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)

Notes to the New CNO Topic Week

By David Strachan

Undersea warfare is entering an era of profound transformation due to the increasing sophistication and proliferation of unmanned systems. But while their roles, missions, and concepts of operation have been thoroughly analyzed, the ultimate deployment of autonomous, expendable vehicles in a shadowy, hostile environment could unfold in ways that have yet to be fully imagined. When this is considered against the current geopolitical backdrop of hybrid warfare and gray zone operations (with the line separating competition from conflict growing blurrier by the day), conditions are ripe for the emergence of a new front in great power rivalry that could redefine the very nature of undersea warfare.

Operating within an opaque, clandestine domain, autonomous undersea vehicles (AUVs) will employ kinetic and non-kinetic means to disrupt, degrade, and destroy, subsuming every aspect of undersea warfare under the umbrella of autonomous undersea conflict, including:

• ISR: AUVs will conduct and actively counter covert monitoring of maritime operations on the high seas, in the littorals, and within ports, coastal facilities, and inland waters.

• Mine Warfare: No longer simply “weapons that wait,” AUVs will surveil, penetrate, blockade, stalk, strike, and defend against such operations by adversary vehicles.

• ASW: AUVs will detect, classify, track and engage adversary submersibles, and will actively disrupt and degrade adversary ASW operations.

• Seabed Warfare: AUVs will disrupt, infiltrate, strike and defend critical seabed infrastructure, such as undersea cables, recharging and data exfiltration stations, and listening posts.

In order to prepare for autonomous undersea conflict, future force investments should emphasize the counter-UUV (CUUV) mission, specifically:

• Artificial Intelligence: CUUV operations will require highly advanced AI, as they will occur in a complex, dynamic, communications-denied environment, and under intense conditions that demand rapid-fire decision-making based on real-time situational and contextual awareness.

• Energy: The complexity of CUUV operations will demand high levels of stored energy to power advanced processing and sophisticated payloads, as well as the propulsive power and maneuverability required for kinetic engagements.

• Collaboration: Pods of AUVs working together will provide expendability, redundancy, wide operating coverage, and will provide tactical overmatch during CUUV engagements.

• Miniaturization: Small, expendable, agile, and lethal AUVs will be preferable to slower, larger, high-value AUVs which will be vulnerable to adversary CUUV operations.

• Weaponization: CUUV operations will include non-kinetic effects to deceive, disrupt and degrade, and to infiltrate adversary undersea networks. Kinetic effects will include proximity and contact detonation for near or complete target neutralization, or “true” kinetic energy strikes to achieve mission kills.

For now, autonomous undersea conflict is the stuff of science fiction, and perhaps this vision may not come to fruition within the next few years. But an autonomous undersea revolution is coming, and with it the need to anticipate and prepare for the myriad operational scenarios that could ensue. The plans laid today will ensure that the Navy stands ready to confront the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.

David R. Strachan is a naval analyst and founder of Strikepod Systems LLC (strikepod.com), a provider of current and strategic fiction intelligence (FICINT) on global naval affairs, with an emphasis on unmanned undersea systems. He can be found on Twitter @Strikepod, and can be reached at david.strachan@strikepod.com.

Featured Image: ROV Deep Discoverer documents the benthic communities at Paganini Seamount during the Deep-Sea Symphony: Exploring the Musicians Seamounts expedition. (Image courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Deep-Sea Symphony: Exploring the Musicians Seamounts.)