By Dmitry Filipoff

Last week, CIMSEC launched a series of articles and interviews on the new Battle Force 2045 fleet design unveiled by the Secretary of Defense. In this series, contributors shed light on why the Defense Secretary may have felt compelled to seize the fleet design process from the Navy, the tactical and technological trends that drove the fleet’s composition, and whether the new fleet is fiscally feasible.

Several themes emerged. The Navy’s prior shipbuilding plans and force structure assessments may have remained too wedded to existing platforms, and not moved out aggressively enough on fielding new ship types that would better reflect the evolving nature of high-end conflict. This inclination on the part of the Navy as well as other underlying assumptions may have caused the Secretary of Defense to seize the fleet design process and push the Navy toward a different outcome.

Whether this new fleet is affordable is highly dubious in the eyes of some. But whether a 500-ship fleet could be afforded is less relevant in the near term. What is more significant is that new ship types have been called for, and how the final number matters less than beginning to build sooner rather than later. But new ship types will require sufficient experimentation and margin for adaptation, and recent shipbuilding experiences with surface combatants has affected the skepticism of Congress. Whether this new fleet can be made real remains uncertain.

During the series, we received some reports of readers experiencing technical issues when accessing the articles and interviews. Please email us at [email protected] if you would like to have the pieces sent to you as attachments.

Below are the articles and interviews, with excerpts. We thank these contributors for their excellent contributions.

Capt. Trip Barber (ret). on Building a New Fleet

“This level of change is institutionally very hard to accept and will never earn an internal consensus. It threatens community beliefs and disrupts the shipbuilding industrial base. However, multiple outside evaluations of the Navy’s fleet design over the preceding four years had said that the time had come for this level of change, and OSD finally stepped in to make it happen when the Navy did not move aggressively enough.”

Capt. Jeff Kline (ret.) on Bringing the Fleet Into the Robotics Age

“As the new fleet design is incrementally introduced, and the advantages and limitations of new technologies are better understood, tactics can be modified along with concepts to effectively employ them. The greatest risk, of course, is to the networks and communications that tie this fleet together. In a way, this transforms the Navy’s “capital ship” from the aircraft carrier to the fleet network, a natural outcome of distributed operations enabled by the Robotics Age.”

Capt. Sam Tangredi (ret.) on Shopping for Studies

“If the Navy itself has been debating these same issues, why did SECDEF ‘take away’ future fleet design from the Navy (as it has been described in the media and elsewhere) and commission his own study? I will play the cynic—but it is based on 30-plus years of being involved in DoD analytical studies. SECDEFs do these things when they already have an answer in mind, but existing studies don’t really justify their answer. SECDEFs need to intellectually justify their answers to Congress, hence they need a ‘study’ to support it.”

CDR Phil Pournelle (ret.) on Chasing Legacy Platforms

“This is unique in the fact that the Secretary of Defense did not defer to the Navy staff. The writing was on the wall several years ago when Congress demanded multiple perspectives on future fleet architectures, suggesting dissatisfaction with continuing to build the same fleet regardless of trends shaping the future combat environment. Further, I don’t think the Navy really addressed the National Defense Strategy’s four-layer construct of contact, blunt, surge, and homeland defense when they submitted their planned architecture. They appeared to have shoehorned in the same force design and not make the fundamental changes called for.”

Col. T.X. Hammes (ret.) on Experimenting for Adaptation

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

Capt. Robert Rubel (ret.) on OSD Seizing Fleet Design

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

“A Decisive Flotilla: Assessing the Hudson Fleet Design,” by Capt. Robert Rubel (ret.)

“The bottom line is that the Hudson and presumably CAPE studies offer fleet designs that are potentially suitable, feasible, and acceptable, if and only if organizational adjustments accompany them. Presumably, both studies were based on a shipbuilding budget no greater than today’s. If not, their feasibility is compromised. It also likely matters how they are implemented, the dynamics of how the Navy gets from its current design to the recommended one while avoiding the perception by adversaries of opening or closing windows of opportunity for aggression.”

Congresswoman Elaine Luria on Getting Congress Involved

“…Congress needs to understand the requirements being proposed and why. Most members of Congress don’t understand specifically the needed mix of ships, aircraft, and missiles required to prevail in a conflict with China. Congressional buy-in will be critical as we determine funding levels for each acquisition program, maintenance, and readiness requirements.”

Dr. John T. Kuehn On Designing for the Long War

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

“The Navy Should Stop Talking About the Future and Start Building It,” by Frank Goertner

“What happened next highlights why strategy in today’s Navy is too fragile for hope. The admiral who signed the Future Fleet Design and Architecture for 2045 transferred within one week of its approval. The Office of Future Strategy lasted less than nine months beyond completion of the report. The CNO who sponsored it retired two years hence. And in the meantime, there were countless executive turnovers within the Navy staff directorates, program offices, and fleet commands on which its recommended reforms relied on for execution and support.”

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at [email protected].

Featured Image: PACIFIC OCEAN (July 10, 2018) The guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105) transits the Pacific Ocean while participating in Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise 2018. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Devin M. Langer/Released)

Force Structure Perspectives Series

By Frank T. Goertner

Four years ago, the U.S. Navy began talking seriously about future fleet design. Directives were released, forums were held, studies were commissioned, roadmaps were constructed, and long-range plans were drafted – each of which called for innovation at scale and reform at speed. Six Navy Secretaries, five Defense Secretaries, four federal budgets, three elections, two Congresses, and one Chief of Naval Operations later, the Office of the Secretary of Defense finally added its voice with Battle Force 2045.

Now it is time to stop talking about the fleet’s future and start building it. This is why.

Words are Cheap 

Naval leaders have a way with words. Flag officers scrutinize them, commanders study them, selection boards interpret them, and staff officers labor over them. Hours of every Navy day are spent molding words into scrupulous emails, formulaic memos, transmittable orders, prosaic strategy documents, and immemorial PowerPoint slides. For better and worse, contemporary naval careers are about surfing words as much as making waves.

But as indispensable as they are to bureaucracy and stricture, most words are cheap, especially in the Pentagon. The shelf-life of a typical action memo or decision brief not required by a program of record or operational order is less than a year. With personnel tours rarely aligned to program requirements or project aims, it proves impossible for staff officer teams to aggregate, iterate, and advocate new ideas beyond the few overlapping months they have together.

The predominance of email and PowerPoint as standard communication mediums only makes matters worse. Once sent or briefed, the words they contain struggle to hold value amid torrents of other communications each day. Emails become guarded or siloed in personal inboxes. Slides, if saved, are uninterpretable once divorced from the briefer. And the obsession with brevity cultivated by both mediums dissuades the critical, memorable, and lengthy learning-based discourse rich topics deserve. 

On some level, the Pentagon knows this, and so does the Navy. The antidote is often thought to be strategy. It is not. 

Strategy is Fragile

When I reported to the Pentagon in 2016 for my final Navy orders, it was to a newly created “Office of Future Strategy.” Established by then-Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral John Richardson as part of his Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, we were a small team tasked with identifying vectors and markers to move the Navy from words to action on future fleet design. The result was an internal report, Future Fleet Design and Architecture for 2045, that set strategic design priorities and architectural attributes for a future fleet that closely match those endorsed by Defense Secretary Esper in recent weeks. That report was published three years ago.

What happened next highlights why strategy in today’s Navy is too fragile for hope. The admiral who signed the Future Fleet Design and Architecture for 2045 transferred within one week of its approval. The Office of Future Strategy lasted less than nine months beyond completion of the report. The CNO who sponsored it retired two years hence. And in the meantime, there were countless executive turnovers within the Navy staff directorates, program offices, and fleet commands on which its recommended reforms relied for execution and support.

Most of this was expected. Even in calm seas, the sprint of Navy flag officers through posts at the Pentagon, alongside the persistent tinker of senior Navy executives within service staff structures, can capsize a Navy strategy. What was unexpected was how rough the seas would become.

Adrift, roiled, crippled, struggling, unclear: each is a published descriptor of America’s naval leadership in the past three years of continuous turnover among appointed and acting Secretaries of Defense and Secretaries of the Navy, questionable fleet fires and firings, on-again off-again Navy approaches to education reform, Pentagon wrangling over naval force structure assessments, and unplanned changes in CNO accession.

It was a perfect storm to sink a fragile future fleet design. That any remnants of it survived is a testament to one thing: the future is here.

Building is Everything          

When words are cheap, strategy fragile, and the future now underway, there is only one path to enduring impact. The Navy needs to stop talking, writing, and strategizing for the future. It needs to start building it now, and it needs to build to last.

Whether the goal is 355 ships or 500 ships by 2045, those tasked to pursue it need to acknowledge that between today and mission completion stand 25 federal budgets, a dozen new Congresses, up to seven different Commanders-in-Chief, at least a half dozen CNOs, and a full generation of naval officer careers. What will it take to build a fleet to ply those waters?

First, the Navy needs to build a new Navy Staff structure (OPNAV) that biases the future over the present. This will no doubt incur risk to current operations, impact readiness, and be decried by advocates for fleet platforms that have served our nation well for decades. But a future fleet cannot be cast, shaped, and hardened from a naval staff structure built to focus on the present. The Navy needs requirements directorates, programs of record, and assessment directives aligned to future fleet goals rather than current fleet demands.

This can take several forms. OPNAV N8 and N9 can be rebuilt around future fleet mission-sets, cross-community force packages, integrated kill-chains, or networked decision loops. Which vector is chosen matters less than that it shatters stove-pipes and breaks the horizon.

Second, the Navy needs to build learning momentum. The standup of a new 3-star OPNAV N7 Directorate dedicated to warfighting concept development and education, along with the assignment of a former fleet commander to its helm, was a step in the right direction. VADM Franchetti’s nomination to move jobs less than two months after reporting was not helpful, however. Nor is the failure to replace the Navy’s Chief Learning Officer or mirror the Army Futures Command’s collaborative approach toward capability innovation that goes beyond strictly military sources of thinking. If the Navy is serious about growing into its future fleet, it needs to build leaders with tenure and partners to prove it, and staff structures whose missions can withstand rapid leadership turnover.

Third, the Navy needs to build a maritime manufacturing base for the future fleet. It is always tempting to assume that the U.S. industrial base is up to any task. But a plan to nearly double the number of hulls in the U.S. fleet and boost nuclear submarine construction by a third is no easy feat for a shipbuilding industry that has been in steady decline for several decades. There may be some solace that as ships turn autonomous, and thereby smaller, the number of private shipyards able to build and service them will expand. Yet there is less solace in the fact that autonomous ships like Sea Hunter have yet to be fielded beyond an experimental capacity, or built at scale for the weaponry needed in contested seas. There remains much to be studied on both sides of the public-private relationships that fuel U.S. sea power, and the only way to learn fast is to build and experiment fast.

Fourth, the Navy needs to build interoperability with future allied navies. Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates, SM-3 missiles, AEGIS, MK 46/48 torpedoes, F/A-18 jets, H-60 helicopters – each is among the most enduring and cost-effective fleet platforms of recent decades. These platforms have also been popular acquisitions by U.S. allies as assurance that freedom of the seas and defense of our nations is a joint venture. This is no coincidence, as much of the U.S. Navy’s success in the Cold War and since has derived from the degree to which foreign navies were attracted to its standards. America’s is not the only allied Navy building up in NATO or sizing up future fleets in the Pacific. Combined, these forces already have over 500 blue water hulls. By 2045, they could produce over 1,000. But across international borders, tactical and technological futures should converge by design more than by chance.

Finally, the Navy needs to build civic enthusiasm for its mission and future. A 40 percent boost to the Navy’s annual shipbuilding budget is an audacious goal. The projected $27 billion shipbuilding budget request Defense Secretary Esper hinted at for 2022 is more than 40 percent what the executive branch requested for spending on education next year. That is a tall order in any year, but a towering one in a government struggling to redesign schools and reskill workforces for the digital and pandemic disruptions of our age.

As gratifying as it is to see defense leaders embrace the future fleet and the resourcing it requires, the stakeholders that really matter are the American taxpayers, voters, and representatives who must fund it. That will take a concerted effort to engage them as beneficiaries of its outcomes and missions. It will take educating and including their representatives on decisions about not just what is needed to build the fleet, but how and where it will be used and why. It may even take a bipartisan U.S. Maritime Commission, akin to the one launched in 1936, to tend to the public will of a maritime nation in distress.

All of this is to say that it is time for the Navy to stop relegating the future to words. Building the fleet of 2045 needs to become a top priority for 2020. There are not another three years, or even three months, to lose.

Frank T. Goertner, a retired U.S. Navy commander, is director for military/veteran affairs and national security programs at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. His final uniformed contribution to the Navy was as lead author of a 2017 report on Future Fleet Design and Architecture for 2045. The opinions expressed here are his alone.

Featured Image: NORTH SEA (Sept. 28, 2020) U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Chris Streicher with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron (VMFA) 211, launches from the deck of the British Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) armed with a Gun Pod Unit (GPU) – 9/A, at sea, September 28, 2020. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by 1st Lt. Zachary Bodner)