Survivability, Expendability, and Invulnerability

By no conceivable means is it possible to give trade absolute protection. We cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. We cannot make war without losing ships. To aim at a standard of naval strength or a strategical distribution which would make our trade absolutely invulnerable is to march to economic ruin. It is to cripple our power of sustaining war to a successful issue, and to seek a position of maritime despotism which, even if it were attainable, would set every man's hand against us. All these evils would be upon us, and our goal would still be in the far distance. In 1870 the second naval Power in the world was at war with an enemy that could not be considered a naval Power at all, and yet she lost ships by capture. Never in the days of our most complete domination upon the seas was our trade invulnerable, and it never can be. To seek invulnerability is to fall into the strategical vice of trying to be superior everywhere, to forfeit the attainment of the essential for fear of risking the unessential, to base our plans on an assumption that war may be waged without loss, that it is, in short, something that it never has been and never can be. Such peace-bred dreams must be rigorously abjured. Our standard must be the mean of economic strength—the line which on the one hand will permit us to nourish our financial resources for the evil day, and on the other, when that day comes, will deny to the enemy the possibility of choking our financial vigor by sufficiently checking the flow of our trade.

Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, Chapter 4, Part II, Attack and Defense of Trade, page 279, by Julian Stafford Corbett

The most important Navy centric discussion last week was unquestionably the discussion CDR Salamander hosted based on comments by reader sid. It is impossible to quote any one summery, a great read where the argument pulls itself together brilliantly in the end. The assumption of invulnerability is clearly false, and whether the Navy is preparing to fight a major war against a peer opponent, or a small war against a limited but capable opponent, the Navy needs to plan for attrition, not invulnerability. Therefore in our discussion about attrition, a great starting place is naturally survivability, thus to keep the fleet capable.

While CDR and sid focus in on the individual survivability of the Littoral Combat Ship, and correctly highlight the folly of speed as a metric for survivability of a 3000 ton ship, whenever we discuss survivability and the Littoral Combat Ship we inevitably go back to the idea of expendables and streetfighters. What a long twisted tale the Littoral Combat Ship is that it could even be somehow associated with this kind of strategic wisdom.

If a force's combat power grows out of proportion to its survivability, however, it becomes tactically unstable. And a tactically unstable force has diminished utility to the nation because it becomes risk averse. This already is happening in some areas. In Kosovo, for example, the most needed use of air power was proscribed in both time and space. As a result, allied aircraft remained at high altitudes. In short, commanders will be unwilling to risk forces because of the human dimension, because of the disproportionately large percentage of the force's combat power represented by a single platform, and because of the high cost in time and treasure when even one such platform is lost in battle. The Navy after Next could become tactically unstable in the face of sophisticated area denial strategies—great eggs, but too few baskets.

History and analysis have demonstrated that to achieve a given level of combat power, numerical advantage is the single most important force attribute. This is why Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jay Johnson repeatedly has stated that in today's environment there is an unacceptable level of risk associated with a force of fewer than 300 ships. Of course, these 300 ships are of different types for different tasks, but numbers contribute to robustness and combat power, strength and combat power are the components of tactical stability, tactical stability underpins access, and access plus power projection equate to a relevant U.S. Navy. Determining the right balance between numbers of ships and the shape of the force is key to leveraging the power of numbers while maintaining affordability.

While maintaining affordability... we think it is relevant to highlight that whenever Cebrowski and Hughes discussed their strategic concepts, they always highlighted the necessity to stay within ones means. Imagine that... It wasn't accidental, and it is often overlooked.

All we ever hear about today when discussing fleet constitution is 313. As this number was developed absent a maritime strategy, we know it is not a strategic number, and with always shifting operational requirements, it would be interesting to see how the Navy could suggest a static number of 313 represents some kind of operational requirement. Indeed just two weeks ago, while we remain 313 today, the Navy essentially truncated the largest surface combatant designed since the 1950s based on an operational consideration, and yet, the number discussed during that hearing remained a floor of 313. Lets be blunt, if 313 is ever to be something other than a floor, the 313 ship plan must be discarded for a new plan.

Numbers matter, but when we discuss fleet constitution we don't want to supplement the idea that numbers matter more than a combined capability. It isn't just 313 though, it is also about the invulnerability mindset, or risk averse mentality we see from today's Navy. Ultimately the Navy did not build the Littoral Combat Ship to fight in the littoral, otherwise they wouldn't have built a three thousand ton unrated mini-mothership with less firepower than every missile FAC on the global market.

Even the Navy's rational for the cancellation of the DD-1000 is to meet challenges in blue water, thus build more blue water platforms. After spending fifteen years talking about ugly fights in the dangerous littoral, the Navy appears to be in full retreat from the littoral, shifting again towards blue water while building a stand off "littoral" mini-mothership with littoral payloads. We are reminded this isn't wise.

The future warfighting environment will stretch our reliance on weapons reach to the breaking point, because many critical missions will have to be done from within the contested littorals. In addition, access to coastlines is the sine qua non of the tremendous power projection capability represented by the U.S. Marine Corps. Whether Marine forces are placed ashore or remain at sea holding enemy forces at risk, the adversary must know that the Navy-Marine Corps team has access from blue water to the beach that he cannot deny.

There are equally important tactical reasons why the contested littoral is valuable battlespace for the U.S. Navy to occupy. They include deepening the battlespace ashore, increasing a commander's tactical options, capitalizing on the dimensions of speed and time, reducing the sanctuary from which an adversary can attack, collocation with the trade routes the nation pays us to protect, and the psychological impact of "in your face" proximity.

The Navy cannot afford to abandon a contested littoral and expect to prevail.

Cebrowski and Hughes need not worry, they aren't the only people the Navy doesn't listen to for strategic advice, they are both in good company as the Navy ignores the warnings of Julian Corbett as well.

How many tactical options does the Littoral Combat Ship give a battlespace commander? Which sanctuary does the Littoral Combat Ship prohibit the enemy from taking advantage of? Which trade route does the Littoral Combat Ship protect? What psychological impact does the Littoral Combat Ship really influence on an opponent beyond the level of a speedboat? While many claim the Littoral Combat Ship has been skewed in emphasizing speed as a survivable metric, let us not forget how many other aspects of littoral warfare get ignored when we trade our littoral warship concept for a mini-mothership design.

When discussing the "dimensions of speed and time" the authors are not talking about 50 knot ships, rather they are speaking towards acting and reacting to tactical conditions with strategic speed. The new Maritime Strategy uses the word presence to represent the concept of strategic speed, but we fail to see how the Littoral Combat Ship represents presence when it has almost no endurance, no tenders, and lacks the firepower to take on almost every threat in the littoral without its single helicopter ready and available. As we have said many times, unmanned technology is not presence, and anyone who wishes to debate that is welcome to step up.

Small ships are not expendable, indeed the Navy does not and has never built expendable ships. The entire premise of survivability with streetfighter was strategic, not tactical. It was a vision of networked maritime forces that emphasized survivability of the fleet based on quantity of force, a very strategic concept. Quantity in this case means a lot, not a specific number (313).

The sweet spot for survivability is the point where the Navy balances the unit level survivability in a way it isn't expendable, but to do so in a way that affords more survivability at the fleet level with quantity.

Survivability ultimately depends on ship type. For example, a smaller, less expensive coastal patrol ship requires different survivability metrics than a 3000 ton half a billion dollar ship. The Navy is making the argument that speed is the sweet spot for a frigate sized Littoral Combat Ship. We disagree, and suggest redundancy, engineering considerations, and defensive weaponry are better choices when discussing 3000 ton ships. For a coastal patrol ship less than 1000 tons, survivability considerations are for the crew, not the platform. For ships too small to survive direct hits from anti-ship missiles, expectations of survivability extend only to weapon systems of similar scale; essentially small arms up to 30mm.

Thinking clearly about survivability, expendability, and invulnerability are critical to the development of operational metrics that shape a networked force, particularly in the littoral. The Navy cannot run from the littoral because of the vulnerability ships face in those conditions, but equally cannot expect success if engaging the littoral with Littoral Combat Ships that are incapable of competing with similar scale vessels of its type and cost. Resources are not unlimited, and the suggestion the Navy is building a half a billion dollar 3000 ton speedboat killer highlights a strategic view absent the consideration of limited resources from which to develop its capabilities from.