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Capability Analysis, Current Operations

A Deckplate Review: How the Submarine Force can Reach its Warfighting Potential, Pt. 2

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By LT Jeff Vandenengel, USN

This two-part article focuses on how the submarine force can more effectively prepare for safe deployments in peace and combat-effective operations in war. Part One focused on time constraints affecting the submarine fleet’s ability to focus on training. Part Two focuses on other problems that arise once submariners find time to train, both in their homeports and while deployed. Those problems include limited trainer (simulator) availability and extensive administrative burdens placed on deployed submarines. 

Factor 2: Limited Training Resources

“My expectation is that commanders will give high priority to training and developing their junior leaders and teams. No commander can do very wrong if you are training and empowering your junior leaders.”1  – ADM John M. Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations Message on Navy-Wide Operational Pause

As discussed in Part One, time constraints are the first factor limiting submariners’ ability to effectively train for at-sea operations. However, when they fight through that obstacle and allocate time to dedicated in-port practice, scarce trainer resources prove to be another hurdle.

The Navy’s various nuclear, ship-handling, navigation, and tactical trainers are extremely important for submarine training. During long in-port periods, they are the best way to keep officers’ and sailors’ operational skills sharp and to prepare junior personnel for new roles. Trainers also allow submariners to practice evolutions and drills—such as large nuclear casualties, complex wartime engagements, or dangerous ship-handling maneuvers—that cannot be completed at sea, either due to the inability to effectively simulate the scenario or safety concerns. These trainers are also the best way to safely let officers and sailors fail and learn from their mistakes, seldom an option at sea.

Build More Shore-Based Trainers

Submarine force trainers are constantly in high demand. After all the required sessions are scheduled, such as tactical evaluations, courses for boats, schools for sailors and officers, re-examinations, and midshipmen and VIP tours, there are rarely slots available that coincide with a boat’s free time. Busy homeports such as Pearl Harbor, where there are twenty-one submarines sharing very limited trainer time, face an even greater challenge.2 As a result, some Pearl Harbor and Bangor submarines sail to San Diego to use their trainers for tactical evaluations, forcing them to expend some of their hull and reactor life and lose more time with their families simply because there are not enough trainers available in their homeport.

In his Comprehensive Review of recent surface fleet collisions and mishaps, Admiral Philip Davidson cited multiple deficiencies in shore-based team training.3 The submarine fleet should minimize the risk of similar mishaps by building more trainers. These trainers, covering scenarios such as surfaced ship driving, nuclear operations, and submerged warfighting, will cost money. They will cost significantly less than the estimated $600 million required to repair USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain after their collisions.4

Hire More Submarine Greybeards

Even if the submarine fleet does not build any additional shore-based trainers, it should hire more “Tactical Advisors,” or “Greybeards,” to staff them. Greybeards are retired submarine COs attached to submarine homeport training centers. They use their knowledge and experience to provide outstanding senior-level feedback, training, and evaluation to boats with a focus on tactics and contact management.

The problem is that the Greybeards are strapped for time and rarely available. Most submarine homeports have just one Greybeard who must cover all submarine evaluations. As a result, they are generally not available to assist a boat with preparations for these evaluations or for deployment. Even in San Diego, which has just a few boats, the Greybeard is often unavailable because he is travelling to other busier homeports to support their evaluations.

To better use these excellent resources, the submarine fleet should achieve a five-to-one ratio of submarines to Greybeards. This would make them more available for submarine training sessions, courses, and schools. Greybeards would also be available to come down to the waterfront and give requested training, drawing on their vast experience and available time to produce a quality product. Every year, highly successful submarine captains are leaving command, and many of them will go on to retirement or jobs where the Navy is unable to take advantage of their tactical expertise. Hiring a small fraction of these officers as additional Greybeards would produce a markedly safer and tactically proficient force.

Many college courses are taught by very capable graduate teaching assistants (TAs). Although they do a good job at educating their students, TAs are rarely as capable as a full professor due to their relative lack of experience and knowledge. Similarly, most submarine trainer feedback comes from JOs and sailors on their shore duty, dedicated men and women who—through no fault of their own—are not as effective at training as Greybeards. The Navy should hire more Greybeards—professors with a focus in at-sea operations and combat.

Factor 3: Administrative Burdens While Deployed

“We need to get back to owning our jobs, concentrating on the operational excellence piece of what our Navy is about, and reducing these administrative distractions that pull us away from that.”5 – ADM John M. Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations Online All Hands Call

Despite the challenges of Factor 1 (limited training time) and Factor 2 (limited training resources), submarines are fighting through these limitations to safely depart for deployment. While deployed, most off-watch time should be spent studying tactics and preparing for upcoming operations. Instead, as shown in Figure 2, officers are spending approximately 2.5 hours each day—27 percent of their awake, off-watch hours—writing and editing a massive report detailing the ship’s operations.

Figure 2: Officer Off-Watch, Awake Time Allocation While Deployed

While deployed, submarines typically employ four officers in control: an OOD, Junior OOD (JOOD), Contact Manager (CM), and Junior Officer the Watch (JOOW). While the OOD, JOOD, and CM fight to keep the ship safe and execute the mission, the JOOW’s sole responsibility is to record everything that the ship is doing. Even though virtually all the required data is already automatically recorded on numerous other systems, the JOOW is required to manually type everything into Microsoft Word. After eight hours of this on watch, the OOD, JOOD, CM, and JOOW all spend several hours refining the document. Some of this time is spent clarifying the ship’s operations and providing important commentary for the report’s end users, but most of the time is spent transcribing data from other systems, fixing grammar, and adjusting formatting. Once complete, the XO and then CO carefully review the consolidated product, often sending it back to the OOD for clarification or corrections and to fix incorrectly transcribed data.

The opportunity cost of the mission report is a degree of submarine safety and warfighting readiness. A typical wardroom, while off-watch, will devote roughly 4,000 officer-hours to the mission report throughout a deployment.6 While they are working on writing, formatting, and editing the report, these officers are not studying tactical references, analyzing external information as it comes in, or preparing the boat for the next operation, forcing them to often sacrifice sleep to complete this task. Deployed submarine officers are generally in a perpetual state of near-exhaustion, and the mission report is the primary reason for that lack of rest. In the surface fleet’s Comprehensive Review, Admiral Davidson cited lack of sleep as a contributing factor to both the USS Fitzgerald and USS McCain collisions.7 The mission report’s massive requirements and lack of automation make it the epitome of an “Administrative Distraction” keeping submariners from focusing on the safe, tactical employment of their warship.8

Consider the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) response to a hypothetical commercial airline using a similar process. In this airline, the pilot, co-pilot, and navigator focus on safely flying to the destination while a fourth flight officer records every change in course, speed, and altitude, every other plane flying by, and countless other details despite the Black Box recording the same data simultaneously. When the plane lands after a long eight-hour flight, the pilot, co-pilot, and navigator then spend several hours reading and editing the document before getting five or six hours of sleep and doing it all over again the next day. The FAA would likely deem that a terrible and unsafe use of time and demand an automated alternative.

The mission report also has important implications for submarine force manning. Submarines do not have enough officers to support a three-section watch-bill with the JOOW. As a result, when detailers send additional officers to boats entering shipyard availabilities, many of those officers get dispatched to deploying units to fill the role of JOOW. Serving as JOOW, essentially acting as a secretary for ship’s operations, negatively affects their ability to complete required nuclear and tactical qualifications, meaning that each wardroom is less knowledgeable and that the submarine fleet needs to recruit and train more officers, a constant struggle.

Despite the substantial effort that its officers are devoting to the mission report, the submarine fleet gains little benefit from the final product. Other boats’ reports could be valuable tools for wardrooms preparing for an upcoming mission, but instead the reports’ size, quantity, and tediousness makes it very difficult to pull out useful information or lessons, limiting the reports’ utility.

Fortunately, the mission report problem could be easily solved. Most of the data the JOOW writes is already recorded by other systems, so the submarine fleet simply needs to devote resources to develop and approve an automated program to combine these sources. Not only would this help the officers, but it would yield a better final product; there would be fewer formatting and transcription errors and the wardroom would have more time to add meaningful commentary. Alternatively, all that data could be left on those separate systems and only be pulled and consolidated if needed, such as during an event of interest. Factor 1 (massive time obligations) discussed how many of the submarine force’s tasks are important to complete, but could be better done by a supporting command. This same approach could be used to solve the mission report dilemma; the submarine fleet could leave all that data on those separate systems and have shore-based end users pull and analyze what they desire. This would allow them to complete this time-consuming administration with staff officers or civilians in a safe office environment instead of demanding unrestricted line officers complete this work at sea while also attempting to keep their ship safe and combat ready.

On August 2, 1945, Commander Eugene Fluckey completed USS Barb’s twelfth war patrol. During this patrol, Commander Fluckey sank 11,000 tons of shipping, conducted the first-ever submarine-launched rocket attack, and destroyed a train, yet submitted a War Patrol Report of just 66 pages.9 Today, our submarines can complete a mission of the same duration without ever encountering a single foreign warship or submarine and still be expected to type and submit a report exceeding 1,000 pages. Just because Commander Fluckey could not use automation and had to manually type his report does not mean today’s submarine force needs to do the same.

Putting Warfighting First

Today’s Navy is faced with serious yet surmountable challenges. The deadly incidents involving Fitzgerald and McCain revealed a hard-pressed fleet fighting to safely operate at sea at the same time that foreign navies rapidly improve their technologies and capabilities. In response, the Navy’s leadership is rightfully charging the fleet with ensuring that warfighting comes first. Yet many submariners, swamped with watch, administration, and collateral duties, are responding with, “Hooyah, but how?”

Consolidated Recommendations

The Navy has devoted incredible time and energy to designing, building, maintaining, and manning its submarine fleet. To maximize that return on investment and ensure those submarines are ready for war, the Navy should address three key factors using the following solutions:

  1. Reduce time obligations on the officers and crew
    1. Allow non-ship’s force officers or CPOs to augment EDO watch-bills
    2. Allow non-ship’s force officers or CPOs to augment SDO watch-bills
    3. Allow non-ship’s force sailors to augment topside security watches
    4. Outsource maintenance procedure development and approval
    5. Shift some QAO responsibilities to regional QA offices
    6. Remove the requirement for SSNs to man Scuba Diving Divisions
    7. Shift security clearance investigation responsibilities to squadron SSOs
    8. Shift in-port Radiation Health Responsibilities to squadrons
    9. Minimize submarines’ Cryptologic Security Management responsibilities
    10. Outsource some duties such as manual page updates and gage calibration
    11. Conduct a holistic review and reduction in submariners’ time commitments
  2. Improve shore-based training resources
    1. Build more shore-based team trainers
    2. Hire more submarine Greybeards
  3. Reduce deployment administrative burdens
    1. Reduce the data required in the mission report
    2. Automate the mission report as much as possible
    3. Shift some mission report responsibilities to civilians or restricted line officers
    4. Reduce the number of required reports and naval messages while deployed

If the Navy can adopt these recommendations, it will result in a significantly safer and more combat-effective force. Officers and sailors with significantly higher levels of knowledge will form experienced teams aided by deep benches. Those teams will form the backbone of a truly professional naval force, yielding a fleet made stronger through personnel and administrative changes alone.

As with any profession, there is an abundance of material to study in the submarine force. Mastering topics such as nuclear systems, Nautical Rules of the Road, advanced weapon systems, coordinated fleet tactics, ship maneuvering characteristics, and submerged navigation requires a great deal of time and study. A refocused submarine fleet will have more bandwidth to attack these topics. They could even expand their study into topics such as naval history or geopolitics, which are currently not required but would better the officers and crew. A fleet protected from countless administrative burdens will be able to better study the numerous intelligence products, tactical manuals, lessons learned, and order-of-battle analyses that are currently only being skimmed or skipped altogether due to lack of time.10

Those more knowledgeable officers and sailors would also have more time to train together as a team. Instead of rushing to train watch-sections for the next upcoming inspection, submarines would have the time and resources to maintain a constant strain on learning and practicing. That constant strain would allow teams to try new tactics and approaches—and potentially fail—and still be better prepared for the next challenge.

A submarine force with a higher level of knowledge and better-tested teams will be comprised of true naval professionals instead of jacks of all trades. Doctors, baseball players, engineers, and lawyers all require incredible amounts of time focused on learning and practicing their trade; why do we think the naval professional is any different?  

Five decades ago, poor maintenance practices likely led to the loss of USS Thresher and USS Scorpion. The submarine force attacked the problem, greatly improving its boats’ physical conditions through processes such as the SUBSAFE Program.11 In contrast, personnel and training failures were the primary cause of more recent mishaps, including those of USS Hartford, USS Montpelier, USS Jacksonville, USS Fitzgerald, and USS McCain. Our weakness appears to have shifted from equipment to training.

Today’s submarine operations are succeeding not because of robust training programs but rather due to the extremely high-quality people onboard and just-in-time training. That is not a resilient model, and it will invariably lead to failure. Fortunately, there are options to solve the problem before it leads to more fatal mishaps, the loss of an entire boat, or subpar performance in conflict. Those solutions would produce a force ready to safely take their ships to sea in peace, and ready to expertly wield them in time of war.

The Navy’s leaders have directed the fleet to make combat preparations its primary concern. The officers and sailors on the deckplates are wholly committed to that goal. Reduced time demands, increased training resources, and fewer deployed administrative requirements would make that warfighting focus a reality.

LT Vandenengel is the Weapons Officer on USS Alexandria (SSN 757). He developed this paper with a working group of submarine officers. The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not represent those of the Department of Defense. You can reach him at [email protected].

Endnotes

[1] Admiral John M. Richardson, USN. “CNO Richardson Message on Navy Operational Pause,” USNI News, October 6, 2017, https://news.usni.org/2017/10/06/cno-richardson-message-navy-operational-pause.

[2] “SUBPAC Commands,” Submarine Force Pacific, accessed November 11, 2017, http://www.csp.navy.mil/subpac-commands/.

[3] Admiral Philip S. Davidson, USN. “Comprehensive Review of Recent Surface Force Incidents.” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Fleet Forces Command, October 26, 2017), 63.

[4] Sam LaGrone “USS Fitzgerald Repair Will Take More Than a Year; USS John M. McCain Fix Could be Shorter,” USNI News, September 20, 2017, https://news.usni.org/2017/09/20/uss-fitzgerald-repair-will-take-year-uss-john-s-mccain-fix-shorter.

[5] Admiral John M. Richardson, USN and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Steven Giordano, USN. “Facebook Live All Hands Call: ‘Administrative Distractions.’” August 30, 2017. YouTube video, 1:33. Posted September 4, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2QTpnaeqiM.

[6] Estimating each section’s four officers spending 2.5 hours on the mission report each day that it is being recorded, with the CO and XO working on it one hour and two hours per day, respectively. This time is in addition to the roughly 3,000 officer-hours that JOOWs will spend writing the mission report while on watch.

[7] Admiral Philip S. Davidson, USN. “Comprehensive Review of Recent Surface Force Incidents.” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Fleet Forces Command, October 26, 2017), 38.

[8] Rear Admiral Herman Shelanksi, USN. “Taking Action-Reducing Administrative Distractions Implementing Change in Phase III,” Navy Live, September 25, 2013, http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2013/09/25/taking-action-reducing-adminstrative-distractions-implementing-change-in-phase-iii/.

[9] Commander Eugene Fluckey, USN. “USS Barb (SS 220), Report of Twelfth War Patrol.” (Midway Island, August 2, 1945), 97-163, https://www.scribd.com/document/175964974/SS-220-Barb-Part2.

[10] Surface ships can be subjected to as many as 238 separate inspections, certifications, and assist visits per 36-month period, all requiring officer time investment, and the submarine fleet is likely subject to a comparable number. Admiral Philip S. Davidson, USN. “Comprehensive Review of Recent Surface Force Incidents.” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Fleet Forces Command, October 26, 2017), 78.

[11] Sam LaGrone “After Thresher: How the Navy Made Subs Safer,” USNI News, April 4, 2013, https://news.usni.org/2013/04/04/after-thresher-how-the-navy-made-subs-safer.

Featured Image: ARABIAN SEA (April 22, 2012) The Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Pittsburgh (SSN 720) transits the Arabian Sea. Pittsburgh is deployed to the 5th Fleet area of responsibility. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Tim D. Godbee/Released)

Capability Analysis

Little Men in Black: The Frogman Threat in Maritime Hybrid Warfare

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By Ben Ho Wan Beng

Introduction

Maritime hybrid warfare is upon us, so proclaimed James Stavridis, a retired United States Navy admiral. “(I)t will sail out to sea and prove a formidable challenge,” he contended in a December 2016 Proceedings article. According to security analyst Frank Hoffman, a hybrid opponent is one that “simultaneously and adaptively employs a fused mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism, and criminal behavior in the battlespace to obtain desired political objectives.” Indeed, Beijing’s use of its maritime militia, or “little blue men”, in the South China Sea (SCS) and similar measures by Teheran in the Persian Gulf are worrisome signs of hybrid warfare taking on a nautical slant.

Several commentators have visualised scenarios of how maritime hybrid warfare, or MHW in short, might unfold. Stavridis spoke of unidentified men in small boats wreaking havoc with rocket and machine-gun fire on SCS shipping in his Proceedings piece. In the same vein, defense writer Colum Hawken conceived of “Q-ships” attacking merchantmen at busy waterways near Singapore and in the Baltic Sea.

These scenarios and most other works on the subject matter delve largely on the use of irregular forces such as militiamen and terrorists to conduct such operations at sea. As for waging MHW beneath the waves, the role played by unmanned underwater vehicles has been recognized as well. What is overlooked perhaps is the utility of “regular” naval special operations forces (SOFs), more specifically combat swimmers, for MHW in the sub-surface realm and this needs to be addressed. It is worth noting that a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) study on maritime domain awareness in northern Europe described frogmen as “arguably the most effective force for maritime hybrid operations.”

Covert and High Level of Deniability

So what is it about combat divers that makes them so suited for MHW? A key feature of hybrid warfare is deniability. As such, “gray-zone” actors often turn to clandestine means to prevent attribution and retaliation by the targeted party, and the low signature of frogman operations is arguably what makes them so suitable in this regard. After all, covertness is the watchword of SOF units, whether they be maritime- or land-centric ones. Indeed, the popular image of them is one of a United States Navy SEAL emerging from the depths of the water to eliminate an unwary sentry or a British Special Boat Service team making a stealthy landing on a hostile beach.

The deployment of frogmen under various conditions accounts substantially for their low signature. Two of such conditions are not unique to these forces but apply to another SOFs as well: deployment in relatively small numbers and during the wee hours where defenses are least alert. To further protect their cover, the frogmen can operate from a Q-ship masquerading as an innocuous commercial ship in the targeted nation’s waters. To be certain, a submarine is also an option for combat-swimmer deployment. However, compared to the Q-ship, the sub simply does not have the same degree of non-attribution that is so central to gray-zone warfare.

Matters for the targeted nation are not helped by the area of operations the combat divers and their motherships would be in – the littorals, with its significant background clutter. As the naval analyst Geoffrey Till wrote: “The littoral is a congested place, full of neutral and allied shipping, oil-rigs, buoys, coastline clutter, islands, reefs and shallows, and complicated underwater profiles.” The ability to detect and identify threats would be a premium in such waters, and this accentuates the frogman threat given its already minuscule signature. This low detectability invariably also means that combat-swimmer missions have a great element of surprise, which is another integral element of MHW.

Navy divers and special operators attached to SEAL Delivery Team (SDV) 2, perform SDV operations with the Ohio-Class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine USS Florida (SSGN 728) for material certification. (U.S. Navy photo by Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist Andrew McKaskle)

All this is not say that divers cannot be picked up at all by sensors – they can be detected by sonar and countered by various measures, including marine mammals and other anti-frogman techniques. That said, if the commandos were to be compromised, their government could deny any association with these “little men in black” like how Moscow distanced itself from the “little green men” who created military facts on the ground in Crimea. After all, the black wet suits worn by combat swimmers are typically unmarked and this helps to some extent in putting up the veneer of non-attribution around these forces.

Kinetic Missions

Combat swimmers can execute a wide range of tasks in maritime hybrid warfare. The kinetic threat they pose is especially ominous as they can create disproportionate strategic effects. Using weapons like limpet mines, divers can carry out attacks on a nation’s maritime interests, whether they be offshore hydrocarbon installations, merchantmen, or even warships.

There have been a number of noted successes in this regard with the December 1941 Alexandria raid being conceivably the most famous. During this operation, six Italian frogmen crippled two British battleships moored in the Egyptian base, changing the naval balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean albeit temporarily. In three groups of two, the divers attacked at night and only one group was detected by the British during the attack – but only after they had attached explosives to the bottom of HMS Valiant.

What is illuminating about this episode is that the Italian commandos pulled off the attack on a highly protected base under wartime conditions. In an MHW environment, however, the opponent’s defenses would not be as vigilant given that they are not operating under a state of war. To be sure, modern naval bases would invariably have anti-frogman measures in place, but many such systems are largely unproven, at least from what is known from open sources. More importantly, commercial ports and other civilian maritime interests that are prime targets for MHW are probably not as heavily guarded as military ones. Indeed, should frogmen be utilized in the vignettes that Stavridis and Hawken have presented in their writings, the situations would probably be more chaotic given the insidious nature of such forces.

Non-kinetic Missions

Frogmen can also perform various non-kinetic tasks in support of a maritime hybrid warfare effort. These include placing eavesdropping sensors on the seabed a la Operation Ivy Bells, where American naval divers wiretapped the Soviet undersea communications system at the height of the Cold War. Another non-kinetic task in the MHW sphere for combat swimmers would be the tampering of the undersea cables so crucial to the Internet and communications services of a nation.

Experts believe that seabed operations – of which divers can play a role in – is likely to gain greater significance with time. As a matter of fact, British Air Chief Marshal Stuart Peach has warned of Russia – a leading hybrid warfare practitioner – cutting and disrupting his country’s submarine cables. The British defense chief noted that such a move could “immediately and potentially catastrophically” hit his country’s economy, adding that it poses a “new risk to our way of life.”

It is worth noting that these non-kinetic missions would have an even lower level of attribution compared to kinetic ones given that no explosions or casualties would be involved. The targeted nation may not even know it has been subjected to MHW techniques until much later, and this no doubt increases the extent of non-attribution so crucial to the success of gray-zone warfare.

Final Thoughts

All in all, the frogman is of considerable utility in the waging of both kinetic and non-kinetic maritime hybrid warfare. The CSIS report mentioned earlier acknowledges this fact vis-à-vis Russia in the Baltic and Norwegian Seas and recommends a technology-centric solution with the development of capabilities for low-signature detection. This is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, and countries outside of northern Europe facing up to such threats would do well to follow suit.

Addressing the challenge cognitively is just as important, if not more so. What is needed is thus a greater recognition of the frogman threat that has somewhat been understated in the discourse on maritime hybrid warfare. With this, “simple vigilance,” which is what one writer deemed as the final line of defense against the threat, could hopefully be strengthened.

In the final analysis, while naval divers constitute a potent threat in the MHW scheme of things, a hybrid actor worth its salt would not use them in isolation. They would likely be deployed in concert with other tools from the hybrid operations playbook like cyber-attacks, (dis)information campaigns, as well as small-scale kinetic action on land. Prussian king Frederick the Great once said that “he who defends everything defends nothing,” and therein lies the enduring challenge of countering hybrid warfare – how best to deal with a threat that is at once multi-faceted and insidious.

Ben Ho Wan Beng is a senior analyst with the military studies program at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He writes primarily on naval affairs, and his work in this area has been published in the likes of the Naval War College Review, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, The National Interest, and The Diplomat.

Featured Image: German Navy combat divers Kommando Spezialkräfte Marine (KSM)

Capability Analysis, Indo-Asia-Pacific

The Growing Dragon: The Radical Reorganization of the PLA

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By Pawel Behrendt

Two years ago, President Xi Jinping announced the reorganization of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the implementation is gaining momentum. The changes, which go far beyond administrative restructuring and equipment modernization, will make the world’s most massive fighting force more modern and flexible. The reorganization gives Xi and his team an opportunity to purge political opponents within the military and address many of the problems that have plagued the military for decades.

During his speech to the National People Congress in 2012, Hu Jintao announced the modernization of the PLA, seeking a modern armed force, able to “win local wars under informationized/hi-tech conditions.” Under Xi Jinping, these modernizations began to materialize. The first noticeable change was the restoration of political officers in the PLA, a clear sign of turbulent relations between the new leadership and the generals. Next, Xi announced a wide-reaching anti-corruption campaign. Most notably, former deputy chairmen of the Central Military Commission, Generals Xu Caihou, and Guo Boxiong, were among those accused of corruption. Their fate was settled in 2016 – Xu died of cancer while under arrest and Guo was sentenced to life in prison.

With the backdrop of the anti-corruption campaign, a real military reform was afoot – in 2014, a reorganization of the command structure was announced. The number of military regions was reduced from 7 to 5, and a joint operation command was established to coordinate actions of ground, air, and naval forces in each area. There was also an increase in the role of the Air Force and Navy, both of which are more prominent in a state with global ambitions as opposed to an Army-dominated system that has long characterized China’s military. In celebration of the 70th anniversary of World War II, Xi Jinping announced the reduction of the PLA by 300,000 soldiers to 2 million standing troops. On the last day of 2015, amid overall personnel reduction, new military branches were established – the Rocket Force and the Strategic Support Force.

2016 brought about important, but less flashy, changes. Specifically, the creation of a DARPA-equivalent research lab was announced in March 2016. The agency was operational in July 2017. In April 2016, military education reform was announced and, as a result, departments related to land forces reduced the number of freshmen by 24 percent and the departments of logistics and support shrunk by 45 percent. Conversely, the number of students admitted to courses related to aviation, Navy, and missile technologies was increased by 14 percent. An increase of 16 percent was planned for departments related to space technologies, radars, and drones.

Further, closer cooperation between universities and training units was also announced. This was the result of increasingly louder complaints that soldiers cannot take full advantage of the increasingly modern equipment. Overcoming this gap is now considered one of the most critical tasks to the PLA. Xi Jinping stressed several times a great need for officers who have a broad knowledge of advanced technologies. Most concerning is the shortage of IT specialists. Like many other countries, Chinese IT companies offer much better compensation and work conditions, robbing the military of talent. Higher military income and attractive career paths are being implemented to prevent the talent bleed. Further, to attract talented college graduates, the draft was aligned with the college graduation season.

In September 2016, the activation of the Joint Logistics Support Force was announced. This step aims to improve the decentralized PLA logistics system. Within each of the military regions, a Regional Joint Logistics Support Center was established with headquarters in Wuxi, Guilin, Xining, Shenyang, and Zhengzhou. Of note, the Joint Logistics Support Force is not subordinate to the PLA HQ, but to the Central Military Commission.

Starting in 2017, even more radical changes were made. In mid-March, a five-fold increase in the size of the Marine Corps was announced. The force now numbers 20,000 soldiers organized in two brigades, but the goal is as many as 100,000 troops in six brigades. The greatly expanded Marine Corps is dedicated primarily to the protection of the maritime thread of the One Belt, One Road, and defense of the overseas interests of the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese Marines will be permanently stationed in Gwadar, Pakistan, and in Djibouti. The African garrison is rumored to have as many as 10,000 soldiers. It is important to mention that, according to media sources, the first Type 075 amphibious assault ship was laid down in March 2017. Specifics on the ship design and numbers are still unknown. The Chinese Admiralty wanted LHDs similar to the American WASP-class but opted for a smaller ship – based on the French Mistral-class – due to financial constraints. Recent information suggests that “something in between” has been chosen.

Amphibious assault ships are necessary if China wants “American style” power-projection capability. The Chinese are well aware of the unique requirements of the Marines, and outdated PLAN Marine Corps equipment is discussed openly. The force has spent years preparing for an invasion of Taiwan and operations in the nearby waters of South and East China Seas requires a thorough reorganization.

The marine brigades of the PLAN are not the only amphibious assault units of the PLA. There are also four amphibious mechanized infantry divisions (AMID) that are part of the PLA Ground Force. These units are essentially mechanized divisions equipped with more amphibious vehicles and river crossing equipment. In effect, the divisions are more suited to crossing rivers and lakes than in taking part in actual seaborne operations. Under the reorganization of the PLAN Marines Corps, the future of AMID is unclear.

Chinese marines storm a beachead (AFP 2018 / Xinhua)

Around the same time that the PLAN Marine Corps reports emerged, PLA Ground Force restricting was also announced. From 1949 through the mid-1980s, the Ground Force was organized into 70 corps. Then, during one of the previous reorganizations, the number was halved and later reduced to 24. At the same time, the corps were renamed “group armies.” During subsequent reductions in the 1990s and 2009, their number fell to 21 and, eventually, to 18 corps. Now, the group armies are returning to corps and further decreased in number to 13. This change, however, has a deeper meaning. Specifically, the 16th and 47th Group Armies will be disbanded. Both are large units and were closely linked to the aforementioned Generals Xu and Guo. According to social media, not all soldiers from disestablished units will leave the military – some may be reassigned, even to the Air Force, Navy or Rocket Force. Some of the other units that will be disbanded are the 14th, 20th, 27th and 40th group armies.

In April 2017, further information was officially disclosed by the Ministry of Defense, when it revealed an even more drastic reorganization. The entire PLA will be divided into 84 corps that will comprise all military branches, as well as garrisons, reserves, military academies, and research units. This means an interruption of historical continuity, cultivated mainly in the Ground Force, in which new army corps will have numbered from 71 to 83. Most of them will be located in northern and western China, opposite the U.S. forces and Japan, but also Russia and North Korea.

Airborne units have also undergone serious organizational changes. Until 2017, there had been three airborne divisions (43rd, 44th, and 45th), organized into the 15th Airborne Corps, subordinate to the PLAAF. Each division consisted of two airborne regiments, a special forces group, an air transport regiment, and a helicopter group. After the recent reorganization, the PLA Airborne Corps was created, and separate divisions were disbanded. Airborne regiments were reclassified as brigades (127th, 128th, 130th, 131st, 133rd, and 134th), and special forces and transport groups were organized into separate brigades. Confusingly, signal, chemical and engineering troops have been assigned into a single brigade. This solution is perceived as the next step in the development of a robust Chinese airborne force and their transformation from light troops into heavily armed units modeled after Russian paratroops.

The large-scale reorganization of the armed forces has also brought about some unexpected personnel problems. Public protests by active duty servicemen and veterans have become common, and the primary cause of dissatisfaction is not only the reduction of posts. Unlike previous cuts, the severance pay program and employment efforts for former military personnel failed. In fact, pay and military pensions sometimes arrived late or in reduced sum. Veterans are particularly embittered, and they accuse the government of ignoring their needs and problems. In October 2017, more than 1,000 vets protested at the Ministry of Defense singing military songs and waving party flags. Police and security officers were confused and surrounded the protesters with buses and police vehicles. On October 11, another protest lasted late into the night, resulting in several arrests. According to human rights organizations, protests are not rare, with over 50 occurring in 2016 alone. As a result, a special Ministry of Veterans Affairs was established in March 2018. The new institution will help veterans to find jobs, lodging, and ensuring their status of “revered members of society.”

Conclusion

A reorganization of a structure as big and complex as the PLA is never an easy task and it is compounded by resistance from active and veteran military personnel. Unlike the USSR, there is no clear division between party, military, and security force. Further, the military has always had a strong influence on the state apparatus. During his second term, Hu Jintao warned about the negative consequences of this system. Despite silencing the most hostile officers whose status and influence were endangered by the reform, protests by lower ranks and veterans show that the Communist Party of China has to be very careful. From the military point of view, the reform aims to convert the force designed primarily to defend Chinese territory into one prepared for expeditionary operations.

Pawel Behrendt is a Political Science Ph.D. candidate at the University of Vienna. He is an expert at the Poland-Asia Research Center and is the deputy chief-editor of konflikty.pl. Find him on Twitter @pawel_behrendt.

Featured Image: Chinese marines (Xinhua)

Capability Analysis, Strategy

Three Hard Questions for U.S. Maritime Strategy in a Digital Age

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By Frank T. Goertner

From the White House to the Pentagon, the message is clear. The world of 21st Century great power competition has arrived, and it is distinctly different from the one today’s U.S. national security enterprise was designed to confront. Now is the time for every agency, department, and service in the executive branch to ask itself hard questions and consider decisive change.

Nowhere is the imperative for introspection more acute than in the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine. They are the sea services responsible for sustaining American sea power; their forces the guarantors of maritime superiority for a maritime nation. Moreover, their leaders are the custodians of the national assets most threatened by the rise of China and Russia as new global rivals in the maritime domain.

With this in mind, it is time to consider whether the emergent norms of this new era of great power competition also warrant a campaign to rethink the functions and missions of these sea services. Is now the time for a new maritime strategy for the United States?

The answer is yes. Three hard questions point to why.

What Will We Do if the Lights Go Out?

The sea services have always been on the nation’s first line of defense against threats to national interests and on the first line of response to disasters at home and abroad. Traditionally this has taken the form of sustaining and guarding physical sea lines of communication (SLOCs) that connect the United States to other maritime nations, while exercising readiness to project military power or render disaster response to physical crises around the globe. 

The current maritime strategy of the United States bins these roles into five enduring functions – deterrence, sea control, power projection, maritime security, all domain access – and promotes seven naval missions – defend the homeland, deter conflict, respond to crises, defeat aggression, protect the maritime commons, strengthen partnership, and provide humanitarian assistance/disaster response. Anyone capable of tracking their way through these lists as they read the document is then offered a tour of U.S. maritime capabilities as they relate to each of these functions and roles. En route, they will find sound justification for everything the sea services are doing today. What they will not find is precise direction on how they should change to confront the future of maritime competition. 

This is a problem. China and Russia are both developing capabilities that could fundamentally change the character of contests at and from the sea.  They are investing in unprecedented capacity for new means of physical and digital coercion. Russia brands it Information Confrontation. For China, it is Low Intensity Coercion and Intelligentized Warfare. Each involves developing sophisticated offensive cyber doctrine, investments in high-end electromagnetic pulse weaponry, and capabilities to disrupt critical communications architecture around and beneath the sea. In early phases of escalation or conflict, it is fully plausible either rival could disrupt civil communications, impair digital infrastructure, and impede electrical services across large swaths of the United States. 

The implications for the future sea services are profound. Each must prepare to defend against digital coercion by maritime rivals and to protect new digital SLOCs for future maritime operations. What are the means by which the sea services could align with other national instruments of power to deter such coercion in peace and in war, and what could each sea service offer the nation in the worst-case that deterrence fails? Could the Navy and Merchant Marine deliver power-generating capacity and internet services from the sea? Could the Coast Guard help reestablish communications between coastal U.S. hubs? Could the Marine Corps help rebuild and defend critical digital nodes and infrastructure? Who would repair the undersea cables and defend them against further attack? In sum, the sea services need a strategy that evolves beyond today’s functions and missions, and toward defining future means to protect America against 21st Century coercion and be ready to respond if the lights go out.  

What if the Oceans Turn Transparent?

One of the tenets of naval strategy has always been the vastness of the world’s oceans. There has traditionally been so much water, with so much activity occurring within and around it, that it was inconceivable any nation could capture and make sense of it all. Any ship at sea was not just the proverbial needle in a haystack. It was a moving needle among hay that was tossing, turning, and even inhabited.

The best navies in history have applied this tenet to their advantage. They developed navigational and communications techniques to maintain the edge over rivals in knowing where their ships were among others in the haystack, along with the fastest ships to traverse the open ocean swiftly or furtively. Maintaining that part has always been hard, demanding continual progress in command, control, and communications technology in platforms built to leverage every boundary of physics they could challenge. On the other hand, hiding has historically been easy. It has been a matter of either knowing where to hide in the ocean’s multi-layered domain or reducing physical signature enough to look like other needles or hay in the stack.   

For the first time in history, there is evidence that this may all be about to change. With the emergence of a globalized sensor-based economy, the world is on track to host more than 50 billion “smart” devices and one trillion digitally connected sensors by the early 2020s. Of course those won’t all be sensing the maritime domain, but many will be. 

They will be mass-manufactured in a host of sizes and configurations and employed on long-endurance drones on and above the ocean’s surface, in nano- and micro-satellites in space, or scattered along the coasts and sea-bed. They will be employed in abundance on military, commercial, and possibly even biological platforms; collecting, deciphering, and transmitting the data of the seas.

For the aggregators of this data, virtually everything in the haystack could be visible – critical portions of the oceans will be effectively transparent. Yet that is only half the problem. Development and operationalization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems, alongside advances in quantum computing and radar, offer the promise of harnessing machine processors to discern patterns in the data such that nearly every needle can be found, or at least rendered probabilistically present, with greater accuracy than humans have ever achieved. 

The impact on the future sea services will be immense. Postures of passive defense will no longer be enough to protect their assets at sea. Is the United States ready for a fight in which the competition for sensor saturation and AI dominance is a core determinate of victory at and from the sea? Are the sea services prepared for an operating environment in which maneuver among rival maritime forces becomes an active game of confounding the predictive analytics of rivals and finding novel ways to hide in the clutter of the oceans’ dynamics? And perhaps of greatest concern, what if the transparency extends below the sea surface and the Navy’s undersea contribution to the U.S. nuclear triad is someday laid bare? Is it worth a strategic hedge such as diversifying employment of strategic weapons and high-yield tactical missiles onto surface combatants, carrier-launched aircraft, or in extremis even container vessels of the Merchant Marine? In sum, the sea services need a strategy that addresses holistically how to sustain American sea power if the oceans turn transparent.     

How can We Mobilize a Digital Maritime Nation?

Since the War of Independence, America’s leaders have recognized that they are responsible for a maritime nation. Yet how to convey that in policy has not always been self-evident. During the inter-war years of the 1930s, as now, the U.S. Government witnessed an escalation of competition among maritime rivals on a scale that had never been seen before, enabled by technology that was fundamentally changing the character of contests between them. National leaders at the time knew the United States had an edge in industrial production and innovation, but they did not know how to mobilize it for a global fight.

In response, the President and Congress passed the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, establishing a Maritime Commission. It was a federal body directed and authorized to chart the mobilization of an American maritime nation for the level of global competition and contest it saw on the horizon. By the 1940s, when those contests turned to war, the nation had at least thought through what was needed in the months and years ahead.      

America remains a maritime nation but is now a digitally interdependent maritime nation in a digital age. This is something new. Wall Street and the solvency of the Federal Reserve are nearly as reliant on foreign digital market transactions as they are on U.S. investments.  The nation’s most powerful and valuable firms are corporations with legal, digital, and human elements that span the world. And U.S. universities – the engine of digital and industrial ingenuity – are digitized global enterprises unto themselves.       

The significance for the sea services is dramatic. They need to think through how to secure America’s national innovation complex and defend its intellectual edge in a world of commoditized data and information. They merit collective contingencies to mobilize the industrial giants of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for sea power competition on behalf of America and our Allies. What will be the legal and financial terms under which the services of Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Space-X and others are commissioned should today’s contests turn to war? Is it time to reconsider standards and terms of selective service for the Digital Age? Do the sea services need new authorities to explore, resource, and test innovative concepts for burden sharing in the event of mobilization? In sum, there should be a strategy to articulate a national vision and lay the foundation for mobilizing a digitized America for the digitized contests on the horizon.

Time for Answers

These are the first of many questions the U.S. sea services should be asking, but the questions are just the start.  Collectively, the services need answers, and they need them fast in order to beat emergent maritime rivals to the future. Equally important, these answers must align across national maritime authorities – public and private, agencies and services, U.S. and Allied – to ensure they all get there together.

In short, they need a new U.S. maritime strategy for a digital age.

Frank Goertner is a Commander in the U.S. Navy. His most recent assignment was as a Strategic Planner for Future Fleet Design and Architecture in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Future Strategy Branch. The views and opinions expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Department of Defense, or U.S. Government.

Featured Image: NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. (April 3, 2017) Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO) Adm. William Moran, left, speaks at the 2017 Sea, Air and Space Exposition. Moran was joined by a panel including Assistant Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Glenn Walters, Vice Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Charles Michel, and Joel Szabat, executive director of Maritime Transportation, to discuss a “Sea Services Update” regarding today’s maritime environment. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Danian Douglas/Released)