Tag Archives: Force Planning

Drones/Unmanned

Two Platforms for Two Missions: Rethinking the LUSV

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By Ben DiDonato

The Navy’s current Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle (LUSV) concept has received heavy criticism on many fronts. To name but a few, Congress has raised concerns about concepts of operation and technology readiness, the Congressional Research Service has flagged the personnel implications and analytical basis of the design, and legal experts have raised alarm over the lack of an established framework for handling at-sea incidents involving unmanned vessels. An extensive discussion of these concerns and their implications would take too long, but in any case, criticism is certainly extensive, and the Navy must comply with Congress’s legal directives.

That said, the core issues with the current LUSV concept arise from one fundamental problem. It’s trying to perform two separate roles – a small surface combatant and an adjunct missile magazine – which have sharply conflicting requirements and require radically different hulls. A small surface combatant needs to minimize its profile, especially its freeboard, to better evade detection, needs a shallow draft for littoral operations, and must have not only a crew, but the necessary facilities for them to perform low-end security and partnership missions to provide presence. The adjunct missile magazine, on the other hand, must accommodate the height of the Mk 41 VLS which substantially increases the draft and/or freeboard, should not have a crew, and should avoid detection in peacetime to increase strategic ambiguity. Not only do these conflicts make it irrational to design one vessel to fulfill both missions, but they point to two entirely separate types of vessels since the adjunct missile magazine role should not be filled by a surface ship at all.

The Adjunct Missile Magazine

The adjunct missile magazine role is best filled by a Missile Magazine Unmanned Undersea Vessel (MMUUV). Sending this capability underwater immediately resolves many of the issues associated with a surface platform since it cannot be boarded, hacked, detected by most long-range sensors, or hit by anti-ship missiles, and so obviates most crew, security, and legal questions. The size required to carry a full-sized VLS also makes it highly resistant to capture since it should have a displacement on the order of 1,000 tons, far more than most nets can bring in, and it could also be designed with a self-destruct capability to detonate its magazine.

The cost should be similar to the current LUSV concept since it can dispense with surface ship survivability features like electronic warfare equipment and point defense weapons to offset the extra structural costs. Because it has no need to fight other submarines and would use standoff distance to mitigate ASW risks, it has no need for advanced quieting or sonar and could accept an extremely shallow dive depth. Even a 150-foot test depth would likely be sufficient for the threshold requirement of safe navigation, and anything past 200 feet would be a waste of money. These are World War One submarine depths. Furthermore, since it only needs to fire weapons and keep up with surface combatants while surfaced, a conventional Mk 41 VLS under a watertight hatch could be used instead of a more complex unit capable of firing while submerged. For additional savings, the MMUUV could be designed to be taken under tow for high-speed transits rather than propel itself to 30+ knots. A speed on the order of 5 knots would likely be sufficient for self-propelled transit, and it would only need long range, perhaps 15,000 nautical miles, to reach its loiter zone from a safe port without tying up underway replenishment assets. Since visualization is helpful for explaining novel concepts, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) design team produced a quick concept model to show what this platform might look like. In the spirit of minimizing cost at the expense of performance, and projecting that tugs could handle all port operations, all control surfaces are out of the water while surfaced to reduce maintenance costs.

Rendering of the MMUUV. (Author graphic)

On the command-and-control front, the situation is greatly simplified by the fact that the MMUUV would spend most of its time underwater. In its normal operating mode, it would be dispatched to a pre-planned rendezvous point where it would wait for a one-time-use coded sonar ping from a traditional surface combatant commanding it to surface. It would then be taken under tow and fired under local control using a secure and reliable line-of-sight datalink to eliminate most of the concerns associated with an armed autonomous platform. A variation of this operating mode could also be used as a temporary band-aid for the looming SSGN retirement, since MMUUVs could be loaded with Tomahawks, prepositioned in likely conflict zones, and activated by any submarine or surface ship when needed to provide a similar, if less flexible and capable, concealed strike capability to provide strategic ambiguity. Finally, these platforms could be used as independent land attack platforms by pre-programming targets in port and dispatching them like submersible missiles with a flight time measured in weeks, instead of minutes or hours. Under this strike paradigm, a human would still have control and authorize weapon release, even if that decision and weapon release happens in port instead of at sea. This focus on local control also mitigates cybersecurity risks since the MMUUV would not rely on more vulnerable long-range datalinks for most operations and could perform the independent strike missions with absolutely zero at-sea communications, making cyberattack impossible.

As a novel concept, this interpretation of the adjunct missile magazine concept obviously has its share of limitations and unanswered questions, particularly in terms of reliability and control. Even so, these risks and concerns are much more manageable than the problems with the current LUSV concept, and so give the best possible chance of success. More comprehensive analysis may still find that this approach is inferior to simply building larger surface combatants to carry more missiles, but at least this more robust concept represents a proper due-diligence effort to more fully explore the design space.

The Small Surface Combatant

The other role LUSV is trying to fill is that of a small surface combatant. These ships take a variety of forms depending on the needs and means of their nation, but their role is always a balance of presence and deterrence to safeguard national interests at minimal cost. The US Navy has generally not operated large numbers of these types of ships in recent decades, but the current Cyclone class and retired Pegasus class fit into this category.

While limited information makes it difficult to fully assess the ability of the current LUSV concept to fill this role, what has been released does not paint a promising picture. The height of the VLS drives a very tall hull for a ship of this type which makes it easy to detect, and therefore vulnerable, a problem that is further compounded by limited stealth shaping and defensive systems. There also does not seem to be any real consideration given to other missions besides being an adjunct missile magazine, with virtually no launch capabilities or additional weapons discussed or shown. This inflexibility is further compounded by the Navy’s muddled manning concept, which involves shuffling crew around to kludge the manned surface combatant and unmanned missile magazine concepts together in a manner reminiscent of the failed LCS mission module swap-out plan. Finally, the published threshold range of 4,500 nautical miles, while likely not final, is far too short for Pacific operations without persistent oiler support.

The result is a vulnerable, inflexible ship unsuited to war in the Pacific, and thus incapable of deterring Chinese aggression. This may indicate the current LUSV concept is intended more as a technology demonstrator than an actual warship. However, because the U.S. Navy urgently needs new capabilities to deter what many experts see as a window of vulnerability to Chinese aggression, the current plan is unacceptable.

Fortunately, there is an alternative ready today. The Naval Postgraduate School has spent decades studying these small surface combatants and refining their design, and is ready to build relevant warships today. The latest iteration of small surface combatant design, the Lightly Manned Autonomous Combat Capability (LMACC), achieves the Navy’s autonomy goals while providing a far superior platform at a lower cost and shorter turnaround time. Where the LUSV design is large, unstealthy, and poorly defended, the LMACC has a very low profile, aggressive stealth shaping, SeaRAM, and a full-sized AN/SLQ-32 electronic warfare suite designed to defend destroyers, making it extremely difficult to identify, target, and hit. While the LUSV concept is armed with VLS cells, LMACC would carry the most lethal anti-ship missile in the world, LRASM, as well as a wide range of other weapons to let it fulfill diverse roles like anti-swarm and surface fire support, something that cannot be done with LUSV’s less diverse arsenal. To maximize its utility in the gray zone, the LMACC design boasts some of the best launch facilities in the world for a ship of its size.

On the manning front, LMACC has a clearly defined and legally unambiguous plan with a permanent crew of 15, who would partner with the ship’s USV-based autonomous capabilities and team with a variety of other unmanned platforms. This planned 15-person crew is complemented by 16 spare beds for detachments, command staff, special forces, or EABO Marines to maximize flexibility, and also hedges against the unexpected complications with automated systems which caused highly publicized problems for LCS.

LMACC was designed with the vast distances of the Pacific in mind, so it has the range needed for effective sorties from safe ports and provisions to carry additional fuel bladders when even more range is needed. Unlike the LUSV concept which Congress has rightly pushed back on, LMACC is a lethal, survivable, flexible, and conceptually sound design ready to meet our needs today.

The full details of the LMACC design were published last year and can be found in a prior piece, and since that time the engineering design work has been nearly completed. A rendering of the updated model, which shows all exterior details and reflects the floorplan, is below. Our more detailed estimating work, which has been published in the Naval Engineer’s Journal and further detailed in an internal report to our sponsor, Director, Surface Warfare (OPNAV N96), shows we only need $250-$300 million (the variation is primarily due to economic uncertainty) and two years to deliver the first ship with subsequent units costing a bit under $100 million each. The only remaining high-level engineering task is to finalize the hullform. This work could be performed by another Navy organization such as Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock, a traditional warship design firm, one of the 30 alternative shipyards we have identified, an independent naval architecture firm, or a qualified volunteer, so we can jump immediately into a production contract or take a more measured approach based on need and funding.

Rendering of the LMACC. (Author graphic)

LMACC has also been the subject of extensive studies and wargaming, including the Warfare Innovation Continuum and several Joint Campaign Analysis courses at NPS. Not only have these studies repeatedly shown the value of LMACC when employed in its intended role teamed with MUSVs and EABO Marines, especially in gray zone operations where its flexibility is vital, but they have also revealed its advantage in a shooting war with China is so decisive that not even deliberately bad tactics stop it from outperforming our current platforms in a surface engagement. Finally, while our detailed studies have focused on China as the most pressing threat, LMACC’s flexibility also makes it ideally suited to pushing back on smaller aggressors like Iran and conducting peacetime operations, such as counterpiracy, to guarantee its continued utility in our ever-changing world.

Conclusion

While there are still some questions about the MMUUV concept which could justify taking a more measured approach with a few prototypes to work out capabilities, tactics, and design changes before committing to full-rate production, there is an extensive body of study, wargaming, and engineering behind LMACC which conclusively prove its value, establish its tactics, and position it for immediate procurement at any rate desired. If the Navy is serious about growing to meet the challenge of China in a timely manner, it should begin redirecting funding immediately to pivot away from the deeply flawed LUSV concept and ask Congress to authorize serial LMACC production as soon as possible. Splitting the LUSV program into two more coherent platforms as described in this article will allow the Navy to fully comply with Congress’s guidance on armed autonomy, aggressively advance the state of autonomous technology, and deliver useful combat capability by 2025.

Mr. DiDonato is a volunteer member of the NRP-funded LMACC team lead by Dr. Shelley Gallup. He originally created what would become the armament for LMACC’s baseline Shrike variant in collaboration with the Naval Postgraduate School in a prior role as a contract engineer for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. He has provided systems and mechanical engineering support to organizations across the defense industry from the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) to Spirit Aerosystems, working on projects for all branches of the armed forces. Feel free to contact him at Benjamin.didonato@nps.edu or 443-442-4254.

Additional points of contact:

The LMACC program is led by Shelley Gallup, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Research, Information Sciences Department, Naval Postgraduate School. Dr. Gallup is a retired surface warfare officer and is deeply involved in human-machine partnership research. Feel free to contact him at Spgallup@nps.edu or 831-392-6964.

Johnathan Mun, Ph.D. Research Professor, Information Sciences Department, Naval Postgraduate School. Dr. Mun is a leading expert and author of nearly a dozen books on total cost simulation and real-options analysis. Feel free to contact him at Jcmun@nps.edu or 925-998-5101.

Feature Image: Austal’s Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV) showing an optionally-manned bridge, VLS cells and engine funnels amidships, and plenty of free deck space with a tethered UAS at the rear. The LUSV is meant to be the U.S. Navy’s adjunct missile magazine. (Austal picture.)

Current Operations

Why Peacetime Naval Buildups are Difficult

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By Steven Wills

Introduction

There has been much gnashing of teeth and complaint in response to the U.S. Navy’s slow build toward a goal of 355 ships. Peacetime naval buildups by free societies have never been simple undertakings. Such governments usually retire large numbers of warships in search of “peace dividends,” from which recovery is often a challenge. If ill-timed, they can result in large numbers of warships that are out of date before they complete even a decade of service, or need to be retired before the end of the service lives to cut costs. Getting to the right numbers of ships, especially in a period of tight finance may mean holding onto old ships well past their expected service life. Past examples of peacetime buildups by the British Royal Navy and U.S. Navy suggest that while getting to larger numbers of ships is possible, the costs can be prohibitive; especially in an environment of rapid, technological advancement.

British Royal Navy Buildups

Representative governments have always been quick to reduce expensive naval armaments in peacetime. The British Royal Navy (RN) reduced its force structure in only modest terms in the wake of the victorious French and Indian War. End strength of the RN dropped from 365 commissioned warships of all types in 1763 at the conclusion of those hostilities to 270 vessels at the start of the American Revolution in 1775.1 While still formidable, British lawmakers questioned whether this force that still boasted over 130 “ships of the line” of 50 guns and greater was capable of dealing with the American rebellion. A debate in the House of Commons from 13 February 1775 featured one speaker who stated “Our present naval force was by no means adequate to our professed intentions; for the squadron that we designed for America would answer no purpose of stopping their commerce; or if we did send a sufficient one, our own coasts, comparatively speaking, must be left totally defenseless.”2 The speaker went on to state that Britain’s perpetual enemy France might dispatch 75 or more ships of the line to menace English seacoast communities if the bulk of the available RN went to the Americas to reduce colonial commerce.

The British increased their fleet to 478 warships by 1783, but at great cost with some estimates suggesting an increase from a low of £1,526,357 in 1765 to £8,063,206 in 1782, and where public net debt rose to over 150 percent of GDP. Peacetime naval buildups are not new, and are almost costly affairs. Britain was perhaps lucky in that the increase in the size and capability of the RN in response to the American Revolution served to also prepare it for a renewed period of war with France. The creation of a state bank (The Bank of England) in 1694, and growing public confidence in the solvency of the British Crown allowed Parliament to “Raise immense sums on short notice and at relatively low rates of interest.”3 Unlike its Continental rivals the British also did not have to spend large sums on ground forces to defend vulnerable land borders. This combination of factors allowed for a fairly quick transition from “rusty trident” in the early 1770s to the sharp instrument that soundly defeated the navies of Denmark, Spain, and France during the Napoleonic wars.

A lack of such an immediate conflict can serve to create whole generations of warships that are out of date before they ever fire a shot in anger. The Royal Navy again reached such a low point in the late 1880s as it struggled to deal with a resurgent France and a rising Russian naval threat that imperiled both the British isles and multiple, overseas British possessions such as the imperial “crown jewel” of India. The Industrial Revolution was also in full swing with new grades of steel armor and improved steam engines entering service as often as new smart devices and software builds do today. British warship construction in the previous two decades had been slow to keep up with technical advances and many newspapers suggested the Navy was in poor condition to take on France and Russia. A series of articles in September 1884 in the Pall Mall Gazette by the muckraking journalist W.T. Steed described the Royal Navy as unready for war against Russia and France based on shrinking budgets, a lack of protection for Britain’s global naval logistics hubs, and an antiquated fleet of small craft for the defense of the British Isles.4

The British response to these conditions was the Naval Defence Act of 1889; a £21,500,000, 5-year program designed to produce 10 battleships, 42 cruisers, and 18 torpedo gunboats.5 According to naval historian Jon Tetsuro Sumida, the program was a resounding success in terms of finance and construction in that most of the program was completed on schedule with little cost overrun. The 1889 program also marked the beginning of an official “two power standard,” where Britain officially declared that its sum of first class fighting vessels (namely battleships) would be superior to the combined fleets of the next two naval powers (France and Russia). While a firm declaration of the importance of British seapower, it was at best a political measure rather than an accurate estimation of British naval strength. Naval historian Nicholas Lambert asserts that many uniformed senior Royal Navy officers believed the two-power standard was not enough and that it best represented a minimum level of strength.6 Britain’s primary political parties in the late 19th century (Conservative and Liberal parties,) however accepted the two power standard as a benchmark.

This decision would have significant consequences in the following decade as Britain’s burgeoning economic growth slowed and with it the funding for a larger fleet. Political scientist Aaron Friedberg asserted that British naval spending in the 1890s was made by possible by three factors. A general increase in national prosperity and with it consumer spending, especially on tea, tobacco, and beer, provided additional tax revenue. The British income and estate (death) taxes also provided generous sources of spending for both defense and for a rising tide of British social spending.7 Unfortunately, British economic growth slowed dramatically over the last quarter of the 19th century as the economic output of Germany and the United States dramatically increased.8 This process of British relative decline served to offset its naval superiority as the cost of replacement battleships dramatically increased over the same period. The pioneering battleship (then known as an ironclad) HMS Devastation cost £360,000 in 1869, but by 1898 the battleship HMS Implacable was £1,100,000.9 These increasing costs would make replacement of the existing foundation of British naval supremacy a significant challenge.

To this financial setback was added the rising costs of new technology; first in the form of new armor, weapons, and steam-powered equipment, but later by the introduction of asymmetric warfare systems such as the side armored cruiser. This ship, with long range, medium-sized weapons and armor sufficient to withstand the shells of the British cruisers traditionally assigned to defend imperial trade routes, represented a direct threat to British finance from trade and key sea lines of communication to overseas possessions like India.10 The French Navy also financed submarine and torpedo development as additional countermeasures to traditional British maritime superiority.11 The very expensive ships of the Naval Defence Act of 1889 were, by contrast, too slow and short-ranged to overtake and destroy armored cruisers, despite being better armed. They were also poorly protected against the torpedo as employed by the submarine and the surface torpedo boat. Improvements in armor manufacture, especially the Krupp steel process that resulted in much lighter yet stronger protective plates, enabled much more armor to be used over a wider area of even cruiser-sized ships. This gave the armored cruiser class its edge over earlier ships that could not support side armor. The new armor was less expensive than past versions, but that improvement was lost in the rush of other expensive steam propulsion and gun systems that combined to double the cost of a modern battleship over the period from 1895 to 1905.12 In fact, technological advancements ensured that the ships from the Naval Defence Act of 1889, notably the eight Royal Sovereign class battleships that were state of the art in 18991, had at best 15 year effective service lives before being out of date.13

HMS Royal Sovereign in 1913. (Wikimedia Commons)

Finally, the international situation and unexpected war in South Africa added to the financial problems of relative decline and rapid technological advancement. The Second Anglo Boer War of 1899 to 1902 put further strain on British finance and with it plans to renew naval supremacy. While early estimates by the British government suggested that costs for the South African conflict might be maintained below £21 million, army-related spending rose quickly in the first two years of the conflict from £21 million to £44.1 million and, and overall British government spending finally grew to a figure of £205 million during the last two years of the war.14 The British national debt also rose from £14 million in 1899-1900, and later to £53 million in 1901 and 1902.15 It was inevitable that these figures would affect Royal Navy expenditures. Over roughly this same period (1897 to 1904,) the Royal Navy expended £29.6 million on new battleships and £26.9 million pounds for the new armored cruisers. Such expenditures could not be sustained without a major increase in taxes which neither British political party would countenance. By 1902 it was clear to the British political establishment that some economy was desperately required and the new Prime Minister Arthur Balfour created the Committee of Imperial Defence to seek joint (Army/Navy) solutions to Britain’s global defense posture. The First Lord of the Admiralty (roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Secretary of the Navy,) Lord Selborne advised his flag officers to “Cease to say ‘this is the ideal plan and how do we get enough money to carry it out,’ to ‘Here is a sovereign (UK coin,) how much can we squeeze out of it that will really count for victory in a naval war?’”16

Ultimately, despite significant expenditure, the Naval Defence Act of 1889 failed to deter continued naval expansion of France and Russia, and also later Germany, Japan, and the United States.17 Rapid technological advancement quickly made the fleet of the 1890s obsolete in the next decade. Britain’s own relative decline and the expenditures for the Boer War further weakened the Royal Navy’s efforts to keep pace with advancing technology and the rising fleets of other nations. The end result was the ascent of the eponymous Admiral Sir John Fisher and his radical program of what today would be called “transformation” where the battlecruiser would replace the battleship and the armored cruiser for high seas combat, and littoral combatants such as destroyers and submarines would be responsible for the United Kingdom’s homeland defense. The Fisher regime, while innovative and fiscally responsible, is seen by some as the beginning of the end of British naval supremacy as Fisher’s program required major reductions in presence forces scattered around the empire in favor of the combat-capable force to defeat rising European competitors. This reduction in direct imperial influence and dependence on other powers, notably the United States and Japan to secure British interests in North America and the Western Pacific, was seen as perhaps the beginning of the end of the British Empire and with it the need for an expanded Royal Navy in its defense.18 This decline might be traced back to the Naval Defence Act of 1889 and a desire to build a significant peacetime fleet in specific numbers over those of opponents.

U.S. Naval Buildup Challenges

The final example of difficult peacetime buildup also deals with the political calculus of fleet size. The U.S. Navy’s 600 ship fleet goal of the 1980s had its origins, like that of the Royal Navy of the 1880s and 1890s, in an enemy’s (Soviet) increased fleet size, rising welfare state expenditures, and a distant land conflict (Vietnam) sapping of funds that might have been used for modernization. The United States Navy of 1970 was a Vietnam War-focused fleet in dire need of recapitalization and modernization. The incoming Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr. set out to begin those processes, but at the cost of the retirement of significant numbers of ships; most of World War II vintage and diminished capability. The fleet had already undergone significant reductions during the tenure of Admiral Thomas Moorer as CNO, with the overall number of ships dropping from 932 to 731.19 Zumwalt had to impose further reductions in order to gather enough resources and potential crews for new construction. He later said:

“We were, on the average, technologically obsolescent. Our fleet was over 20 years of age, on the average. One of the things that impressed both Secretary Chafee and Secretary Laird in my preliminary meetings with them when, as it turns out, they were looking for who should be the next CNO, was that I said that given the budget limitations, we simply had to reduce the numbers of ships in order to begin the process of building new ships. We needed to reduce the expenditures for men and ships and start building ships.”20

Like Fisher in 1904, Zumwalt also needed to cut obsolescent ships before building new ones. While such processes delay growth and in fact result in reductions, they are necessary for subsequent fleet growth. Zumwalt worked hard to ensure existing, authorized classes like the Spruance-class destroyers were built and pushed to get what became the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates added to the fleet, but mass retirements of old ships further reduced the fleet size.21 Overall numbers of ships decreased to 530 by 1980.22

PACIFIC OCEAN (Nov. 17, 2011) The decommissioned Spruance-class destroyer ex-Paul F. Foster (EDD 964) conducts a successful demonstration of shipboard alternative fuel use while underway in the Pacific Ocean on a 50-50 blend of an algae-derived, hydro-processed algal oil and petroleum F-76. Paul F. Foster has been reconfigured as the Self-Defense Test Ship to provide the Navy an at-sea, remotely controlled, engineering test and evaluation platform without the risk to personnel or operational assets. (U.S. Navy photo by Charlie Houser/Released)

The Presidency of Jimmy Carter was an especially dark period for the Navy with the former naval officer president content with an objective force of only 400 ships.23 Carter and his land warfare-focused subordinates such as Defense Secretary Harold Brown and Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy Bob Komer sought significant reductions in naval expenditures through most of his administration.24

Studies for rebuilding U.S. Navy force structure began during the Ford Presidency and gained maturation during the Carter administration thanks to the efforts of Carter’s own Navy Secretary Graham Claytor, a World War II naval officer who opposed the Defense Department’s naval reductions. Claytor sponsored a study known as SeaPlan 2000 that recommended a 585 ship fleet that could be purchased and maintained with regular, four percent growth in the Navy’s budget; a figure then within accepted spending limits of the Navy.25 Like the British “Two Power Standard,” this figure was also a political measurement in that multiple studies on 400, 600, 900 and 1200 ship fleets had been undertaken with the 600 ship version seen as most economical and that it represented a minimum rather than an ideal force structure to meet the global Soviet naval threat.26 

Jimmy Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the new administration both adopted and altered elements of SeaPlan 2000. Led by Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr, a new 600-ship Navy (an easy round-up from 585) figure was introduced as the benchmark for U.S. Fleet strength. An aggressive building program was introduced to meet the 600 ship figure by the close of a hypothetical 2-term Reagan presidency. The 600 ship Navy was paired with a new Maritime Strategy that justified and detailed the fleet’s use in combat with the Soviet Navy as well as routine presence and other operations. Navy Secretary Lehman also stated that 600 ships was the minimum fleet size to support the 15 carrier battle groups needed to provide the geographic, peacetime naval presence.27 The whole package of fleet size, strategy, and employment was offered at the same four percent rate of growth.

The weak point of the 600-ship navy buildup, however, was its retention of older, steam-powered surface warships in significant numbers in order to bridge the gap between existing and future force structure while maintaining the 600 ship number goal. The navy of the period had ships propelled by steam, diesel, nuclear, and most recently gas turbine engines. Of these types, nuclear power supported a growing portion of the Navy’s carrier strength and a dozen guided missile cruisers built as carrier escorts. Diesel engines were auxiliaries on many ships and propelled a growing number of mid-sized amphibious warfare ships. Gas turbine engines had become the new choice of propulsion for combatant ships including the Spruance-class destroyers, Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates. Steam power, however, still served the bulk of the existing surface combatant fleet, some of the aircraft carriers, and large number of auxiliary ships. Many of these ships were older units and they were not aging well; a condition that made their retention as part of the growing 600-ship force a challenge.

In terms of one warship category, guided missile destroyers (DDG,) the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in 1985 that only five of 67 such ships in 1989 would be classed as “modern,” which the CBO defined as constructed after 1970.28 The most numerous frigate/guided missile frigate (FF and FFG) category was better, but still saw 65 of a possible 111 ships as pre-1970 construction in 1989.29 The vast bulk of these older units were steam-powered units, whose manpower and maintenance-intensive 1200 psi, 950 degree steam plants became more challenging to maintain as they aged. Numerous oil leaks and fires plagued these aging units over the course of the late 1970s and 1980s. While the steam cruisers received significant combat systems upgrades in the form of the New Threat Upgrade (NTU) system, only a few of the steam destroyers received such improvements and the steam-powered frigate classes remained largely unaltered with the exception of the addition of the close in weapon system (CIWS) for some.

The modernization and retention of the steam-powered surface combatant force, and many other steam powered navy warships became a moot point at the end of the Cold War in 1991. As early as 1989 when it became evident that the Soviet Union was in a period of decline, 16 frigates of the Garcia and Brooke class frigates and guided missile frigates were decommissioned as a cost-savings measure.30 The manpower cuts determined by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell in the creation of the post-Cold War “Base Force” further accelerated the retirement of the personnel-heavy steam warship fleet. The 34 units of the Adams and Farragut-class destroyers followed into retirement in 1990 and 1991, and the upgraded steam cruisers of the Leahy and Belknap followed in the early 1990s.31 The numerous Knox-class frigates were also decommissioned by the mid 1990s, with an abortive attempt to retain some as reserve frigates ended in 1994.

In all, 114 steam-powered cruisers, destroyers, frigates were retired in the period 1989-1995. It is open to debate how long these ships could have been retained had the Cold War continued, but given their age and maximum thirty year service life, it is improbable that enough could have remained in commissioned long enough to be steadily replaced by newly constructed Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in the 1990s and 2000s.32

Conclusion

Peacetime naval buildups are difficult and face uncertain sustainability if the force structures they create are not soon called to active combat. Like the British in 1889 and the U.S. in the 1980s, the U.S. Navy is attempting a significant peacetime naval buildup without an immediate conflict on the horizon (unlike the U.S. “Two Ocean Navy” buildup of 1938 to 1940 when World War 2 was already underway.) Like the Royal Navy of the middle and late 18th century, it now finds that even modest reductions can inhibit low-end presence and limited war operations. The U.S. Navy may also discover that rapid technological advances in data processing, artificial intelligence, hypersonic and directed energy weapons can render much of any fleet additions obsolete less than 10-15 years into a 30-40 year life span. Open architecture systems and the modular weight, space, and connectivity of the unfairly maligned littoral combat ship (LCS) might allow that ship type to deploy capabilities yet unplanned or conceived when they were constructed. Such ships can also be constructed in larger numbers than their larger, much more technically complex cousins. It may still be difficult to maintain a fleet of any relevant size given these challenges.

The U.S. Navy has however taken some positive steps to increase fleet size and simplify the process of maintaining that fleet longer and at best cost. The Cold War-era classification of surface warships (cruiser, destroyer, frigate, patrol,) is giving way to one of large and small surface combatant (LSC and SSC.)33 Historically, a reduction in the number of individual classes by merger has been a good way to reduce costs. The British Royal Navy combined the predreadnought battleship and fast armored cruiser into first the battle cruiser and then the fast battleship. The introduction of open architecture combat systems and vertical launch capability for weapons has made the process of updating much easier than in the past. The Navy has requested that the new FFG(X) class have as much commonality with current ships as possible.34 More reductions in the acquisition and test and evaluation bureaucracy can help this process as well. The LCS, for example, must undergo another round of operational testing every time one of its mission modules gets a new piece of equipment. This sort of endless testing only delays programs and results in cost increases as do the additional layers of “oversight” added to an already over-burdened Navy.

Peacetime naval buildups in periods when war is not imminent are historically difficult, and no one should expect immediate results in the absence of large budget deficits. As history shows, sometimes a reduction in overall numbers of ships is required in order to build new construction necessary to grow the fleet. Solutions for managing such efforts include not reducing the fleet to a point where even a modest increase is difficult; avoiding the pitfalls of rapidly advancing technology that can make today’s force structure rapidly out of date, combining classes of ships into fewer types of ships with more commonality, and avoiding politically-driven fleet sizes that cannot be retained without herculean efforts. The U.S. Navy can increase in size and capability, but it won’t happen overnight in what remains a peacetime environment.

Steve Wills is a retired surface warfare officer and a PhD candidate in military history at Ohio University. His focus areas are modern U.S. naval and military reorganization efforts and British naval strategy and policy from 1889-1941. These views are his own.

References

1. Jack Coggins, Ships and Seaman of the American Revolution, Harrisburg, PA, Promontory Press, 1969, p. 22.

2. Ibid, p. 19.

N.A.M Rodger, Command of the Sea, A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1845, New York, Norton, 2004, p. 644.

3. Jon Tetsuro Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, Finance, Technology, and British Naval Policy, 1889-1914, Annpolis, Md; The Naval Institute Press, 1993, p. 5.

4. W.T. Steed, “The Responsibility for the Navy,” The Pall Mall Gazette, 30 September, 1884, electronic resource, https://attackingthedevil.co.uk/pmg/responsibility.php, last accessed, 01 March 2018.

5. Sumida, p. 13.

6. Nicholas Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution, Columbia, SC, The University of South Carolina Press, 1999, pp. 20, 21.

7. Aaron Friedberg, The Weary Titan, Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905, Princeton , NJ, Princeton University Press, 1988, p. 98.

8. Ibid, p. 81.

9. David K. Brown, Warrior to Dreadnought, Warship Design and Development 1860-1905, Barnsley, UK; Seaforth Publishing, 2010, p. 203.

10. Lambert, p. 25.

11. Ibid, p. 27.

12. Sumida, pp. 19, 20.

13. Lambert, p. 105.

14. Friedberg, p. 106.

15. Ibid.

16. Lambert, p. 36.

17. Friedberg, p. 153.

18. Ibid, pp. 201-205.

19. “U.S. Ship Force Levels; 1886-Present,” Washington D.C.: The U.S. Navy History and Heritage Command, electronic resource, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/us-ship-force-levels.html#1965, last accessed 10 April 2018.

20. Alfred Goldberg and Maurice Matloff, “Oral History Interview with Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr,” Washington D.C,; The Defense Department Historical Office, 22 October, 1991, pp 11, 12.

21. Ibid, p. 16.

22. John Hattendorf, U.S. Navy Strategy in the 1970’s, Selected Documents, Newport, RI, The United States Naval War College Press, 2007, p. xiii.

23. John Hattendorf, The Evolution of the Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986,Newport, R.I.; The U.S. Naval War College Press, 2003, p. 9.

24. Edward C. Keefer, Harold Brown, Offsetting the Soviet Military Challenge 1977-1981, Washington D.C.; The Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office, 2017, pp. 233-239, 425.

25. John Hattendorf, U.S. Navy Strategy in the 1970’s, Selected Documents, Newport, RI, The United States Naval War College Press, 200, p. 121.

26. John Hattendorf, The Evolution of the Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986,Newport, R.I.; The U.S. Naval War College Press, 2003, pp. 10-13.

27. Ibid, p. 50.

28. “Future Budget Requirements for the 600 Ship Navy,” Washington DC, The Congressional Budget Office (CBO,) September 1985, p. 15.

29. Ibid, p. 16.

30. “Navy to Place 6 Frigates Based in S.D. in Mothballs,” The Los Angeles Times, 24 June 1988.

31. Kit and Carolyn Bonner, Warship Boneyards, Osceola, WI; MBI Publishing, 2001, pp. 115, 116.

32. “Future Budget Requirements for the 600 Ship Navy,” p. 56.

33. Ron O’Rourke, Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans; Background and issues for Congress, Washington D.C.; The Congressional Research Service (CRS,) 08 December 2017, p. 3.

34. Ron O’Rouke, “Navy Frigate (FFG[X]) Program: Background and Issues for Congress,“ Washington D.C.; The Congressional Research Service (CRS,) 08 December 2017, p. 4.

Featured Image: CVN 76 under construction (Wikimedia Commons)

Capability Analysis, Drones

Game-Changing Unmanned Systems for Naval Expeditionary Forces

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By George Galdorisi

Perspective

In 2018 the United States remains engaged worldwide. The 2017 National Security Strategy addresses the wide-range of threats to the security and prosperity of United States.1 These threats range from high-end peer competitors such as China and Russia, to rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran, to the ongoing threat of terrorism represented by such groups as ISIL. In a preview of the National Security Strategy at the December 2017 Reagan National Defense Forum, National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster highlighted these threats and reconfirmed the previous administration’s “4+1” strategy, naming the four countries – Russia, China, Iran and North Korea—and the “+1” — terrorists, particularly ISIL — as urgent threats that the United States must deal with today.2

The U.S. military is dealing with this threat landscape by deploying forces worldwide at an unprecedented rate. And in most cases, it is naval strike forces, represented by carrier strike groups centered on nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and expeditionary strike groups built around large-deck amphibious ships, that are the forces of choice for dealing with crises worldwide.

For decades, when a crisis emerged anywhere on the globe, the first question a U.S. president asked was, “Where are the carriers?” Today, that question is still asked, but increasingly, the question has morphed into, “Where are the expeditionary strike groups?” The reasons for this focus on expeditionary strike groups are clear. These naval expeditionary formations have been the ones used extensively for a wide-array of missions short of war, from anti-piracy patrols, to personnel evacuation, to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. And where tensions lead to hostilities, these forces are the only ones that give the U.S. military a forcible entry option.

During the past decade-and-a-half of wars in the Middle East and South Asia, the U.S. Marine Corps was used extensively as a land force and did not frequently deploy aboard U.S. Navy amphibious ships. Now the Marine Corps is largely disengaged from those conflicts and is, in the words of a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, “Returning to its amphibious roots.”3 As this occurs, the Navy-Marine Corps team is looking to new technology to complement and enhance the capabilities its amphibious ships bring to the fight. 

Naval Expeditionary Forces: Embracing Unmanned Vehicles

Because of their “Swiss Army Knife” utility, U.S. naval expeditionary forces have remained relatively robust even as the size of the U.S. Navy has shrunk from 594 ships in 1987 to 272 ships in early 2018. Naval expeditionary strike groups comprise a substantial percentage of the U.S. Navy’s current fleet. And the blueprint for the future fleet the U.S. Navy is building maintains, and even increases, that percentage of amphibious ships.4

However, ships are increasingly expensive and U.S. Navy-Marine Corps expeditionary forces have been proactive in looking to new technology to add capability to their ships. One of the technologies that offer the most promise in this regard is that of unmanned systems. The reasons for embracing unmanned systems stem from their ability to reduce the risk to human life in high-threat areas, to deliver persistent surveillance over areas of interest, and to provide options to warfighters that derive from the inherent advantages of unmanned technologies—especially their ability to operate autonomously.

The importance of unmanned systems to the U.S. Navy’s future has been highlighted in a series of documents, ranging from the 2015 A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, to the 2016 A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, to the 2017 Chief of Naval Operations’ The Future Navy white paper. The Future Navy paper presents a compelling case for the rapid integration of unmanned systems into the Navy Fleet, noting, in part:

“There is no question that unmanned systems must also be an integral part of the future fleet. The advantages such systems offer are even greater when they incorporate autonomy and machine learning….Shifting more heavily to unmanned surface, undersea, and aircraft will help us to further drive down unit costs.”5

The U.S. Navy’s commitment to and growing dependence on unmanned systems is also seen in the Navy’s official Force Structure Assessment of December 2016, as well as in a series of “Future Fleet Architecture Studies.” In each of these studies—one by the Chief of Naval Operations staff, one by the MITRE Corporation, and one by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments—the proposed Navy future fleet architecture had large numbers of air, surface, and subsurface unmanned systems as part of the Navy force structure. Indeed, these reports highlight the fact that the attributes unmanned systems can bring to the U.S. Navy Fleet circa 2030 have the potential to be truly transformational.6

The Navy Project Team, Report to Congress: Alternative Future Fleet Platform Architecture Study is an example of the Navy’s vision for the increasing use of unmanned systems. This study notes that under a distributed fleet architecture, ships would deploy with many more unmanned surface (USV) and air (UAV) vehicles, and submarines would employ more unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The distributed Fleet would also include large, self-deployable independent USVs and UUVs, increasing unmanned deployed presence to approximately 50 platforms.

This distributed Fleet study calls out specific numbers of unmanned systems that would complement the manned platforms projected to be part of the U.S. Navy inventory by 2030:

  • 255 Conventional take-off UAVs
  • 157 Vertical take-off UAVs
  • 88 Unmanned surface vehicles
  • 183 Medium unmanned underwater vehicles
  • 48 Large unmanned underwater vehicles

By any measure the number of air, surface, and subsurface unmanned vehicles envisioned in the Navy alternative architecture studies represents not only a step-increase in the number of unmanned systems in the Fleet today, but also vastly more unmanned systems than current Navy plans call for. But it is one thing to state the aspiration for more unmanned systems in the Fleet, and quite another to develop and deploy them. There are compelling reasons why naval expeditionary forces have been proactive in experimenting with emerging unmanned systems.

Testing and Evaluating Unmanned Systems

While the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have embraced unmanned systems of all types into their force structures, and a wide-range of studies looking at the makeup of the Sea Services in the future have endorsed this shift, it is the Navy-Marine Corps expeditionary forces that have been the most active in evaluating a wide variety of unmanned systems in various exercises, experiments, and demonstrations. Part of the reason for this accelerated evaluation of emerging unmanned systems is the fact that, unlike carrier strike groups that have access to unmanned platforms such as MQ-4C Triton and MQ-8 Fire Scout, expeditionary strike groups are not similarly equipped.

While several such exercises, experiments, and demonstrations occurred in 2017, two of the most prominent, based on the scope of the events, as well as the number of new technologies introduced, were the Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation (S2ME2) Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX), and Bold Alligator 2017. These events highlighted the potential of unmanned naval systems to be force-multipliers for expeditionary strike groups.

S2ME2 ANTX provided an opportunity to demonstrate emerging, innovative technology that could be used to address gaps in capabilities for naval expeditionary strike groups. As there are few missions that are more hazardous to the Navy-Marine Corps team than putting troops ashore in the face of a prepared enemy force, the experiment focused specifically on exploring the operational impact of advanced unmanned maritime systems on the amphibious ship-to-shore mission. 

For the amphibious assault mission, UAVs are useful—but are extremely vulnerable to enemy air defenses.  UUVs are useful as well, but the underwater medium makes control of these assets at distance problematic. For these reasons, S2ME2 ANTX focused heavily on unmanned surface vehicles to conduct real-time ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) and IPB (intelligence preparation of the battlespace) missions. These are critical missions that have traditionally been done by our warfighters, but ones that put them at extreme risk.

Close up of USV operating during S2ME2; note the low-profile and stealthy characteristics (Photo courtesy of Mr. Jack Rowley).

In an October 2017 interview with U.S. Naval Institute News, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development, test and evaluation, William Bray, stressed the importance of using unmanned systems in the ISR and IPB roles:

“Responding to a threat today means using unmanned systems to collect data and then delivering that information to surface ships, submarines, and aircraft. The challenge is delivering this data quickly and in formats allowing for quick action.”7

During the assault phase of S2ME2 ANTX, the expeditionary commander used a USV to thwart enemy defenses. For this event, he used an eight-foot man-portable MANTAS USV (one of a family of stealthy, low profile, USVs) that swam undetected into the “enemy harbor” (the Del Mar Boat Basin on the Southern California coast), and relayed information to the amphibious force command center using its TASKER C2 system. Once this ISR mission was complete, the MANTAS USV was driven to the surf zone to provide IPB on obstacle location, beach gradient, water conditions and other information crucial to planners. 

Unmanned surface vehicle (MANTAS) operating in the surf zone during the S2ME2 exercise (Photo courtesy of Mr. Jack Rowley).

Carly Jackson, SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific’s director of prototyping for Information Warfare and one of the organizers of S2ME2, explained the key element of the exercise was to demonstrate new technology developed in rapid response to real-world problems facing the Fleet:

“This is a relatively new construct where we use the Navy’s organic labs and warfare centers to bring together emerging technologies and innovation to solve a very specific fleet force fighting problem. It’s focused on ‘first wave’ and mainly focused on unmanned systems with a big emphasis on intelligence gathering, surveillance, and reconnaissance.”8

The CHIPS interview article discussed the technologies on display and in demonstration at the S2ME2 ANTX event, especially networked autonomous air and maritime vehicles and ISR technologies. Tracy Conroy, SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific’s experimentation director, noted, “The innovative technology of unmanned vehicles offers a way to gather information that ultimately may help save lives. We take less of a risk of losing a Marine or Navy SEAL.”

S2ME2 ANTX was a precursor to Bold Alligator 2017, the annual Navy-Marine Corps expeditionary exercise. Bold Alligator 2017 was a live, scenario-driven exercise designed to demonstrate maritime and amphibious force capabilities, and was focused on planning and conducting amphibious operations, as well as evaluating new technologies that support the expeditionary force.9

Bold Alligator 2017 encompassed a substantial geographic area in the Virginia and North Carolina OPAREAS. The mission command center was located at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. The amphibious force and other units operated eastward of North and South Onslow Beaches, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. For the littoral mission, some expeditionary units operated in the Intracoastal Waterway near Camp Lejeune.

The Bold Alligator 2017 scope was modified in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, as many of the assets scheduled to participate were used for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. The exercise featured a smaller number of amphibious forces but did include a carrier strike group.10 The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) orchestrated events and was embarked aboard USS Arlington (LPD-24), USS Fort McHenry (LSD-43), and USS Gunston Hall (LSD-44).

The 2nd MEB used a large (12-foot) MANTAS USV, equipped with a Gyro Stabilized SeaFLIR230 EO/IR Camera and a BlueView M900 Forward Looking Imaging Sonar to provide ISR and IPB for the amphibious assault. The sonar was employed to provide bottom imaging of the surf zone, looking for objects and obstacles—especially mine-like objects—that could pose a hazard to the landing craft–LCACs and LCUs–as they moved through the surf zone and onto the beach.

The early phases of Bold Alligator 2017 were dedicated to long-range reconnaissance. Operators at exercise command center at Naval Station Norfolk drove the six-foot and 12-foot MANTAS USVs off North and South Onslow Beaches, as well as up and into the Intracoastal Waterway. Both MANTAS USVs streamed live, high-resolution video and sonar images to the command center. The video images showed vehicles, personnel, and other objects on the beaches and in the Intracoastal Waterway, and the sonar images provided surf-zone bottom analysis and located objects and obstacles that could provide a hazard during the assault phase.

Bold Alligator 2017 underscored the importance of surface unmanned systems to provide real-time ISR and IPB early in the operation. This allowed planners to orchestrate the amphibious assault to ensure that the LCACs or LCUs passing through the surf zone and onto the beach did not encounter mines or other objects that could disable—or even destroy—these assault craft. Providing decision makers not on-scene with the confidence to order the assault was a critical capability and one that will likely be evaluated again in future amphibious exercises such as RIMPAC 2018, Valiant Shield 2018, Talisman Saber 2018, Bold Alligator 2018 and Cobra Gold, among others.

Navy Commitment to Unmanned Maritime Systems

One of the major challenges to the Navy making a substantial commitment to unmanned maritime systems is the fact that they are relatively new and their development has been “under the radar” for all but a few professionals in the science and technology (S&T), research and development (R&D), requirements, and acquisition communities. This lack of familiarity creates a high bar for unmanned naval systems in particular. A DoD Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap provided a window into the magnitude of this challenge:

“Creation of substantive autonomous systems/platforms within each domain will create resourcing and leadership challenges for all the services, while challenging their respective warfighter culture as well…Trust of unmanned systems is still in its infancy in ground and maritime systems….Unmanned systems are still a relatively new concept….As a result; there is a fear of new and unproven technology.”11

In spite of these concerns—or maybe because of them—the Naval Sea Systems Command and Navy laboratories have been accelerating the development of USVs and UUVs. The Navy has partnered with industry to develop, field, and test a family of USVs and UUVs such as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (“Sea Hunter”), MANTAS next-generation unmanned surface vessels, the Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (LDUUV), and others.

Indeed, this initial prototype testing has been so successful that the Department of the Navy has begun to provide increased support for USVs and UUVs and has established program guidance for many of these systems important to the Navy and Marine Corps. This programmatic commitment is reflected in the 2017 Navy Program Guide as well as in the 2017 Marine Corps Concepts and Programs publications. Both show a commitment to unmanned systems programs.12

In September 2017, Captain Jon Rucker, the program manager of the Navy program office (PMS-406) with stewardship over unmanned maritime systems (unmanned surface vehicles and unmanned underwater vehicles), discussed his programs with USNI News. The title of the article, “Navy Racing to Test, Field, Unmanned Maritime Vehicles for Future Ships,” captured the essence of where unmanned maritime systems will fit in tomorrow’s Navy, as well as the Navy-after-next. Captain Rucker shared:

“In addition to these programs of record, the Navy and Marine Corps have been testing as many unmanned vehicle prototypes as they can, hoping to see the art of the possible for unmanned systems taking on new mission sets. Many of these systems being tested are small surface and underwater vehicles that can be tested by the dozens at tech demonstrations or by operating units.”13

While the Navy is committed to several programs of record for large unmanned maritime systems such as the Knifefish UUV, the Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV), the Large Displacement UUV (LDUUV) and Extra Large UUV (XLUUV), and the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) vehicle (since renamed the Medium Displacement USV [MDUSV] and also called Sea Hunter), the Navy also sees great potential in expanding the scope of unmanned maritime systems testing:

“Rucker said a lot of the small unmanned vehicles are used to extend the reach of a mission through aiding in communications or reconnaissance. None have become programs of record yet, but PMS 406 is monitoring their development and their participation in events like the Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation Advanced Naval Technology Exercise, which featured several small UUVs and USVs.”14

The ship-to-shore movement of an expeditionary assault force remains the most hazardous mission for any navy. Real-time ISR and IPB will spell the difference between victory and defeat. For this reason, the types of unmanned systems the Navy and Marine Corps should acquire are those systems that directly support our expeditionary forces. This suggests a need for unmanned surface systems to complement expeditionary naval formations. Indeed, USVs might well be the bridge to the Navy-after-next.

Captain George Galdorisi (USN – retired) is a career naval aviator whose thirty years of active duty service included four command tours and five years as a carrier strike group chief of staff. He began his writing career in 1978 with an article in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. He is the Director of Strategic Assessments and Technical Futures at the Navy’s Command and Control Center of Excellence in San Diego, California. 

The views presented are those of the author, and do not reflect the views of the Department of the Navy or Department of Defense.

Correction: Two pictures and a paragraph were removed by request. 

References

[1] National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D.C.: The White House, December 2017) accessed at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905-2.pdf.

[2] There are many summaries of this important national security event. For one of the most comprehensive, see Jerry Hendrix, “Little Peace, and Our Strength is Ebbing: A Report from the Reagan National Defense Forum,” National Review, December 4, 2017, accessed at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/454308/us-national-security-reagan-national-defense-forum-offered-little-hope.

[3] Otto Kreisher, “U.S. Marine Corps Is Getting Back to Its Amphibious Roots,” Defense Media Network, November 8, 2012, accessed at: https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/return-to-the-sea/.

[4] For a most comprehensive summary of U.S. Navy shipbuilding plans, see Ron O’Rourke Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, November 22, 2017).

[5] The Future Navy (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Navy, May 2017) accessed at: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/cno/Richardson/Resource/TheFutureNavy.pdf. See also, 2018 U.S. Marine Corps S&T Strategic Plan (Quantico, VA: U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, 2018) for the U.S. Marine Corps emphasis on unmanned systems, especially man-unmanned teaming.

[6] See, for example, Navy Project Team, Report to Congress: Alternative Future Fleet Platform Architecture Study, October 27, 2016, MITRE, Navy Future Fleet Platform Architecture Study, July 1, 2016, and CSBA, Restoring American Seapower: A New Fleet Architecture for the United States Navy, January 23, 2017.

[7] Ben Werner, “Sea Combat in High-End Environments Necessitates Open Architecture Technologies,” USNI News, October 19, 2017, accessed at: https://news.usni.org/2017/10/19/open-architecture-systems-design-is-key-to-navy-evolution?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=b535e84233-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1450b-b535e84233-230420609&mc_cid=b535e84233&mc_eid=157ead4942

[8] Patric Petrie, “Navy Lab Demonstrates High-Tech Solutions in Response to Real-World Challenges at ANTX17,” CHIPS Magazine Online, May 5, 2017, accessed at http://www.doncio.navy.mil/CHIPS/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=8989.

[9] Information on Bold Alligator 2017 is available on the U.S. Navy website at: http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=102852.

[10] Phone interview with Lieutenant Commander Wisbeck, Commander, Fleet Forces Command, Public Affairs Office, November 28, 2017.

[11] FY 2009-2034 Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap, pp. 39-41.

[12] See, 2017 Navy Program Guide, accessed at: http://www.navy.mil/strategic/npg17.pdf, and 2017 Marine Corps Concepts and Programs accessed at:  https://marinecorpsconceptsandprograms.com/.

[13] Megan Eckstein, “Navy Racing to Test, Field, Unmanned Maritime Vehicles for Future Ships,” USNI News, September 21, 2017, accessed at: https://news.usni.org/2017/09/21/navy-racing-test-field-unmanned-maritime-vehicles-future-ships?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=fb4495a428-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1450b-fb4495a428-230420609&mc_cid=fb4495a428&mc_eid=157ead4942

[14] “Navy Racing to Test, Field, Unmanned Maritime Vehicles for Future Ships.”

Featured Image: Marines with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment prepare a Weaponized Multi-Utility Tactical Transport vehicle for a patrol at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., July 13, 2016. (USMC photo by Lance Cpl. Julien Rodarte)

Book Review

Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at Risk

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Robert Scales, Scales on War: The Future of America’s Military at Risk. Annapolis, Naval Institute Press, 2016, 248 pp, $25.46.

By Colin Steele

“Wars break armies, and they have to be put back together again.” — Bob Woodward, paraphrasing Gen. (ret.) Jack Keane 

“Wars may be fought with weapons but they are won by men.” — Gen George S. Patton, Jr. 

In my early teens, I enjoyed former SEAL Richard Marcinko’s Rogue Warrior books. I couldn’t yet drive, so stories of SEAL derring-do provided an outlet for too much testosterone with too little direction. I haven’t read any of the “hop-and-popping, shoot-and-looting” exploits of Demo Dick and Red Cell in years, but the stories planted several seeds that have taken root over time. Perhaps the most enduring of these from the Rogue Warrior books is Marcinko’s quip that the word “war” is itself an acronym for We Are Ready.

As the major ground commitments of the Long War appear to be winding down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the defense establishment is turning to the question of the next war — hybrid or high tech? Gray zone or little green men? Whatever it is, will we be ready?

War prognostication is an infamously fallible industry. In the memorable words of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, “when it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.” The perennial and oft-cited problem of “fighting the last war” only sets in after forces have been committed to a place, region, and conflict that was neither predicted nor prepared for. And once boots touch ground, of course, training is over: the war will be fought with the force — tactics, techniques, procedures, and equipment — we have, not those we “might want or wish to have,” to paraphrase Gates’s predecessor Donald Rumsfeld. 

If we wish to be ready for the next war, two questions follow: whether we can improve our ability to predict the conflict and how we might better prepare our forces to win no matter what. In his latest book, Scales on War, retired Army Maj. Gen. Bob Scales takes up both questions, and, with iconoclastic fervor, tears down the business-as-usual answers to each.

On war forecasting, Scales is especially scathing: “The least successful enterprise in Washington, D.C., is the one that places bets on the nature and character of tomorrow’s wars. The industry remains enormously influential and well financed, because everyone in Washington knows that bad bets cost lives and waste trillions.” He goes on to lay out five lines of wishful thinking, ranging from the “Scenario Development School” to the “Global Trends School” — and to dismiss each of them as implausible wishful thinking.

Even more concerning to Scales than misconceptions of where the next war will be fought is the question of who will do the fighting and how. Namely, his concern is for the infantry, the “intimate killers” who ultimately close with and destroy the enemy. Scales views the capital-intensive, casualty-averse American way of war as disastrous, and, ultimately, deadly to the next generation of infantry that will inevitably be committed to fight. As long as wars will forever be won by infantry, in Scales’s view, we owe it to this minority of soldiers to train and equip them to utterly dominate the enemy. No U.S. soldier should ever find him or herself in a fair fight.

Scales is compelling on both fronts, throwing cold water on the war forecasters and laying out the case for the infantry necessary to definitively fight and win the nation’s wars. Scales on War, however, is more successful in its diagnoses and critiques than in its prescriptions. Perhaps out of reluctance to offer yet another flawed prediction, “the enemy” too often goes unspecified. Too much of the argument also rests on emotional appeal, for example by reference to a “debt” owed to service members by their civilian masters. This is a far too easily contestable basis for law and policymaking. Finally, the book is almost completely silent as to the importance of joint warfare. Wars might ultimately be won by “intimate killing” — and soldiers’ lives should not be wasted — but the much broader strategic, operational, and budgetary context in which the infantry exists and fights receives short shrift relative to its policy implications.

The policy merits of Scales on War will have to be debated and ultimately decided upon by the politicians who will resource and shape tomorrow’s fighting force. What makes the book worth reading for those within (or interested in) the Department of Defense, however, are the lessons Scales points toward in terms of educating and training the force. No matter how policymakers strike the balance between highly trained infantry and high-tech platforms, the services will retain the responsibility for preparing tomorrow’s troops for tomorrow’s wars, wherever they may be.

However badly we may fail to predict tomorrow’s wars (be they anything from messy contingency operations to high-end interstate war) the test of war will be the same as ever: are we ready? As Scales points out, the world is changing, and so are the technology, character, and scope of conflict. Enemies continue to adapt and emerge; the U.S. joint force is still looking for a new normal after Iraq and Afghanistan. Women are being integrated into U.S. combat arms (on which Scales holds a pragmatic and largely positive perspective), new battlefield technologies hold the promise of giving the infantry unprecedented advantages, and education and training will evolve to meet tomorrow’s needs. In fact, education and training may prove to be the most important area for innovation and evolution — and Scales’ limited but clear-eyed suggestions on that topic should be studied and expanded upon by future authors.

Scales on War is the author’s last book — his “last shot to tell the sad story of neglect, ahistoricism, intellectual hubris, corruption, and ignorance about the nature and character of war that has left too many of our [soldiers] dead on the battlefield.” In that he succeeds, though more policy work is needed to find solutions. Others should pick up where Scales on War leaves off so that, when the next war comes, “We Are Ready.”

Colin Steele is a 2018 Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy candidate at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Find him on Twitter at @bravo_xray12.

Featured Image: A U.S. Army M109A6 Paladin deployed in support of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, fires during training operation at Camp Manion Iraq, March 10, 2017. (Photo by Spc. Christopher Brecht)