Welcome to part one of the March 2016 members’ roundup. Over the past month CIMSEC members have examined several international maritime security issues, including an increase in Russian naval activities and deployments, recent U.S. naval exercises demonstrating the Fleets’ application of the distributed lethality concept, laser technologies and the U.S. defense acquisition program and as usual, the increasingly tense security environment in the Asia-Pacific.
Paul Pryce begins the roundup in the Asia-Pacific with a discussion, on what he refers to as, the new era in Singaporean defense procurement. In his article at Offiziere, Mr. Pryce highlights that previous procurement strategies for the country’s Navy have focused on acquiring mainly European designed vessels, either built specifically for Singapore or purchased following a short period of service in the initial European country. However, the planned construction of eight indigenous Independence-class littoral mission vessels beginning in 2016 and the expected procurement of a domestically built light aircraft carrier through 2021 suggests that the Singapore’s shipbuilding capacity and overall maritime force projection capabilities are becoming increasingly strengthened – a significant implication for Singapore’s role in South East Asian security dynamics.
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Alex Calvo, for Asian Military Review, discusses the challenge Taiwan faces in securing a replacement for its four aged hunter-killer submarines (SSKs), two of which are vintage Tench-class World War II boats while the other two were commissioned in the Netherlands in 1987 and 1988. Mr. Calvo explains how Europe has become reluctant to support Taiwanese military procurement needs for fear of angering China while the United States no longer produces SSKs. He suggests that Taiwan may look to Japan as an alternative source for its SSK replacement largely due to recent efforts by the Japanese shipbuilding industry to win the contract for the Royal Australian Navy’s SSK procurement requirements while also noting a lack of other feasible alternatives.
Kyle Mizokami, for Popular Mechanics, discusses China’s plans to establish aircraft carrier battle groupstasked with defense of the country’s territorial sovereignty, maritime rights and overseas interests both regionally and perhaps globally. Mr. Mizokami highlights the nature of China’s first operational aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, as he explains its training role and limited capacity to carry large numbers of combat capable aircraft. However, he also notes that China has confirmed the construction of the Dalian carrier, which will have more hangar space for support and combat aircraft – but will still only displace about 50 000 tons, or half that of a modern U.S. carrier.
Leaving the Asia-Pacific, Dave Majumdar outlines the implications of Russia’s planned massive live-fire nuclear exercisebeing conducted by two Project 955 Borei-class ballistic missile submarines deployed with the Northern Fleet. In his article at The National Interest, Mr. Majumdar explains how one of the missile boats will sequentially launch all sixteen of its RSM-56 Bulava missiles at a depth of 164ft while highlighting that such an exercise, whether a U.S. or Russian ballistic missile boat, would only launch their entire payload in conflict as part of full-scale retaliatory or offensive nuclear strike. In a second article at The National Interest, Mr. Majumdar discusses the spotting of a Russian Project 667 BDRM Delfin-class ballistic missile submarine near French territorial waters – the boat carries sixteen missiles capable of carrying four nuclear warheads each with a range of 7500 miles.
Bryan McGrath, for the War on the Rocks, provides the ‘First Principles’ that will help guide the difficult task of structuring the U.S. Navy’s future fleet. Mr. McGrath emphasizes that the Navy must be sized and shaped into a fleet that allows for both combat-credible and presence forces to be positioned globally in a manner that secures national interests while effectively deterring major power conflict. He also mentions the implementation of the distributed lethality concept, where individual platform lethality is increased even as the force becomes geographically dispersed. On this point, Mr. McGrath argues that an individual combat capacity increase should not compel policy makers to reduce the size of the fleet, as one does not necessarily balance the others strategic importance. On the same topic at The National Interest, Dave Majumdar describes a recent test of the SM-6 missile where it was revealed that the system now retains effective anti-surface capability, a major step for distributed lethality implementation across the fleet.
Members at CIMSEC were also active elsewhere during the first part of March:
Kyle Mizokami, for Popular Mechanics, provides an analysis on the technological developments that have allowed lasers to enter military service with effective and useful capabilities. Mr. Mizokami notes that the U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy are all interested in deploying lasers across their forces with the Navy already fielding a laser aboard the Austin-class USS Ponce – while the rest of the fleet is anticipated to see large volumes of laser armament in the 2020-2021 timeframe.
Robert Farley, also for The Diplomat, describes China’s dependence on military technologies acquired from foreign powers. Mr. Farley provides specific examples outlining the importance of foreign technology throughout the PLA, including aircraft carriers, missile defense systems, surface vessels, ground armored systems and several fighter aircraft. However, Mr. Farley notes that this dependence is weakening as domestic innovation and technological breakthroughs are occurring rapidly.
Chuck Hill, for his Coast Guard Blog, provides an outlook for the future role and importance of the U.S. Coast Guard, highlighting its projected fleet size of nine frigate sized National Security Cutters and 25 light-frigate sized Offshore Patrol Cutters – an overall force of 34 surface combatants. In terms of personnel, the Coast Guard is already larger than the French and British navies and should therefore, according to Mr. Hill, be considered a significant maritime asset for U.S. national defense and a supplement to certain U.S. Naval operations. In a second article for his blog, Mr. Hill discusses the Sensor Hosting Autonomous Remote Craft (SHARC)and its possible uses for ASW and anti-drug smuggling operations. He also provides a video illustrating its unique features and special propulsion system.
CIMSEC has also recently (February) published a compendium discussing a range of strategies, challenges and policy options concerning Distributed Lethality. You can find a download link for all of the articleshere.
At CIMSEC we encourage members to continue writing, either here on CIMSEC or through other means. You can assist us by emailing your works to dmp@cimsec.org.
Sam Cohen is currently studying Honors Specialization Political Science at Western University in Canada. His interests are in the fields of strategic studies and defense policy and management.
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This piece was originally published by the US Naval Institute. It is republished here with permission. Read it in its original form here.
By Eric J. Labs
The Navy released its latest 30-year shipbuilding plan to Congress in April 2015. 1 The document (hereinafter referred to as the 2016 plan) described the purchases, retirements, costs, and projected inventory of the fleet the Navy says it will need from now through 2045. Critically, the plan outlines the fact that the Navy will need substantially more money than what Congress has allocated to shipbuilding in recent decades. The tyranny of time, the stubbornness of high shipbuilding costs, and competing fiscal priorities will put pressure on the size and capability of the future fleet. In short, over the next 30 years the Navy faces a slowly unfolding fiscal Pearl Harbor.
In recent years, the Navy has changed the tone of the annual shipbuilding report it sends to the Congress. It used to be that those documents were full of bureaucratic optimism and rosy scenarios. But over the last three years in particular, the Navy has offered a frank discussion of the challenges it faces in implementing its shipbuilding plan. In my view, a document that was once disregarded by many on Capitol Hill has now become one of the more valuable reports that is sent to the Congress. It warns that hard choices are coming and the Congress and the nation must be prepared to make them.
U.S. Navy – The future USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) conducts sea trials in December. Such a revolutionary vessel reflects both the aspirations and the daunting challenges of tomorrow’s fleet, for such “alternative ship designs and fleet architecture take a long time to implement,” notes the author, pointing out that the DDG-1000 “has been in development, design, and construction for 20 years. . . .”
Between now and 2045, the Navy proposes buying 264 ships and retiring 244 ships in order to maintain a fleet of 300 ships or more. Officially, the Navy’s goal is 308 ships but under the 2016 plan, the schedule of commissioning new ships and decommissioning old ones yields a fleet of 300 or more beyond 2019 and 308 or more for 12 of the next 30 years. (If 12 littoral combat ships are cut from the program as directed by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, then the Navy’s fleet will exceed 300 ships only between 2019 and 2030.) The Navy states directly that without a large increase in its shipbuilding budget, it cannot afford to buy the 264 ships in its shipbuilding plan and would not be able to sustain a fleet of 308 or more ships for very long, if it is reached at all.
I will focus more of this discussion on the first 20 years of the Navy’s plan, covering the years 2016 through 2035, because the third decade of the Navy’s plan is necessarily quite speculative. Nevertheless, keeping an eye on the longer, 30-year perspective is important. While it is true that the nature of warfare, technology, and costs cannot be predicted decades into the future, it is today’s decisions that are most important for the long-run perspective. The President proposes a budget and Congress makes appropriations year-to-year. The Department of Defense provides Congress with a five-year Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), but without the presence of the 30-year plan, the long-range effect on the Navy of the incremental decisions made in each year’s budget cycle would not be understood. For example, in the 1990s, the service built an average of one submarine every other year, and that low rate of construction had no effect on the existing inventory, because coming off the boon years of the 1980s, the attack submarine force was young. Submarine procurement could be reduced during the 1990s without affecting the existing force structure at all. But in the next decade those decisions would manifest themselves in a declining SSN force in a world that today looks like it will get more dangerous and more competitive, not less, and for which some observers of international and naval affairs think having more submarines would be a valuable asset for the Navy.
What to Buy and at What Cost?
Between 2016 and 2035, the Navy plans to buy 178 ships, including 12 expensive Ohio -class replacement ballistic-missile submarines. The rest of those purchases comprise 4 aircraft carriers, 28 attack submarines, 40 large surface combatants, 35 littoral combat ships (LCSs) and frigates, 16 amphibious ships, and 43 combat logistics and support ships.
J. M. Caiella – The Ohio-class sub replacement (SSBN – X) is “the 800-pound gorilla in the room” when it comes to the Navy’s shipbuilding ledger. “At around $6 billion apiece, buying those new boomers poses a substantial fiscal and budgetary challenge to the Navy.”
The Congressional Budget Office, in a report that I authored, estimates the cost of building those ships at an average $18.7 billion per year in Fiscal Year 2015 dollars. 2 But that amount is for new construction only. It does not include all of the other activities that the Navy must fund from its shipbuilding account, such as refueling aircraft carriers, outfitting and post-delivery, and other items. They add another $2 billion to the Navy’s funding requirements, resulting in an average shipbuilding budget of $20.8 billion per year for the next two decades.
The dilemma the Navy faces is that in recent decades shipbuilding budgets have been much lower. Since 1986, the Navy has received an average of only $15.8 billion per year, after adjusting for inflation, for all of its shipbuilding activities. And in the most recent decade, 2006–2015, it was even less—$15 billion. Thus, in order to fund the Navy’s plan, the shipbuilding budget will need to increase by an average of 40 percent compared to the past ten years, or about $6 billion per year.
As readers of Proceedings will know, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is the Ohio Replacement Program. The Navy plans to replace its aging force of 14 Ohio -class ballistic-missile submarines with a new, as-yet unnamed class of 12 boats, with procurement funding starting in 2017 and continuing through 2035. At around $6 billion apiece, buying those new boomers poses a substantial fiscal and budgetary challenge to the Navy. Declared to be the Navy’s top budgetary priority, the question, in the view of some members of Congress, is not whether the Ohio replacements will be funded, but rather how they will be funded. Will the Navy receive increases in its shipbuilding budget to pay for the new submarines, or will the Navy have to buy those submarines from a budget that is not increasing? If so, what happens to the rest of the fleet?
Future Fleet, Historical Funding Level
In the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress directed the Navy to assess what would happen to its shipbuilding plan if, on average, future shipbuilding budgets matched historical budgets. So far, the Navy has not responded to that congressional directive.
The CBO’s analysis shows that constraining future shipbuilding budgets to an average of $16 billion per year results in a much smaller fleet over time. The assumptions that were made in doing such an assessment were as follows:
• The Navy builds all 12 Ohio replacement submarines.
• Production of aircraft carriers is not cut, because Congress mandates the 11-ship force level in law.
• All other ship programs are cut roughly proportionately.
With those assumptions and applying the budgetary constraint, the Navy would purchase 131 ships over the next 20 years, instead of the 178 in the 2016 shipbuilding plan. Specifically, those purchases would include:
• 4 aircraft carriers
• 12 ballistic-missile submarines
• 18 attack submarines
• 25 destroyers
• 25 LCSs and frigates
• 12 amphibious-warfare ships
• 35 combat logistics and support ships.
Reducing the shipbuilding program by 47 ships over 20 years results in a fleet no larger than today’s by 2035. Over the entire 30 years of the Navy’s plan, the fleet would drift down to 237 ships if the historical funding level does not budge much from $16 billion. (See the accompanying table). That is a reduction of 13 percent compared to today’s Navy and 22 percent compared to the fleet of 2045 projected under the 2016 plan.
Our future fleet.
Is There a Solution?
What are the alternatives to a decline of the Navy’s fleet? Are the alternatives viable? Let us consider each one in turn.
Increase the shipbuilding budget. The first and immediately obvious solution would be to increase the size of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget. Shipbuilding represents about 3 percent of the overall defense budget, a relatively small fraction. As my counterpart at the Congressional Research Service, Ron O’Rourke, has noted in his work, increasing ship construction by $5 billion per year would represent less than 1 percent of defense spending. Yet, even such a small increase faces three powerful headwinds—one short-term, one long-term, and one that is a constant—that are political and budgetary in nature. In the near term, any increase in the defense budget faces the caps imposed by the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 and the various amendments, including the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015. While the BCA says nothing about how much of the DOD budget may be spent on any particular account, the fact that the BCA caps defense spending below the President’s 2016 FYDP makes it extremely difficult to find the money to increase any category of spending, including shipbuilding. The 2016 FYDP allocated $121 billion more for defense spending over the years 2016 to 2020 than the amounts allowed under the revised caps of the BCA. Thus, widespread cuts are the order of the day, not funding increases.
Although the BCA is set to expire in 2021, presumably making it easier to increase the defense budget in the long term, the large fiscal challenges facing the United States will not. Between now and 2040, the CBO projects that the demands by a growing older population and rising medical costs will increase spending on Social Security and Medicare by 27 percent and 80 percent respectively. But the dedicated revenues that support those programs will remain nearly flat. 3 Because federal deficits over that period will persist and increase the national debt, the CBO also projects that spending on interest will increase by 230 percent; at the same time, revenues from federal income taxes will increase by only 25 percent. Stiff competition for federal resources will remain a fact of our budget debates for decades to come, and the Navy will not be immune.
Finally, within the defense budget itself are the competing demands and priorities of the services and their supporters. If the military branches were unified in the perspective that naval shipbuilding, including the Ohio replacement, should be the nation’s first military priority—or at least the first acquisition priority—it might be a relatively simple thing to shift 1 percent of the defense budget in its favor. But that is not a universally held view. As the threats to U.S. national security become more varied in this emerging new strategic era, the competing demands of all parts of the military for more resources make shifting even a small amount of the defense budget a difficult proposition, especially with the demands on federal resources continuing to grow. 4
Adopt alternative ship designs and fleet architecture. If more money does not flow into the Navy’s shipbuilding accounts, what are the other alternatives? Are there ways to squeeze more out of the current budget? Can you keep ships around longer and modernize them? Does the Navy really need to buy the fleet it is proposing, or would an alternative be better? These are large, wide-ranging questions that deserve serious attention and debate. My purpose in raising and discussing them briefly in this article is to show that even if such suggestions were adopted, they would have little effect on the fleet over the next 10 years and only a marginal effect over the next 20 years.
Let us very briefly consider two examples of alternative fleet architectures proposed by two knowledgeable and experienced men in the business of fleet design: Captain Arthur “Trip” Barber and Captain Wayne Hughes. 5Both are retired Navy officers who then spent many more years thinking about alternative fleet architectures and ship designs. They still do.
In a 2014 Proceedings article, Captain Barber recommends that the Navy do a number of things differently in what he sees as an unending period of federal fiscal constraint. He suggests changing the capabilities of existing ship platforms as well as changing the ways the Navy deploys or stations ships in order to get more deployed time out of these expensive capital assets. However, he also recommends exploring several alternative ship designs that, he argues, would reduce shipbuilding costs, including using a single new ship design for both aircraft carriers and large-deck amphibious-assault ships, developing several classes of surface combatant that perform different missions but share a common hull, and repeating that common-hull approach for various support-ship missions.
U.S. Navy (Sam Shavers) – Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus delivers remarks at the christening of the USS Jackson (LCS-6) in December. The Secretary of Defense recently called for cuts to the LCS shipbuilding program, which might be said to have experienced its share of setbacks and controversy.
Captain Hughes equally reimagines the future fleet, although he believes his plan is affordable within existing shipbuilding budgets. The New Navy Fighting Machine, as Captain Hughes describes it, would develop even more new ship types than would Captain Barber’s. Specifically, Captain Hughes envisions new conventionally powered submarines, light aircraft carriers, small land-attack arsenal ships, and a substantial green-water force, as well as continuing to build numerous ship types that are already part of the Navy’s 2016 plan.
Nevertheless, however thought-provoking the suggestions offered by both men, making such major changes to the fleet will not be easy or quick. Alternative ship designs and fleet architectures take a long time to implement. For example, the LCS was first proposed in 2001. Fifteen years later the Navy has commissioned six of those small, relatively inexpensive 3,000-ton ships. A large all-new ship design, such as the DDG-1000 Zumwalt -class destroyer, has been in development, design, and construction for 20 years and won’t commission into the fleet until later this year. The same is true for the new Ford -class aircraft carrier. Under the Navy’s shipbuilding plan, in 15 years—2031—the Navy will have only eight new combat ships of entirely new design: three Ford -class carriers, three Zumwalt -class destroyers, and two Ohio replacement ballistic-missile submarines. Another 48 combat ships will be commissioned that have a modified design of existing warships: 21 Arleigh Burke –class Flight III destroyers, 20 frigates based on the LCS (or just 12 under Secretary Carter’s directive), and seven LX-R amphibious ships based on the existing LPD-17 hull. The Navy will also have another 28 combat logistics and support ships of some new type. Overall, in 2031 at least three-quarters of the fleet will still be composed of ships with designs that are in service today.
Thus, unless the ship-acquisition process can be changed such that it dramatically speeds up the introduction of new ship designs into the fleet, most of the suggestions by Captains Barber and Hughes would not have a meaningful effect on the composition of the fleet until, coincidentally, the Ohio Replacement Program is essentially completed in 2035. This is a point that Captain Hughes explicitly acknowledges and addresses (and one that Captain Barber recognizes but does not address), but, based on the Navy’s acquisition history, the former may be optimistic about what is achievable in 10–20 years. 6
Huntington Ingalls – A rigger oversees a small-unit flip during construction currently underway on the second Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) at Newport News Shipbuilding. “In 15 years – 2031 – the Navy will only have eight new combat ships of an entirely new design,” including three Fords.
Keep older ships in the fleet. A less time-intensive alternative to new ship designs or fleet architectures would be to modernize older ships and keep them in the fleet. But this approach has its own problems. Paradoxically, the Navy is already doing this to a large extent, so it is not clear that more can be done, but also historical experience suggests that the service dislikes doing so. Over the past 20 years, senior Navy leaders have extended the service lives of more than 100 submarines, destroyers, and amphibious ships relative to their original design lives. At the same time, the Navy retired dozens of ships that had many years of useful service life remaining, rather than purchasing slightly fewer new ships to pay for keeping the older ships in the fleet.
Specifically, in the early 2000s, the Navy increased the service life of the Ohio -class ballistic-missile submarines from 30 years to 42. If that had not been done, we would have debated the merits and means to pay for the Ohio replacement more than a decade ago, when the United States was fully engaged in two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Similarly, the service life of Los Angeles –class attack submarines was increased from 30 years to 33. The Navy now assumes its large-deck amphibious-assault ships will serve for 43 to 45 years, which is up from 40 years. And since the release of the 2009 shipbuilding plan, the Navy has assumed its Arleigh Burke –class destroyers would serve in the fleet for 40 years, rather than 35 years in earlier plans, which is up from the original design life of 30.
Extending the service lives of these ships further is impossible in some cases and questionable in others. The submarines will be at the limit for the number of cyclings (submerging and surfacing) that their pressure hulls can tolerate, and the energy in their reactors will be exhausted. Conventionally powered surface ships, however, could in theory be upgraded if the Navy chose to do so. Properly maintained, conventional hulls can last for many decades. Ships that were retired from the U.S. Navy and sold or transferred to other countries often serve for decades longer as a result. But at a certain point, a ship that is still useful in a South American or Asian navy would no longer be valuable to the U.S. Navy, because physical limitations may prevent a modernization of her combat systems to perform high-end missions. Further, keeping older ships in the fleet even longer would require the Navy to modernize combat systems and fully fund maintenance programs. But budgetary constraints and long, frequent deployments have made it hard for the service to do so. Thus, if it is not clear that Burkes can serve for 40 years, it seems even less likely they could serve for 45 to 50 years performing missions the Navy would find valuable.
At the same time the Navy was extending the service lives of some ships, it was retiring others well before the end of their design lives. In the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, the Navy retired the entire class of Spruance destroyers. To keep those ships in the fleet the Navy would have had to spend money on improving their material condition as well as upgrading their combat systems. It also would have cost money to continue to operate those ships. But a decade later, the surface-combatant force is overworked with long deployments because there are insufficient ships to meet the demand. In addition, the original plan was to retire the Oliver Hazard Perry –class frigates sooner and keep the Spruances around, but that decision was reversed because it was cheaper to operate the smaller ships. Relative capabilities apparently did not figure strongly in the decision.
Similarly, the Navy retired 17 Los Angeles –class attack submarines at an average age of 22 years, rather than pay to refuel those boats and keep them in the fleet. Paying for all 17 refuelings would have cost less than the price of two new Virginia -class submarines. Again, the Navy would have had to budget resources to operate those ships, but at about $40 million per submarine per year, that was not an insurmountable obstacle.
And more recently, the Navy proposed to retire seven Ticonderoga -class cruisers and two amphibious ships to help conform to the budgetary caps of the Budget Control Act, rather than reduce new ship purchases further. Congress intervened, however, directing the Navy to keep those ships in the fleet and provided additional appropriations to do so. But if the Navy had had its way two years ago, the fleet today would number 264 ships. In that event, the strain on large surface combatants and amphibious ships, which now routinely deploy for seven to ten months, would be even greater.
Size? Capabilities? Both?
One way for a policymaker or anyone interested in naval matters to think about these issues is to figure out what your objective is. Do you care most about the size of the fleet? Or are the capabilities of the fleet more important? Of course, both are important. But the tension between size and capabilities is in many ways a proxy for the tension between the Navy’s day-to-day responsibilities and its high-end warfighting requirements. In an unendingly tight fiscal environment, a larger Navy is one that is better able to provide overseas presence and perform the many, varied peacetime missions that our naval forces are routinely called on to conduct—without overly stressing the ships and crews. 7However, ships with the high-end warfighting capabilities that would be needed in an unlikely, but far from impossible, future conflict with a peer or near-peer competitor are expensive. The Navy cannot afford to build as many of them as it would like under historical funding levels.
If this seems like a daunting set of challenges for shipbuilding, that’s because it is. Yet, it may be possible that a little bit of everything could close the gap. If the Congress can shift a fraction of 1 percent of the defense budget toward shipbuilding, if improving acquisition can squeeze a fraction of 1 percent of the defense budget toward more shipbuilding, and if the Navy invests in some of its older ships to keep them in service, then perhaps it can step off the path toward a fleet of 237 ships that history says it is on. But that combination of outcomes would be difficult to achieve.
Dr. Labs, writing here as a private citizen, is Senior Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons at the Congressional Budget Office. He specializes in issues related to the procurement, budgeting, and sizing of the forces for the Department of the Navy. Dr. Labs has testified before Congress several times and published numerous studies under the auspices of the CBO as well as a number of articles and papers in academic journals and conferences.
1. Report to Congress on the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2016 (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, March 2015), http://tinyurl.com/ocrqtfc [8] .
2. Congressional Budget Office, An Analysis of the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2016 Shipbuilding Plan , October 2015, www.cbo.gov/publication/50926[9] .
4. Ronald O’Rourke, A Shift in the International Security Environment: Potential Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress , Congressional Research Service, 20 November 2015,www.hsdl.org/?view&did=788858 [11] .
5. CAPT Arthur H. Barber, USN (Ret.), “Rethinking the Future Fleet,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings , vol. 140, no. 5 (May 2014), 48–52. CAPT Wayne P. Hughes, USN (Ret.), The New Navy Fighting Machine: A Study of the Connections Between Contemporary Policy, Strategy, Sea Power, Naval Operations, and the Composition of the United States Fleet , (Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2009). See also his “A Bimodal Force for the National Maritime Strategy,” Naval War College Review , vol. 60, no. 7 (Spring 2007), 29–47.
Welcome to part one of the February 2016 members’ roundup. Over the past month CIMSEC members have examined several international maritime security issues, including recent Indian Navy maritime policy developments, aspects of the U.S. Navy’s defense procurement program, components of a notional South China Sea naval conflict between China and the U.S. and capability challenges for the U.S. Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).
Beginning the roundup at Offiziere, Darshana Baruah discusses India’s Cold War non-aligned strategy and the implications this strategy has had on India’s maritime security policy in the post-Cold War period. Ms. Baruah explains that India must realize that non-alignment does not equate to non-engagement and that committing to a policy of engagement is critical to manage the complexities of the developing Asian maritime security environment. She references the bilateral MALABAR naval exercises between the U.S. and India as well as the Maritime Security Strategy document released by the Indian government as developments hinting to a changing Indian maritime policy.
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Ankit Panda, at The Diplomat, also discusses India’s maritime strategy with an analysis on potential joint patrol operations in the South China Sea between Indian and U.S. navies. Mr. Panda highlights that there is no indication whether these jointly conducted patrols would reflect recent U.S. FONOPs or less contentious passing patrols, however, he notes that the potential for these patrols to occur reflects a shift in India’s maritime doctrine to ‘act East’. Also at The Diplomat, Mr. Panda explains the conditions and challenges of completing a Boeing-India F/A-18 Super Hornet deal where the Indian Defense Forces would receive an advanced multi-role fighter to supplement its next-generation indigenously built Vikrant-class aircraft carrier and raise the potential for increased technology sharing between the U.S. and India.
Bryan McGrath, at War on the Rocks, discusses the concept of distributed lethality and recent weapons tests and developments that have brought this concept to maturity for the U.S. Navy’s surface force. Mr. McGrath explains how the successful launch of a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) from a U.S. Navy destroyer has now increased the anti-surface warfare combat range of about 90 U.S. cruisers and destroyers currently operating with the Vertical Launch System (VLS) to 1000 miles. Mr. McGrath also identifies the additional capability introduced to the long-range supersonic SM-6 missile, now capable of engaging enemy surface combatants, as a critical development for distributed lethality implementation across the fleet.
Kyle Mizokami, for Popular Mechanics, discusses the planned purchase of 14 F/A-18 Super Hornets as a result of the fighter shortfall in carrier air-wings caused by delays in the Joint Strike Fighter Program. He explains that the delays will also reflect the slow introduction the F-35C will have entering into service within the Navy with only four planes to be purchased in 2017. Mr. Mizokami also outlines surface combatant purchases included in the Navy’s FY2017 budget, highlighting the procuring of two Virginia-class attack submarines and two Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers – the destroyers to be equipped with the new Air and Missile Defense Radars that boost the ship’s ballistic missile defense capabilities. Also at Popular Mechanics, Mr. Mizokami provides an analysis on the U.S. Navy’s LCS live fire exerciseagainst an enemy fast-attack swarm that demonstrated potentially serious flaws in the ships design, revealed by combatants entering the ‘keep-out’ range of the ship and technical issues arising throughout the test – albeit the exercise only tested certain weapon and fire control systems.
To conclude the roundup in the Asia-Pacific, Harry Kazianis for The National Interest provides an outline of potential tactics China’s PLA would emphasize during a notional conflict with the U.S. Navy. Mr. Kazianis explains that over the past two decades China has feared the U.S. ability to rapidly deploy naval assets throughout multiple domains in China’s areas of interests largely due to limited PLA capabilities. Mr. Kazianis identifies the employment of large volumes of rudimentary sea-mines and missiles as a simple mechanism for overwhelming U.S. Navy defenses and a feasible strategy to achieve an asymmetric edge over U.S. fleets in theatre.
Members at CIMSEC were also active elsewhere during the first part of February:
At USNI News, Sam LaGrone discusses the Request for Proposal Naval Air Systems Command is set to release later this year concerning the Carrier Based Refueling System (CBARS) or the unmanned aerial refuelling tanker. Mr. LaGrone explains how the CBARS is a follow-on program that will incorporate many components and systems from the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike program (UCLASS).
Robert Farley, for The National Interest, provides an analysis on the Zhenbao Island conflict between the Soviet Union and China in 1969 and how the sovereignty dispute nearly escalated to a nuclear confrontation. Mr. Farley explains the avenues of escalation that may have led to Soviet tactical strikes on Chinese nuclear facilities and the implications this would have had on U.S.-NATO-Soviet stability in Europe.
James Stavridis, for Nikkei Asian Review, provides five strategies for Pacific-Asian countriesthat will reduce the potential of an outbreak conflict in the region. Mr. Stavridis suggests that direct military-to-military contact can create a framework of deconfliction procedures thereby reducing escalatory conditions within the region. He also explains how the use of international negotiation platforms to resolve territorial disputes can contribute to a sustainable stability. In an article at The Wall Street Journal, Stavridis highlights the ‘icebreaker gap’ the U.S. has developedwith only four large icebreakers to be active by 2020 while Russia will have at least 42. He explains how acquisition processes to close this gap are extremely strained with the current defense budgetary restrictions the government is experiencing.
Dave Majumdar, for The National Interest, explains how the next generation of U.S. Navy surface combatants will incorporate digital and information technologies into the core foundations of ship design to allow for time and cost efficient technological upgrades. In a second article at The National Interest, Majumdar highlights the strategy shift that has occurred within the U.S. Navy’s UCLASS approach. The article outlines how the move to CBARS away from the UCLASS ISR and light strike capability will assist the Navy in developing a sophisticated unmanned aviation infrastructure for future carrier operations.
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Sam Cohen is currently studying Honors Specialization Political Science at Western University in Canada. His interests are in the fields of strategic studies and defense policy and management.
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As the US Navy begins to pivot away from dependent tactical group paradigms and towards more independent striking units under distributed lethality, it will become increasingly necessary to revise our operational dynamics. The rapid increase in communications and tracking has led to an era in which a remote admiral can guide the hand of all units under his or her purview. We must resist such temptations. The remote warfighter knows significantly less than the commanding officer (CO) on the scene. Moreover, the administrative and procedural burden placed upon these commanding officers has sapped much of their tactical creativity and tenacity, as Ian Akisoglu has argued. Equipping ships with upgraded combat systems is all well and good, but the warfighters who utilize them and their operational paradigms must also be upgraded. We must decentralize tactical authority back down to the unit level and significantly enhance tactical knowledge and creativity.
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The Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center (NSMWDC)’s Warfare Tactics Instructors (WTI) program is a huge step towards a low centralization, high unit proficiency operational model. As these WTIs spread throughout the Fleet disseminating ideas and rising to command, we will see a manifest change in unit-level tactical understanding and ability. However, the WTIs alone cannot overhaul our tired Preplanned Responses (PPRs) and outdated doctrines. They need to be empowered with the flexibility and out-of-the-box thinking that are the hallmarks of successful, evolutionary organizations. Our overly rigid combat procedures cannot handle the complexities of gray wars and supersonic conflict. Hence we must accomplish this shift through both the WTI program and a cocktail of long-term reforms: create accelerated CO pipelines with longer CO billets, enhance and widely distribute warfighting simulators, expand Personnel Exchange Program (PEP) billets, and form an across-the-board “task force” to resolve the over-management of unit commanders.
Vice Admiral Tom Rowden and Rear Admiral Jim Kilby speak at the inaugural ceremony of the Surface and Mine Warfare Development Center in June 4, 2015 (US Navy Photo).
The Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) community has long suffered from having truly great officers mired in bureaucratic office jobs while their surface skills atrophy. Yes, it is crucial that our rising stars learn from staff and Pentagon billets, but their command leadership must be prioritized if they are to be retained. As VADM Rowden explained during the previous distributed lethality topic week, “Distributed Lethality is MUCH more than just putting more missiles on ships—it is about investing in warfighting expertise.” In this spirit we must push our rising stars to the tip of the spear as fast as possible. We must provide an accelerated command pipeline for our most able officers if we are going to get the elite commanding officers that are the bedrock of distributed lethality’s effective implementation. By giving these high potential candidates more early command opportunities and accelerated pipelines to CO/XO billets, we will keep our best and brightest plugged into the Fleet with the latest tactics.
USS Barry (DDG 52) steaming in the Mediterranean Sea.
Far too many officers have wasted years waiting for command only to then get short 12-15 month stints. This is a misunderstanding of what kind of commanding officers we want and how to utilize talent. A crew does not care about making sure every decent SWO gets the opportunity to command, they care about having the best CO possible. We push for quantity over quality for no real end as most post-command SWOs go on to do staff and other mostly dead-end oversight-based administrative jobs before retiring. Instead we must focus on providing our best prospective command officers with multiple years of command and sea time in order to make them the great, salty warfighters we need in future conflicts.
This adjustment will also renew Sailors’ faith in the position of CO as an elite surface warrior. One talented, highly-experienced CO with three years of DDG command is more valuable than three “good” quick-stint COs who are not able to come into their full leadership and warfighting potential in such a short time. If a CO is doing a great job, then there is no reason to rotate him or her out at 15 months just to let another officer wear the crown. Bureaucracy and entitlement should not get in the way of us accelerating, retaining, and utilizing the very best SWOs. No one should be destined for CO just because of good FITREPs. Only our very finest should assume command, and they should do so for multiple years to gain the critical, diverse experiences required of a true warfighting commanding officer. By allowing the best SWOs to skip obligatory shore duties and be screened early for command, and allowing more fleet elements to be commanded by early command LCDRs, we can offer an enticing value proposition to our most elite SWOs and keep them firing on all cylinders on their path to being the world’s finest naval captains. These COs are the glue that will make distributed lethality effective in practice.
Another crucial step is rolling out well-made, easy to use, and highly accurate warfighting simulators. These can proliferate at all levels and will have demonstrable impacts on units’ tactical knowledge, understanding, and performance. As a child I played Jane’s Fleet Command (1997) ad nausem. In the process I became an 8 year-old who could speak intelligently about Exocet missiles and the dangers of submarine operations in the Taiwan straits. By allowing SWOs to continuously fight the enemy, wargame, revise tactics, and practically learn of the world’s military capabilities, we will have a more engaged and competent cohort of warfighters. We must find a way to leverage the enormous advances in computing technology and wargaming in order to best equip the minds of those who will be on the frontlines in future conflicts. Drills, PowerPoint, and brief-based schools are banal compared to the image of a cruiser being struck by an SS-N-22 while you scramble an F-18 squadron to counterattack against a flotilla of enemy DDGs hiding in the shadows of mountainous islands. Instinct and competence are forged in the fire of conflict, so – sans conflict – we must utilize highly-realistic simulators as the best alternative.
LCS simulator used to prepare crews (Lockheed Martin photo).
Moreover, our officer corps must not remain a closed system, an echo chamber of similar sounds. In order to best equip our frontline leaders with a diverse understanding of how to fight and know how other navies think and operate, we must go to these other navies. Seeing how a foreign navy functions can be incredibly illuminating and provide crucial perspective on what we do right and how we can improve. From the Dutch to the Japanese, we have a broad array of powerful naval allies who use alternative systems and doctrines to pursue their national maritime objectives. The Personnel Exchange Program (PEP) as it exists today is a woefully inadequate means of accomplishing such an exchange of ideas. Only a handful of SWOs are able to participate and gain critical foreign insight and experience. By ramping up PEP, we will open our officer corps to a diversity of ideas, procedures, and technologies that can only help our critical thinking and tactical skills in unpredictable and complex conflict scenarios. The core of distributed lethality’s effectiveness will lie in COs’ ability to harness their wardrooms’ creativity and diverse experiences to fight unexpectedly in spontaneous, unusual battlefields. This skillset can be enhanced by observing and understanding other navies and their methods.
Ultimately, the most critical and immediate reform that is necessary is a Task Force designed to peel back the red-tape and operational micromanagement of COs. This group would be composed of all levels of officers from ensigns to admirals. It would discuss and delineate exactly which procedures and processes are absolutely necessary for a flag officer to control and kick all other authorities back down to the unit CO. In combat there is no time to wait for the admiral’s move; the unit commander must be able to execute in an innovative and effective manner in order for distributed lethality to succeed. The CO needs to feel that they are the one fighting a battle, not their boss a thousand miles away.
All too often we are slaves to procedure and protocol even when they don’t make tactical or operational sense. This environmental context is the key to tactical victory and must be exploited, not glossed over by a PPR. In the end, distributed lethality can only succeed if it is executed by well-versed, innovative, and empowered commanding officers and their crews. If individual units cannot fight independently, then distributed lethality will become little more than beefed-up units operating in the same defensive strike group arrangements we currently utilize. Therefore the solution to our current tactical weakness is twofold: restrain over-management and bureaucratization while enhancing opportunities for our best talent in order to produce independent, highly capable warfighters with the operational latitude to sink fleets and win wars. We must do everything in our power to make this a reality now before the first missiles fly in a hot conflict.
ENS Daniel Stefanus is an associate editor at CIMSEC and a graduate of the Duke University NROTC unit. He currently serves as the Electrical Officer onboard USS ANCHORAGE (LPD 23) in San Diego, CA. The views expressed here are his own.
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