The Proof Is In The Pudding

The details of the FY13 budget are beginning to drift out, and it seems that the much ballyhooed "pivot" to Asia--and by inference, to Naval and Aerospace power--is more heat than light.  As I discussed on last week's Midrats internet radio show, there are two ways to demonstrate budget emphasis.  One is to spend more on something, and the other is to spend less, but have the magnitude of the cut be less than other priorities, creating an "emphasis by subtraction".  This is what it appears to have occurred in the FY13 budget. 

News reports and Pentagon statements indicate that the Navy will retire 7 cruisers and 2 LSD's early, while cutting its shipbuilding totals 28% from the FY12 estimate for 2013-2017 (57 ships) to 41 ships in the same period with this budget.  Retiring assets early from a Fleet already stressed to meet its commitments, and then eating your shipbuilding "seed corn",  strike me as odd ways to demonstrate an emphasis on Seapower.  I've talked to some in the Navy who suggest that under the new plan, we'll be able to field as many ships in 2020 as we do now, which is put forward as evidence of great progress and victories within the Pentagon bureaucracy. How this reconciles with the fact that the Fleet we have NOW does not meet the needs of the COCOMS--let alone the Fleet some project to be necessary to underwrite East Asian security in the face of Chinese expansion and modernization--evades me. 

For navalists, the current Republican Presidential primary has included several references to Fleet size, some of which have had issue taken with them in the press (NOTE:  I am actively supporting Mitt Romney for President).  In this one, Walter Pincus seizes upon what he believes is a lack of detail among the candidates when discussing the Fleet.  His suggestion that Romney's use of "9 ships is a year out of date" (to summarize yearly shipbuilding levels) ignores the basic fact that in the last year in which we have complete information (FY11), the Navy procured only 9 ships.  He then goes on to point to an erroneous figure of 55 ships over the next five years (the number in the FY12 budget was 57), while hedging his criticism by saying "...the fiscal 2013 budget due shortly could change things....".  Indeed it has, again, by dramatically cutting the number of ships to be built, by retiring useful ships early, and by deferring the acquisition of critical submarines.  This again--in a strategy emphasizing an immense maritime theater and the Seapower and Aerospace power necessary to dominate it. 

Clearly, the number of hulls as a measure of Naval power ain't what it used to be.  However, the suggestion that networks and precision guided munitions make hull counts unimportant points again to the basic physics problem that Naval planners have faced since the Phoenicians--a ship can only be in one place at a time.  Quantity does have a quality all its own, and as I've advocated many times on this site, networks and PGM's are of incalculable value when the Navy is fighting; however they are less important when the Navy is doing what it does the vast majority of the time--deterring and assuring.  We are sliding into the trap of sizing our Navy to fight and win wars only, de-emphasizing the critical role of what Tom Barnett has termed "system maintenance".  The more we move toward a force designed ONLY to fight wars, the more likely such a Fleet will be to become a magnificent anachronism--powerful, networked, and top-notch--but operating largely in the Virginia Capes and San Diego opareas. 

Bryan McGrath

Costa Concordia Reconstruction

For those interested in the seamanship aspects of the Costa Concordia disaster, this may be interesting:

Reconstruction of the Costa Concordia Tragedy, Narration by John Konrad from gCaptain.com on Vimeo.

Narration by John Konrad, CEO gCaptain.com and USCG Licensed Master Mariner Unlimited.

McGrath Guest on MIDRATS Internet Radio Show

While most of you were watching the Pats/Ravens game last evening, Sal and Eagle1 were kind enough to have me on their Internet Radio Show "Midrats" for the full hour.  We cover a lot of ground here, and I hope you find the dialogue useful.


Bryan McGrath

DOT&E FY2011 Annual Report

The DOT&E FY2011 Annual Report (PDF) is out, and I noted that Wired is focused on the LCS report (PDF). The reason the Wired article on LCS reads like it's reaching for straws to find news in the LCS report is because the DOT&E FY2011 Annual Report on LCS lacks new information. The DOT&E report basically details exactly what ADM Pandolfe told everyone at Surface Navy Association conference - in January of last year (in 2011). Hard to get worked up about issues openly discussed over a year ago.

What I did find interesting about the report is that the report heavily focuses on the MIW module problems, but only one aspect of the module - the airborne pieces expected to be used on the MH-60R helicopter (AN/AQS-20A and ALMDS). Does that mean the rest of the MIW module is doing well? I don't know what the absence of concerns for the SUW and ASW modules means either. Does that mean the program components of those modules aren't mature enough to evaluate, or does it mean they don't have any concerns right now with those components? I don't know.

About the only thing I learned in the LCS DOT&E report is that DOT&E is still actively sounding the bell on the survivability issues of LCS, and the Navy is still not ready to discuss that issue about LCS with anyone. Everything else in the DOT&E report reads like first in class ship stuff. I still think Austal should have seen the corrosion issue coming, and I don't like that there has already been a crack in LCS1, but these are issues where Navy folks involved appear comfortable with the corrections made to address those issues.

While LCS is likely to get lots of attention early (the program is the Navy's attention whore these days), there really isn't much in the DOT&E report on LCS that was new, and certainly nothing worth getting worked up about.

If you want to see what a truly damning report in the DOT&E FY2011 Annual Review looks like, check out LPD-17 (PDF). The report uses several hundred words to detail how the class is "assessed as capable of conducting amphibious operations in a benign environment, but not operationally effective, suitable, or survivable in a hostile environment due to significant reliability deficiencies on major systems affecting communications, propulsion, and self defense."

LCS has nothing even remotely close to damning as that assessment.

Another Dutch Sub To Horn Of Africa

In 2010 the Dutch deployed a submarine to the Horn Of Africa after a request from NATO. And while most newspapers focused on the lack of Dutch surface vessels around the Horn of Africa, after HNLMS Zuiderkruis left for retirement (the next surface vessel to go is HNLMS Van Amstel),  there is a Dutch vessel in the area: HNLMS Dolfijn, join operation Ocean Shield.

In 2010 the Dutch sub was 4 months away from her homeport, this time the sub will stay for 8 months. After 4 months the Dutch will rotate crews.

This means the Dutch should have 3 vessels in the area in May: HNLMS Dolfijn, HNLMS Van Amstel and HNLMS Tromp.

And while the sub will gather important information, it is general a very boring operation for the crew. Lying a couple of miles from the Somali cost, watching through a periscope, for days on is more like a police stake out and not as exciting as trying to sneak past enemy warships.

Highlight for the crew the last time a Dutch sub was off the Somali coast was seeing a vessel leave for the sea, after which HMS Montrose sent a Lynx to stop the suspected pirates.

And the information gathered is important in two ways: for operation Ocean Shield and EU Navfor on one side, and for the Dutch on the other.
It is important for the Dutch, because they can trade their intelligence with others who have intelligence they want. In 2010 they did an intellegence exchange with the USA. The USA got intelligence on Somalia, we got intelligence on Afghanistan.

And only recently the Dutch and Germans formed a Joint Investigation Team to tackle the problem of piracy in the HoA.

The old saying is still true: there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Dutch VPD vs. Somali Pirates

Yesterday  around 6.00 CET pirates in a fishing vessel attacked the MV Flintstone  93NM north east of the island of Socotra.
The pirates in their dhow where seen coming and the crew of the Flintstone went into hid in a special compartment of the ship. Meanwhile the Dutch Vessel Protection Detachment, consisting of marines, prepared for the arrival of the skiff that came from the dhow, that was being used as a mother ship.

At first the VPD fired flares at the coming ship, in which they could see several weapons including a RPG. When this RPG was aimed at the Flintstone the marines answered with direct fire, forcing the skiff to return to the dhow.

What I don't understand is the choice of the pirates to attack the MV Flinstone. Their intelligence must be lacking.

After the report of the Wijkerslooth Commission, the Dutch decided to make 50 VPDs available to protect vulnerable, Dutch owned, vessels.
And they sometimes announce names of ships which will have a VPD on board. And yes, from 2 weeks ago: the Flintstone will have a VPD on board.

SOPA

If you don't know, you need to start learning about it. This is one law that I strongly believe Congress will screw up in a big way, and I'm not going to sit quietly like I did with the Patriot Act. I'm almost convinced that only people who have indifference or contempt for American ideals like liberty and freedom would support this law.



Go to Wikipedia today, you will be given information how to contact your political leaders. Speak out, before you are silenced.

Update from PLAN land

Every year, Chinese shipyards around the country stops working around Chinese New Year. Since Chinese New Year is less than a week away, we got some last minute photos from the Chinese shipyards.

First of all, we see the first two 056 class ships from HuDong shipyard. Now, there is also 056 under construction in HP shipyard, but these ones are more prominent and seem to be further along. There is still a debate on why PLAN even needs these ships, but that's a discussion for another day.



Secondly, we the work on 054As at HP shipyard continues to be extremely fast paced. The fifth ship (548) came back for work in HP shipyard.

The 7th one was launched a while ago.

The 8th one is amazingly far along considering the 6th 054A at HD shipyard just got launched a short while ago.


Finally, we got some new and interesting photos out of JN shipyard.
It looks like the 5th 052C just got launched very recently. The 3rd one has made a return to the shipyard after all the sea trials. I thought it was already commissioned. The next 3 photos show them from different angles. The 3rd one is definitely joining the navy soon. The 4th one has quite a bit to go before being ready to conduct sea trials. The 5th one looks to be slightly less finished than the 3rd and 4th one when they were launched. My feeling is that it was launched at this point because they needed the spaces in the dry dock halls for new ships.



We see below two new ships going into the dry docks and they appear to be the 6th and 7th 052C. I'm not sure if both of them will be 052C, because the rumour is that 7th ship would be in the 052D series.


So, there is a lot of activity going on in the Chinese shipyard. The work will probably stop a month, so we won't have much to see for a while.

Introducing Foreign Entanglements

The Powers That Be over at Bloggingheads have decided to hand Matt Duss and myself the keys to a new, weekly foreign policy show which we've decided to call Foreign Entanglements. Announcement and discussion here:
 
This is a very interesting opportunity, and Matt and I hope to make the most of it by continuing to include many of the contributors who have long been involved in Bloggingheads, as well as new contributors who speak on different subjects and to different interests. Feedback regarding potential contributors (or favorite past contributors) is very welcome. For my own part, I hope to have more conversations with folks like those who appear on this and other defense policy blogs.  We'll see how it all works out.

America's New Asiatic Fleet

Professor James Holmes has a piece online today in which he calls himself a "reluctant convert" to the idea of stationing LCS's in Singapore and according to Holmes, perhaps in the Philippines.  Here's a key thought from Holmes:  "The LCS, then, may be the right ship for the Southeast Asian theater while drawing the venom from Chinese rhetoric. In some ways, an LCS squadron would constitute a throwback to the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, which anchored the US presence in Asia until crushed by Japan early in World War II. The Asiatic Fleet was a light force, not a battle fleet. Its chief purpose was diplomacy."  I think Dr. Holmes' conversion is a good thing, and the strategic thinking behind it should be more closely examined.

Holmes points to remarks made by the new OPNAV Director of Surface Warfare (N86), RADM Thomas  Rowden at the recent Surface Navy Symposium (Galrahn cited his speech here), which included the line “aggressively fielding the LCS fleet in order to meet our vital war-fighting gaps and forward-deploy additional American flags on LCS halyards.”  What both Holmes and Rowden are pointing to is that in the great game of "assurance", numbers matter, and what are friends and allies in the South China Sea need from us right now is assurance.  Assurance that our fiscal problems aren't going to cause us to look irredeemably inward, leaving them to make unsavory choices about whether to strike security bargains with the Chinese or to arm up themselves, and assurance that their sovereignty--including their rights in disputed areas--will not be subject to a Chinese fait accompli. 

Rowden's got it right--flags on halyards make a difference.  It should be our aim to present the extended Chinese maritime fleet with the reality of seeing American flags flying from naval ships wherever they find themselves throughout the South China Sea littoral.  Forward deploying LCS is a great first step, one enabled by the innovative crewing scheme under consideration for their employment.  But LCS is just a first step.

The Navy should begin to consider the design of a fleet of fast patrol boats, our own Houbei's if you will.  These would be fast, lightly armored but well armed patrol boats, networked, equipped with integrated topside guns and an over the horizon surface to surface missile capability.  These boats would be built in numbers, and offered IMMEDIATELY for export to partners throughout the region. Crewed rotationally like LCS, these boats could operate in composite squadrons alongside partner nations manning the same platforms--bringing interoperability to its most basic level.  In essence--a new Asiatic Fleet.

Why would we do this?   Flags on halyards.  Our friends and allies would be more aware than ever of our light but persistent presence, as would those who might seek to disturb the peace.  These are clearly not envisioned as "war winning" vessels.  They are conceived of as "war avoiding" vessels.  Their presence--and the promise they represent of more powerful force over the horizon adds a deterrent component to their assurance role. 

But please note that I did not say we should "build" these vessels; just design them for now--perhaps begin to offer them for export.  But not for us, at least not yet.  Not in this environment.  As long as the Navy force structure is likely to take a hit and shipbuilding is likely to decline, we cannot afford to build ships of this nature.  But we should be ready to.  We should be ready to when either the economy improves and additional resources flow to defense, or if the defense budget does eventually become "imbalanced" in other than superficial ways, devoting a higher share of resources to shipbuilding.  The Asiatic Fleet was a good idea then, and it is a good idea now.

Bryan McGrath