Notes to the New CNO Topic Week

By LCDR Robert “Jake” Bebber, USN

A strategic resource is one for which states compete. Land is the classic example of a strategic resource, but virtually any resource can be strategic if it is essential to a nation’s interests and if gaining and maintaining access to it requires states to formulate and pursue competitive policies. In the twentieth century, petroleum often was held up as the preeminent example of a strategic resource. It was viewed as such a resource because it could be leveraged—assuring access for friendly states and denying it to adversaries. This leverage required a whole-of-nation approach which included private industry, diplomatic policy, and military planning. For example, in 1980, the United States declared that it would use military force, if necessary, to protect its interests in the Persian Gulf region—a policy known as the Carter Doctrine—to assure Western access to oil resources while denying it to the Soviets.¹

Since the end of the Cold War, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has pursued rapid military expansion coupled with cyber-enabled and information-related geo-economic strategies to capture and control key industries, networks, and infrastructure in order to replace the liberal international order with a Beijing-led order, supplanting the U.S. as the dominant superpower. The American response, while welcome, remains constrained to issues related to either trade balances or intelligence-collection risks. A holistic approach is required.

The U.S. Navy is particularly vulnerable to China’s geo-informational and geo-economic strategies. For example, the PRC’s growing control over the semiconductor industry, the undersea cable industry, maritime shipbuilding, and port operations, place the ability of the Navy to execute its core functions in doubt.² The Navy and the Defense Department are also vulnerable to larger influence and shaping operations through the capture of key education, media, and entertainment industries by the PRC, which shape the global cultural understanding and American public perception.³

To win a strategic resource competition, the Navy must leverage American advantages in all-source automated data collection and analysis, and rapidly develop and field autonomous information systems to platforms that provide commanders with battlespace awareness beyond a “red” and “blue” common operational picture display.  The Navy must dramatically increase investment, especially in bandwidth availability and advanced antenna networks that enable effective employment of new information systems.

The Navy and Joint Force should be part of a national strategy that harvests information resources and controls critical information industries while denying that leverage to our adversaries. This requires new operational concepts, deeper relations with partners, allies, and industry, and a re-thinking of current personnel recruitment, training and retention.

References

1. Bebber, Robert. “China’s Cyber-Economic Warfare Threatens U.S.” Proceedings 143, no. 7 (2017).

2. Bebber, Robert. “Treating Information as a Strategic Resource to Win the “Information War.” Orbis 61, no. 3 (2017): 394-403.

3. For example, the upcoming Navy-centric movie “Top Gun: Maverick” appears to have been censored to remove references to Japan and Taiwan. Tencent Pictures, a Chinese movie production company, is an investor and “co-marketer” of the film. See: https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/media/top-gun-flags-intl-hnk/index.html

Featured Image: Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren, Va. (Aug. 19, 2004) – Naval reservists, scientists and engineers work in the Integrated Command Environment (ICE) Human Performance laboratory located at NSWC Dahlgren, Va. (U.S. Navy photo/Released)

Notes to the New CNO Topic Week

By John T. Kuehn, Ph.D., Commander, USN (ret.)

What follows is a summary of my advice to Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson while I was a member of his Fleet Design Advisory Panel in 2016-17 (FDAP).

An indispensable component of any fleet of the future is its undersea warfare capability. The ability to prosecute anti-surface warfare and sea denial through submarine employment in contested areas of the global commons is critical. This means any report or plan that cuts back on submarine and undersea capabilities as they exist today, manned or unmanned, should be viewed as unacceptable. Any erosion of the doctrine and training for this capability, as was long tolerated after the end of the Cold War, should also be viewed as unacceptable.

Be ready to fight a missile and torpedo fight. The naval battle of the future has already been hinted at in history, especially at the Falklands in 1982. It will involve primarily missiles and undersea weapons with a healthy dose of electronic warfare and cyber. The cyber aspect is not yet well understood and will require more integration into naval doctrine, especially electronic maneuver warfare (EMW) and our understanding of emission control. The day has arrived that our receivers are as vulnerable as our transmitters when we conduct emission control (EMCON).

The network is the modern-day capital ship. The network that supports EMW and Distributed Maritime Operations, and the nature of its graceful degradation under fire, the development of artificial intelligence options (or reserve modes), and the accompanying command philosophy (i.e. disciplined initiative) will constitute either the greatest strength or the greatest weakness for any future fleet. It is vital, but the people who will use it across the spectrum of war are more important. Human capital is the more important half of this modern-day capital ship.   

The Navy must emphasize fielding proven technology. Do not bank on emergent technology that only currently exists on paper and in formulas, and is not something that can be fully operationalized into the fleet we have by 2030. Avoid the Arthur C. Clarke “syndrome” of attempting to skip a generation or two of technology whose advantage will be fleeting anyway and possibly out of touch if a protracted war breaks out.

Commander (retired) John T. Kuehn is a professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. A former naval aviator, he is the author of Agents of Innovation (Naval Institute Press, 2008) and the coauthor, with D. M. Giangreco, of Eyewitness Pacific Theater (Sterling, 2008). He has also published A Military History of Japan (Praeger 2014), Napoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns (Praeger 2015), and America’s First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the U.S. Navy, 1900-1950 (Naval Institute Press, 2017).

Featured Image: PEARL HARBOR (Feb. 21, 2019) Rear Adm. Daryl L. Caudle, commander of Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet (COMSUBPAC), delivers remarks during the COMSUBPAC change of command ceremony aboard the Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS Mississippi (SSN 782) at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Shaun Griffin/Released) 190221-N-KV911-0254

Notes to the New CNO Topic Week

By Stephen M. Carmel

The U.S. military has lost one of the unique differentiators that formally sets it apart from its potential adversaries – the ability to reliably sustain itself over long distances within relevant timeframes. There has been much said recently on the dismal state of the nation’s dry cargo sealift forces. And while it is rarely touched on in the conversation, the fact is that for all practical purposes there is no virtually tanker (fuel) capacity to speak of at all.

The question is not “would the U.S. Navy run out of fuel in a fight with China?”, but how quickly. We are talking weeks, if that. An aircraft carrier (even a nuclear one) at war without fuel is just an artificial reef in the making. The Chinese add the equivalent of an entire U.S. Maritime Security Program (MSP) fleet to their inventory every year while in the U.S. we debate about adding one or two ships over the course of decades but nothing concrete ever gets done. The Chinese have bold visions and execute on those visions effectively. In the U.S., at least in terms of sealift, incrementalism is our watchword and even then we don’t execute on that minimal vision. The focus is always on doubling down on failed programs and policies that brought about the current state of affairs when bold, innovative thinking that does not repeat the mistakes of the past is required.

As a start we urgently need a true Maritime Strategy (CS21R and its successor, the Design, are naval, not maritime strategies). The Maritime Strategy must lay out how the nation’s sealift assets and merchant marine fit into broader national security objectives and wartime contingencies. Then that strategy must be executed rapidly and effectively.

A program for defense sealift must ensure the proper mix of both wet and dry cargo ships is available and truly deployable when needed. The architecture of the defense sealift fleet must be adaptable and able to adjust easily to changes in the threat we face. However, current policy remains a static architecture and what is being discussed in the Ready Reserve Force recapitalization conversation is just another old, obsolete, and static fleet architecture, but which somehow intends to be used in a modern and dynamic threat environment. This is a recipe for failure. 

This is an issue of readiness posture. It is time to recognize that if this problem is not solved and solved urgently, a peer competitor will be able to outlast us in conflict and eventually dictate the outcome. Sealift cannot continued to be viewed as a burden and one to be cut when dollars are short. It is a crucial logistical enabler of naval warfighting.  

Sealift – the ability to sustain our forces over long distances at the speed of war – must be viewed as an indispensable element of a forward leaning, lethal, combat force. Without this investment everything else may be rendered moot. 

Steve Carmel is Senior VP at Maersk Line Limited. Among other activities he is a current member of the Naval Studies Board, and past member of the CNO Executive Panel and Marine Board. 

Featured Image: Ready Reserve Force Vessel Cape Ray. (Transportation.gov)