Considering What a Paradigm Shift in the DoD Means for the Navy

Today we turn our attention to an article recently published in the 2008 Summer Washington Quarterly by Michael J. Mazarr. Michael J. Mazarr, a professor of national security strategy at the U.S. National War College, brings a thought provoking article regarding the Paradigm Shift in the DoD towards asymmetrical warfare that is sure to be cited in future research. As a 33 page PDF, we believe those who take the minutes to read in full will be rewarded with a thoughtful view for consideration regarding the current military retooling effort. Naturally, over the coming days we will discuss this contribution in more depth.

As an opening salvo though, we offer the following food for thought.

We believe the DDG-1000 is critical to the future fleet, just like we consider the DDG-1001, LCS-1, and LCS-2 important to the future. While we are not sold on the value of DDG-1002 or other future DDG-1000 class vessels, we do believe the Navy should build LCS-5, LCS-6, and LCS-7 as planned in FY09 while it continues to look towards the future. This line of thought, keeping in mind our criticisms of the current Navy fleet constitution plan, is based largely on two narratives we subscribe to. For the DDG-1000 and DDG-1001, we believe both will make excellent technology demonstrators for planning the CG(X), which we consider the most vital future ship for the United States Navy. We also subscribe to Captain Hughes narrative from a few years ago that the Littoral Combat Ship isn't perfect, which is a good reason to build a few.

LCS-1 has been named Freedom, LCS-2 has been named Independence, and DDG-1000 has been named Zumwalt. We consider the DDG-1000 class to be for the 21st century Navy what the Long Beach was to the post WWII cold war Navy, so with that in mind we will call DDG-1001 the Long Beach. Earlier this week we highlighted a photo of the ABCD fleet, and as we consider how the fleet of evolution offers lessons applicable to today's Navy, we will rearrange the alphabet a bit for the names of the current new ships and label it the FIZL fleet, which we pronounce "fizzile" as part of the narrative because we don't believe the best way ahead is 7 battleships and a flotilla of 55 unrated mini-motherships.

Even with all the hand wringing on shipbuilding problems, we observe the Navy still has a bit more than a decade to build the surface forces that will ultimately define what the US Navy will do well in the first 4 decades of the 21st century. We believe the article by Professor Mazarr should be part of the strategic consideration regarding what resources should be a priority over the next decade. The way we see it, ends, ways, and context for maritime strategy must be prioritized as we look to the future, because only then will resource decisions facing the Navy be clarified. If we accept "Preventing War is as important as Winning War" as the mission statement to the Navy's maritime strategy, do we assume such equality in purpose is also the priority? The answer yes or no matters a lot.