The Next 12 Years Matter

In 1815, the Royal Navy found itself in a unique position. Britain had just completed an unpopular war with the Americans, while also recently emerging victorious over a revolutionary France. The Royal Navy found itself in a unique position, the sole remaining superpower with a large fleet to rule the waves and police the world heading into a new century.

The Royal Navy in 1815 faced a very uncertain future. The potential of a rebirth in the French Navy was possible, there was the potential of Russia pushing its Navy into the Atlantic, and America was a rising nation with incredible industrial potential that also raised concern. The admiralty had to make difficult decisions, and they did, and those decisions led to Royal Navy dominance at sea for well into the 20th century.

By 1817, with no naval competitor, the Royal Navy had reduced its ships of the line from 99 to 13 with several ships laid up in reserve. If the Royal Navy was going to maintain its naval superiority, it needed a plan that worked its inherent advantages. At the time Britain had the largest shipbuilding industry in the world, had the largest economy in the world, had the largest merchant fleet in the world, and had an efficient basing system that gave reach to operations virtually all over the world. This allowed Britain to make several critical decisions regarding shipbuilding, alliances, and how to handle innovation to maintain its naval superiority.

First though the Royal Navy had to define its role, which it did by taking on the war they were involved in, specifically the war against slavery, while also preparing for meeting the challenge of any emerging future rival.

For the war against slavery, the Royal Navy built a large fleet of smaller frigates, sloops, and brakes, which represented the low end of naval warships of the era. These smaller, faster ships would allow flexibility for the Royal Navy in eliminating the slave trade. In preparation for the next war, the Royal Navy adopted a strategy that Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Studies terms "the strategy of the second move." Because the Royal Navy had an existing fleet that was unmatched on the seas, the Royal Navy made a difficult decision to accept a 'good enough' fleet. Utilizing its economy and shipbuilding industry, instead of investing in new large ships, investment went into innovation for naval warfare and small ships to fight the current war.

This strategy entailed the Royal Navy developing technologies for naval warfare, but not incorporating them into the fleet until another nation did, or as a 'second move.' So for example, when the French started experimenting with explosive shells in the mid 1820s, the Royal Navy adopted explosive shells on all battleships by 1838. By 1840, the British merchant marine had over 700 steam powered ships, but the Royal Navy had none. However, as the French and Americans began looking into steam power for their naval vessels, the Royal Navy commissioned its first steam powered ship in 1845, and its first steam powered battleship, the HMS Agamemnon, in 1849 with the innovation of screw propellers.

When the Crimean War began in 1854, the Royal Navy had almost completely converted its main ships of the line to steam. When iron armor had revealed its potential in that war, the Royal Navy immediately adopted it with the commissioning of the HMS Warrior in 1861, which immediately made virtually every warship in the world Navies obsolete (and actually repeated a similar strategy of making the rest of the worlds Navies obsolete in 1906 with the commissioning of the HMS Dreadnaught).

By 1860, the most compelling part of this strategy wasn't its application of small, fast, flexible warships to address the war against slavery, nor the innovation and shipbuilding capacity that allowed the Royal Navy to rapidly adapt to new technologies, it was that the Royal Navy had sustained over 4 decades of naval superiority on a very mild budget. By maintaining a 'good enough' fleet, and by adopting a spiral development shipbuilding strategy that consisted of a large number of classes that consisted of few ships per class, constantly driven by the funding of innovations, the Royal Navy had been able to maintain superiority on a mild budget with gradual gains instead of spending a large budget on ships with generational leaps in technology.

History has repeated itself in the 21st century, and the US Navy finds itself in a similar position following the conclusion of the cold war. In 1989 the United States had become the worlds only remaining superpower with a very large fleet and no competitor on the horizon. By 2007, the fleet has been reduced to 278 ships, yet still finds itself without a naval competitor. Today the Navy is facing an uncertain future, a rapidly growing China and India, not to mention the potential rebirth of Russia. The US Navy finds itself engaged in a war today, with the possibility of one looming in the future. The US Navy also faces increasing budget pressure, meaning that any strategy adopted to meet these challenges needs to be able to work within a confined budget.

These similarities put the US Navy in 2007 in a similar position the Royal Navy found itself in 1817, but the plans forward appear to have nothing in common.

The Royal Navy in 1817 invested heavily in innovation but used modernization techniques to existing platforms to maintain its superiority, only building new platforms with existing, proven technologies. By comparison, the US Navy in 2007 has flat lined innovation, particularly for submarines, has downgraded the modernization of the existing fleets most important platform (DDG-51s), and is building new platforms that are almost completely based on new technologies.

The Royal Navy in 1817 committed to the long war it was in, and almost single handedly ended the slave trade worldwide by itself. The US Navy in 2007 is now engaged in a long war of its own, but has mildly accepted this role by throwing a modular solution that may, depending upon configuration, help in meeting the challenges posed by the war it is in. While a number of concepts have been adopted to fight the long war, specifically the Global Fleet Station concept, and the 1000 ship Navy concept, only the LCS is being built to actually effect these concepts, and even then it is questionable whether the LCS is actually a good fit in either concept.

So far in the 21st century, the Navy plan of action has committed enormous budgetary resources to building the transformational concept championed by Rumsfeld. This plan of action calls for rushing the Navy into a generational leap in naval power, despite the reality the US Navy is already at least a generation ahead of the closest potential competitor, in preparation for the war of tomorrow while almost completely ignoring the war of today. Is this really the way ahead? The existing fleet of CGs and DDGs, which represents more on board firepower at sea than the next 17 Navies in the world combined, is younger on average than the aircraft in the US Navy, and not a single one of these ships requires a replacement until 2020 at the earliest.

Why then is the Navy committing over 55% of its total shipbuilding budget between 2007 and 2020 to more cruisers and destroyers, while reducing innovation in submarines, while reducing total expeditionary capacity at sea, while reducing logistical capability for the fleet, while spending aviation funding to build it, and while building a token warship (LCS) for the war the nation is currently engaged in? The Navy is completely ignoring the potential, much less the evaluation, of new naval concepts that ForceNET technology has pointed to as revolutionary in simulation, like streetfighter, arsenal ship, underwater superiority systems, or mother ship technologies. These technologies, due to the lack of focus on innovation in today's Navy, will remain unknown in potential while the Navy races to deploy more cruisers and destroyers during the only time period until 2020 when an existing cruiser or destroyer doesn't need to be replaced.

Roughead and Gates need to get the priorities of the Navy inline with the priorities of the Nation, because as things stand, it is impossible to see how the Rumsfeld naval strategy addresses either the war we are in today, or will be affordable enough to have the Navy ready for the war tomorrow. The key for the US Navy to maintain its naval superiority in the 21st century is to utilize the next 12 years to innovate and prove which technologies will be decisive, so in 2020 when the fleet of tomorrow replaces the fleet of today, the Navy can execute an affordable plan efficiently based on proven technologies that make the generational leap transformation calls for. Continuing the rush into that generational leap today wastes the advantage the US has guaranteed itself with the existing fleet until 2020.

The next 12 years matter.