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Beans Boots Bullets, Strategic Outlook

Quantity over Quality

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This article is part of our “Sacred Cows Week.”

As articles and blog posts often point out, US naval forces have been largely unchallenged at sea since World War II. Today we face the largest danger since 1945, in the form of severe budgetary cutbacks and fiscal austerity that affect our manning and readiness. After nonnegotiable items like paychecks and food supplies, there is little leftover for R&D, systems upgrades, or the planned expansion to 300 vessels in the next decade.

We face a paradox: while the Navy’s budget is downsizing, its mission requirements are expanding. With the rebalance to the Pacific, there is a lot of ocean that the Navy has to cover—64 million square miles in fact. Our forces are occupied daily from maintaining ballistic missile defense off the coast of North Korea to aiding efforts in Japan after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima to monitoring territorial disputes in the East China Sea to conducting counter-piracy operations among the Indonesian archipelagos. In the words of Admiral Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, “Presence is our mandate. We have to be where it matters. We need to be there when it matters. And we need to be ready when it matters.” How can we be there, from the Strait of Malacca to the Second Thomas Shoal, when we’re $14 billion dollars short?

It requires the reversal of an adage, a sacred value we pride ourselves on and indeed have executed expertly: “Quality over Quantity!” If we are to achieve Forward Presence and Power Projection, we must instead turn to the new values of “Quantity and Distribution.” We are accustomed to having the highest quality maritime assets on the seas. But in the current times, and for the foreseeable future, the US Navy cannot finance these types of assets in the quantity necessary to maintain a presence across the world’s oceans.

Instead we need smaller and simpler vessels that are relatively inexpensive to produce and maintain. What they sacrifice in capability, such ships gain in speed and affordability—speed to respond quickly, affordability to be mass-distributed. Such a fleet would promote regional stability and establish a forward US Navy presence everywhere they are deployed. If a situation requires bigger guns, the Navy’s more capable (and accordingly more expensive) assets can be dispatched as backup. Smaller ships also offer the advantage of reducing vulnerability. Expensive gray-hulls are single high value targets compared to a dispersed group of low-cost vessels.

130214-N-IC228-003What platform would fill this role exactly? Perhaps a new program is needed, or perhaps an existing program can be adapted such as the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) or the Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV). One thing is for sure, it won’t be the DDG1000 or the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier. The Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) and its variant, the Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB), are promising programs. John Glenn, the second in this line produced by General Dynamics, was just floated in San Diego this past September. Essentially a modified oil tanker, these 840-foot vessels offer a plethora of storage space, a large open deck, and ballast tanks capable of flooding parts of the deck to take on hovercraft. MLPs may not be the quality of technological superiority that we are used to; but at a mere $500 million a copy, they bring capability for a price at which we can afford the quantity.

As the US continues to shift from large-scale conventional wars to geographically diverse low-intensity conflicts, the Navy’s forces must be tailored with the current financial hardships in mind. With changing times come changing values, and it is finally time to shelf the demand for quality and instead favor quantity.

References:

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/dfad249c4dfc

http://www.seapowermagazine.org/stories/20131025-cno.html

Beans Boots Bullets

Closing the Loop: Boosting Operational Sustainability and Quality of Life through Wastewater Reclamation

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By Lt. j.g. Todd Coursey, USN

This post was inspired by a question on the application for this year’s U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Rapid Innovation Cell (CRIC): “If you had $1 million and 18 months to change the Navy, what would you do, and how would you accomplish it?” We will be running additional innovative ideas in this series in conjunction with the CRIC’s new discussion forum “The Whiteboard.” 

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Ship_pumping_ballast_waterYou’re on deployment in the U.S. 5th Fleet Area of Responsibility (AOR) off the Arabian Peninsula. You’ve been in 90 degree heat most of the afternoon. You just came off watch and as you head to the shower you hear the ship’s 1MC announce, “Water hours – showers secured.”

As some sailors know all too well, volume demand for shipboard water at times exceeds its capacity. The traditional approach to alleviate this problem is to change demand, constraining shipboard personnel to endure limited water use. But there’s another way. Engineering a closed-loop water system to re-use water supplies, leveraging mature civilian industry technologies and academia knowledge, could provide a respite for shipboard personnel and equipment.

Current shipboard practice is to discharge both black water (sewage) and gray water (non-sewage) overboard while operating beyond 3 miles of land, hold black water within 3 nautical miles while diverting gray water overboard, and while in port collect both black and gray to offload to suitable shore facilities.

Instead of diverting gray water overboard, the Navy should treat gray and black water as the two independent systems they are, and close the loop in the sewage-treatment system for reclamation of gray water. This reclaimed water should be used in non-human consumption applications – the water quality to flush a toilet is less stringent than water quality required for drinking water. Recycled, lower quality water can be used as a supplemental cooling medium for refrigerant plants, for topside freshwater wash-downs, bilge cleaning, freshwater ballast tank flushes, and some fire-fighting applications.

Additionally, treating gray and black water as independent systems increases sewage-holding capacity by reducing the introduction of gray water into black water. It also lessens the demand on saltwater/freshwater conversion and potable water systems by diverting it to reclaimed lower quality water for suitable applications. Operationally, reclamation of gray water therefore provides an advantage as the Navy supports a more littoral fleet. By extending water use in restricted discharge areas, the Navy enhances its ability to undertake sustained littoral operations.

To facilitate the reclamation, the Navy should consider using mature industrial technologies such as biomass reactor vessels and membrane filtration systems on gray water for appropriate applications. Recent national (mostly through the Clean Water Act) and international environmental controls have forced cruise ship and transport industries to improve their sewage discharge, and consequently there has been significant development in both bio and membrane technologies to support reclamation of gray water.

The Staff of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV), through its Environmental Protection, Safety and Occupational health Division (N45), has a vision for Environmentally Sound Ships of the 21st Century, whereby new-design ships must be able to operate in U.S, international, and foreign waters in compliance with environmental laws and regulations without degradation of mission or quality-of-life. This means that ships must be designed and operated to minimize waste generation and optimize waste management. With a concentrated focus in re-use of gray water and process improvements in treating the sources of effluent sewage, we can improve the quality of life for sailors, and improve worldwide capability and operability.

Lt. j.g. Todd E. Coursey is an Engineering Duty Officer and the project officer aboard USS Porter (DDG 78). Prior tours include USS Ashland (LSD 48) and enlisted tours aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), and Nuclear Field “A” School in Charleston, SC, where he completed his BS degree and was selected for Officer Candidate School (OCS).

Beans Boots Bullets

China’s Defense Budget Getting Fatter on the Big Mac Index

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“Show me the money” is the mantra of those analyzing Chinese defense budgets, searching for every defense dollar hidden behind state-owned defense enterprises and construction projects. But perhaps what they should be asking is, “where’s the beef?”

Every traveler knows that money is only as good as what it can buy. What you find on the dollar menu on one side of the border may cost $2.05 on the other. A lack of this purchasing-power-parity perspective is a major flaw in standard comparisons of annual defense spending. Analysis of the U.S. and Chinese defense budgets should not concentrate on dollar-vs-dollar, but rather the meat of what those budgets can buy.

For a quick non-scientific assessment of defense budgets weighted by purchasing-power, we look to the Big Mac Index (BMI, no pun intended). In 1986, the Economist developed the BMI as a humorous way of gauging the accuracy of currency valuations world-wide. What started out as educational humor became a serious academic endeavor. The BMI is so effective that the infamous currency manipulating government of Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has passed laws regulating the sale and marketing of the Big Mac. Although the Economist has produced a “gourmet” version controlling for local factors such as differences in labor costs, it is those local market defects that make the raw BMI appropriate for defense budget analysis – the analysis is not of currency on the exchange floor, but on the shop floor.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China‘s raw defense budget of $166 billion is a mere 24% of the American defense budget at $682 billion (including so-called OCO funds for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars). In order to gain the purchasing power perspective, we can compare the budgets using the respective countries’ Big Mac Index prices – $2.61 in China and $4.56 in the United States. Weighted with the BMI, China’s defense budget value is 42% of its American rival, the equivalent of $287 billion. chinabudgetchart1

Depending on what source you use, the comparison worsens. A raw dollar-to-dollar comparison of DOD’s maximum assessment of China’s defense budget ($215 billion) and the U.S. budget without war funding ($593 billion) shows China at 35% of the U.S. level. Once you weight the budgets with the BMI index, the Chinese defense budget emerges at a robust 63% of the U.S., the equivalent of $376 billion.

chinabudgetchart2

The BMI is by no means a perfect method of showing the value-for-money comparison of Chinese and U.S. defense budgets. After all, burgers aren’t bombers, and fries aren’t frigates.

But using such purchasing power parity measures provides a useful perspective as the dirge of sequestration starts to play. The BMI illustrates how the value-for-money calculation tilts toward China. So, too, are the missions and challenges to which the value is applied. Because of its extensive cyber program and other means of industrial espionage, China must spend far less on R&D as it steals and copies designs and doctrines from its more advanced competitors. China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) focus provides a financial asymmetry as well as a technological one. After all, a DF-21 “carrier killer” missile is far cheaper than the U.S. supercarrier it’s designed to strike.

Secretary Hagel has noted that half of U.S. defense spending is obligated to pay, benefits, and retirement – not training, supplies, capital investment, procurement, or R&D as many assume. China does not treat their personnel nearly so well. Moreover, these “people costs” are consuming an increasing share of the defense dollar. Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno recently predicted that compensation would consume 80% of the Army’s budget by 2023.

The BMI does hold out one glimmer of hope: the McDonald’s Theory of International Relations holds that no two nations hosting a McDonald’s franchise will ever go to war. But in the Asia-Pacific of the 21st Century, the United States cannot afford to rely on Mayor McCheese to guarantee the peace.

LT Matthew Hipple is the Executive Officer of PC Crew INDIA and the Director of the NEXTWAR blog. He is also a member of the U.S. Naval Institute and a contributor to Proceedings. While his opinions may not reflect those of the United States Navy, Department of Defense, or US Government.
Twitter: @AmericaHipple

This article was originally posted at Real Clear Defense.

 

Beans Boots Bullets

Gooey Kablooey: How Agro-Terrorists Will Destroy You By Destroying Your Food

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 The following article is special to our International Maritime Shipping Week. While we often discuss the threats to maritime shipping, this week looks at dangers arising from such global trade, and possible mitigations.

It's the one to port
                           Cargo ships in San Francisco harbor. Is one of them out to ruin your dinner?

Sometime in 1843 or 1844, a ship most likely from Baltimore, New York, or Philadelphia landed in a European port. Among the seed potatoes in its hold was the North American fungus Phytophthora infestans. The resulting potato blight swept across Europe, and when it combined with the abominable agricultural policy in Ireland, the outcome was nearly a million dead and a 25 percent reduction in population if including emigration. 

Last year, around 25 million food shipments entered the United States, primarily by sea, but only roughly two percent of them were inspected by Food and Drug Administration agents, and nearly all of these inspections occurred on U.S. soil (the largest share at the massive port of Los Angeles). Meanwhile a 2012 report by the Centers for Disease Control shows that from 2005 – 2010 at least “39 outbreaks and 2,348 illnesses were linked to imported food from 15 countries”, and that “nearly half (17) occurred in 2009 and 2010.”

The fact is, importing foods to the United States is not only big business, it’s risky business. Food imports almost doubled from 1998 to 2007, with much of the growth in fruit, vegetables, and seafood; and agricultural inspections have struggled to keep up. While the Food Safety Modernization Act passed by Congress in 2010 allowed for the implementation of the computerized Predictive Risk-based Evaluation for Dynamic Import Compliance Targeting (PREDICT) system, a human inspection is still required to render a verdict. 

But there’s more. The introduction of blight or disease into the food supply of the United States would be a major long-term success for an adversary. That’s right, agro-terrorism is real and you should be worried about it. A subset of bioterrorism, agro-terrorism is the introduction of an animal or plant disease with the purpose of causing economic, health, and social damage. The seemingly low shock value of the topic means less public attention, but it is real enough that former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson gave a warning speech on its dangers—and was eviscerated for calling attention to the risk for adversaries. 

The problem is that the United States’ food supply really is vulnerable to agro-terrorism. In terms of targets, the agricultural sector is an easy mark due to modern livestock-raising methods; their feed preparation and distribution process; the geographically dispersed location of farms and ranches; and the relative safety of handling animal and plant pathogens by a human.

The low inspection-rate of imports coming by sea, and relatively smaller dollar amounts going to security for those imports, provide perhaps the safest vector for the undetected transmission of a pathogen. An adversary could rely on blind luck, transporting tainted food and hoping that it is added to a distribution system to achieve limited results. But an organized network could be more deadly by using existing sea routes for transport of contraband to smuggle pathogens to a recipient within the United States for more targeted distribution. Just as trafficked drugs or persons slip past the low inspection capacity of Customs and Border Patrol, pathogens infecting food could land in the hands of a determined adversary. 

What would the effects be of such a pathogen? Economically, the calculation is complicated. The 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak in the United Kingdom, probably caused by the illegal import of tainted meat that was subsequently fed to pigs, is estimated to have cost that government $13 billion, including second-order impacts to businesses and restaurants dependent on the sale of livestock. But this figure does not include the cost of lost exports from the meat embargo immediately imposed by Britain’s trading partners.

In the United States, where the CIA World Factbook estimates the agriculture sector makes up $172 billion of the nation’s 2012 GDP compared to the United Kingdom’s $17 billion, the second and third order effects would be even greater. A 2002 limited study by National Defense University estimated that an outbreak of foot and mouth disease restricted to only ten ranches in the United States would cost up to $2 billion in cascading effects. A widespread outbreak would be orders of magnitude greater.

The health effects for citizens are more obvious, if only because of the legend of the Irish Potato Famine in the mythos of America’s development. But as with all forms of terrorism, a small death toll is all that’s needed to cause widespread panic. A 2005 outbreak of E. coli related to bagged spinach killed but three and sickened about 250, yet spread fear (and excuses for subbing fries for salad) across the country. If such as scenario was followed by a public statement from the responsible party, with promises of additional attacks, the response could collapse confidence in the entire food system, resulting in wide-spread loss of jobs and cascading social unrest. 

So what’s an American to do? The short answer is “not much.” The sheer volume of transported goods, the importance of the human element to detect agriculture disease, and the necessarily quick transfer of perishable items make stopping agro-terrorism before it occurs a near impossibility. Like many other forms of asymmetric attack, a determined adversary will succeed.

One thing that can be done is preparation to mitigate the effects of such an attack. The long-delayed National Bio and Agro-defense Facility (NBAF) took another lurching step forward in the FY14 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill in both the House and Senate. Designed to be one of the most sophisticated laboratories in the world, it would study the most dangerous pathogens in hopes of finding antibiotics or resistants to limit the damage an outbreak could cause.

Multiple Homeland Security Presidential Directives also require Federal and local coordination preparations and plans to respond to an agro-terror attack. In most cases, mitigating the effects of such an attack will require identifying the pathogen, containing it, and then taking steps to destroy it before it can escape from the containment zone. These steps can only be taken in time with prior coordination and practice.

Finally, we need to do what the Irish couldn’t—be able to quickly tell which ship, at which port, and from which point of departure carried the blight. While impossible to inspect every cargo container, with a concerted effort the United States can establish a system that provides more efficient and effective tracking of the containers themselves over the course of their travels, from loading to unloading. Shedding more light on their journey creates a less-hospitable route for potential practitioners of malfeasance.

Sherman Patrick is a Senate staffer working on national security issues. The views expressed in this article are his alone.