Traditionally the junior service, operating in the Army’s shadow and receiving a ten percent share of the 2015 defence budget of $6.6 billion, Pakistan’s Navy personnel numbers more than 22,000 active, plus 5,000 in the reserve. This secondary role stands in contrast with the economy’s dependence on the sea, with the port city of Karachi contributing 25 percent of GDP and the proposed China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) raising the country’s maritime profile even further.
Much of the Navy’s backbone, including its seven submarines, five French-made ‘Khalid’ class conventional hunter-killer (SSKs) acquired in the 1990s plus two ‘Hashmat’ class SSKs from the 1970s, is nearing retirement. The Navy is working to acquire new surface and undersea combatants, boosting domestic shipbuilding in the process and in cooperation with Beijing.
Plans include procuring an additional four 3000-ton F-22P/’Zulfiqar’ (Sword) class frigates with improved sensors and weapons (including HQ-17 surface-to-air missiles, developed from Russia’s Tor 1/SA-N-9), as well as six Type-022 Houbei stealth catamaran missile boats. State-owned shipbuilder Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works (KSEW) is responsible for these programs, and is expanding its facilities with a new foundry, manufacturing areas, and two dry docks of 26,000 and 18,000 dead weight tons, spread over 71 acres. Islamabad had been hoping to procure six Perry-class frigates from the US on easy terms, but congressional hostility has prompted greater reliance on China, a country heavily committed at all levels to Pakistan, being a key to Beijing’s strategy of securing access to the Indian Ocean and keeping New Delhi distracted by a regional rival.
Sword class frigate of the Pakistani Navy.
Karachi is the traditional home of the Pakistani Navy, and remains of the utmost importance, despite diversification into other bases, among them PNS Siddique (in Turbat, in the south-west, close to the strategic deepwater port of Gwadar and the border with Iran), Pasni, and Jinnah Naval Base (also in the south-west). Asked whether security is considered by the Pakistani Navy as a reason to push for further diversification away from the city, Zoha Waseem (PhD Candidate at King’s College London and an expert in Pakistani security and policing) explains that “the situation in Karachi in terms of the ongoing operation is linked with the need of the military to keep investing in Karachi. The construction of military bases, infrastructure, and training centres and accommodation does not appear to be decreasing. Karachi is an ATM machine, and a prime location for any stakeholder to have its assets here.”
PNS Badr, a British-built Type-21 frigate, was decommissioned in 2014. Despite being the junior service and the country facing a difficult fiscal position, Pakistan’s Navy has been pushing for ambitious plans in terms of both surface and undersea combatants. Source Flickr.
While new ships are seen as essential in terms of maritime security and the fight against piracy, it is Pakistani plans to acquire new submarines that have met with the greatest concern in New Delhi. In March 2015, Islamabad announced plans to procure eight new Chinese submarines, and in October 2015 confirmed that four would be purchased from Beijing and four built at KSEW. The package includes a training centre in Karachi and probably includes access to China’s Beidou-II (BDS-2) satellite navigation network. Thanks to similar designs, Beijing, in turn, gets to enjoy the necessary maintenance personnel and facilities enabling her to operate her own submarines much more efficiently in the Indian Ocean, home to vital SLOCs (sea lanes of communication) for China. Ideally the Navy would like a total of 12 new boats. These Chinese-designed submarines will probably be based on the air independent propulsion (AIP) equipped Type 39B Yuan SSK (known as S-20 in its export version). Displacing 2,300 tons, they can fire both cruise missiles and 533 mm torpedoes, and can also deploy mines and special forces. Pakistan, already working on a version of the National Defence Complex Babur missile capable of launch from her old Khalid submarines, sees the S-20 as more than a conventional platform, although preventing an Indian blockade is certainly a major goal in and by itself. A sea-based deterrent would provide Islamabad with a second strike capability, while avoiding perceptions of falling behind India in the nuclear sphere. The resulting improvement in survivability is seen by Mansoor Ahmed (Stanton Nuclear Security junior faculty fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center), as providing greater strategic stability to South Asia, given that India could not be sure of completely destroying Pakistani nuclear forces and thus escape unacceptable damage herself.
Work on a sea-based deterrent may also be closely linked to the Navy’s status within the military. According to Scott Cheney-Peters (US Navy reserve officer and CIMSEC founder) “Unless Pakistan’s Navy can develop an at-sea strategic nuclear deterrent it is likely to remain the ‘junior service.’ This means it has a strong institutional incentive to pursue an SLBM second-strike capability. But just as this incentive may not be enough to bring the capability to fruition any time soon, so the second-capability may not be enough to remove the perception of the Navy as a junior partner in the nation’s armed forces.”
Alex Calvo is a guest professor at Nagoya University (Japan) focusing on security and defence policy, international law, and military history in the Indian-Pacific Ocean Region. A member of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC) and Taiwan’s South China Sea Think-Tank, he is currently writing a book about Asia’s role and contribution to the Allied victory in the Great War. He tweets @Alex__Calvo and his work can be foundhere.
Featured Image: MAYPORT, Fla. (Aug. 31, 2010) Pakistan sailors parade their country’s colors during the decommissioning ceremony of the guided-missile frigate USS McInerney (FFG 8) at Naval Station Mayport. During the ceremony, McInerney was commissioned into the Pakistan navy as PNS Alamgir (F 260). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Gary Granger Jr./Released).
This piece was originally published by the US Naval Institute. It is republished here with permission. Read it in its original form here.
By Eric J. Labs
The Navy released its latest 30-year shipbuilding plan to Congress in April 2015. 1 The document (hereinafter referred to as the 2016 plan) described the purchases, retirements, costs, and projected inventory of the fleet the Navy says it will need from now through 2045. Critically, the plan outlines the fact that the Navy will need substantially more money than what Congress has allocated to shipbuilding in recent decades. The tyranny of time, the stubbornness of high shipbuilding costs, and competing fiscal priorities will put pressure on the size and capability of the future fleet. In short, over the next 30 years the Navy faces a slowly unfolding fiscal Pearl Harbor.
In recent years, the Navy has changed the tone of the annual shipbuilding report it sends to the Congress. It used to be that those documents were full of bureaucratic optimism and rosy scenarios. But over the last three years in particular, the Navy has offered a frank discussion of the challenges it faces in implementing its shipbuilding plan. In my view, a document that was once disregarded by many on Capitol Hill has now become one of the more valuable reports that is sent to the Congress. It warns that hard choices are coming and the Congress and the nation must be prepared to make them.
U.S. Navy – The future USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) conducts sea trials in December. Such a revolutionary vessel reflects both the aspirations and the daunting challenges of tomorrow’s fleet, for such “alternative ship designs and fleet architecture take a long time to implement,” notes the author, pointing out that the DDG-1000 “has been in development, design, and construction for 20 years. . . .”
Between now and 2045, the Navy proposes buying 264 ships and retiring 244 ships in order to maintain a fleet of 300 ships or more. Officially, the Navy’s goal is 308 ships but under the 2016 plan, the schedule of commissioning new ships and decommissioning old ones yields a fleet of 300 or more beyond 2019 and 308 or more for 12 of the next 30 years. (If 12 littoral combat ships are cut from the program as directed by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, then the Navy’s fleet will exceed 300 ships only between 2019 and 2030.) The Navy states directly that without a large increase in its shipbuilding budget, it cannot afford to buy the 264 ships in its shipbuilding plan and would not be able to sustain a fleet of 308 or more ships for very long, if it is reached at all.
I will focus more of this discussion on the first 20 years of the Navy’s plan, covering the years 2016 through 2035, because the third decade of the Navy’s plan is necessarily quite speculative. Nevertheless, keeping an eye on the longer, 30-year perspective is important. While it is true that the nature of warfare, technology, and costs cannot be predicted decades into the future, it is today’s decisions that are most important for the long-run perspective. The President proposes a budget and Congress makes appropriations year-to-year. The Department of Defense provides Congress with a five-year Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), but without the presence of the 30-year plan, the long-range effect on the Navy of the incremental decisions made in each year’s budget cycle would not be understood. For example, in the 1990s, the service built an average of one submarine every other year, and that low rate of construction had no effect on the existing inventory, because coming off the boon years of the 1980s, the attack submarine force was young. Submarine procurement could be reduced during the 1990s without affecting the existing force structure at all. But in the next decade those decisions would manifest themselves in a declining SSN force in a world that today looks like it will get more dangerous and more competitive, not less, and for which some observers of international and naval affairs think having more submarines would be a valuable asset for the Navy.
What to Buy and at What Cost?
Between 2016 and 2035, the Navy plans to buy 178 ships, including 12 expensive Ohio -class replacement ballistic-missile submarines. The rest of those purchases comprise 4 aircraft carriers, 28 attack submarines, 40 large surface combatants, 35 littoral combat ships (LCSs) and frigates, 16 amphibious ships, and 43 combat logistics and support ships.
J. M. Caiella – The Ohio-class sub replacement (SSBN – X) is “the 800-pound gorilla in the room” when it comes to the Navy’s shipbuilding ledger. “At around $6 billion apiece, buying those new boomers poses a substantial fiscal and budgetary challenge to the Navy.”
The Congressional Budget Office, in a report that I authored, estimates the cost of building those ships at an average $18.7 billion per year in Fiscal Year 2015 dollars. 2 But that amount is for new construction only. It does not include all of the other activities that the Navy must fund from its shipbuilding account, such as refueling aircraft carriers, outfitting and post-delivery, and other items. They add another $2 billion to the Navy’s funding requirements, resulting in an average shipbuilding budget of $20.8 billion per year for the next two decades.
The dilemma the Navy faces is that in recent decades shipbuilding budgets have been much lower. Since 1986, the Navy has received an average of only $15.8 billion per year, after adjusting for inflation, for all of its shipbuilding activities. And in the most recent decade, 2006–2015, it was even less—$15 billion. Thus, in order to fund the Navy’s plan, the shipbuilding budget will need to increase by an average of 40 percent compared to the past ten years, or about $6 billion per year.
As readers of Proceedings will know, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is the Ohio Replacement Program. The Navy plans to replace its aging force of 14 Ohio -class ballistic-missile submarines with a new, as-yet unnamed class of 12 boats, with procurement funding starting in 2017 and continuing through 2035. At around $6 billion apiece, buying those new boomers poses a substantial fiscal and budgetary challenge to the Navy. Declared to be the Navy’s top budgetary priority, the question, in the view of some members of Congress, is not whether the Ohio replacements will be funded, but rather how they will be funded. Will the Navy receive increases in its shipbuilding budget to pay for the new submarines, or will the Navy have to buy those submarines from a budget that is not increasing? If so, what happens to the rest of the fleet?
Future Fleet, Historical Funding Level
In the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress directed the Navy to assess what would happen to its shipbuilding plan if, on average, future shipbuilding budgets matched historical budgets. So far, the Navy has not responded to that congressional directive.
The CBO’s analysis shows that constraining future shipbuilding budgets to an average of $16 billion per year results in a much smaller fleet over time. The assumptions that were made in doing such an assessment were as follows:
• The Navy builds all 12 Ohio replacement submarines.
• Production of aircraft carriers is not cut, because Congress mandates the 11-ship force level in law.
• All other ship programs are cut roughly proportionately.
With those assumptions and applying the budgetary constraint, the Navy would purchase 131 ships over the next 20 years, instead of the 178 in the 2016 shipbuilding plan. Specifically, those purchases would include:
• 4 aircraft carriers
• 12 ballistic-missile submarines
• 18 attack submarines
• 25 destroyers
• 25 LCSs and frigates
• 12 amphibious-warfare ships
• 35 combat logistics and support ships.
Reducing the shipbuilding program by 47 ships over 20 years results in a fleet no larger than today’s by 2035. Over the entire 30 years of the Navy’s plan, the fleet would drift down to 237 ships if the historical funding level does not budge much from $16 billion. (See the accompanying table). That is a reduction of 13 percent compared to today’s Navy and 22 percent compared to the fleet of 2045 projected under the 2016 plan.
Our future fleet.
Is There a Solution?
What are the alternatives to a decline of the Navy’s fleet? Are the alternatives viable? Let us consider each one in turn.
Increase the shipbuilding budget. The first and immediately obvious solution would be to increase the size of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget. Shipbuilding represents about 3 percent of the overall defense budget, a relatively small fraction. As my counterpart at the Congressional Research Service, Ron O’Rourke, has noted in his work, increasing ship construction by $5 billion per year would represent less than 1 percent of defense spending. Yet, even such a small increase faces three powerful headwinds—one short-term, one long-term, and one that is a constant—that are political and budgetary in nature. In the near term, any increase in the defense budget faces the caps imposed by the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 and the various amendments, including the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. While the BCA says nothing about how much of the DOD budget may be spent on any particular account, the fact that the BCA caps defense spending below the President’s 2016 FYDP makes it extremely difficult to find the money to increase any category of spending, including shipbuilding. The 2016 FYDP allocated $121 billion more for defense spending over the years 2016 to 2020 than the amounts allowed under the revised caps of the BCA. Thus, widespread cuts are the order of the day, not funding increases.
Although the BCA is set to expire in 2021, presumably making it easier to increase the defense budget in the long term, the large fiscal challenges facing the United States will not. Between now and 2040, the CBO projects that the demands by a growing older population and rising medical costs will increase spending on Social Security and Medicare by 27 percent and 80 percent respectively. But the dedicated revenues that support those programs will remain nearly flat. 3 Because federal deficits over that period will persist and increase the national debt, the CBO also projects that spending on interest will increase by 230 percent; at the same time, revenues from federal income taxes will increase by only 25 percent. Stiff competition for federal resources will remain a fact of our budget debates for decades to come, and the Navy will not be immune.
Finally, within the defense budget itself are the competing demands and priorities of the services and their supporters. If the military branches were unified in the perspective that naval shipbuilding, including the Ohio replacement, should be the nation’s first military priority—or at least the first acquisition priority—it might be a relatively simple thing to shift 1 percent of the defense budget in its favor. But that is not a universally held view. As the threats to U.S. national security become more varied in this emerging new strategic era, the competing demands of all parts of the military for more resources make shifting even a small amount of the defense budget a difficult proposition, especially with the demands on federal resources continuing to grow. 4
Adopt alternative ship designs and fleet architecture. If more money does not flow into the Navy’s shipbuilding accounts, what are the other alternatives? Are there ways to squeeze more out of the current budget? Can you keep ships around longer and modernize them? Does the Navy really need to buy the fleet it is proposing, or would an alternative be better? These are large, wide-ranging questions that deserve serious attention and debate. My purpose in raising and discussing them briefly in this article is to show that even if such suggestions were adopted, they would have little effect on the fleet over the next 10 years and only a marginal effect over the next 20 years.
Let us very briefly consider two examples of alternative fleet architectures proposed by two knowledgeable and experienced men in the business of fleet design: Captain Arthur “Trip” Barber and Captain Wayne Hughes. 5Both are retired Navy officers who then spent many more years thinking about alternative fleet architectures and ship designs. They still do.
In a 2014 Proceedings article, Captain Barber recommends that the Navy do a number of things differently in what he sees as an unending period of federal fiscal constraint. He suggests changing the capabilities of existing ship platforms as well as changing the ways the Navy deploys or stations ships in order to get more deployed time out of these expensive capital assets. However, he also recommends exploring several alternative ship designs that, he argues, would reduce shipbuilding costs, including using a single new ship design for both aircraft carriers and large-deck amphibious-assault ships, developing several classes of surface combatant that perform different missions but share a common hull, and repeating that common-hull approach for various support-ship missions.
U.S. Navy (Sam Shavers) – Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus delivers remarks at the christening of the USS Jackson (LCS-6) in December. The Secretary of Defense recently called for cuts to the LCS shipbuilding program, which might be said to have experienced its share of setbacks and controversy.
Captain Hughes equally reimagines the future fleet, although he believes his plan is affordable within existing shipbuilding budgets. The New Navy Fighting Machine, as Captain Hughes describes it, would develop even more new ship types than would Captain Barber’s. Specifically, Captain Hughes envisions new conventionally powered submarines, light aircraft carriers, small land-attack arsenal ships, and a substantial green-water force, as well as continuing to build numerous ship types that are already part of the Navy’s 2016 plan.
Nevertheless, however thought-provoking the suggestions offered by both men, making such major changes to the fleet will not be easy or quick. Alternative ship designs and fleet architectures take a long time to implement. For example, the LCS was first proposed in 2001. Fifteen years later the Navy has commissioned six of those small, relatively inexpensive 3,000-ton ships. A large all-new ship design, such as the DDG-1000 Zumwalt -class destroyer, has been in development, design, and construction for 20 years and won’t commission into the fleet until later this year. The same is true for the new Ford -class aircraft carrier. Under the Navy’s shipbuilding plan, in 15 years—2031—the Navy will have only eight new combat ships of entirely new design: three Ford -class carriers, three Zumwalt -class destroyers, and two Ohio replacement ballistic-missile submarines. Another 48 combat ships will be commissioned that have a modified design of existing warships: 21 Arleigh Burke –class Flight III destroyers, 20 frigates based on the LCS (or just 12 under Secretary Carter’s directive), and seven LX-R amphibious ships based on the existing LPD-17 hull. The Navy will also have another 28 combat logistics and support ships of some new type. Overall, in 2031 at least three-quarters of the fleet will still be composed of ships with designs that are in service today.
Thus, unless the ship-acquisition process can be changed such that it dramatically speeds up the introduction of new ship designs into the fleet, most of the suggestions by Captains Barber and Hughes would not have a meaningful effect on the composition of the fleet until, coincidentally, the Ohio Replacement Program is essentially completed in 2035. This is a point that Captain Hughes explicitly acknowledges and addresses (and one that Captain Barber recognizes but does not address), but, based on the Navy’s acquisition history, the former may be optimistic about what is achievable in 10–20 years. 6
Huntington Ingalls – A rigger oversees a small-unit flip during construction currently underway on the second Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) at Newport News Shipbuilding. “In 15 years – 2031 – the Navy will only have eight new combat ships of an entirely new design,” including three Fords.
Keep older ships in the fleet. A less time-intensive alternative to new ship designs or fleet architectures would be to modernize older ships and keep them in the fleet. But this approach has its own problems. Paradoxically, the Navy is already doing this to a large extent, so it is not clear that more can be done, but also historical experience suggests that the service dislikes doing so. Over the past 20 years, senior Navy leaders have extended the service lives of more than 100 submarines, destroyers, and amphibious ships relative to their original design lives. At the same time, the Navy retired dozens of ships that had many years of useful service life remaining, rather than purchasing slightly fewer new ships to pay for keeping the older ships in the fleet.
Specifically, in the early 2000s, the Navy increased the service life of the Ohio -class ballistic-missile submarines from 30 years to 42. If that had not been done, we would have debated the merits and means to pay for the Ohio replacement more than a decade ago, when the United States was fully engaged in two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Similarly, the service life of Los Angeles –class attack submarines was increased from 30 years to 33. The Navy now assumes its large-deck amphibious-assault ships will serve for 43 to 45 years, which is up from 40 years. And since the release of the 2009 shipbuilding plan, the Navy has assumed its Arleigh Burke –class destroyers would serve in the fleet for 40 years, rather than 35 years in earlier plans, which is up from the original design life of 30.
Extending the service lives of these ships further is impossible in some cases and questionable in others. The submarines will be at the limit for the number of cyclings (submerging and surfacing) that their pressure hulls can tolerate, and the energy in their reactors will be exhausted. Conventionally powered surface ships, however, could in theory be upgraded if the Navy chose to do so. Properly maintained, conventional hulls can last for many decades. Ships that were retired from the U.S. Navy and sold or transferred to other countries often serve for decades longer as a result. But at a certain point, a ship that is still useful in a South American or Asian navy would no longer be valuable to the U.S. Navy, because physical limitations may prevent a modernization of her combat systems to perform high-end missions. Further, keeping older ships in the fleet even longer would require the Navy to modernize combat systems and fully fund maintenance programs. But budgetary constraints and long, frequent deployments have made it hard for the service to do so. Thus, if it is not clear that Burkes can serve for 40 years, it seems even less likely they could serve for 45 to 50 years performing missions the Navy would find valuable.
At the same time the Navy was extending the service lives of some ships, it was retiring others well before the end of their design lives. In the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, the Navy retired the entire class of Spruance destroyers. To keep those ships in the fleet the Navy would have had to spend money on improving their material condition as well as upgrading their combat systems. It also would have cost money to continue to operate those ships. But a decade later, the surface-combatant force is overworked with long deployments because there are insufficient ships to meet the demand. In addition, the original plan was to retire the Oliver Hazard Perry –class frigates sooner and keep the Spruances around, but that decision was reversed because it was cheaper to operate the smaller ships. Relative capabilities apparently did not figure strongly in the decision.
Similarly, the Navy retired 17 Los Angeles –class attack submarines at an average age of 22 years, rather than pay to refuel those boats and keep them in the fleet. Paying for all 17 refuelings would have cost less than the price of two new Virginia -class submarines. Again, the Navy would have had to budget resources to operate those ships, but at about $40 million per submarine per year, that was not an insurmountable obstacle.
And more recently, the Navy proposed to retire seven Ticonderoga -class cruisers and two amphibious ships to help conform to the budgetary caps of the Budget Control Act, rather than reduce new ship purchases further. Congress intervened, however, directing the Navy to keep those ships in the fleet and provided additional appropriations to do so. But if the Navy had had its way two years ago, the fleet today would number 264 ships. In that event, the strain on large surface combatants and amphibious ships, which now routinely deploy for seven to ten months, would be even greater.
Size? Capabilities? Both?
One way for a policymaker or anyone interested in naval matters to think about these issues is to figure out what your objective is. Do you care most about the size of the fleet? Or are the capabilities of the fleet more important? Of course, both are important. But the tension between size and capabilities is in many ways a proxy for the tension between the Navy’s day-to-day responsibilities and its high-end warfighting requirements. In an unendingly tight fiscal environment, a larger Navy is one that is better able to provide overseas presence and perform the many, varied peacetime missions that our naval forces are routinely called on to conduct—without overly stressing the ships and crews. 7However, ships with the high-end warfighting capabilities that would be needed in an unlikely, but far from impossible, future conflict with a peer or near-peer competitor are expensive. The Navy cannot afford to build as many of them as it would like under historical funding levels.
If this seems like a daunting set of challenges for shipbuilding, that’s because it is. Yet, it may be possible that a little bit of everything could close the gap. If the Congress can shift a fraction of 1 percent of the defense budget toward shipbuilding, if improving acquisition can squeeze a fraction of 1 percent of the defense budget toward more shipbuilding, and if the Navy invests in some of its older ships to keep them in service, then perhaps it can step off the path toward a fleet of 237 ships that history says it is on. But that combination of outcomes would be difficult to achieve.
Dr. Labs, writing here as a private citizen, is Senior Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons at the Congressional Budget Office. He specializes in issues related to the procurement, budgeting, and sizing of the forces for the Department of the Navy. Dr. Labs has testified before Congress several times and published numerous studies under the auspices of the CBO as well as a number of articles and papers in academic journals and conferences.
1. Report to Congress on the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2016 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, March 2015), http://tinyurl.com/ocrqtfc [8] .
2. Congressional Budget Office, An Analysis of the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2016 Shipbuilding Plan , October 2015, www.cbo.gov/publication/50926[9] .
4. Ronald O’Rourke, A Shift in the International Security Environment: Potential Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress , Congressional Research Service, 20 November 2015,www.hsdl.org/?view&did=788858 [11] .
5. CAPT Arthur H. Barber, USN (Ret.), “Rethinking the Future Fleet,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings , vol. 140, no. 5 (May 2014), 48–52. CAPT Wayne P. Hughes, USN (Ret.), The New Navy Fighting Machine: A Study of the Connections Between Contemporary Policy, Strategy, Sea Power, Naval Operations, and the Composition of the United States Fleet , (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2009). See also his “A Bimodal Force for the National Maritime Strategy,” Naval War College Review , vol. 60, no. 7 (Spring 2007), 29–47.
Recently the new Chief of Naval Operations issued a document “Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority” that outlines how, hopefully, the US Navy can maintain a maritime superiority our foes will recognize and avoid confronting.
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If you look for anything specifically regarding the Coast Guard here, you will not find it (other than the cutter in the formation on the cover). The Coast Guard is not mentioned even once, but it does talk about some things that are Coast Guard related. Perhaps the Coast Guard should not feel bad about this. It only mentions the Marine Corps once.
Three Forces that are Changing the Environment
The first global force is the traffic on the oceans, seas, and waterways, including the sea floor – the classic maritime system.
A second increasingly influential force is the rise of the global information system – the information that rides on the servers, undersea cables, satellites, and wireless networks that increasingly envelop and connect the globe.
The third interrelated force is the increasing rate of technological creation and adoption.
Obviously the Coast Guard facilitates and regulates marine traffic, and is tapped into the global information system. In wartime, these contacts will become essential since they will form the basis for naval control of shipping. He also talks about new trade routes opening in the Arctic. These will only be reliable if we have new icebreakers. He also talks about illegal trafficking.
“This maritime traffic also includes mass and uncontrolled migration and illicit shipment of material and people.”
A Document That Explicitly Recognizes the Competition
“For the first time in 25 years, the United States is facing a return to great power competition. Russia and China both have advanced their military capabilities to act as global powers. Their goals are backed by a growing arsenal of high-end warfighting capabilities, many of which are focused specifically on our vulnerabilities and are increasingly designed from the ground up to leverage the maritime, technological and information systems. They continue to develop and field information-enabled weapons, both kinetic and non-kinetic, with increasing range, precision and destructive capacity. Both China and Russia are also engaging in coercion and competition below the traditional thresholds of high-end conflict, but nonetheless exploit the weakness of accepted norms in space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum. The Russian Navy is operating with a frequency and in areas not seen for almost two decades, and the Chinese PLA(N) is extending its reach around the world.
“…Coupled with a continued dedication to furthering its nuclear weapons and missile programs, North Korea’s provocative actions continue to threaten security in North Asia and beyond.
“…while the recent international agreement with Iran is intended to curb its nuclear ambitions, Tehran’s advanced missiles, proxy forces and other conventional capabilities continue to pose threats to which the Navy must remain prepared to respond.
“…international terrorist groups have proven their resilience and adaptability and now pose a long-term threat to stability and security around the world.”
Recognizing Budgetary Limitations
“There is also a fourth ‘force’ that shapes our security environment. Barring an unforeseen change, even as we face new challenges and an increasing pace, the Defense and Navy budgets likely will continue to be under pressure. We will not be able to “buy” our way out of the challenges that we face. The budget environment will force tough choices but must also inspire new thinking.”
Throughout there is an emphasis on understanding history and the strategic concepts of the past. There is also a recognition of the need to work with partners.
“EXPAND AND STRENGTHEN OUR NETWORK OF PARTNERS: Deepen operational relationships with other services, agencies, industry, allies and partners – who operate with the Navy to support our shared interests.”
Other than the Marine Corps, the US Navy has no closer partner than the US Coast Guard. And while only about one eighth the size of the US Navy, in terms of personnel, the US Coast Guard is larger than Britain’s Royal Navy or the French Navy. The partnership has been a long and successful one, but I would like to see the Navy be a better partner to the Coast Guard. This is how the Navy can help the Coast Guard help the Navy.
What I Want to See
If we have a “run out of money, now we have to think” situation, one thing we can do is to try to get the maximum return from the relatively small investment needed to make the Coast Guard an effective naval reserve force.
Webber Class WPC, USCGC Margaret Norvell
We need explicit support from the Navy at every level, particularly within Congress and the Administration, for Coast Guard recapitalization.While the Navy’s fleet averages approximately 14 years old. The Coast Guard’s major cutters average over 40. The proposed new ships, are more capable than those they replace. They are better able to work cooperatively with the Navy. The nine unit 4,500 ton “National Security Cutter” program is nearing completion with funds for the ninth ship in the FY2016 budget. The 58 unit, 154 foot, 353 ton Webber Class program is well underway with 32 completed, building, or funded. But the Coast Guard is about to start its largest acquisition in history, 25 LCS sized Offshore Patrol Cutters. Unfortunately, it appears that while the first ship will be funded in FY2018 the last will not be completed until at least 2035. This program really needs to be accelerated.
We need an explicit statement from the Navy that they expect the Coast Guard to defend ports against unconventional threats, so that they can keep more forces forward deployed. This is in fact the current reality. The Sea Frontiers are long gone. Navy vessels no longer patrol the US coast. The surface Navy is concentrated in only a handful of ports. No Navy surface combatants are homeported on the East Coast north of the Chesapeake Bay. If a vessel suspected of being under the control of terrorists approaches the US coast the nearest Navy surface vessel may be hundreds of miles away.
We need the Navy to supply the weapons the Coast Guard need to defend ports against unconventional attack using vessels of any size, with a probability approaching 100%. These should include small missile systems like Hellfire or Griffin to stop small, fast, highly maneuverable threats and we need a ship stopper, probably a light weight anti-ship torpedoes that target propellers to stop larger threats. We need these systems on not just the largest cutters, in fact they are needed more by the the smaller cutters that are far more likely to be in a position to make a difference. These include the Webber class and perhaps even the smaller WPBs.
We need to reactivate the Coast Guard’s ASW program and ensure that all the new large cutters (National Security Cutters and Offshore Patrol Cutters) have an ASW capability, if not installed on all of the cutters, at least planned, prototyped, tested, and practiced on a few ships (particularly in the Pacific). The National Security Cutters and the Offshore Patrol Cutters are (or will be) capable of supporting MH-60R ASW helicopters. Adding a towed array like CAPTAS-4 (the basis for the LCS ASW module) orCAPTAS-2 would give them a useful ASW capability that could be used to escort ARGs, fleet train, or high value cargo shipments. Towed arrays might even help catch semi-submersible drug runners in peacetime.
One of three contending designs for the planned 25 Offshore Patrol Cutters.
The Coast Guard is the low end of America’s Naval high-low mix. It is a source of numbers when numbers are needed. The Coast Guard has more assets for low end functions like blockade than the Navy. The Navy has about 105 cruisers, destroyers, LCS, PCs, and is not expected to have more than 125 similar assets for the forseeable future. The Coast Guard has about 165 patrol cutters including 75 patrol boats 87 feet long, about 50 patrol craft 110 to 154 feet in length (58 Webber class WPCs are planned), and about 40 ships 210 foot or larger that can be called on, just as they were during the Vietnam War, when the Coast Guard operated as many as 33 vessels off the coast in support of Operation MarketTime, in spite of the fact that the Navy had almost three times as many surface warships as they do now. The current program of record will provide 34 new generation cutters including nine 4500 ton National Security Cutters and 25 Offshore Patrol Cutters that should be at least 2500 tons.
The Coast Guard provides peacetime maritime security, but is currently under-armed even for this mission. A small investment could make it far more useful in wartime.
(Note here is another post on this looking at the “design” from a Navy point of view.)
Chuck retired from the Coast Guard after 22 years service. Assignments included four ships, Rescue Coordination Center New Orleans, CG HQ, Fleet Training Group San Diego, Naval War College, and Maritime Defense Zone Pacific/Pacific Area Ops/Readiness/Plans. Along the way he became the first Coast Guard officer to complete the Tactical Action Officer (TAO) course and also completed the Naval Control of Shipping course. He has had a life-long interest in naval ships and history. Chuck normally writes for his blog, Chuck Hill’s CG blog.
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This article originally featured on Defencyclopedia and is republished with permission. It may be read in its original form here.
SUMMARY
The best position for a sensor on a ship, is on top of the highest mast. Multiple sensors mean multiple antennas; hence ending up close together. Such an arrangement requires the need to switch one system off before another one can be used. As all sensor systems are installed separately on the ship, and then subsequently integrated and tested, they add considerably to the time and cost required for building a naval vessel.With recent development of integrated masts for warships, gone are the dozens of antennas and sensors found on practically every flat topside surface of a modern naval vessel.
These integrated masts allow the exploitation of modern materials and technology to improve sensor performance and coverage with pre-outfitting, leading to reduced cost of construction due to reduced time overruns. This article, by Commander Nitin Agarwala, who is now a contributing author for Defencyclopedia, explores the developments in integrated mast design for integration of electronic warfare (EW),communication and Radar and their future in warship construction.
INTRODUCTION
How does an antenna become designated for use in navigation, weapon fire control, communications, electronic countermeasures or for any other reason, and ultimately installed on board a Naval surface ship? The answer should be, it’s part of the antenna design procedure. Though the answer is simple, the process is not. There was a time, when this design procedure, referred to as dart-boarding, was based on an educated guess for the most feasible layout of the antennas, followed by experimental verification.
The multiple mast and cluttered antenna layout on a 1970’s era Soviet Kashin class destroyer
As the reliance on electronic systems such as communications, radar,navigation, gunfire control, friend-or-foe identification, electronic countermeasures, and aircraft operations increased, one realized that complex, intricate below-decks electronic equipment was virtually useless unless matched with satisfactory antenna performance. Hence former methods of antenna design and topside arrangements were no longer adequate and dart-boarding disappeared – to be replaced by careful scientific planning. These electronic systems divided the shipboard antennas into three broad groups.
Omni-directional antennas – used mainly for communications, air navigation, and passive reception. These satisfy the need of ships and aircraft to maneuver independently of each other and fixed radio stations.
Directional antennas – used for transmitting and receiving spatially concentrated energy in one direction at a time. These are used for radar, gunfire control, and satellite communication to obtain information about or from remote objects.
Directional antennas – used to determine bearing of incident radiation; and is used primarily for direction finding navigation and Electronic Countermeasures (ECM).
For an operational naval platform, the basic minimum required sensors are communication antennas from HF to UHF, navigation radar, surveillance radar, IFF, Fire Control Radar, ESM, jammers, electro-optical sensor systems and missile up-links.Providing these large number and variety of distinct services on the antenna in the extremely restricted space presents many very-difficult and different problems which do not arise in other technical disciplines.
Clustering of so many antennas in so little space,plus the necessity for simultaneous emission and reception together with the undesirable, but unavoidable, electromagnetic coupling to, and re-radiation from, a host of other shipboard metal objects, results in a most trying system integration problem for the ship. Strenuous efforts must be made to reach a compromise with all competing topside subsystems so as to provide the least degradation in overall performance.
TYPES OF MASTS
To meet the requirement of these sensors, the Naval Architects have hence used
The various types of masts have been a result of changing requirement of the navies and the developing technology used over the years. Of all these masts, a plated mast, even with a higher weight than a lattice mast, is preferred in most cases due to its advantages of lower radar cross-section, improved through life maintenance (due to enclosed structure), lesser vibration and ability to handle larger weight of modern equipment.
Note the blackening of the area around the radars on the mast
The design of the mast however is not limited to just the placement of thesensors.The mast design has a direct bearing on the design of the vessel itself as its weight will impact the stability performance, air resistance will impact the ships speed and the arrangement of the antennae will affect the top side electromagnetic environment and RADHAZ (radiation hazard).
When designing, one needs to structurally integrate the mast to the ship to ensure strength due to both static and dynamic loads (whipping loads due to hull slamming, air resistance, shock), provide access, power and cooling air and study the effect of the heat plume from the exhausts/funnel impinging on the antennae. The picture of HMAS Perth shows the effect of proximity of the smokestack to the masts on the ship.
NEXT GENERATION MASTS
Conventional warship masts are plagued with a variety of downsides which include large amounts of steel making the ship topside heavy resulting into weight penalty, expensive maintenance due to exposed sensors, wooding as a result of sensor / mast interactions, electromagnetic induction due to spurious reflections and poor screening and impingement in return causing a high radar signature. This has led to designers looking at alternatives.
Accordingly in recent years, there has been a significant interest in the concept of composite masts, with a variety of designs being developed. These designs aim to house sensors and antenna within the protection of the mast and use frequency sensitive shielding to allow the sensors to “see” through the mast panel structure thus offering an improved signature and arc of coverage. Such major initiatives are:
A photo of the enclosed hexagonal mast on the USS Radford
The Advanced Enclosed Mast/Sensor (AEM/S) system designed by the US and initiated in 1995 is a hexagonal (used onboard USS Radford DD-968) or an octagonal (used onboard U.S.S. San AntonioLPD-17) structure. It encloses the existing radar and other sensitive equipment,protecting them from the environment thereby reducing maintenance requirements. The lower half of the AEM/S system serves to hold up the top half. The case of the lower half is balsa. An electromagnetic (EM) shield compartment that uses reflecting metallic shielding is included in a portion of the lower half of the mast to meet design requirements. The top half contains a tailored sandwich composite material made up of a foam core, with frequency selective material, as well as structural laminate skins.
An illustration showing the construction of the mastOctagonal Advanced Enclosed Mast/Sensor on USS San Antonio
The Advanced Technology Mast (ATM) designed by the UK, comprises of a steel substructure clad in advanced fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) composite panels,which incorporate radar-absorbing layers. Sensors are installed in interchangeable modules mounted within the cladding. The philosophy of the mast is intended to support future surface warship designs and retrofit to existing ships. The sensors and radio equipment are completely enclosed in the radar reflective mast structures. The masts look like unstayed pole masts with very large rectangular cross-sections, tapering from the base to the top.
A close-up of the Advanced Technology Mast
HMS Ark Royal was fitted with the Advanced Technology Mast
The Integrated mast (I-MAST) designed by Netherlands, is a completely different design approach from the traditional sensor layout. This mast type integrates the sensors into the structure itself. One central mast structure houses the radar, optronic, and communication sensors and antennas as well as all cabinets and peripherals. The Integrated Mast conceptimproves the undesirable situation of having to equip a ship with sensors and antenna after she has been completed in full. In the I-Mast, the mast and the equipment are built and tested while the ship is under construction. When the ship is ready, the mast is put on the ship as a turnkey system. It has a comparatively simple interface to the ship’s power supply, cooling water supply, combat system, and mechanical deck structure, making installation a plug and play operation.
HNLMS Friesland, a patrol ship of the Netherlands Navy has the I-mast 500 integrated mast
The mast itself is a fully air tight module forming part of the ship’s citadel, providing environmental protection against shock, blast, vibration, solar radiation,temperature, uptake efflux, electromagnetic radiation and chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. An external load-bearing steel structure has been adopted to facilitate the integration of different types of sensors and communications, with equipment arranged over four deck levels (a top deck,upper antenna deck, lower antenna deck and an equipment deck. A shielded duct or “backbone” routes cabling and cooling circuitry up through the centre of the mast to serve individual equipment.
All processing cabinets are sited on the equipment deck. This is also the floor of the mast module and the interface to the ship platform through a single crew entry hatch and two cable entry panels fitted port and starboard. Services routed through these panels comprise water, air, own-ship data, power supplies, monitoring and control, dual communication, video and combat system buses, and auxiliary interfaces
A cut-out shows the sensor layout in the i-MastAn illustration showing the various types of sensors present on the i-Mast 500
SENSORS OF I-MAST
All radars and antennas in an I-Mast not only have a full 360° field of view; they are also developed so as to operate simultaneously without interfering each other.Theseradars are non-rotating, four-faced active phased array radars, which in itself is a major performance enhancement. As the four faces operate simultaneously, the radars achieve four times the time on target achieved by a rotating radar. The surface surveillance radar (Seastar) was developed especially for this purpose and it is capable of detecting and tracking small objects (e.g. divers’ head) between the waves,contributing enormously to situational awareness in littoral environments. The details of the sensors as fitted in an I-Mast are as under:
SeaMaster 400 (also called SMILE) is a non-rotating S-band radar with four faces for air and surface surveillance. It is derived from the proven SMART and APAR radar systems. SM400’s unique concept of multi-beam volume search with four active scanning faces ensures the simultaneous performance of all operational tasks at a high update rate and very low false alarm rate. SM400 also provides helicopter direction and approach capabilities and has three fire control channels. The system’s high number of parallel transmit and receive channels provide a high degree of redundancy.
Seamaster S-band radar
Seawatcher (also called SEASTAR) is a four face non-rotating active phased array X-band radar for naval surface surveillance. The high resolution system automatically detects and tracks asymmetric threats and very small objects such as mines, periscopes. Seawatcher can also be used for helicopter guidance.
Seawatcher X-band radar
Gatekeeper is a 360° panoramic electro-optical surveillance and alerter system based on IR/TV technology. Designed to counter emerging asymmetric threats down to small boats and swimmers, Gatekeeper increases short-range situational awareness in littoral environments.
GatekeeperSATCOM antenna domeA CGI shows the sensors of the I-mast operating together without any blockage of signals
The Integrated Communication Antenna System (ICAS) facilitates the use of standard VHF / UHF communications equipment, is fitted with Link 16 integration, provides excellent transmit/receive isolation, offers estate for auxiliary antennas such as GSM/GPS and is designed for future growth.
Cylindrical IFF array
The non-rotating Identification Friend or Foe (NR IFF) uses a cylindrical array fitted to the top of the structure. It is designed to operate with standard interrogator/transponder systems. It is optimized for operation with a non-rotating primary radar.
NEED FOR AN INTEGRATED MAST
Littoral environments are extremely complex given the high density of natural and man-made clutter, crowded commercial air and sea lanes, vehicle traffic along the coastline, and the effects of anomalous propagation on sensor performance. To further complicate the problem, recent years have seen the emergence of an increasingly“asymmetric” threat set (unmanned air vehicles, fast inshore attack craft, gliders, dinghies, swimmers and mines) that are intrinsically difficult to detect in high clutter backgrounds. To resolve such issues the concept of an integrated mast incorporating the principal surveillance sensors and communication systems has evolved.
By resolving the electromagnetic conflicts and line-of-sight obstructions inherent to traditional topside antenna arrangements, the integrated mast aims at delivering an unobstructed field of view, reduced cross section; ease of electromagnetic friction and to simplify shipboard integration. This in return provides a significant benefit in terms of improved operational performance and availability, shorter shipbuilding time, reduced maintenance requirements and significant savings in below-deck volume.
In an integrated mast various antennae are integrated within the design of the mast itself along with the electronic equipment to be “integrated” in the mast as a single unit. The result is a mast which is a structurally self-supporting module. The integrated mast with its technology of integrated sensor concept delivers huge advantages which are:
Better operational performance
Higher operational availability due to maintenance possible in the protected, sheltered environment of the Mast, meaning that it is no longer necessary to wait for repairs until weather conditions are safe enough
Reduced ship-building time
Reduced maintenance requirements due to non-rotating radars
Enormous savings in below-deck space
Reduced signature / increased arc of coverage
Reduced costs (i) Lower sensor costs due to improved environment(ii) Cheaper maintenance due to lack of corrosion, no re-painting and modular approach
Reduced topside weight / improved stability
Reduced EMI – RAM covered decks
Potential for quick role changes – flexibility, upgradeability
CONCLUSION
Various advanced Mast designs have been produced in the recent past which have been discussed in this paper. All of them have been tested for their structural performance against both environmental and shock loads. One can say with confidence that today the concept of “integrated mast” has become a reality from just a technology demonstration project. Though it is definitely a product which shall become an integral part of the future ship design, however many issues such as the impact of the integrated mast on ship design need to be studied in detail.
One needs to also study issues such as material selection for the mast, access arrangements and structural integration and stability as key aspects among many. Finally the integrated mast designers themselves will continue to be challenged by how to design a mast or series of masts that offer a solution that is sufficiently flexible for fit to a variety of vessel sizes and satisfy differing customer requirements.
Edited by N.R.P
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Commander (Dr) Nitin Agarwala, a serving Indian Naval Officer commissioned in 1993, is a Naval Architect from Cochin University of Science and Technology and an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Kharagpur. The officer has experienced the various facets of a warship as a user, inspector and a maintainer. He is now a part of the design team of naval warships. He has published over 26 papers in various conferences, and journals of national and international repute. His areas of interest are Wave structure interaction problems, Acoustic structure interaction problems, Hydroelasticity related ship structure problems, Corrosion problems associated with ships.
