I regret to share the following announcement.
Fair winds and following seas.Wednesday, November 30, 2024
Raymond, We Will Miss You

Thursday, September 21, 2024
The Admirals Lobby
The extreme aviation enthusiasts, beginning with Curtiss himself, made the fundamental mistake of thinking that vulnerability was an absolute quality. It is, of course, all relative- relative to the vulnerability of competitive weapons systems that could possibly perform the same mission, relative also to the ability of the target to protect itself or be protected, and relative to the urgency of the mission that a weapons system is designed to perform even though it might be subjected to damaging counterattacks. This last criterion might more accurately be described as the balance between vulnerability and expendability. But the extremists seldom if ever considered that the aircraft might have some important vulnerabilities and limitations of its own, that surface forces might be needed for urgent roles even if their susceptibility to damaging counterattacks had been substantially increased, that surface ships might be better able to defend themselves against air attack than other forces with similar capabilities, or that the aircraft might add more to the offensive and defensive punch of surface ships than it would detract in increased vulnerability.
Naval officers, curiously enough, seldom challenged the implicit (and sometimes explicit) assertion of the uninformed enthusiasts and the extremist aviation devotees that vulnerability was an absolute thing. Their response in almost every case was to argue just as absolutely that ships were not significantly vulnerable to air attack. It was evident from the beginning that the confrontation of opposed sides on the issue of the military significance of the airplane was not to be primarily a debate over technical questions but rather a political dispute. The aviation enthusiasts perhaps understood that they would get nowhere by taking a moderate stand; furthermore, virtually none of them was a professional military man, and they therefore could not have been expected to appreciate important military considerations when evaluating a new piece of hardware. The naval officers on the other hand, once the aviation enthusiasts had taken an extreme position, may have understood that a reasoned reply to extremist contentions is seldom politically effective, especially if the contentions appeal to the general public.
A more likely explanation for the character of the officers' response was the threat they perceived in the claims of the extremists- claims which, from the officers' point of view, seemed to challenge the raison d'etre of their service and therefore challenged the continued existence of the Navy itself.The first paragraph could be applied to nearly any debate about the integration of new technologies into existing force structures that we've had in the last hundred years. The point on the treatment vulnerability as an absolute quality is particularly apt for evaluating the "aircraft carrier vulnerability debate" of recent years; too much of this debate has focused on this question of absolute vulnerability, rather than on a broader (dare we say "net"?) assessment of how capabilities interact. And I think that the political observations are also useful, although in this case we might apply them specifically to branches rather than to the service as a whole.

The US Navy and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Tuesday
YOKOSUKA, Japan (July 11, 2024) The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) moves into Dry Dock 4 at Fleet Activities (FLEACT) Yokosuka to continue repairs and assess damage sustained from its June 17 collision with a merchant vessel. FLEACT Yokosuka provides, maintains, and operates base facilities and services in support of U.S. 7th Fleet's forward-deployed naval forces, 71 tenant commands and 26,000 military and civilian personnel. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Peter Burghart/Released) |
Tuesday's Senate Armed Service Committee hearing was one of the most important engagements politicians in Washington, DC have conducted publicly with the Navy in a very long time. It has been years since we have watched an important hearing between the Senate and leaders of the US Navy where the primary focus of the hearing wasn't a budget. Tuesday's hearing was about something much more important, it was about the safety of American sailors. After 17 lives have been lost in two collisions at sea in the Pacific this year, this was the moment where elected officials would evaluate and determine if the US Navy is meeting the standards expected by the American people following a series of several tragedies where lives have been lost.
To the credit of the Senators in the Senate Armed Service Committee, as an American citizen I felt well represented by the probing questions that triggered several honest responses. However, as I listened to the answers provided by the Navy, considered those answers overnight Tuesday and all day Wednesday, I am uncomfortable with some of the answers provided by Admiral John Richardson, CNO. The Navy leaders accurately testified that "organizational culture" is part of the problem, and anyone who knows squat about challenges related to "organizational culture" in a big organization like the US Navy understands that among all the challenges the Navy faces with fleet material condition problems - an organizational cultural problem is always the hardest challenge to solve. When any organization has a serious culture problem, particularly one that has results where people die, the only question that demands an answer by the US Senate is whether the Navy leaders tasked to deal with the culture problem are capable of dealing with it successfully.
That hearing did not convince me this group of Navy leaders is prepared to do that today. That can change, but as of Tuesday it's blatantly obvious ADM Richardson does not know how to address the problem, and it's questionable if he even understands the problem yet. Below are two (there were more...) of the issues and comments from the Senate hearing that, quite bluntly, should not be allowed to be said by Navy leaders in front of the Senate and the American people. These statements are not acceptable under any circumstances if the expectation is Navy leaders can successfully address the organizational culture problems in the Navy today.
An Indefensible Statement
I will quote this article over at USNI News. This paragraph is an unbelievable, indefensible statement by ADM Richardson and I was shocked on Wednesday that I couldn't find a single member of the Navy community countering such complete nonsense publicly. But privately... this was widely circulated as a huge pile of complete bullshit.
Asked if requesting a delay in deployment date would negatively affect a commanding officer, Richardson said no and added that “if I could go down and give that commander a handshake and a medal I would do that. This is exactly the type of honesty and transparency we need to run a Navy that’s safe and effective.”The CNO would give that CO a medal? That answer is absurd at best, and is indefensible if the Senate hearings are supposed to represent serious discourse on a serious subject regarding a specific action that the FITZ or MCCAIN COs could potentially taken that could have saved lives.
ADM Richardson appears to understand he needs Commanders who will be honest and transparent about the true state of his force, but if Admiral Richardson believes there wouldn't be a negative affect to the career of that Commander in his Navy today, then that's a serious problem. I can't find anyone who believes that. In any large business or government culture, much less military culture of the US Navy, nobody in senior management tells executive level leadership "no" because of risk. What happens instead is the executive level leadership demands risk mitigation, and the senior manager does the job as required, and the organization accepts the risk. There isn't an option for Commanders to say "I can't deploy my ship right now" without career consequences, and at minimum it was either naive or ignorant to suggest otherwise.
Here were the follow up questions never asked. Is there a single naval officer who has made Flag in the 21st century who, when a CDR or Captain, requested a delay in deployment to their superior because the request to go to sea carried too high a risk? The answer, of course, will be no.
Is there any example of any COs of any ships in the last ten years that requested a delay in deployment because of a ships material condition? If it happened, was that CO promoted? Has anyone checked to validate the CNO's testimony?
The only legitimate answer ADM Richardson could give in Senate testimony is that "yes, that's a symptom of the culture problem in the Navy." Until ADM Richardson can get that question and answer right, he cannot and will not solve the culture problem in the Navy that led to the death of 17 sailors. If someone was to research the questions listed above, it will reveal there are zero SWO Flag officers today who delayed a deployment because of a ships material condition. They will likely find that among any officers who were brave enough to ask for a deployment delay due to a ships material condition, not a single one of those officers was promoted.
The Navy has metrics that can prove or disprove the statement made by ADM Richardson in testimony to the Senate on this topic, so I hope someone in the Navy turns the CNO's speculation on this topic into a fact finding review. The intent of getting the metrics isn't to prove ADM Richardson wrong, of course his answer in the Senate was wrong, but instead it's important for the Navy to see the context for why no one was ever promoted when the CO did actually ask for a delay - in each case - to better understand both the culture problem and the material condition problem.
CHANGI NAVAL BASE, REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE (August 21, 2024) Damage to the portside is visible as the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) steers towards Changi Naval Base, Republic of Singapore, following a collision with the merchant vessel Alnic MC while underway east of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore. Significant damage to the hull resulted in flooding to nearby compartments, including crew berthing, machinery, and communications rooms. Damage control efforts by the crew halted further flooding. The incident will be investigated. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Joshua Fulton/Released) |
Misrepresentation of a Basic Organizational Leadership Principle
I am one who is skeptical of President Trump's business acumen, but... if he is the professional business leader he claims to be, this statement by CNO Richardson would represent a huge red flag. Again, from USNI News:
“We have a can-do culture, that’s what we do. Nobody wants to raise their hand and say I can’t do the mission, but it’s absolutely essential that when those are the facts we enable that report,” CNO said.More than a few editors leveraged the "can do" culture statement in headlines that gave the perception that CNO Richardson was somehow suggesting "can do" culture is a problem. Even the USNI News article I am citing has the headline: CNO Richardson: High Optempo and ‘Can-Do Culture’ Culminated In ‘Pervasive’ Expired Certifications in Forward-Deployed Surface Forces.
“We don’t meet more than 50 percent of the combatant commanders’ demands as it is, it’s from a force structure standpoint and a combination of that and readiness. And there have been times where I’ve spoken with my subordinate commanders where there’s just insufficient time to get a force trained and certified to meet the deployment date, and we have to go back to the combatant command and say you’re going to have to wait.”
I am trying not to interpret the CNO's comment in the way the headlines are suggesting, but it's hard to agree with the CNO's comment in any context that a "can do" culture in the Navy is a problem. When the CNO made his "can do" comment in testimony on Tuesday, it immediately sparked discussion across multiple social media platforms by several of the top military observers who were watching the hearings. The commentary of "can do" being negative didn't sit well with folks, but whether it is the nature of social media or because the hearing kept moving quickly beyond the CNO's comment, no one effectively described why this comment didn't sit well with anyone.
The reason the CNO citing "can do" culture in a problematic context doesn't sit well with people is because the CNO misrepresented what "can do" culture in an organization represents. When an organization can be described as having a "can do" culture what it means is that the employees of the organization are positively motivated towards objectives in support of the organization, and are willing to work harder towards organizational goals. Within the Federal government's own civil service materials for senior management promotional exams, a "can do" culture of a department is an example cited as a reflection of positive work being done by supervised managers. In seminars that discuss organizational leadership principles, "can do" culture is a positive reflection of a good working team environment.
I have no doubt that a "can do" culture exists in the US Navy, but where a "can do" culture exists, it has nothing to do with the Navy's organizational culture problems that the CNO is responsible for fixing related to ship material condition. Leveraging "can do" culture should be part of the CNO's solution, not identified as a problem. In the very same testimony the CNO gave to the Senate, he actually discusses characteristics of a cultural problem that is well known to be toxic in organizations, and btw - ironically, these characteristics of an organization are also cited in the Federal governments own civil service promotional exam materials as representing potentially toxic managers within teams.
Asked by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) if it was “irresponsible” to allow a ship to deploy with an expired certification, Richardson likened the certifications to a driver’s license.
“What had happened in those areas, ma’am, is that the team out there was conscious that these certifications were expiring. And it’s a bit like your driver’s license expiring - it may not necessarily mean that you don’t know how to drive any more, it’s just that expired,” he said.
“However, we do need to recognize that … they need to go back and recertify. What had happened instead is that they would do an evaluation, and say hey, your certification is expired, we’re not going to get a time to get onboard and do the certification for some time, so we’ll do a discussion or administrative review to extend that. It’s called a risk-mitigation plan. That became pretty pervasive, so it was kind of this boiling frog scenario that over time, over the last two years really, became acute.”When conducting cyber security audits in the IT industry, a good security auditor will look for persistent risk mitigation activities as part of the evaluating the hygiene of security culture within an organization. If during a cyber security audit the auditor determines the ISO is constantly taking steps for risk mitigation for a specific system or service, and there is no evidence of organizational commitment towards solving the root cause for the risk mitigation activities, it basically means the leadership of an organization is the source of the poor security hygiene for the system or service. When there are widespread examples, it's called having a "must do" organizational culture, and the organization "must do" things that carry high risk until eventually, the organization adopts high risk activities into the culture as part of normal status. At that point, even high risk mitigation activities become standard operating procedure, and once something is SOP organizational leadership becomes blind to the risk, and the risk is no longer important enough to resolve at a root cause level.
"Can do" cultures don't require risk mitigation plans, but "must do" cultures do. The distinction is the difference. A "Can do" culture in an organization is a bottom-up culture of productivity, while a "must do" culture within an organization is a top-down culture of productivity. The specific characteristics that distinctly identifies whether an organization has a positive "can do" culture or a negative "must do" culture is the persistent requirement for risk mitigation and the acceptance of risk mitigation as part of standard operating procedure at the senior leadership level.
The CNO's own testimony before the Senate on Tuesday suggests that the US Navy has a toxic "must do" top-down culture, because he not only cited risk mitigation but a tremendous amount of evidence was presented in testimony that the acceptance of risk mitigation as part of standard operating procedure is prevalent in the Pacific theater.
The CNO testimony also suggests the US Navy has a "can do" bottom up culture, and the CNO seems to believe at minimum that the "can do" culture represents part of the problem. If a positive "can do" culture of the organization is part of the problem, it is a symptom, not a cause. As a symptom it suggests the CNO has another problem, because it can lead to senior level blame gaming. A "can do" culture in the US Navy represents a positive characteristic of the US Navy culture and the CNO needs to take a hard look whether or not that positive culture is being exploited by a toxic command culture of "must do" senior leaders. Who is demanding high risk? Where is high risk institutionalized as standard operating procedure? How is accountability for risk being determined?
If the CNO actually believes that the "can do" culture is the problem instead of a symptom, ADM Richardson may be incapable of solving the organizational cultural problem in the Navy. Correctly identifying the difference between a symptom and problem is a requirement. How can the CNO be weeks into this process, be testifying in front of the Senate, and still potentially be getting problem identification wrong? Where are the smart people on the CNO's staff?
Remember, what was the first thing Navy senior leadership did when ship material condition problems started several years ago? The Navy classified INSURVs, which virtually insured risk mitigation would become standard operating procedure when public criticism would no longer be a problem.
The CNO's own testimony suggests the problem is a "must do" culture because he testified that the two specific aspects that represent a "must do" toxic top-down organizational culture problem exist - persistent requirement for risk mitigation and the acceptance of risk mitigation as part of standard operating procedure at the senior leadership level. There are metrics that can identify the culture challenge the Navy faces, and those metrics are not going to support the CNO's testimony that COs can delay deployments due to a ships material condition without career consequences, because that action would be counter culture. The Senate is asking the right questions. Yet some the answers by the CNO himself aren't believable.
Who suggested to the CNO that the first visible action the Navy needs to take before analysis is completed to identify the basic stuff like 'work hours and duty shifts' should be the Navy should stand up a new staff? What credible analysis has the Navy conducted that identified the first, most important, immediate step to be taken towards solving really tough organizational problems is constituting a new staff organization, rather than a manning review related to number of hours deployed sailors are working per day or week?
In my opinion, given what was said in Tuesdays testimony, the only new staff the US Navy needs is one ready to bring research skills, analysis skills, a significant increase in critical thought to some serious cultural problems in proximity closer to the CNO, because letting the CNO describe symptoms as problems in Senate testimony related to the death of 17 sailors insured Tuesday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for the US Navy. If creating new staffs and implying blame should be directed towards sailors who are obviously sacrificing themselves towards successful objectives demanded by Navy leadership is being described as the problem... I just don't see how this group of Navy leaders can be trusted to successfully grow and improve the Navy looking into the future when there are so many red flags related to how this group of Navy leaders is struggling to deal with the challenges that already exist today.
Thursday, April 20, 2024
The Ship is an "Electronic" Being
In a 19 January 2024 letter to The Times of London, the former Chief
Naval Constructor (and then member of the British Parliament), Sir Edward Reed
attempted to explain some of the reasons for the rapidly rising cost of British
capital ships. The battleship HMS
Devastation had been completed in 1871 at a cost of 361,438 pounds, but the
cost of HMS Inflexible, launched in
1876 and nearing completion at the time of Reed’s letter was to cost 812,000
pounds. Parliament was naturally concerned about these apparent, skyrocketing
costs. Reed, whose former position as Chief Naval Constructor, as position
roughly analogous to that of the U.S. Assistant Secretary of
the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition,) explained the cost
increase as this:
“Every war vessel is now a steamer, and
some of our most powerful and valuable ships have not a sail upon them, but, on
the contrary, are huge engines of war put into activity of every part by steam
and steam alone. The main propelling engines are worked by steam. A separate
steam engine starts and stops them. Steam ventilates the monster, steam weighs
the anchors, steam steers her and steam pumps her out if she leaks. Steam loads
the gun, steam trains it. Steam depresses or elevates it…The ship is a
steam being.”
Reed went on to explain that the use of
steam in so many areas of modern ship operation as a replacement for the wind
and muscle power utilized in age of fighting sail warships, along with advanced
products of the industrial revolution such as rifled, breech-loading cannons
and compound steel armor had combined to significantly increase the cost of the
modern battleship. A similar, 1877
report by the U.S. Navy’s Chief Engineer echoes Reed in that it stated, “year by
year the thickness of armor and the weight of naval artillery go on increasing
together. Mechanical appliances have more and more replaced manual labor, and
at the same time the forms of the ships have been adapted to the work they have
to do and the conditions under which they must act.” The Royal Navy was able to slow and eventually
reverse the growth in its overall budget estimates in the first decade of the
20th century, but only through the radical actions of First Sea Lord
Admiral Sir John Fisher. The cantankerous and combative senior uniformed
leader of the RN opted for quality over quantity and produced fewer, but larger
and more powerful warships as the means to reduce the budget and increase
combat capability. As a result, the RN’s budget
from 1905-1911 remained less than that of 1904.
Still,
the rising costs of the British naval armaments race with Germany exceeded Fisher’s capacity
for cost savings and British Naval estimates again increased in 1911. The Royal Navy did not regain control over
the escalating costs of its capital ships until the interwar period of the
1920’s and early 1930’s when a combination of naval arms limitation treaties
and appalling economic conditions forced such conditions.
A
similar process may be underway in the increased costs of U.S. surface warships
over the last four decades at a rate greater than inflation. A 2006 RAND
Corporation study
suggests that key indicators for modern warship cost center on a vessel’s ratio
of electrical power generating capacity to its light ship (with no fuel
ammunition, stores or other consumables aboard) weight. It appears that just as
the industrial revolution’s steam and steel products drove up warship costs in
the 19th and early 20th centuries, today’s rapidly advancing electrical and
electronic equipment now account for significant increases in 21st century
warship costs. The rapid advance of electronic equipment and its operating
software, as well as new technologies like rail guns and directed energy
weapons suggests that ship cost increases will continue for the foreseeable
future as they did during the Industrial Revolution. Given this data, today’s
warships might echo Reed’s comment and can be construed as “electronic beings”
with electrical and electronic systems and associated software just as integral
to the rising costs of 21st century warship as steam and steel
products were to its 19th century counterpart.
The
RAND study’s potential solutions for reducing these costs include keeping ship
designs less complex, more stable over time, and a consideration to physically
separate expensive capabilities in the form of modular components to the main
hull. The study also emphasized the unstable nature of U.S. naval shipbuilding,
starting: “Many shipyards have a monopsony relationship with the government—that
is, the government is their main, if not only, customer. At the same time,
fluctuating ship orders from the Navy, with initially forecast orders typically
exceeding what is ultimately purchased, discourage shipyards from making
investments that could ultimately reduce the cost of ships.” RAND noted that
unless these costs are brought under control that the U.S. would be
hard-pressed to field even 260 ships by 2035.
The
RAND study was released in 2006 and now the U.S. struggles to maintain its
current fleet of 287 ships. It is vital for the U.S. to reduce these costs
moving forward into the middle 21st century. A 2015 RAND
report on surface ship maintenance suggests that the current readiness
crisis is just the beginning of potential troubles, as deferred maintenance and
mid-life upgrades in existing warships will grow over the next twenty five
years. Unlike Admiral Fisher, the U.S. cannot now afford to reduce its overall
number of ships, and solutions to qualitatively increase fleet firepower such
as rail
guns and directed
energy weapons require significantly more, expensive development.
What
can the U.S. do to slow the growth of its own “electronic being” fleet? It
should develop a Maritime strategy that is a worthy successor of its 1980’s-era
predecessor. That strategy product was put “on the shelf” by then CNO
nominee Admiral Frank Kelso in June 1990. It was replaced by the “From theSea/Forward from the Sea” concept that assumed an extended period of
operational maneuver from the sea against rogue and in support of failed states
around the greater Eurasian littoral. That time where great power competition
was a relic of the past is gone and has been replaced by a hybrid period of
both great power competition and growing non-state actors. Concepts like “Defeat one /
Deny or Deter another”
are not strategy and represent operational art raised to strategic levels. A Maritime Strategy
with operational characteristics that can be activated from phase zero start to
a phase 4 conclusion needs to be in place. It will help shape global naval
force deployment, and fund the units needed to carry out the strategy and its
operational elements. Great Britain’s Royal Navy had a clear
strategy from the age of “fighting sail” through the end of the Second World
War. It was the shield of imperial trade and commerce and the sword that
attacked those of its enemies and enabled the operational maneuver of British
ground combat forces from the sea. The U.S. Navy does not have a similar clear
purpose that can be easily articulated to Congress, U.S. allies, and potential
opponents. Instead, the U.S. speaks of strategy in terms status quo, the 30 year shipbuilding plan
and other force structure management processes. The Navy needs a product and
not a process to shape the size, design and operation of its 21st century force
and perhaps prevent the technological creep that has contributed to the price
increases on Navy ships as documented in the RAND report.
The littoral
combat ship (LCS) class tried to affect some of the changes suggested by the
RAND. LCS was supposed to be less complicated than other combatants through the
separation of its major capabilities in surface, subsurface and mine warfare
into modular components bought and developed separately for the class. “Teething”
issues in the first four experimental LCS units and the shipyards that produce
them caused significant program delays, including an outright pause
from 2007-2009 and the cancellation of the original LCS 3 and 4. The shipyards
producing LCS have matured as have the designs and LCS has made significant
progress in terms of capability and production cost maintainability since being
placed under program executive officer (PEO) management in 2011. Despite those
successes, troubles with the first four LCS units, uncertainty over operational
costs, and a deep-seated Congressional
and naval culture that believes that a frigate must be a “light destroyer” to
be successful
have combined to make LCS the defense press’ poster program for poor
acquisition management.
Despite
widespread dislike, the LCS program still offers to solve some of the problems
that dogged both the British Navy of the 19th century and the U.S.
Navy in the present. Admiral Fisher combined the
functions of the battleship and the armored cruiser into the hybrid
battlecruiser
that had the speed and range to overhaul and destroy surface raiders, and the
firepower and advanced fire control needed to engage any opponent at long
range. LCS still offers the ability to combine multiple small ship functions of
patrol, mine warfare and the traditional combatant surface and subsurface
warfare missions as interchangeable capabilities on one hull. LCS also supports
unmanned vehicles and other off-board systems much better than the
conventional frigates proposed to replace it. One LCS frame, like that of the
World War 2 Sherman medium tank, that supported multiple variants is a better
choice than building new, separate, separate mine warfare, patrol, and small
surface combatant units, which will need to happen if the “frigate” category is
taken by a high end design.
The
RAND study touted the benefits of stability in design as a cost saving
measures. One of the reasons for the selection of an LCS hull as the basis for
the new frigate class is an attempt to improve stability through the use of the
same basic hull, much as the DD 963 hull
was used as the basis for the CG 47 class. If seen through to the
construction phase, this choice would support the shipyards that produce both
LCS and the projected frigate. The U.S. elements of the firms that produce the
LCS have a “monopsony
relationship”
with the U.S. government as described in the RAND report and have little
civilian business as compared with more traditional shipbuilders who also
construct warships. The maintenance of stability in construction might allow
these companies to avoid the layoffs that happen when the U.S. cannot make up
its mind about which design to accept. This is not “corporate welfare,” but a
vital issue in the maintenance of an effective industrial base to support the
Navy in both peace and war.
The
electronics revolution that has driven up the cost of U.S. warships over the
last half century bears a remarkable resemblance to that of the Industrial
Revolution, whose steam and steel products so substantially increased the cost
of British Navy units in the 19th and early 20th
centuries. The 2006 RAND study on warship costs suggested ways the U.S. might
slow that growth. LCS was one possible solution, but problems with early units,
and opposition from Cold War cultures of ship size, lifespan, manning, sustainability,
and intra-service parochial interests have combined to make LCS less of a
success. While visions of larger, very capable fleets for the future may dazzle
they eyes of some, the realities of rising fleet maintenance costs, the budget
deficit, and internecine political warfare on Capitol Hill effectively combine
to strangle such visions in their think tank cradles. The Navy will likely have
to make due with a smaller force for the time being, and effective strategy,
not massive firepower, could determine victory in the event of significant
naval conflict. Like the Royal Navy of the mid and late 19th
century, the U.S. must mitigate the accelerating costs of technological
revolution and develop cost effective, operational solutions in support of
defined Maritime strategy. Some of the concepts pioneered in the LCS program
can aid in that endeavor and should be given a chance to succeed. Given current
challenges, LCS and its frigate variant are likely to be the only small surface
combatants the U.S. Navy will receive for the foreseeable future.
Friday, April 7, 2024
Thoughts on Syrian Strike
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USS Porter launching cruise missiles towards Syria. |
I watched Nikki Haley's speech in the UN on social media this morning, and I quickly realized two things:
- America was pissed off.
- The world was now aware America was pissed off.
If you haven't seen that video yet, the stare she gives the Russian ambassador makes it must see viewing. I was impressed.
When President Obama gave Syria a red line on chemical weapons back in 2013, and Assad crossed that red line, you may remember I was quite uncomfortable with how everything had gone down. I was uncomfortable with the President giving the red line, and I was uncomfortable with the idea the US would have to attack Syria. President Obama took a lot of criticism for addressing that incident in 2013 with diplomacy, but the United States ultimately removed a considerable amount of chemical weapons from Syria via MV Cape Ray and over time I came to appreciate the decision by President Obama. Until this past week, there had been no clear evidence of chemical weapons use by the Assad regime in Syria against civilians, including for the entire remainder of the Obama administration. In my mind, what President Obama did at the time was the right thing.
But when news broke about chemical weapons use in Syria this week, particularly in the context of what is happening on the Korean peninsula, in my mind President Trump had a very serious choice to make. He either attacked Syria for breaking their agreement with President Obama, or the United States retreated from the role as the leader of the global security construct the world has enjoyed since the end of the cold war.
Assad left Trump no choice, and actually gave the Trump administration exactly what they needed in many ways. The strike by the United States against Syria on Thursday checks multiple strategic boxes that needed to be checked given the checkered beginning of this Presidential administration. In one stroke, President Trump was able to:
- Support a policy championed by President Obama with a limited use of military force thereby proving that domestic political disagreements do not represent a weakness in US foreign policy.
- Send a clear signal of US resolve to the dictators globally like Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong un that the US is not to be tested.
- Reassert US influence in a region of the world dominated by Russia at this point and time.
- Send a clear message to world powers like China, at a time Trump is meeting with Xi Jinping, that the US led by President Trump will use military force when forced to.
But sending 60 Tomahawks into Syria isn't about tactical effects, the way to measure this military action will be to observe strategic effects. I'm sure in the near future cable TV will find some political science mouth breather ready to do battle damage tactical assessments on use of Tomahawks as if the military action taken Thursday has something in common with trying to win some battle against Syria. Firing Tomahawks into Syria isn't about winning a battle though, it's about shaping the conduct of a war, which is a continuation of the policy set forth by President Obama specific to chemical weapons and a necessary escalation in response to Assad for challenging the agreement Syria made with the last administration.
Only time will tell if the strategic communication sent on Thursday was sufficient, or whether a new challenge to President Trump is forthcoming to test the US resolve on this issue.
As this event relates to naval strategic theory, I will be observing this event as an early test of the Trump administrations naval focused offshore balancing strategic theory. The ability to send an effective strategic communication with the execution of a tactical missile strike was a staple of both the Reagan and Clinton administrations, but both of those President's enjoyed a large US Navy capable of acting globally in massive force in response to any incident. Today's US Navy is significantly smaller than the Navy of those two Presidents, and while an Arleigh Burke class destroyer can send the initial volley of cruise missiles to send a strategic message, I am not as confident regarding how things might unfold if there was blow back from this type of military action.
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