unmanned warships, submarines, and smaller surface combatants. What do you make of the size of this fleet and its mix of platforms? 

From one perspective, the Secretary’s plan is encouraging. A number of us armchair admirals have been advocating for such a redesign since the late 1990s. Notably, the late Professor Capt. Wayne Hughes, long-time chairman of the Operations Research Department at the Naval Postgraduate School, advocated for what he called a “bi-modal” Navy consisting of a mix of ships similar to what both the Hudson Institute and Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office came up with.

The notion of a mixed fleet was at least euphemistically embedded in the 2007 national maritime strategy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21^st Century Seapower (CS21). It called for “credible combat power” to be concentrated in the Middle East and the Western Pacific with “globally distributed, mission tailored” forces being dispatched to other areas to carry out an array of peacetime missions, including maritime security, and disaster relief and humanitarian assistance operations. This concept was the result of an input to the strategy development process by Prof. Hughes. It seemed congruent with the document’s sweeping assertion that the Sea Services would deploy globally to “…protect and sustain the peaceful global system comprised of interdependent networks of trade, finance, information, law, people and governance.” Such a comprehensive approach to defending a favorable world order clearly called for a large and strategically dispersed Navy, and this prospective fleet design appears to deliver such a force.

This new force structure may be used to execute Navy and Marine Corps warfighting concepts, including Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). These concepts and the new fleet design embody leadership’s thinking on the nature of future warfighing tactics and operations. Are these warfighting concepts mature or flexible enough to provide a long-term foundation for building this redesigned fleet? Are trends in tactics and technology adequately captured? 

If the Secretary’s design adopts provisions in the Hudson study, it will contain a different approach to the application of new technology. While the number and types of ships in the design are clearly congruent with DMO and EABO, there are other underlying factors that the numbers in and of themselves do not capture. The Hudson study advocates a fundamentally different approach to air and missile defense, for example, substituting closer-in engagements for the long-range layered structure in current doctrine.

Perhaps most fundamentally, the Hudson fleet design is based on what they call “decision-centric warfare” which, based on the DARPA concept of mosaic warfare, seeks to impose insoluble dilemmas and confusion on the enemy. Therefore the new fleet, in a Taiwan invasion scenario for example, would focus on disruption of enemy plans rather than just attrition of enemy forces. This necessarily incorporates a multi-domain approach and seems to mesh well with the emerging joint command and control concept. Whether the decision-centric “theory of victory” will work is an imponderable, but in any case, the projected force composition seems flexible enough to accommodate other approaches if necessary.

The Navy has long been concerned about whether it can sustainably increase the size of the fleet within traditional levels of shipbuilding funding. How can we view the affordability and sustainability of this fleet? 

I have been a budget skeptic for quite some time and thus far my skepticism has been justified. I am encouraged by Secretary Esper’s assertion that he will augment the Navy’s Shipbuilding and Conversion (SCN) account, but his remaining time in office might be measured in months. In any case, it is a matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and “Peter” – other Services and programs that stand to lose money – can be expected to put up a fight. Meanwhile, COVID relief expenditures will prevent any significant increase to the defense budget.

The Hudson plan can theoretically be executed within current SCN guidelines and so I am less skeptical of it. But the Secretary’s plan is more expansive, and while I do like it, I do not think it will be possible to achieve. There are going to have to be difficult internal tradeoffs, most notably reducing the number of nuclear aircraft carriers to bankroll other programs.

This process was notable for including the direct involvement and direction of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which initially rejected the Navy and Marine Corps force structure assessment delivered in January. What is unique about how this process played out and what can we learn for making future assessments? 

There seems to be some kind of “deep state” within the Navy that is wedded to current fleet design. There is not room here to go into all the ins and outs of this matter, but since the late 1990s the Navy has repeatedly rejected calls for a less carrier-centric and more distributed fleet. The LCS is kind of the exception that proves the rule. The need for a smaller, cheaper combatant that could be built in larger numbers became evident in that period, but the Navy acquisition process could not tolerate a truly small, cheap vessel. And so it rushed into production a ship that was designed around too much and perhaps too irrelevant to new technology, and whose cost bloated to several times what was envisioned. Then it rolled the dice again on the Ford-class carrier program and the Zumwalt-class destroyer, both representing ruinously expensive technological overreach. The Optimized Fleet Response Plan, designed to squeeze more readiness out of an insufficient inventory of ships, also has not worked.

Predictably, the Navy’s process produced a fleet structure assessment that was still wedded to these types of approaches, and SECDEF blew the whistle on this. It might be the case that this is simply a one-time interrupt and if a new administration takes office things will snap back to the way they were. Or perhaps OSD will now keep the fleet design process in its hands permanently.

Ideally, in my view, this episode will break up the Navy’s fixation on the aforementioned force structure concepts and approaches, and it will adopt a new approach to fleet design that is freed from the strictures of machine-based campaign analysis based on canonical contingency scenarios. There has been a struggle for the last several decades within the Navy between the strategy shop and resource shop over this, with the resource shop always winning. I hope SECDEF’s intervention will alter that balance of power.

What does it mean for U.S. naval strategy and great power competitiveness to build this fleet, and to build it soon? Does it address a gap between national strategy and the navy needed to execute it?

Clearly the Navy does not have enough ships and other resources to support the national grand strategy of comprehensively defending our desired international order. That strategy requires both strategic dispersal and operational concentration. The 2007 CS21 document expressed this succinctly when it called for concentrated credible combat power in the Middle East and Western Pacific, and “globally distributed, mission tailored” forces to conduct presence elsewhere. The problem is that the nation either cannot or will not make the kind of investment necessary to generate a Navy of sufficient size to do this based on the current fleet design. Moreover, trends in weapons and technology make the current concentrated nature of the fleet vulnerable.

Therefore the Navy must shift to a fleet design that is based on both strategic and tactical dispersion. Doing so would permit a more rapid adjustment, since smaller combatants could be built at more yards. Now the question is whether the lumbering acquisition process could also adjust. The problem is likened to the LCS debacle, in which the process proceeded on the basis of “ready, shoot, aim,” which made the Navy wind its way forward to some extent. And so it will want to be more deliberate in the next round of ship design and procurement. But geopolitical events are outpacing us in that respect. The Navy really needs to find a way to increase its combat lethality in the short term, regardless of what overall fleet design is adopted.

Previous force structure assessments conducted in 2016 were later considered by some to be overly optimistic with respect to certain factors, such as available resourcing. How can we be confident in this new assessment, and that it will spur the change it recommends? What comes next to build this fleet? 

Navy shipbuilding plans have almost always been based on a “bow wave” of anticipated future shipbuilding budgets, and I suspect the latest one SECDEF rejected was no different. But even SECDEF himself seems to have caught a mild form of the disease based on his statements that he will increase the shipbuilding budget. But current-year increases are one thing, sustained national commitment to a larger fleet is quite another.

It seems that only looming existential threats can spur such a buildup, and there do not seem to be any of these on the horizon, at least in the public’s view, and notwithstanding the exhortations on great power competition contained in both the current National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy documents. Moreover, it seems that the cost growth of ships has been outpacing inflation, so even modest increases over time will not be enough. In order to achieve effective strategic dispersal through greater numbers of ships and also increase combat lethality through tactical dispersion, the Navy will have to fundamentally change its attitude toward small, cheap ships that are armed with smart, long-range missiles, and soon.

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.

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

Featured Image: South China Sea (Oct. 15, 2020) An F/A-18E assigned to the “Royal Maces” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 27 launches off the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) while conducting security and stability operations in the South China Sea. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Codie L. Soule)

Force Structure Perspectives Series

By Dmitry Filipoff

As a part of CIMSEC’s Force Structure Perspectives Series, CIMSEC discussed the Battle Force 2045 fleet design with Col. T.X. Hammes (ret)., a Distinguished Research Fellow at the U.S. National Defense University. In this conversation, Col. Hammes discusses whether this fleet can be afforded, how novel warfighting concepts provide a point of departure for experimentation, and how the increasing lethality of modern weaponry is driving changes in fleet design.

The Secretary of Defense recently announced a new fleet plan for a future U.S. Navy of 500 ships, a major increase over today’s fleet of around 300 ships. Among many changes, the fleet emphasizes substantial additions in areas such as sealift, unmanned warships, submarines, and smaller surface combatants. What do you make of the size of this fleet and its mix of platforms? 

The increase in submarines and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) is a positive sign. As SecDef noted, submarines remain our most survivable platforms today. When combined with unmanned underwater vehicles, new mines, and new torpedoes, they can dramatically increase the PLA Navy’s problems in penetrating the first island chain.

The jury is still out on unmanned surface vessels (USVs). One issue will be how to prevent their seizure during peacetime by manned commercial surface vessels – whether simply pirates or state sponsored. While it remains unclear how unmanned surface vessels with be protected and armed, it is encouraging that the Navy is currently examining different ways to increase the number of platforms available for a wide variety of missions. Although not mentioned by SecDef, the Navy is exploring the concept of missile merchants to provide major increases in lethality (increasing the number of missile tubes at sea) and numbers of distributed assets at relatively low cost. Since these ships will need crews of only 40-50, they may be an interim step to fully unmanned surface vehicles. They also address the major issue facing all the services – the increasing cost of personnel. 

Given the rapid diffusion and marked increase in the range of anti-ship missile systems, the reduction in the number of very large platforms – carriers and large-deck amphibs – is also a positive development. But the cuts seem to be minimal. The Chinese have modified the H-6 bomber to deliver a modified DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missiles to a range of well over 2,000 miles. Even the air wing of the future will not be able to reach anywhere near that far when (if) it is fielded a decade from now. The Secretary stated that the primary roles of the carriers and potential light carriers will be deterrence, power projection, and sea control. Power projection will be problematic due to the fact land-based air and missile systems continue to outrange naval aviation. Deterrence is in the eye of the beholder and may well work against medium or small powers, but China has clearly worked hard to neutralize the carriers.

Sea control remains a vital role for air-capable platforms. This will provide a continuing role for the large-deck carrier, but one has to question whether we need eight to carry out this mission. The enormous cost of the carrier, its air wing, personnel, operations and maintenance cost, and long expensive training pipelines makes this an enormous investment. Given projected budget constraints, we need to consider if using increasingly capable Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) capable drones on smaller platforms can’t achieve the same mission at a vastly reduced cost while freeing the escorts from protecting the carrier. We should be seeking to impose costs on our opponents, not ourselves.

Major cuts in large surface combatants with concurrent increases in small surface combatants also reflect significant changes in the character of naval warfare in an age of mass missile attacks. It is in keeping with Captain Wayne Hughes’ concepts of missile age warfare. The combination of more small missile capable ships, potentially missile-armed USVs, and missile merchants could provide the U.S. Navy with many more missiles systems at much less cost. This creates more problems for our competitors.

This new force structure may be used to execute Navy and Marine Corps warfighting concepts, including Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO), and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). These concepts and the new fleet design embody leadership’s thinking on the nature of future warfighing tactics and operations. Are these warfighting concepts mature or flexible enough to provide a long-term foundation for building this redesigned fleet? Are trends in tactics and technology adequately captured? 

The Navy and Marine Corps warfighting concepts address the “core operational concept” the SecDef noted in his speech. The most important aspect of these concepts is the recognition that they require major force structure changes for the services to be effective in the emerging operational environment.

In fact, the concepts are not mature. Nor should we expect them to be. They are an initial attempt to respond to what the Secretary noted is a fundamental change in the character of warfare as it expands into new domains. The intellectual logic has been debated and gamed quite a bit, but the ultimate proof is in experimentation and adaption. A key attribute must be flexibility so that the concepts can quickly evolve as the Navy and Marine Corps experiment and learn.

Like all previous attempts to adapt radical changes in the character of warfare, they are not the final answer, but provide a basis to start the cycle of innovation, test, and experimentation that has marked all major force transitions. Trends and tactics are probably not adequately captured because predicting the future, as that great American strategist Yogi Berra noted, is very difficult.

In the 1930s, faced with the challenge of a Pacific War, the Marine Corps started experimenting with major amphibious operations before it had an effective landing craft, good radios for coordination, appropriate command and control structures, and dozens of other techniques and pieces of equipment needed to succeed. By doing so, it drove many of the technologies that would be needed by taking advantage of the changes still being driven by the third industrial revolution.

In 1947, while struggling to adapt to a potential nuclear battlefield, the Marine Corps started to experiment with regimental-sized helicopter assaults when its largest helicopter could carry only three passengers. Both concepts were flexible and adapted as the environment changed and the Corps learned from its experiments. And the concepts both took advantage of new technologies and drove technological development in the directions needed to execute them.

The Navy has long been concerned about whether it can sustainably increase the size of the fleet within traditional levels of shipbuilding funding. How can we view the affordability and sustainability of this fleet? 

Due to funding restraints, it is questionable whether the fleet can reach the proposed size. The Congressional Research Service provided its usual high quality analysis of cost not only for construction but also maintenance of the proposed 355-ship fleet in its report Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress. While CRS does not take a position on affordability, it notes that in 2019 navy leaders stated that the best they could achieve without a major budget increase was a fleet of 305-310. The CRS report noted that while the current budget is among the highest in history, it can only support a fleet of about 300 ships. 

To date, there are insufficient details concerning the composition of the 500-plus ship navy to give a hard analysis of the affordability. But given the fact the Navy could not support a fleet of over 310 without major increases, it seems the plan as currently configured is not affordable unless the U.S. Navy ruthlessly scrubs its priorities and reallocates its resources toward shipbuilding and not manned aircraft and its associated training and maintenance infrastructure.

What does it mean for U.S. naval strategy and great power competitiveness to build this fleet, and to build it soon? Does it address a gap between national strategy and the navy needed to execute it? 

Obviously this much larger fleet would make it easier to execute almost any strategy than the current, much smaller, force structure. The fact the proposed fleet is not affordable within today’s parameters of naval budgets means there can be no coherent discussion as to its impact on strategy. Fortunately, this fleet structure is not the only and certainly not the least expensive way to execute that strategy.

Previous force structure assessments conducted in 2016 were later considered by some to be overly optimistic with respect to certain factors, such as available resourcing. How can we be confident in this new assessment, and that it will spur the change it recommends? What comes next to build this fleet?

This plan seems to ignore the budget in the same way the plan for the 355-ship fleet did. The 355-ship navy plan was more of a political statement of aspiration than an actual plan. The old but very true saying that a strategy without resources is a fantasy applies. Achieving this plan would require not only maintaining the record high DoD budgets but also reallocating major resources from other services to provide the funds the Navy needs to execute this plan. The record of DoD budgets post-Eisenhower indicates our system is extremely unlikely to reapportion major budgets between services. Compounding the problem, the U.S. federal budget will be under increasing pressure from increasing interest payments on the national debt, increasing costs of current medical programs, infrastructure needs, and social security costs.

The first step is to design a fleet within fiscal constraints that recognizes the emergence of long-range, precision missiles as a potentially dominant weapon in naval warfare. This means shifting from a building program based on platforms to one based on the weapons systems they carry. These weapons will have to be autonomous and with much longer ranges to be strategically and operationally relevant.

Vested interests will make this an extremely difficult task. Many will object due to a sincere belief that current platforms can be upgraded to thrive in the emerging environment. Others will object because shifting to new concepts means older systems will have to be phased out. Many of these systems – particularly carriers and their aircraft – have aggressive Congressional and industry support. This is an inherent part of the system since Congresspersons are bound to represent their constituents and CEOs have responsibilities to their shareholders. But to make the plan a reality, and to increases the Navy’s contribution to strategic competition, the shifts discussed here need to be pursued.

Dr. T. X. Hammes is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the U. S. National Defense University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the views of the U.S. government.

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

Featured Image: U.S. 5TH FLEET AREA OF OPERATIONS (June 4, 2017) The amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5) pulls alongside the dry cargo and ammunition ship USNS Washington Chambers (T-AKE 11) during a replenishment-at-sea (RAS) as Sailors from deck department prepare to man the phone and distance line. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Mutis A. Capizzi/Released)