The Questions Tell the Story

We have linked to Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter's article in Proceedings twice over the last week encouraging our readers to read it in full themselves. Some have already commented on the article.

Why do we think this article is important? First, it is a strange subject to see any Secretary of the Navy present in Proceedings right now, because it is revealing. If there was ever a question whether the Navy is engaged in an internal struggle with itself, we believe that article is proof. Consider the structure of the article. SECNAV starts by immediately highlighting the problems in shipbuilding, specifically making the case for global coverage which implies a necessity for more ships than is currently planned.

He follows up with a call for partnership, but in making that call highlights how we do not need carriers, rather cruisers, for global presence to build partnership. From there SECNAV warns that funding will decrease in the future, and highlights various programs that should help reduce costs through improvements in construction of the fleet and reductions in manpower.

Then it gets a bit strange as SECNAV begins asking a bunch of questions for the purpose of defending the peace. We don't disagree with the content of Winters article, but that content is revealing in terms of highlighting what the SECNAV himself sees as the major problems.

Rather than discuss what SECNAV sees as the way ahead, we focus in on the first two questions he raises for the future Navy.

How do we expand the Fleet to have the presence we want while still meeting the broad array of security challenges that may face us in the future?

How do we optimally match what we buy with the most likely threats we see in the future?

Easy, you Eighty-Six the battleship. That means the Navy makes due for the next decade with 22 CG-52s, 62 DDG-51s, and 2 DDG-1000s, and builds other platforms to balance the fleet. There are so many questions regarding the future fleet. We don't know if laser technologies are the future, or rail guns, or ramjet. We don't know what power requirements will be, nor what the power source will be. We have nothing but questions at the high end of the surface combatant force, and the Navy's only answer is to look back and grab a 1980s design and push it as the way ahead. Let me offer an alternative observation that is an indisputable fact:

No combination of world wide naval forces in the short to mid term can compete in wartime with the current surface combatant force for at least the next decade. That is an advantage the Navy is NOT using. That means we have time to plan our future battleship force and get it right.

If we leverage that indusputable fact, the Navy has a number of options in its evolution towards a future force. For example, the Littoral Combat Ship has questionable utility in building partnerships. As an unrated mini-mothership, it has all of these deployable capabilities that are only useful for warfighting, specifically identifing minefields, blowing up small boats, and searching out submarines. It brings almost no capability to support OTH actions from the littoral, because it cannot carry cruise missiles. It has no capabiity at all against other warships, and almost no value in a major combat action.

Which leads to the necessity to answer the second question. We are heading into a time where resources will be scarce, in particular, funding will be very tight. In such conditions the Navy must make a strategic choice, and we believe the choice that needs to be made is that all ships built should be at the high end of their class. For example, the 3,000 ton LCS is the weakest 3000 ton warship in the world. Unacceptable. It must have the capability to fight at the high end of its class. If the US Navy builds a 1000 ton PC, it needs to be an ass kicking machine of war. Warships should be built to fight and survive the high end of war against opponents of similar size and displacement.

The security threats issue raises the necessity for strategic flexibility. For this, we would recommend more amphibious ships. The flexibility of amphibious ships is not subject to debate, they are the most flexible platforms in the fleet. If we don't need them for amphibious assault, they have the utility to be used for unmanned systems, or soft power deployments, or global fleet stations. The amphibious ship is the enabling platform at sea to support other manned platforms at sea in defending the peace, or taking the Marines forward when called for war.

The strategy to 86 the battleship, build frigates/corvettes, and establish a credible amphibious force capability to be leveraged for every type of mission from the lowly soft power deployment to the assault on enemy territory, does contain risk. This leads to SECNAVs next set of questions.

Many important questions arise from this discussion of risks, to include: Are we prepared for all of the unknowns? Are we well-prepared for potential small-scale engagements that we might face? Is it wise or prudent to adopt a strategy of taking more risk in large conflicts that are of low probability? Where do we need increased capabilities, and where can we take a risk by maintaining them at current levels? Can we afford to continue funding the support components of the force necessary to carry out humanitarian assistance/disaster relief, cooperative engagement, or localized conflicts before they become regional combat operations?

Those questions exist today because we don't build any cruisers to control the sea lanes globally, rely too much on battleships to do the work of the fleet, and do not sufficiently have enough amphibious and logistics ships to use our command of the sea towards building partnerships. Speaking purely in strategic and tactical terms, the way to hedge against unknowns at the high end is to build more submarines, but nobody seems to want that. The way to hedge against unknowns at the low end is to build more amphibious ships, exactly what we are recommending.

If we spend the next ten years building amphibious ships, logistics ships, submarines, and small surface combatants we can take what we have and prepare a Vision 2020. That Vision 2020 would answer questions for surface combatants including what weapon systems, what propulsion system, what hull form, and what electronic systems are needed for the 21st century battleship. Vision 2020 would also include using the LHA(R) to test UCAS-Ns, Reapers, and Scan Eagles as an unmanned aviation alternative to the existing naval aviation capability. The 3rd Ford class CVN, the last big carrier currently in the planning process is scheduled to be funded in 2019, meaning Vision 2020 would decide not only the future of the surface combatant force, but also the 21st century vision for naval avaition, answering the question whether the Joint Strike Fighter will be the last manned aircraft or not.

When the Secretary of the Navy poses so many questions in a Proceedings article, it highlights the lack of a clear strategic vision for the fleet that would otherwise be articulated in the same pages. The only conclusion therefore is that there is no vision, and the Navy is not leveraging its current advantages towards a future where we can claim every advantage. The generic Vision 2020 expressed in this post is a loose blueprint of what is possible, if we commit to using our current advantages and leverage this time to build towards 2020, the time frame when we must begin replacing existing battleships and have the answers regarding the future of naval aviation.

In a period of limited resources, this is not time to screw up the future at the expense of the present. We will not get another decade like the 2010-2020 time frame until the 2050 time period to build the global naval force for defending the peace, because after 2020, for at least three decades, all resources must be committed towards naval forces dedicated to the requirements of major war.